> On 8/29/06, Seth Ackerman <sethackerman1 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> > Having read what you said, as well as what Achcar, Cole, Chomsky, etc.
>> > have said, I'd have to say that the Iraqi elections profoundly
>> > confused not only Iraqis but also liberals and leftists in the West.
>>
>> I think you're the one who's confused. Your attitude seems to be: if
>> you're an Iraqi and you're not shooting at US troops, you must be a US
>> stooge. That's just not true. The US is terrified of the UIA's political
>> dominance in Iraq.
>
>
> Washington proclaimed that the elections were a victory for the Iraqis
> and democracy, but it of course knew that they weren't. The Iraqis --
> probably including those who are elected officials -- have by now
> understood that they weren't a victory for them or democracy either,
> by simply looking at the real world around them: Iraq has become more
> dangerous, and it has become even harder to make ends meet, since the
> elections.
[...]
> The only people who still think that the elections were a victory for
> the Iraqis must be some liberals and leftists in the West (if I may
> assume that Achcar, Cole, Chomsky, etc. have not changed their minds).
You're talking past me here, and I suspect you realize it.
I said Washington was forced to permit elections, which was a defeat for it. I didn't say it ushered in a glorious era for the Iraqi people. Your model of politics here seems to be a crude zero-sum game: When Washington loses, the people necessarily bask in triumphant victory and vice versa. That's not reality. In this case, Washington lost and Iraq became mired in horror.
>> Certain individual UIA leaders (generally the ones in
>> tailored suits) are dependent on the Americans because when the US
>> leaves, their gravy train is over. But the UIA is more than those
>> individuals - it's a collection of mass parties with deep roots in every
>> Shiite neighborhood, as well as guns, money, and fighters. The fortunes
>> of the tailored-suited politicians may ebb and flow but the UIA is an
>> immovable mass that will still be there after the US leaves, whenever
>> that happens.
>
>
> The United Iraqi Alliance is not a cohesive political party itself,
> and it is a fragile alliance: e.g., between the January and December
> 2005 elections, Moqtada al-Sadr's party chose to join the Alliance,
> and the Iraqi National Congress and Iraqi Hezbollah left it to form
> their own lists. It has no roots at all among Kurds and Sunnis, so,
> when the Americans leave, it will probably just dissolve, its
> constituents controlling their respective neighborhoods in
> predominantly Shi'i areas, with Sunni and Kurdish militias controlling
> theirs.
>
> The Iraqi people urgently need a national liberation front that is
> made up of Shi'is, Sunnis, and Kurds, which the UIA isn't and which
> can't come about through elections, which tend to divide rather than
> unite. Only such a national liberation front that has legitimacy in
> the eyes of all major constituencies in Iraq can credibly offer
> amnesty to nationalist guerrillas and isolate and liquidate sectarian
> terrorists.
>
> I hope that Tehran will come to understand that, rather than setting
> store by the UIA as you seem to.
Here you're attributing to me your own crude zero-sum model: I pointed out that the US is afraid of the UIA, ergo I must be setting store by the UIA. But I'm not doing anything of the sort.
Your thoughts about elections vs. national liberation fronts are interesting: Elections divide, NLFs unite. I don't think so. The same forces that make elections divisive in Iraq -- i.e., each group's fear that the others will take power and exclude it -- apply even more to armed struggle.
Suppose I'm a Shiite politician with a milita. My strategy is to form a NLF with Sunnis to drive out the Americans tous ensemble. Other Shiite politicians are playing demagogic sectarian games, but I think they're wrong. As I try to seal an alliance with some group of Sunnis, what prevents one of my Shiite rivals from launching an anti-Sunni attack calculated to provoke Sunni retaliation against my own constituents? Where does that leave me? Now I can be credibly accused of cozying up to "the Sunnis" at the very moment when "the Sunnis" are slaughtering Shiites. I've lost doubly: not only has my NLF strategy failed, but my personal standing as a Shiite leader has suffered vis-a-vis the other Shiite leaders. Now if I don't quickly get on the anti-Sunni sectarian bandwagon, I may be finished as a political force.
You're always urging people to face the reality that people in the Mideast don't want democracy, so we should all "accept" that. Well, if you're in such an accepting mood, you too need to accept a basic fact about Iraqi political life: Most Iraqis do not see American dominance as the worst possible scenario. They are even more afraid of what the other Iraqi groups might do than they are of American imperialism.
["The Americans aren't the problem; we're living under an occupation of Kurds and Shi'ites," Sattar Abdulhalik Adburahman, a Sunni leader from the northern city of Kirkuk, told a gathering of tribal leaders last week, to deafening applause. "It's time to fight back." - BG, 3/27/05].
Seth