I could not agree more as Ive always argued that a government that has the confidence of the Iraqi people would have great difficulty in continuing to endorse the occupation of Iraq.

It therefore comes as no surprise that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament Mahmoud al Mashhadani wants to raise statues to those fighters that have kiiled members of the American occupation force.

Further it comes as no surprise that President Talabani has announced that the Iraqi security forces will have taken over from the occupation forces by the end of the year.

I expect that the Republicans will hold the line on Iraq at least until after the 2006 domestic round of elections. ( The line being "stay the course")

There is some movement around the edges the odd Republican govenor and the odd right wing commentator who are increasingly saying why are we sheding our blood for these american hating Iraqis.

I expect that after the elections divisions within the Republican party will become more stark.

As to Iraq itself it is obvious but has not been stated at this site that the violence caused by militias is now and has been for a while a greater threat to security than the insergency.

The problem for the Americans remains as it did at the beginning ,who are their friends?

The answer remains the same they dont have any.

(before people go me about the noble Kurds Ill just point out that I think the natural ally for the Kurds in the region is the Israelis they both have a similar enemy list and I think that the Kurds will by now view the Americans as fair weather friends)

Hi Kerry. Again you invite me to say what I think could happen. I usually try to avoid this as I have no great oppinion of my oppinion. I try to ask questions and every now and then try to point out the obvious when others seem reluctant to do so.

Well after so many invitations Ill tell you what I think.

I think that the Kurds should raise statues to George W. Bush, they should form Kurdish -US friendship societies and they should throw flowers at any coalition soldier that comes within flower throwing range. They owe their good fortune to the Bush- Howard- Blair decision to make war on Iraq.

I think Sunni arabs are justified in taking up arms and resisting the occupation. This based not on their rejection of a democratic alternative but based on their experience of occupation the arrests without trial the tourtures the death squads the raising of cities.

I think that the Shia arabs are playing a poor game as peace in Iraq could come about if their leaders would ask the Americans to go and offer the Sunnis a good deal instead of sitting back letting the coalition destroy Sunni areas or organising death squads out of the Interiour Ministry or setting up prisons where torture is practiced.

I think that the secular part of the society is seeing a brief period of sunshine alternating between having some scope to create things like Trades Unions while on the other hand having things like music shops closed down by religious fanatics. Or being murdered by same.

I think its good that you think the future is in the hands of the Iraqi people if you revisit my first scribblings at this site you will notice that I reached that conclussion very early.

It is clear that all contributors to this site want Iraqi society to progress. The sticking point at the beggining was would Iraq progress if attacked by the coalition.

The sticking point now is would Iraq progress if the coalition stays or goes.

I think and have for a while that the co alition is an impediment to progress as long as they are there its stalemate mainly because the Shia leadership is prepared to sit on their hands while the US does their dirty work for them ( with the exception of the boys running the death sqads out of the Interiour Ministry)

Thats why I say bring the troops home because the Iraqis must make a choice kill each other or work together while an army of occupation is there this choice is denied to them.

I think Sunni Arabs are justified in taking up arms and resisting the occupation. This based not on their rejection of a democratic alternative but based on their experience of occupation the arrests without trial the tourtures the death squads the razing of cities.

The sticking point now is would Iraq progress if the coalition stays or goes.

I think and have for a while that the coalition is an impediment to progress: as long as they are there its stalemate mainly because the Shia leadership is prepared to sit on their hands while the US does their dirty work for them ( with the exception of the boys running the death sqads out of the Interior Ministry)

Thats why I say bring the troops home because the Iraqis must make a choice: kill each other or work together. While an army of occupation is there this choice is denied to them.

My poor construction of sentances has done it again I didnt mean that the Shia leadership should ask the US to go and offer the Sunni a good deal. What I meant was that the Shia leadership should ask the US to depart.

Then the Shia leadership should offer the Sunni arabs a deal that would split the resistance between those who were responding to the ham fisted tactics of the coalition and those who are implacably opposed to a peaceful resolution.

Just a quick note about my "doom and gloom"

Pessimism and optimism are useless in understanding anything

Look at the American Civil War Sherman was so pessimistic at the wars outbreak that he was treated for depression while his close friend P.G.T. Beauregard was very optimistic.

I would aways take the rational pessimism of the Yankee Sherman over the fantacy driven optimism of the rebel Beauregard.

I have been arguing with the pro war left for years now and quite frankly I find the forced optimism to be an expression of wish forefilment

Hi David (youngmarxist)

Pessimism and optimism are emotions. My position is that emotions are pretty poor tools in analysing the world. I objected to being dismissed for my "doom and gloom" as I think that it is facts that are important.

You state that American atrocities are prosecuted whereas resistance atrocities are celebrated. Unfortunately its not that simple. US forces have fired on unarmed crowds no prosecution there was the famous case of the wounded Iraqi prisoner being murdered again no prosecution and Im sure you are aware of the controversy about coalition troops having imunity from local Iraqi courts.

The current case where the US troops went to a house killed the mother, father, 5 year old child then raped and murdered the 14 year old child then burnt the house down is an interesting case as it highlights what US troops think that they can get away with and what threashold needs to be crossed before prosecution follows.

As to why the Shia leaders dont ask the coalition to leave well Ive covered this in many previous posts. I also think that it is revealing that when told that senior Iraqi government leaders expect to take over control of secutity by the years end Rumsfield laughs.

Pessimism and optimism are emotions. My position is that emotions are pretty poor tools in analysing the world. I objected to being dismissed for my "doom and gloom" as I think that it is facts that are important.

Hi David (youngmarxist)

I dont think that the coalition should leave because some of its troops murder and rape Iraqis. I brought up their behaviour to address a question that you had posed to me.

I think that the coalition should leave as I have repeated many times because I think that they are causing more trouble than they are solving. Am I alone in this oppinion well no the majority of Iraqis when asked consider attacks on coalition troops to be justified. The current Iraqi government stood on a end the occupation platform. The speaker of the Iraqi parliament wants to put up statues to honor Iraqis who fight the coalition. The majority of the US population is against continuing the occupation.

You say that I produce a drumbeat of bad news from Iraq well Im only raising stuff that happens Im not making this stuff up.

And yes I understand that I am pessimistic because I havent adopted the advanced analytical position possessed by other contributors to this site that allows them to see democratization of the Middle East while I only see policy made on the run with ideology as a cover story.

Just a word on optimism The crowds in Berlin were wlidly optimistic in 1914, The Confederates were optimistic in the early 1860s Hitler was optimistic in 1940 as were the Japanese high command in 1941. All that optimism tells you is that someone is optimistic it doesnt give an answer about their performance. Once again I turn to Sherman he forsaw what war would mean he described war as hell but this did not stop him from becoming one of the most successful generals of the civil war

Steve says: Am I alone in this opinion? Well no, the majority of Iraqis when asked consider attacks on coalition troops to be justified

The current Iraqi government stood on a end the occupation platform.

A timetable for the withdrawal of the multinational forces from Iraq.

You say that I produce a drumbeat of bad news from Iraq well Im only raising stuff that happens Im not making this stuff up.

I dont think that the coalition should leave because some of its troops murder and rape Iraqis. I brought up their behaviour to address a question that you had posed to me.

I think Sunni arabs are justified in taking up arms and resisting the occupation. This based not on their rejection of a democratic alternative but based on their experience of occupation the arrests without trial the tourtures the death squads the raising of cities.

Public opinion survey cited by the Cato Institute.

Those in favour of immediate withdrawl

Kurdish area 3%

Shia area 61%

Sunni area 65%

Bagdad area 75%

overall result those in favour of immediate withdrawl 57%

http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-18-04.html

Hi David (youngmarxist) I dont see your point so your survey is more up to date it only had a 74% completion rate why do you think this was. Just imagine your in Iraq hostile to the occupation and your approached by a researcher who asks are you in favour of attacks on the occupation forces. Surely you must agree that the % admitting to hostility towards the occupation force gets a skew towards low reporting. Anyway your point is weak ONLY 47% of Iraqis approve of attacks on the occupation forces. Even if Im wrong and theres no under reporting 47% is a very high figure.

Iraqis have been polled to death and what these polls show is high numbers want withdrawl, high numbers are ok with attacking the coalition, high numbers see the coalition as invaders not as liberators, high numbers think that the US will set up penmanent bases, high numbers think that the americans wont go if they are asked and high numbers think that the americans do nothing for their security.

Look if you find some comfort in the statistic that only 47% of Iraqis see attacking the coalition as a good thing well what can I say

I don’t think of myself as having to force my optimism in the face of a continuous stream of bad news coming out of Iraq.  I think that the analysis that the whole region is a cultural, political and economic ‘swamp’ in desperate need of a modernity creating drainage project, (that undoubtedly must ‘grow out of the barrel of a gun’), is only confirmed and strengthened by the bad news coming out of the whole region. 

Bad news was always coming out of the region even when it was not reported by western mass media.  It reminds me of China during the first half of last century.   IMV it will continue to pour out of the region for many decades to come, but there is strong evidence that the democratic revolution will be far quicker than the European predecessor.

Just like in China, my side, (communists and other democrats), were always being grabbed by death squads, and later found in a ditch - dead after been tortured, but in the past it was not considered worth reporting, let alone going on protest marches about.  Just a steady drip feed of horror with progress to be presumably measured over hundreds of years, and individuals liberated only via forced emigration to a western country. 

The Middle East is truly a stagnant environment kept that way since WW2 because it suited the tyrants that ran the countries and the imperialists, most notably the US, thought it suited them as well.  After all, the logic goes, democracy leads to communism, so delaying the first step delays any profit sapping latter step; and anyway the major interest of the imperialists was to secure cheap oil or so they thought.  Actually their main job was to generate an environment where the ruling class as a whole would be free to generate greater profits and that could only be achieved by liberating the productive forces of economically free individuals.  It never suits a ruling class to over extend itself and then throw good blood and treasure after bad trying to hold a political entity that can not be held.   Thus the US were defeated by peoples war in Vietnam, and they would be in Iraq as well if such a war were ever to be fought.   No such war can be fought presently because it would require a breakdown in the constitutional arrangements.  There is no need for such a breakdown.  Only those who would fear loosing an election would seek to impose their will outside of the constitutional arrangements.

Nothing new in bad news; it’s the young girl executed in Iran, or the two young teenage boys; the Zionist outrages against Israel’s neighbors and second class citizens; the police state tyrannies of Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia; it goes on and on.  So what is new that provokes people into despair (rather than just pessimism) at the violence?  It appears to me to be the scale of the violence rather than the violence from the swamp per se.  It appears to be, as presented by Steve, just a judgment call as to whether the presence of Coalition troops helps or hinders the democratic revolution.  But the Democratic Revolution afoot in Iraq, requires methods for resolving such judgment calls otherwise we remain subject to the tyranny of the fascist bomber.   That method is via those precious elections and its these elections that in many ways separate humans from the beasts.

Why does Steve not accept the judgment call of the political leadership of Iraq?

This is where I have trouble with people who theoretically support the overthrow of the old systems and tyrants but do not support the bourgeois sending troops.  It’s as if they don’t want the Middle Eastern reactionaries to fight back!  But all of us know that they will and there is no shortage of all kinds of reactionaries in this ‘swamp’ who are or will fight against democratic norms.

There are two sides to the fight and the US used to be, by my reasoning, on the side of propping up the old, but have now (for their own very good reasons) jumped sides and brought on the revolutionary war on terms that are favorable to all democrats throughout the region.   This reversal has caused the cognitive dissonance that has collapsed the remnants of what has been know as the left of politics into an overwhelmingly anti-western coalition of the willing apologists for Islamo- fascism.  What remains active is not much more than a pseudo-left on the streets at demos leading some confused youngsters and older leftists that have not been able to avoid being sucked into the anti-Americanism, so reminiscent of the progressive period of their youth during the Vietnam War period.  A war to prevent elections no less!

The dead end of this politics has been evident since the three Iraqi elections took place in 2005.  The avoidance of dealing with the elected representatives and what they are doing, in favor of going on about ‘the opinion poll said this is the majority politics’ is the result.   It is an abandonment of analyzing the actual politics that are in progress in favor of simply what I would like to talk about ‘politics’.  It’s the meaningless rave to be found at sites like Harry’s Place.

I would rather the Iraqi people settle on a political method of determining ‘what is to be done’, and in their constitution I believe they have.  I believe this at least to the point that it is unreasonable to take up arms to further ones interests against the interests of those Iraqi masses that have agreed to be bound by that constitution. 

Failure to settle on rules would place that political view outside of the representative democracy camp.  Those of us that believe in elections take their result very seriously.  We expect a government to emerge from a parliament with some form of majority and the government to change through loosing that majority through the constitutionally mandated next election.   

Now this avoidance in favor of - or understanding of (instead of outright condemnation of) – inflicting death and destruction on and amidst the Iraqi peoples and risking ones own life as well is particularly strange for any left winger. 

Loosing an election is not the end of the world if one is free to advocate ones politics and convince a majority at the next election and thus form the government and implement ‘your’ policies. 

There is no justification to kill or be killed here.  Westerners who support international human standards and rights, ought support the government of Iraq to make the call (as far as the deployment of international troops is concerned) in the interests of the Iraqi people. 

The Iraqi democracy is part of the world wide democratic revolution and it is this government that ought to be understood and supported against anti democratic forces who are unreasonably risking their own lives and taking the lives of others.

People can’t hide behind opinion polls and surveys.  They are just a giant cop out.

Patrick

Am I alone in this opinion? Well no, the majority of Iraqis when asked consider attacks on coalition troops to be justified

Completion rate 98% Sample size 3,444 Date done April 2004

Extesive list of Iraqi opinion polls http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55