> >In Palestine, the armed factions don't target other Palestinians.
> >That's more like Abu Nidal's style, a madman who didn't deserve
> >support.
>
> "Palestinian militias summarily executed hundreds of collaborators
> during the first intifada" (Suzanne Goldenberg, "Public Death for
> 'Collaborators,'" _The Guardian_, January 15, 2001,
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,422379,00.html>).
The word I used before was "indiscriminately." As in the mass bombings of Shiite mosques and marketplaces.
> The reticence of resistance fighters makes the job of US anti-war
> activists difficult, because we have no clear idea of their political
> composition, but, if we really think about what it takes to resist
> the occupation by force (at least until resistance fighters get
> really well organized, politically mature, and very actively and
> broadly supported by Iraqi masses) solely from the point of view of
> physical survival and military effectiveness in the short run, their
> silence makes sense. The fewer clues you give to the intelligence
> analysts of the army of occupation, the better your chance of staying
> alive and continuing armed struggles becomes. One of the main
> military advantages that resistance fighters have over foreign
> soldiers is that nobody knows who resistance fighters are, whereas
> foreign soldiers are readily identifiable and their bases and
> movements easy to chart. Knowledge = Power.
The resistance puts out leaflets to communicate. None of the leaflets seem to say: "We are working for an Iraq in which... xyz." Resistance forces often have spokesmen, shadowy guerrilla intellectuals who communicate the goals using aliases or from hiding places. Even al-Qaeda has websites full of ideological material. None of that in this case. Maybe some of the footsoldiers don't really have a program except getting rid of the occupier. But the higher-ups presumably have some kind of vision of who should rule and how. I suspect they don't communicate it because they don't think it would be very appealing to anybody.
Seth