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July 06, 2003
Iraqi troubles
Alan over at Southerly Bluster has a good post on the resistance to the US shift away from a democratic Iraq. It is not a few Baath Party remnants.
That shift, and the Shi'ite resistance to it, is happening as more and more U.S. troops are being killed and injured in liberated Iraq. And the response by President Bush? To issue a challenge to the hit and run attackers.
"My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.”
The Onion gets imaginative on that cowboy imagery.
Oh well, we can expect more hit-and-run style guerilla attacks. More US reprisals. More confrontation and escalating violence. And US will look more and like an occuping power. Thus Paul Bremer says:
"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country...We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country."
Do we have the replay of the traditional logic of 19th-century empire being in the 21st century: protecting one conquest requires an indefinite extension of conflict? Or is this still a case of a foreign, invading army having liberated the Iraqi people from oppressive rulers, then making the Iraqi people free?
It is understandable that American, such as Cobert King in the Washington Post, are now calling for a road map out of Iraq.
But here is an audit of what is going one in Iraq behind the headlines to help retain a sense of balance.
For the Iraqi's the struggle for their own democratic Iraq will be a long, slow and internal fight, in which they, as a divided people, will have to fight for their own rights and freedoms.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at July 6, 2003 12:19 PM
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