Some Iraqis say (earnestly or ironically) that they don't mind American corporations taking over Iraqi oil as long as US occupiers can restore water, electricity, and basic security, but US occupiers have not been able to provide them yet, and they will not be able to do so in the near future either. According to the NYT article "Riots Continue Over Fuel Crisis in Iraq's South" (August 11, 2003), fuel shortages are certain to continue and may very well create a humanitarian crisis in the winter, and electricity will remain unreliable due to sabotage, looting, etc.
The US occupation of Iraq has given a new meaning to the old slogan: "Power to the People." :->
At 1:21 PM -0400 8/31/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>>Something I think I heard Christian Parenti say on Doug's show yesterday
>>was, a big reason Iraqis are not eager to take up arms as a people against
>>their occupation would be the simple fact that one way or another their
>>society has been at war for over 20 years now. They've had enough of it.
>>That also helps explain the pleas to Americans to take the oil, just get the
>>power back on and clean water flowing and some semblence of order and
>>then...leave them alone!...
>
>Ah, the Iraqis - they just don't understand.
Some Iraqis have protested against the foreign occupation; others have taken up guns; others have not done either yet but they may if the occupation cannot restore order and provide for basic necessities; and yet others have and will bear arms to defend foreign occupiers from Iraqi resistance fighters. Diversity of responses originates in differences in classes, political dispositions, religious faiths, ethnic loyalties, etc.
Such diversity always existed in the history of colonialism and imperialism and indigenous responses to foreign invaders, occupiers, settler colonialists, and modern imperialists. Through the course of enslavement of Africans for modern chattel slavery, upper classes of Africans in dominant African tribes helped to sell African commoners of competing tribes to European slavers. During the American revolution, some American Indians sided with the British, others sided with American rebels, yet others sought to remain neutral. And so on to the present and the future. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * 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://www.solidarity-us.org/>