Do Iraqi's really want freedom?

Great Debates
41

The text of a proclamation by Muqtada al-Sadr that calls on his followers to cease military operations and to confine themselves to sit-ins in the Kufa mosque.
trans. J. Cole:

**’ In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

“They plot, and God plots, and God is the best of plotters.” God, the exalted, the great, has spoken truly.

To the Army of the Mahdi, the Office of the Speaking, Fighting Center of Religious Learning, and to the followers of the martyred Sayyid [Sadiq] al-Sadr, and all Muslims:

…it has also reached us that a rebellious faction has infiltrated your ranks and deliberately attempted to fan the flames of turmoil, committing plunder and looting of governmental offices that offer services, and of the stalls of money changers…

…we have decided (we, the office of the martyered Sayyid al-Sadr), to halt the military operations and gatherings, and to stop the disturbance of secure citizens, to halt the attacks on their honor, and* to apprehend these rebellious elements * and to surrender them to the office of the speaking, fighting religious Center.

All believing brethren in all the provinces must prepare to fulfill their religious duties through this sit-in, and to prevent enemies of Islam from infiltrating their ranks.

Muqtada al-Sadr
Najaf
17 Safar 1425 ’
**

Is this the sort of thing that you’re looking for iamme99

42

d’ohh

link

43

I don’t know if you are being sarcastic with this question, but no, al-Sadr & his like are who are causing much of the disruption. Islamic religious militants like al-Sadr are not interested in democracy, but instead want an Islamic state like Iran, driven by religion first.

As I’ve said, you can’t impose democracy on a country, but if democracy is what the majority want, then they need to express this desire for the media and world to see.

What I personally would like to see is this supposed majority that want peace and democracy to get off their rears and do something meaningful. Perhaps put together a 250,000 person march where they tell the Islamic militants to take a hike, tell them they are not going to be allowed to control everyone’s destiny, tell them they will be hunted down and turned into the authorities and/or killed, tell them they will not be martyrs and that they will suffer in whatever hell they believe in if they don’t stop their kidnapping and murdering.

I don’t believe we should have ever gone into Iraq, but now that we are there, I don’t see that we can just pack up and leave either. This situation is a quagmire for us but until everything settles down and a leader can be put into place, I don’t see that we can just up and leave. If the Iraqi people want us out of Iraq, then they can hasten the process by showing the militants that they will not be allowed to take control of the country. Unless they do so, there will just be further killing and more animosity on both sides.

44

If it’s a bid for power, wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until the Americans leave before you make your move?

By starting up a militant movement now, al Sadr has to fight not only the Iraqi internal security forces but the US army as well. Why not wait a coupla years quietly organising and then start operations long after the Americans have gone?

I don’t see the point in fighting pitch battles against the US army, they are obviously going to lose and they’ll all die. So Sadr is killing off all his most dedicated fighters.

If I was an Iraqi who wanted the American troops to leave I would wait until June when power is transferred and then I would elect a government which had as part of it’s electoral platform a promise to ask American troops to leave as soon as possible.

What’s the point in dying when you can achieve the same result peacefully even though it may take 5 or 10 years to accomplish? By fighting the US army, all you are doing is ensuring they will be there even longer.

I don’t doubt the courage and resolve of the al Sadr fighters but I doubt the tactical wisdom of fighting when you don’t have to. At least postpone the fight for a few years until the Americans are long gone and see how things turn out.

I think these boys could win the prize for Most Pointless And Suicidal Resistance Movement in history.

By the way, I’ve heard that al Sadr is the nephew of President Khatami’s wife (Iranian President) and that al Sadr was in Iran not long ago meeting with high up Iranians. Dunno how true this is but it strikes me that the only people who stand to gain from destabilising Iraq and stopping the progress of democracy are the Iranian mullahs.

Coincidence? When it comes to politics, I don’t believe in 'em. I just don’t see the point in fighting the US army (the most advanced fighting force in the world) when they’re fixing to leave anyway.

45

We’re not at all “fixing to leave.”

We’re setting up permanent bases and the world’s largest US embassy.

There’ll be thousands of US military personel there for years.

46

You’re making an assumption there, and that is that the Iraqis believe that the Americans do, in fact, intend to leave. Given the level of mistrust and suspicion common amongst ME people as regards America, this may be your blind spot.

What you say makes perfect sense on that assumption, in that case, it is entirely foolish to fight for what must, inevitably, fall into your lap anyway. But take away that assumption, then the Shia have no reason to accomodate America.

Keep in mind, so far we are following ObL’s playbook as written: the Christian Crusaders invade the oil rich country, install a leadership of exile puppets, and set about installing thier military force as a permanent feature in the ME landscape. The invasion of Iraq is manna from Heaven for the Iraqi fundy-terrorist movement.

Ask yourself this: if it appears obvious, by polling or whatever means, that an election in Iraq would legitimately install a fundamentalist Shia governance, much like the one endured by Iran, would America permit such an election to go forward? I very much doubt it. I don’t know what excuse would be offered, what rationale cobbled together.

Perhaps a majority of Iraqis only want freedom of choice long enough to cast it aside? I don’t know, I would certainly hope not. But we have that freedom, we could vote to chuck the Constitution and make GeeDubya President for Life. If the freedom of choice is limited by the avuncular wisdom of the US, in what way is it freedom? Isn’t it, then, nothing more than the freedom to choose to do what we want them to, or to choose to be forced to.

What assurances can we give? Certainly, we are rebuilding, but wouldn’t we do exactly that if our intention was to colonize? We make noises and gestures about elections. But do we really mean it?

Unless we are willing to allow the people of Iraq to choose wrong (in our estimation), we are not offering them “freedom” at all.

47

For U.S. troops, numbers not very appealing in Iraq

**The Army’s top officer, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, has told Congress that the Army is planning for a steady troop level of 100,000 through yearlong rotations that extend into spring 2007. But Schoomaker added that he was not making a prediction.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said last week, “I don’t know of any expert I’ve spoken to who thinks that within five years we’ll be down to less than 75,000 people.”

Seth Jones, a Rand Corp. specialist who has studied previous nation-building efforts, says that if the United States wants to succeed in rebuilding Iraq, it must plan to keep forces there for five to seven years, and maybe more.
**

48

Skarf,

As SimonX has pointed out:

My opinion on “justification” is neither here or there so and I havent offered it. My question was posed to those who seemingly believe that the Iraqis dont or wont stand up for what they “supposedly” believe in, namely such undefined virtues of peace, independence and freedom. Its a safe bet I think that if you were to ask the insurgents what they are fighting for they would tell you freedom from American occupation and Iraqi independence. Everyone in every war fights for freedom and independence, even the Nazis spoke of freeing Germany from the “shackles of Versailles” and even the slavemonger Confederacy spoke of freedom. Freedom and independence are universal values, and it means precisely nothing to say you fight for them or to imagine we are the only ones that do. We fight for freedom, and they fight for freedom, and unless we break down into specifics how in particular our respective visions of these universal principles differ we might just as well go around bleating about how we are fightning for “goodness”.

Me I believe in goodness. Are you a hater of goodness?

49

You are still thinking like an American, I’m not condemning you for that bias, but I think you need to see the reality of the situation.

People in Iraq are not going to protest like they do in the US. They have seen too many of their brothers and sisters have their heads chopped off for indicating opposition to an Iraqi leader. How do they know the leader(s) they are protesting against won’t eventually be ruling the nation? Also, as pointed out here several times, they are certainly not wanting to appear as US occupation sympathizers.

50

Simonx said:

Nonsense. You’re not setting up permamnent bases, you’re just setting up bases same as you did in Kosovo or any other war zone.

If an independent Iraqi government asks you to leave in a few years, you’ll have to leave. Same as if the UK asked you to move your bases from the UK.

Elucidator:

I agree with you that none of this is an exact science. We are all just trying to predict the future as best we can and hope for the best.

But I would remark on one assumption in your post:

I don’t think an election in Iraq would install a fundamentalist government. I think they want democracy. Give them a proper, free, fair, SECRET, ballot and I think they’ll elect a non-islamic government.

The results from the Algerian election have just come out today. The sitting president won with 83% of the vote and the islamic candidate got about 4%. By all accounts this has been the least corrupt election in Algeria for years and international observers have praised it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3613805.stm

Not all islamic countries want to live under the taliban or Saudi style laws.

And this election was in Algeria where there are quite a lot of religious fundametalists. Iraq is pretty modern, secular and western leaning. Iraqis are very well educated. They will handle democracy just fine if they’re given the chance.

Maybe al Sadr is trying to stop democracy because that’s not in his interests. Maybe the reason he’s doing this is because he’s acting under orders from his Iranian masters because democracy is not in their interests.

51

*My opinion on “justification” is neither here or there so and I havent offered it. *

I realize that, and that’s why I asked. Read my posts, not SimonX’s paraphrases.

My question was posed to those who seemingly believe that the Iraqis dont or wont stand up for what they “supposedly” believe in, namely such undefined virtues of peace, independence and freedom.

Oh! Semantics. I usually try to keep things in context. You’re using peace, independence and freedom in a different way than I had thought - well, freedom namely.

Me I believe in goodness. Are you a hater of goodness?

Yes, I hate goodness. :rolleyes:
What I said before was: “I was under the impression that the context in which eolbo’s comment was made was an attempt justify what the insurgence were doing, not to state why, which I thought was self-evident. I had believed eolbo pulled the line out of context. That is - he equivocated the Western vision of freedom, etc. with that of the vision of the insurgence.”

I hope that explanation is adequate.

52

See how silly the whole exercise is? In the same vein of course the Iraqis want “freedom”. Evidence suggests though that their notion of freedom doesnt consist of foreign armies marching up and down their streets running their country and closing down their newspapers.

53

A slight difference of perspective:

Iraqi Resistance Report

54

Particularly interesting is an other article linked from that one:

Specifically because of the author background:

My guess: Iraqis were pissed at Saddam. But they are also very pissed at the Americans… One doesn’t exclude the other.

I find it also particularly fascinating that the American occupation government has been really, really bad at handling cultural issues; I have a teacher who was in the Middle East for 5 years and he told me that losing face was extremely frustrating for an Arab and it seem to have happened many times. They also like to boast a lot to get standing but that administration has taken everything the Iraqis have been saying at face value.

55

Is this what you were trying to get across? Like I said, that’s self-evident. I’m glad we agree.

56

Sad when we get more accurate and important news from independent resources than the main channels. Why the bloody hell was something like this not all over the news? … Nevermind. I wish I didn’t know the answer to the question.

Yep, we suck.

I think that the Bush administration simply isn’t very good at foreign policy. They seem unprepared and specifically unaware of differences in culture. They’re like a stereotypical well meaning (well…) clod visiting a foreign country and insulting someone important by doing something wrong. Actually, kinda like Homer Simpson, I guess.

I have this gut feeling that if Bush had been elected during the Cold War, we would all have been dead within two months of him taking office.

57

If I may be so bold as to begin by presenting Mr. Rumsfeld’s non-denials, (possibly not-lies)

21 April 2003

Q: In the process that you are engaged in now of looking not just at Iraq, but at the region, can you give us your thought process — frame for us how you want the American footprint to look like, a year or two from now, in the region. There was also a New York Times story saying that the administration was supposedly looking at, long term, four air bases in Iraq.

Is that, in fact, a reflection of your thinking for the future of that country?

Rumsfeld: Well, it depends — it says “senior Bush administration officials say.” To my knowledge, I don’t know what senior is, but I can tell you he wasn’t asked (indicating General Myers), I wasn’t asked, Torie wasn’t asked, Wolfowitz wasn’t asked, Pace wasn’t asked, and there has been zero discussion among senior Bush administration officials, the way I define senior, on that subject. We literally have not even considered that.

Now, what is going on? There are four bases that the U.S. is using in that country to help bring in humanitarian assistance, to help provide for stability operations. And are they doing that? Sure. But does that have anything to do with the long-term footprint? Not a whit.
April 24, 2003
Q: I would like to take you to a subject that you addressed earlier this week, which was the question of whether there’s planning on the way in the Pentagon to establish a long-term military relationship with the government that does emerge in Iraq that might allow access for U.S. forces in the future?

Rumsfeld: Well, you know. Is there any planning going on in the Pentagon? **Is somebody thinking about something like that? I don’t doubt it for a minute. ** But we are looking at our footprint all over the globe as I have indicated. We are looking at it in Asia we are looking at it in Europe, which General Jones has announced. We are looking at it in the Middle East, in fact, we’ve just changed our footprint to some extent because we announced the end of operation of southern watch and northern. It was the end of a period and that changes that. Those forces leave. My guess is that in the case of Iraq you couldn’t even begin to think about that until there was an interim government, that a final government that would be in a position to make those kind of arrangements.

Second, and I don’t anticipate that will be the case. **Second, certainly and not at the senior level there’s no one planning anything like that. ** And third, my guess is with the absence of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. The need for U.S. presence in the region would diminish rather than increase. And forth, there’s an awful lot of countries in the region where a lot of money has been spent, in neighboring countries where we have excellent facilities, excellent cooperation and it’s not as though we need additional places out there.

(emphasis added)
While this isn’t exactly a confirmation, it’s not exactly a denial either.

On the other hand, we have Bryton Johnson and others of the Combined Joint Task Force-7 (CJTF-7) Forward Engineer Support Team-Augmentation (FEST-A) multi-district Tiger Team “engaged in master planning for the permanent bases in Iraq.”

from Jan 04 Engineer Update published monthly for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

**Engineer support teams build logistical hub in Iraq**
By Grant Sattler
Coalition Provisional Authority

Johnson is a project manager in the environmental branch at Europe District. He deployed to Turkey in April for a month for the planned push into Iraq from the north, returned to Germany, and then deployed to Iraq in July with a multi-district Tiger Team engaged in master planning for the permanent bases in Iraq, working at Al Taji north of Baghdad.

Johnson said his major projects on LSA Anaconda are building a Class 8 warehouse for medical supplies, building a theater postal distribution facility, and building an 800,000-square-foot concrete parking apron for both the Air Force and Army. The warehouse is mechanically complicated because of refrigeration for blood supplies and security for narcotics.

Of course, of course.
Maybe the Iraqi government won’t ask us to leave.

58

**Meet the 389th Engineers, Davenport component**
March 14, 2004

He understood Camp Victory to be the largest combat base project since Vietnam. It required filling nearly five miles of deep irrigation ditches with more than 185,000 tons of rubble, the clearing of acres of wheat fields, and the laying of gravel and building roads.

It’s to be one of eight long-term bases American troops plan to use on Baghdad’s outskirts in a move out of the city center to coincide with the return of sovereignty to the nation on June 30.
[and]
By late January 2004 engineers from the 1st Armored Division were midway through an $800 million project to build half a dozen camps for the incoming 1st Cavalry Division. Army planners expected to finish by 15 March 2004. The new outposts, dubbed Enduring Camps, will improve living quarters for soldiers and allow the military to return key infrastructure sites within the Iraqi capital to the emerging government, military leaders said. “The plan is for the camps to last five to 10 years,” said Col. Lou Marich, commander of the 1st AD engineers. “They will last longer if we take care of them.”

59

That’s a very good point! Which again begs the question, will the majority that supposedly want freedom going to sit on their backsides and allow the opportunity they have to be taken from them, even if it means possible death? How committed are they to fight for their right to choose? They will only be able to do so if they vanquish the militants among them.

60

Simon,

Time will tell I suppose, I don’t trust Rumsfeld as far as I could throw an ox. But whatever his designs are in Iraq doesn’t really matter in the long term. A future Iraqi government can still ask the troops to leave and the troops will have to leave. So it’s up to the Iraqi people to put pressure on their new government to tell the US to remove it’s troops, if this is what they want (which I’m not entirely convinced about).

iamme,

I think expecting the Iraqis to march in the streets in support of the occupying power is expecting too much. Especially when that occupying power is America who aren’t exactly flavour of the month in the middle east.

Your average Iraqi may not support al Sadr but the Sadr people are still their fellow Iraqis and fellow muslims. So overt opposition to them is unlikely. Faced with the choice to side with America or to side with fellow Iraqis, I would expect most Iraqis to side with their countrymen. So it’s important that America doesnt act in way that forces them to have to make this choice.

It’s important that America makes it clear to them that the choice they are making is a choice between democracy or a return to dictatorship NOT a choice between America and some Iraqi group or other.

Anyway it looks like some kind of peace is being brokered in Falluja so hopefully this will all die down somewhat. The real problems start when America starts to withdraw and Iraqis are left to their own devices - that will be the real crucial period when everything could go wrong.