The idea of self respect is hardly contradictory to the fact that the resistance includes Islamists and Ba'athists, unless you think that only those whom you classify as "good people" have self respect (and then, there are "good people" who do not have any self respect at all, but that's another topic). There are Islamists and Ba'athists -- the sort of Islamists and Ba'athists completely lacking in self respect -- working for the occupation.
Think of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson -- they were slave owners (worse people than the worst Islamists and Ba'athists in Iraq) who had more self respect than Tory slave owners. In the same way, there are Ba'athists and Islamists, and there are Ba'athists and Islamists. Some work for the foreign occupation; others resist it.
Resisting the occupation imposes a tremendous sacrifice on you. First of all, you are likely to get killed or tortured. You wouldn't do it if all you wanted were money or power _at any cost_, even at the cost of becoming a lackey of the foreign occupier. You would do it only if you have at least enough self respect to make submission to the foreign occupier intolerable for you.
Most likely, though, the majority of resistance fighters are neither Islamists nor Ba'athists -- they are probably working-class men who have yet to develop any coherent political philosophy of their own. I've read a good deal of Christian Parenti's and others' reports on Iraqi resistance fighters, but none appears to say that the majority are "theocrats and semi-fascist Ba'athists." The majority seem to be ordinary Iraqis. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * "Proud of Britain": <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and <http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>