[lbo-talk] WSJrnl sweats: can Iraq become another Algeria?

[Dwayne Monroe]

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This strategy would explain why the Baathists didn't
use chemical weapons; the act would have turned the
world irreparably against them. The major fighting
also ended before U.S. troops swept into the Sunni
areas
north of Baghdad, where two Republican Guard divisions
were able to blend into the population. Now the
Baathists can maintain hope of outlasting the
Americans, who they assume will grow tired of taking
casualties and turn Iraq over to the U.N.
***********************

There is a boneheaded quality to this statement, which
is a mixture of:

A.) Desperation (the insistence that those weapons
must exist and weren't used for cagey reasons) 

B.) A Papal-esque absolution of the Americans of any
responsibility for angering ordinary Iraqis - all
resistance comes from those damned Baathists 

and 

C.) A strange assumption that the goal of resisters is
the creation of a UN administration, instead of the
expulsion of foreigners

The profound depth of the self-delusion displayed,
even as the author(s) strive to sound a wake-up call,
beggars the imagination.  I don't doubt that the
Baathists are waging a guerilla war but the insistence
that they are the sole source of anti-occupation
feeling and action suggests a knumbskullery, which
exceeds my descriptive ability.

This is what astounds me about these criticisms of the
Iraq occupation from elites, even in their
self-corrections they show a stubborn unwillingness to
see the situation whole.

These are the 'best and brightest'?

DRM

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