>>I hope that others in (A) will also come forward and say that they
>>don't actually agree with Rumsfeld that all or most resistance
>>fighters are "dead enders."
>
>Your tone here smacks of McCarthyism.
I don't think McCarthy, et al. ever accused Communists of agreeing with the Secretary of Defense on any topic, however minor. What McCarthy, et al. did was to accuse the Army, the State Department, etc. of harboring Communists, fellow travelers, and dupes.
>>I'd have to say that he did capture the main message of (A) that
>>resistance fighters are most probably mostly bad, that their
>>actions are, on the whole, terribly harmful to all other Iraqis and
>>the rest of the world, that what they are doing shouldn't be
>>compared with anti-colonial revolts in the past at all, etc., even
>>if he overstated the case a bit for a rhetorical effect.
>
>I'll put aside the fact that the precis above overstates what I said
>just as much as Dwayne's did.
I'd think that my summary actually understates the overall tone of (A) postings in general, even if your words in particular were generally more moderate than it.
>Let me ask you a few questions. In about two days of nonviolent
>demonstrations last month, Sistani and his forces accomplished what
>the armed resistance failed to do in months of blowing stuff up:
>They forced the US to scrap its plans for choosing a new Iraqi
>government. Doesn't that alter your assessment of the effectiveness
>of armed struggle in this situation?
Why would Washington have any reason to make any concessions to Sistani and his forces, if the occupation had not already been attacked by resistance fighters and if Iraq were as (relatively speaking) quiet as, e.g., Kosovo (where discontent runs high among both Albanians and the few remaining Serbs without boiling over into armed insurgencies against the occupying force)?
And if Sistani, et al. ever get the concessions that they want, which they have not yet, Washington will still have a secret police that it has been building up:
***** Secret police force to be set up in Iraq By Julian Coman Washington January 5, 2004
Nine months after the end of Saddam Hussein's regime and his feared intelligence force, Iraq is to get a secret police force again - courtesy of Washington.
The Bush Administration will fund the agency in its latest bid to root out the Baathist loyalists behind the insurgency in parts of Iraq. The force will cost up to $US3 billion ($A4 billion) over the next three years.
Its ranks will comprise Iraqi exile groups, Kurdish and Shiite forces - and former agents who are now working for the Americans. CIA officers in Baghdad will play a leading role in directing their operations. . . .
"The presence of a powerful secret police ... will mean that the new Iraqi political regime will not stray outside the parameters that the US wants to set," said John Pike, an expert on classified military budgets at the Global Security organisation. "To begin with, the new Iraqi government will reign but not rule."
- Telegraph
<http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/04/1073151210964.html> *****
>Another question: All signs now point to the US caving to Sistani on
>elections. A likely outcome at this point is an agreement for a
>temporary handover of sovereignty to the Governing Council (formal
>"end" to occupation) June 30, followed by free national elections
>late this year to choose a permanent government. Sistani insists
>only an elected government should be allowed to sign a
>status-of-forces agreement with the USA. The US may be forced to
>cave on that too. Under that scenario, a year from now, Iraq will
>have a democratically elected government and independence from the
>US. None of this is guaranteed, the US is liable to try all sorts of
>tricks, but that's the direction things are heading in and Sistani
>has enormous leverage. So why is armed struggle necessary, unless
>you're fighting for Sunni dominance as opposed to national
>independence?
As long as the armed resistance continues, Washington may decide Sistani's forces are a moderate alternative to which it can turn without losing all hope. Minus the resistance fighters, Washington may very well decide that Sistani's forces are the gravest danger to its design, and the media will then begin to portray Shiite demonstrators as "fanatical mobs" bent upon the creation of a Shiite theocracy that will persecute Kurds, Sunnis, and everyone else and that will team up with Iran, export terrorism, etc. It won't matter that there is no factual evidence for such evil intentions on the part of Sistani and his allies. -- Yoshie
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