If Iraqis ceased to resist the US occupation, and if all Iraqis cooperated with US officials and armed forces unconditionally, the occupation would likely become "kinder and gentler": no barbed wire encircling Iraqi villages, at least.
But for the armed and unarmed Iraqi resistance (and resistance can be very subtle), the US government could have quickly privatized Iraqi industries, installed a puppet neoliberal regime, left several US military bases in Iraq, and, flush with a sense of victory, moved onto exciting new ventures (though not necessarily militarily): Syria, Iran, Korea, Venezuela, the Philippines, Colombia, and so on, and so forth. The US government could have succeeded in imposing its Road Map on Palestinians, too. All that is up in smoke now.
That is not solely due to armed attacks on US and coalition soldiers and Iraqi and other collaborators. Far from it. The US government has no social force in Iraq that it can fully trust to govern Iraq on behalf of the US government. In the eyes of the US power elite, even collaborators aren't cooperative enough. -- 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/>