Letters to the Editor
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Unfortunately, under "unintended consequences", the hope of reform and even tiny steps toward reform have been stomped on throughout the middle east ...
as far as I can tell ... Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Iran have all moved in to a "more repressive" defensive posture in response to wannabes and nascient insurgent elements ... the ultimate blowback from that remains to be known.
We feigned interest in "arabs" after 09/11 -- remember being shocked to find just how much anti-american sentiment there was in Kuwait back in around 2002 or 2003 on 60 minutes? Remember being surprised at how virulent the anti-American sentiment was that was being sold in the mosques of Germany and England was? Remember the collection baskets that included Chechnya and Afghanistan as due a portion of the tithe, along with the Palestinians?
I have been anxiously waiting for Gilles Kepel's next book (not on the horizon) for a year or two ... In the meantime, as far as I can tell, our actions have helped fuel a radicalization which has been "effectively" suppressed, an effectiveness we don't want to acknowledge, carried out by our "allies" on their own people.
like they say, "Stay tuned" ... too bad we have such a lazy, cowardly press and such a lazy, oblivious-and-plan-to-stay-that-way population.
It seems to me that increasing the repression and extinguishing hope of incremental gradual reforms will have consequences.
It appears that many countries who initially denounced terrorism (who wouldn't, after all?) have realized that being "cooperative" in the WOT was to be seen as "complicit" if not collaborationist ...
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Actually, most violence is against 'coalition troops.'
Victoria,
While the media reports this is nothing but a 'sectarian bloodbath' the vast majority of the violence is against U.S. and other troops, and against the puppet Iraqi army and police.
The sectarian part of the violence is a far second.
So this laughable stuff about 'leftists' seeing the obvious is very complimentary. Actually, even Republicans see the obvious now.
Muslim political terrorists have to be fought with 'intelligence' - and I mean that in all ways. Invading a country is the fool's way to do it. And, actually, if Iraq wasn't sitting on the largest pool of UNEXPLORED oil in the world, I doubt there would have been an invasion.
You notice we didn't invade North Korea! No oil there, of course.
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No, the majority of violence is against civilians
While the media reports this is nothing but a 'sectarian bloodbath' the vast majority of the violence is against U.S. and other troops, and against the puppet Iraqi army and police.
I see you can't offer any evidence, just a stand-alone assertion.
The numbers from 2006 belie your claims:
807 Coalition Troops Killed
16791 Iraqi
Besides you effectively dismiss the murder of "puppet" Iraqis at the hands of whom you refer to as "Muslim political teroroists". These "puppets" are part of an effort to establish a stable, democratic society after fifty years of dictatorship (which the US of course played a role in aiding). Only a leftist or religious fundamnetalist could be against that.
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Right!
Kudos to Gary Kamiya for getting this part right:
"The suggestion that we now leave a bunch of fanatical mass murderers alone may strike most Americans as cowardly and morally contemptible."
Yes. It will strike most Americans as cowardly and morally contemptable to leave large part of the world vulnerable to a bunch of fanatical mass murderers. Let's not do that.
Next idea, Gary?
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Excellent!
You've done well Gary. If Heffalump (Elephantman) thinks it is a bad idea, you must have it right.
Quite seriously though, the only way to affect terrorism is through policework and by ceasing to provoke.
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This article makes me angry because....
...from before the Iraq war and since, Salon has dedicated itself to trashing the left for its anti-war, anti-imperialist stance. Kamiya and his Salon gang have only offered arrogant dismissals, caricatures and smears of the anti-war left. From Michele Goldberg's insulting, cherry-picking, sneering pieces on anti-war demonstrations to Edward Lempinen's ludicrous, a-historical and infamous piece supporting the invasion and attacking the left for being insufficiently critical of Saddam, Salon has never engaged with the anti-war/anti-imperialist left credibly or seriously. Kamiya even trashed Edward Said on the strength of a cursory, slanted reading of his classic text ORIENTALISM while swallowing whole the superificialities of a recent historical text attacking Said.
So now several years after this disastrous debacle, Kamiya and Salon finally realize gee...anti-imperialism is the best way to go. No credit given to the anti-war left that they sneered at all these years. Well we could've told you this long, long ago: LEAVE THESE PEOPLE THE HELL ALONE! You don't see Brazil or Sweden targeted by al qaeda.
Anybody with any cursory knowledge of the history of imperialism in the 20th century would've told you the results of the Iraq invasion long before it happened. In fact, they did, but Salon like all liberal news outlets didn't want to listen. Nothing that has happened since has been a surprise -- tho some have been surprised by the depth of the stupidity and incompetence of the Americans. I'm not one of them, I know the history of American imperialism too well.
So thanks, Gary and Salon, for finally telling us what the anti-imperialist left knew all along. Too bad it took thousands of dead bodies and the destruction of a whole country for you to discover it.
P.S. Oh, and Gary -- yeah, leave the Muslim world alone. That means stop painting the Israelis as victims, since they're the ones who came along and invaded, murdered, ethnically cleansed and still occupy and brutalize daily a helluva a lot of Muslims (and Christians too) on land that they stole.
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Q
Victoria,
My source is the present Brookings Institution report on the 'surge'. Page 8. This graph is titled "Enemy initiated attacks against the coalition and partners." It shows most attacks (not fatalities) against armed forces, not civilians. I, however, don't know what the Brookings Institution considers an "attack."
Many Iraqi civilians ARE dying, and it is partly by the hands of the jihadists, the Sunni and Shiite militias, the Iraqi puppet government and the U.S. military, which has stepped up bombing. These numbers are not all being done by Al Quaida, as your president repeats ad nauseum.
The U.S. military and your president supposedly don't even track civilian casualties, which is how much they care about them. The numbers are being tracked by independent observers and they show there is no peaceful success in Iraq. Iraq has been rated a 'failed state', second from the bottom. Iraq's own armed forces are now less ready to act without U.S. aid than a few months ago, also recently evaluated by our own government.
The threat of terrorism has increased due to the events in Iraq, and this is confirmed by the U.S. government's own NIE analysis.
There won't be any 'democratic' government in Iraq imposed at the barrel of a gun. Democracy does not grow like that. Maybe in your fantasy land, but not there. Like I said, we need 'intelligence' of all types - political, cultural, economic, military, cultural, organizational, etc. to defeat Islamic reactionaries. The president has displayed no intelligence whatsoever, except a greed for oil, and a hankering for Biblical prophecy.
And that is the best aide HE can give to Al Quaida.