If the administrations aims really are as myopic as you say, then that is another excellent reason for being against this war. (Though the point is moot, now, since we are commited to fighting it.)
Overthrowing a country in the most sensitive region of the geopolitical landscape (and doing it through a process that almost guarantees the maximum possible resentment and anger for US encroachment) without having a long-term aim is simply stupid.
These human shields who have changed their minds sure are getting a workout in the the pro-war press! But I fear they do not reflect the sentiments of the majority of Iraqi people presently under siege. And they certainly don’t reflect the sentiments of the majority of other Arab peoples who are up in arms. Today 250,000 people protested in Pakistan against the war.
I heard an interesting interview with some Iraqi expats in Egypt. They were anti-Saddam, having in fact left Iraq for political reasons. Yet Bush’s war, which they perceived as a self-interested and unjust attack on the Iraqi people, had actually brought them to the point where they supported the man whose policies they had fled. When asked about Iraqis’ lack of choice under Saddam they said that that was an Iraqi problem and that the US had no right to step in and manage it for them. When asked about WMDs they argued that the United States had more of these than anyone. Although they continually emphasized their fundamental dislike of Saddam, they strongly felt that, right now, Bush posed a greater threat to Iraqi self-determination than Saddam did.
Granted, these were expats and no longer living directly under Saddam’s thumb. Still, it’s hard to believe that their feelings don’t shed light on Iraqis now living in state of chaos and death not of their chosing.
To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the expats’ readiness to support Saddam (they spoke of wanting to return to Iraq to help fight in their country’s defense–though I didn’t get the sense that any of them planned to do so). But then nationalism is a largely emotional phenomenon. And that is what Bush has done. He has kindled the nationalist and religious sentiments of millions of people. They are simply unwilling to entrust their hopes for a better Iraq to Bush’s hands; and, of course, Bush never gave them the chance to say “no thanks.”
Ace of Swords, thanks for posting that excellent (but deeply disturbing) link.
So far, the only real resistance the coalition forces are getting are either from the republican guard, or solders forced to fight, because their wives and children are being held at gunpoint.
Wow, way to dismiss what an actual Iraqi citizen thinks, just because he’s a cab driver.
And you know this how?!?
His point (I think) is that you don’t have a monopoly on knowing what other people think…particularly people you have little or no contact with. Nor do a few naive idealists who one gets the impression went to Iraq apparently thinking that Saddam must be a good guy (exagerating a bit perhaps here) and then discovered to his surprise that Saddam really is a very bad guy after all. Well, duh!
As the discussions in this thread and the excellent thread involving Collounsbury show, there is a rather wide diversity of opinion on what the Iraqis think. I believe that about the only thing we can agree on is that most of them are not big fans of Saddam and that many of them are, at best suspicious of the motives of and at worse equally or even more offended by, the actions of the U.S.
Uhm, a little something called the news.
Yes, the Iraqi people may be somewhat suspicious, but that’s only because of 1) Iraqi propaganda, and 2) Our failure to get Saddam the first time, thus, helping to lead to the death of several thousand Iraqi people killed by Saddam for starting an uprising against him, and not having the collation back them up in the first war. But closer to the end this war gets, and the more that the Iraqi people see that we will, in fact, remove Saddam, the more confident the Iraqi people will be in revolting. In fact, there is, or was, a revolt in Basra (yeah, yeah, the Iraqi government is denying it, big surprise.)
In other words, you have no reason for believing it other than that it is said by those you choose to read. (And, this from someone who seems to think of Newsmax as a good news source?)
Again, I am completely amazed at your ability to cut through all the different interviews, interpretations, etc. of what is going on and arrive at the correct one based on nothing more than what you see in the media! Very impressive!
Okay. I’ve just spent a looooooooong freaking time reading Collounsbury’s thread (I need an aspirin and three shots of whiskey now…damn, my brain hurts).
**Collounsbury, Tamerlane, Eva Luna, ** and the rest of the un-freaking-believably well-informed participants in that thread, I salute you. While I didn’t read any of the links (I intend to go back and do so, but hey, I have to go to work myself sometime), I must say that I learned more in one day, just reading that thread, than I’ve learned in the months since this whole thing started. I knew there was a lot I didn’t know, but I had no idea how much I didn’t know.
It’ll take me a while to fully understand everything spoken of in that thread, but now I feel a lot less ignorant.
Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
I’d say in general it is an apples and oranges comparison.
The Afghan model, such as it is ( which is making very slow progress, if any at all ), is at least loosely rooted in a certain historical reality of a weak central government that has always been balanced by a very strong tribal system ( probably unparalled in scope compared to any other modern nation ). As such the loya jirga, the tribal council used to choose a government, is actually a long-standing facet of Afghan society ( it was even enshrined in the Constituition of 1931, though I think that was partially altered in 1964 ) - It has also always been the tribal method of running things at a more local level, at least among the Pashtuns. I do have my concerns the current Afghan model can succeed despite the best of intentions, if only because as it stands now the central government is so incredibly weak, it can’t really act as even a balancing or adjudicating force to promote stability. What progress Afghanistan had been making in the years prior to the Soviet invasion were due in large part to the increasing strength of the central government - In a sense all of those gains have not only been totally erased, but the central government has beyond regressed to the point where it is weaker than it almost ever has been. Hopefully that will slowly change in the years to come. But I suspect it will be a painfully slow process.
Iraq, in contrast, has always been a “top-down” country administratively. It was created in the 20th century from a more or less geographically consistent, but in terms of recent history rather artificial merger of three Ottoman provinces that had a foreign monarchy imposed on it. Both the monarchy, and later the military and Ba’athist dictatorships that followed, tended to follow a highly centralized policy that really didn’t make much room for lower-level input. So paradoxically, while less purely tribal than Afghanistan, I’d venture to say that Iraq as a nation actually has less cultural experience in internal consensus-building.
Iraq does have quite a few advantages over Afghanistan however. It is less tribal, at least in the ( far more extensive than in Afghanistan ) urban areas. Even factoring in extensive war-damage it will still have far more national infrastructure. It is vastly more literate, with a sizeable middle-class, plenty of professionals ( and with its more secular history, many are female ) and much larger pool of educated intelligensia. And of course the biggest difference and greatest advantage relative to Afghanistan, is that it is much more economically viable as a single unit. Oil makes a HUGE difference.
I’m not sure how best to reconstruct Iraq. But at least it has some things going for it that Afghanistan ( in an abstract anthropomorphic sense ) would kill to have.
No other reason? OK, oh knowledgeable one, please tell me what I’m not reading so that I can be as enlightened as you.
And by the way, what’s wrong with Newmax? Are you accusing them of lying or something?
You’re getting pretty hostile there, aren’t you. And what do you mean by “nothig more than what you see in the media”? Where else am I supposed to get my information from?
Newmax should have been Newsmax, of course.
Apples and oranges, hell. That’s apples and orangutans.
Well, what I am objecting to is you making broad statements like the only resistance we are seeing is from Republican guard forces or soldiers being forced to fight by having relatives held at gunpoint. I have heard reports in the media that such tactics are being used by the Iraqis but, to my knowledge, there has not been any compelling evidence presented that this is the only reason any non-Republican Guard soldiers are fighting the U.S and U.K. troops. (And I am quite skeptical that there are that many secret police available to hold families at gunpoint for this to be the case.)
And, you might note that I am not the one in this argument who is claiming to have all of the knowledge of what is actually going on. I am merely challenging you to provide evidence for extremely broad statements of knowledge that you are making.
Well, a quick perusal of Newsmax suggests that Fox News looks left-wing by comparison. Anything written by their opinion columnists is quite suspect in my view. Whether they manage, like the Wall Street Journal, to have pretty fair and balanced news reporting despite having strongly opinionated and often deceitful editorials is something I haven’t investigated closely enough to know. But, I would tend to be suspicious of relying on them to give balanced news coverage.
Well, my point is that you are making broad claims to know things like what Iraqis are thinking without any firsthand knowledge (like, e.g., Collounsbury has…and he paints a very different picture). I would also tend to argue that your views can’t even be supported by a full and balanced reading of even the media here in the U.S.
Yes, I do get a bit hostile when someone claims to know things that it seems they can’t possibly know.
Certainly you’re aware of the stream of ex-pats headed back into Iraq:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0326war-jordan26.html
I guess that would mean ‘Saddam bad, Bush worse, Iraq good.’
jshore, while I disagree with you feeling the need to get pissy, after rereading my posts, I do see how they can make me look like I think that I’m a know it all. I guess I’ll have to watch that.