Given that the war came after more than a decade of economic embargo (which came after the Gulf War and the Iran-Iraq War), the Iraqi people resisted the US military far more than we had the right to expect them to.
Besides, resistance is continuing -- tens of thousands of Iraqis have already begun to protest. The _New York Times_ said on the front page today that "[p]rotests against the American forces here are rising by the day":
***** ..."Down, down U.S.A. - don't stay, go away!" chanted Ahmed Osman, 30, a teacher among the several hundred Iraqis protesting today in front of the Palestine Hotel downtown, which the marines are both guarding and using as their headquarters to recruit civil servants to reconstruct Iraq's central authority. "Bush is the same as Saddam," he said.
The protest was small compared with the 20,000 who marched today in Nasiriya against the American presence in Iraq, but it was the largest such demonstration in Baghdad yet, prompting the marines to seal off the hotel, and the Sheraton next door, for several hours and to beef up security.
There is no sense that these complaints - in which ordinary Iraqis have begun insistently buttonholing any Westerner who wanders by - are degenerating into violence or an unwillingness to cooperate with the Americans....
<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/16/international/worldspecial/16BAGH.html> *****
We'll see what Iraqis will create out of growing complaints and protests. They will get more organized, sooner or later. They will once again reclaim the country from the colonizers. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>