> This (absence of basic services etc.) has been the case in Iraq for last
> ten years under UN sanctions.
Actually this isn't true, Ulhas. Iraqis were lacking many things, but they weren't lacking power, water and safety against random violent crime.
Secondly, if they ever consciously compare it to the sanctions years, it probably redoubles their anger, because they blamed all those deprivations on us, not Saddam. This would be seen as a continuation and intensification of our hatred for them.
> The question is why should they resort to armed struggle, if they can
> have street demonstrations and mass rallies.
The culture of mass rallies is completely foreign to the place. The culture of revenge killing is thousands of years old.
> We need to consider the ability to fight over a long period of time.
> Where does this come from?
If all you need to have a decisive effect is a bombing or ambush or sabotage every other day, it takes a miniscule amount to keep it going. Very small groups with any kind of anti-American ideology you wish to mention can keep that going in a huge country. 0.001% of the population can keep it going. So long as the rest are furious and feel no loyalty to us, they're not going to turn them in. And if they have a little outside money, recruitment for one night stands might be simply a matter of offering a furious and destitute man some decent money to do what he already wants to do and would feel proud of doing -- strike back. The pool of such men would be enormous.
And that's not counting the clan revenge killing dynamic. We could get easily get ourselves involved in endless vendetta feuds with every tribe and subtribe in the country.
> I don't know if Ba'athist ideology is a credible one today, after
> decades of Ba'athist rule/misrule.
I think we're talking past each other. My whole proposition is that *you don't need a credible ideology* to resist *when there isn't a state or a functioning service system.* Nor do you need a large force nor an enduring ideology to keep that force together. Because it takes one hundred-thousandth of the effort to perpetuate anarchy as it does to overcome a state.
If you think that proposition is wrong, I'm all ears. It's a speculative proposition.
> Saddam's regime was no better, though it wasn't a foreign regime.
Again, this fails to register the main point: Saddam's regime had a state. And it provided the goods.
It also used terror, torture and collective punishment, force multipliers that the CPA hasn't yet. And it was deeply, deeply integrated into society. There were informers everywhere. Saddam might not have known jack about how Americans think, but he knew the inside of his own society like nobody's business.
The force necessary to dislodge Saddam was a million times more than the force necessary to scare off American civilian electrical workers on contract.
> Yes, this is possible, but anti-imperialism as a _mass_ and _militant_
> ideology is almost dead in Asia. There are exceptions to this trend,
> however. For example Palestine.
Again, my whole point is that having an occupation that doens't command an established state makes the Iraqi and Afghan situations unprecedented. Maybe this will all end up working out simply. But there is no reason on the surface to think that the experience of any previous third world resistance movement will provide any guide. At least I can't think of any. Palestine might actually be the most germane comparison. But even there one would have to turn it inside out and stand it on its head before there were comparable.
If you think that's wrong, and that not having a state and a functioning economy changes nothing essential in the resistance equation, by all means make your counter-argument.
At the moment, I think the history 20th century guerrilla struggles casts no more light on the present situation in these two countries than the history of 19th colonial wars cast on 20th century guerrilla struggles.
Michael