[lbo-talk] the Iraqi resistance at work

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 11/19/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie wrote:
> > On 11/19/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >> Can someone explain the strategic rationale behind this?
> >>
> >> > HILLA, Iraq (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 22 people south of
> >> > Baghdad on Sunday by offering poor Shi'ite workers day laboring
> >> > jobs and then detonating explosives packed inside his minibus as
> >> > the crowd gathered around it.
> >>
> >> Nihilism? Sectarianism? Making Iraq ungovernable? I don't get it.
> >
> > You should have supported Saddam Hussein's government.  Terrorism
> > against that government was not unknown, and it committed its own
> > state terrorism on a large scale, but it provided security to the
> > Iraqis, who will not enjoy it again for many, many years to come.
> ==========================
> Or you could have opposed the US invasion of Iraq, as was typically done,
> without declaring support for Saddam's government. In fact, the latter would
> have been counter-productive in that it would have alienated the mass of
> antiwar protestors who saw the two issues as quite separate.

It's time for "the mass of antiwar protesters" to learn a lesson in
realism from the Iraq sanctions and war: the existence of a government
and citizens' welfare under it are not separate issues.  It's the
government that is responsible for welfare of citizens who live under
it, from security to nutrition, sanitation to education, in any
country where a modern government exists.  Destroy a government, and
citizens under it will suffer, deprived of what the government has
provided them with.
-- 
Yoshie
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