If you’re a conservative, listening to Riverbend will do you well. She is a pretty conservative first-hand observation. What she writes is probably a pretty good conservative reflection of how most Baghdadians feel.There are some more friendly to Americans than her (mostly select business people), but most are probably at least as bitter.
The term fundamentalist is arguable. Ervand Abrahamian has made what I think is a persuasive argument that Khomeini wasn’t a fundamentalist in almost any sense of the word, but rather a populist. Certainly his theology cannot be construed as anything but innovative and outside the mainstream of historical Imami Shi’i thought ( which positively discouraged clerical political activity ).
An overall positive review of Abrahamian’s book Khomeinism that is however a bit sceptical of the of the usefulness of the populist label:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/blecher.html
Not really. The whole thing was a confused rush and it is not at all certain, in fact it is pretty unlikely that most Iranian realized they were setting the stage for the type of theocratic autocracy ( with democratic trappings ) they eventually ended up with. Khomeini had immense revolutionary cachet and a sterling reputation as a humble, monastic, fair-minded religious figure and he carefully positioned himself as a go to guy only for emergencies, who would generally fade into the background and act as a national spiritual anchor. Khomeini had since the 1970’s embraced that era’s pseudo-Marxist rhetoric of class warfare and in the wake of the revolution he was initially careful to reach out to the left by promoting such leftist celebrations as May Day. The first post-Revolution parliament was very ideologically mixed ( though Ayatollah Beheshti’s conservative IRP and its allies did capture a majority of 130 seats out of 241 in the first election ). It was only gradually that he and the clerical conservatives asserted themselves and began purging leftists, secularists, and eventually religious moderates from the government ( especially after 1981 ).
Some were, some were not. Khomeini used his Mandela-like standing to hijack a popular uprising. “His” constitution was popularly affirmed, but rushed through with little debate in the post-revolutionary euphoria and no alternatives to the proposed Islamic Republic were offered for referendum. The opposition ( the left, other more moderate religious parties like Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari’s) only started to get their act together to protest it after it had passed.
Nah, again. There was nothing traditionalist about Imami Shi’i clerical political activism and rule. It is very non-traditional and there was no certainty that Khomeini’s vision would triumph in Iran until ~1980. The Hostage Crisis was actually rather key to Khomeini’s success in undermining his opposition. So was SH’s invasion of Iran and to a lesser extent the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan.
- Tamerlane
Actually on re-reading, it really isn’t that positive, as the reviewer disagrees with a fair bit of Abrahamian’s take :). Still, it is fair, I think, though my spin on the book would be a bit more positive.
- Tamerlane
Just a general thought: Iraq is like Vietnam in that what you have is a civil war of sorts in which the mostly Sunni folks who had a stake in the old regime are fighting the mostly Shia folks who want a new regime, dominated by themselves, while the Kurds go off & pursue their own agenda, of course.
Anyway, being a civil war, you are once again in the position of having to fight off a section of the populace in its own territory, a thing which is simply not going to be successful. Our own Revolutionary War here in the US can be understood as a civil war between the revolutionaries and the Tories. The Brits took the major cities, and still lost the war. Ditto for us in Iraq: we can take all the major cities we want, it ain’t going to win us the war.
It’s not our territory, and we can fight ‘til doomsday trying to make it ours, but it simply won’t work. Like someone said up there, get the elections done, declare all is well for the Fox News crowd and Brutus, who apparently believes every piece of propaganda the USG puts out, then get out, before we manufacture any more terrorists and waste any more of our soldiers’ lives or our money on this limitless rathole.