[lbo-talk] re Hot Air Advisory! (Was: Tariq Ali)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Sat Dec 13 11:31:29 PST 2003


mike larkin wrote:


>The trouble with Ali is that his Iraq stuff is a
>tired rehash of left arguments you can get from other
>left writers who challenge their readers'
>preconceptions instead of just pandering to them.
>People like Christian Parenti, for example.

I've taken some heat for interviewing Richard Burkholder, who supervised Gallup's poll of Baghdad. A letter-writer said he couldn't believe he was listening to a progressive radio station - I should leave that stuff to NPR. And someone at the Monthly Review Xmas party told me pretty much the same thing. I guess these folks know what Baghdadis think, or should think, and any effort to ask them somehow promotes imperialism. But the poll confirmed what Christian told me - that Iraqis are glad to be of Saddam (the guy at the MR party tried to convince me that SH was popular and had done good things), don't like being occupied by the U.S. and don't at all trust Washington's motives, but are worried about what would happen if the U.S. simply pulled out. It's a complicated and contradictory position, which doesn't fit nicely with the preconceptions of your average metropolitan anti-imperialist. I spent quite a bit of time getting Burkholder to explain how you accurately poll a population under occupation (they used Iraqis who didn't disclose that they were doing the poll for a U.S. firm - and he said respondents were so thrilled that they were being asked what they think that they kept talking way beyond the allotted hour, and tried to get the pollsters to talk to their friends and relatives too). He struck me as someone who was serious about trying to probe the state of opinion. But some people didn't want to listen to the results.

Doug



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