Doug, (caricaturing Yoshie?):
'It's also about staking out your market niche - you can't be the
baddest leftist on the block if you can't denounce all the others as
stooges, dupes, and sellouts.'
Well, possibly; that's a characterisation that resonates. But maybe you should take care that you do not sound a little shrill, yourself.
(And, for sure, questioning the racial background of posting is a provocation too far.)
But the rhetorical energy given over to denouncing the violence committed against the occupation - and, or - against 'struggling civil society' in Iraq, is out of proportion to the problem.
I haven't endorsed any struggle against the occupation - I just don't know enough about what anyone is fighting for.
But I do know that the failure of the occupation is not caused by the 'Iraqi resistance'/'terrorists'. It has failed on its own.
The only real threat to the security, and to the sovereign will of the Iraqi people (however expressed) is the occupation itself.
The desire to label opponents as 'Ba'athists', 'Al Qaeda', 'fanatics' and so on is so strong because it is the only way to justify the military presence - so short on indigenous endorsement.
*** There is, it should be said, an immature desire to see imperialism - personified in the US Serviceman, or even in the Iraqi policeman - cut down by an avenging angel from the east, that stirs the hearts of western adolescents.
That fantasy, coalesces with its obverse, the fear of the 'axis of evil', to big up the supposed Iraqi resistance.