>>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.
>
>FWIW I don't think it makes much sense to talk about slave owners as
>being "bad people" in an era in which slavery was taken for granted.
Chattel slaves of the New World slavery didn't take slavery for granted, and they thought of slave owners as "bad people" or worse. You can read slave narratives (by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, etc.) and oral histories of slaves to learn about their thoughts. Moreover, whenever they had a fighting chance, slaves either fled or rebelled or both, demonstrating what they thought of slavery and slave owners by their deeds.
Thomas Jefferson also thought that slavery makes slave owners "bad people" and that God would side with slaves against slave owners in the event of "a contest" between them: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest" (Notes on the State of Virginia, Chapter 18, <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch18.html>).
>>Resisting the occupation imposes a tremendous sacrifice on you.
>>First of all, you are likely to get killed or tortured.
>
>Seems to me this is a likely fate for collaborators too.
All have very good chances of getting killed or wounded. The casualty rates go like this, in the descending order: Iraqi resistance fighters; Iraqi collaborators; and US and coalition soldiers. The least motivated to fight among them are Iraqi collaborators, for they are not as well paid as US and coalition soldiers, they (unlike US soldiers) are not (yet) compelled by law to serve America for a term in their contract, and they cannot earn self respect that comes from the belief that they are defending their country from unjust invaders that resistance fighters have. Hence their high rates of desertion.
>>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.
>
>You might do it out of religious fervor, fanaticism, even peer
>pressure (Sunni martyr culture?). I can think of lots of reasons.
>
>You could make the self-respect argument in the case of Nazi
>partisans fighting the Soviet Union, BTW. Go to the Baltics or
>Western Ukraine. It's a common argument.
Self respect that makes people hate submitting to the foreign occupation is very common, and the occupiers will forget this fact at their own peril. No US soldier or Iraqi collaborator will fight without being paid, much less make martyrs of themselves, and even with paychecks, how long they will fight is a big question. How much do you think you need to be paid to make you motivated to go and fight in Iraq? -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * 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/>