I am glad that Mr. Bremer has recognized the probability the the Iraquis seem fairly ungrateful for what we have done for them. Imagine how grateful the American people and Founding Fathers would have been if, rather than fight a long bloody Revolutionary War, some other country would have been able to quickly defeat the British and then handed to us, on a silver platter, our freedom and independence from Britton. In effect, that is what we are trying to do for the people in Iraq. Initially, at least some were happy for what we have done for them, but the appreciation even then was a bit underwhelming. I’m sure many Iraquis still want us to succede, but when 10% of the newly trained Iraqui Army suddenly SWITCH SIDES when they came under attack recently and another 40% ran away from the fight…..this bodes very poorly for our effort in Iraq and reveals a huge ambivalence on the part of many Iraquis towards any real appreciation for our efforts to help them help themselves. One interesting threat to Iraq: make the northern part where the Kurds are a new Kurdist State, then let the southern part alone to degenerate into civil was between the Sunnis and Shiites…I’m sure the Kurds will appreciate their new freedom and will welcome a friendly US Army base to be established there to help them keep their new found independence!!
This “War on Terrorism” is really turning into a religious war, as the Muslims, in general, tend to be ambivalent about radical Muslims attacks on Western Democracies/ former Christian nations (FORMER, because Western Europe…and to a large extent the USA…have abandoned the Christian faith already).
I cannot help but think that just as God raised up the Assyrians, and then the Babylonians, to bring judgement upon the wicked ancient Isrealites….so God has raised up basically these same people today to bring judgement upon Western Civilization for having forgotten the blessings of it’s Christian heritage and who has, in general, turned their back on the Bible and the God of the Bible.

Mr. onofrio uses a bad analogy, I think:

“Imagine how grateful the American people and Founding Fathers would have been if, rather than fight a long bloody Revolutionary War, some other country would have been able to quickly defeat the British and then handed to us, on a silver platter, our freedom and independence from Britton. In effect, that is what we are trying to do for the people in Iraq.”

No, it isn’t.
In the American Revolution, after the British defeat Americans came together to determine the fate and government for the new country. Not foreigners, but our own people.
What happened in Iraq would be more equivalent to this:
Imagine if in 1773 France had invaded, thrown out the British, removed all Tories from office, and then proceeded to occupy the colonies and to help us to write a constitution, with the understanding that they (The French) had the final say over whatever government we were to adopt, and with the idea that our courts and constitution had to reflect French ideals.

Part fo the reason why the Kurds have been so friendly, I think, is that for the most part we haven’t tried to control them as they form their civil institutions.

Well… the reason we have left the Kurds alone is because they have developed civil institutions themselves (aided by ten years where we propped up their quasi-independence by bombing).

The important difference between the Americans in Mr. Jose’s analogy and the Iraqis now is that we Americans had the cultural and intellectual resources to draw upon for our own constitutionalism.

Mr Auster,

Congratulations on your sense of realism. Perhaps one effective method of familiarising oneself with the reality of the Arab-Muslim word is by consulting bloggers who actually reside on the spot in the countries in question

Read ‘Healing Iraq’ (at http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/) to learn about what life is really like in Iraq.

Read ‘The Religious Policeman’ (at http://muttawa.blogspot.com/) to learn about what it means to be a Saudi.

Incidentally, TRP got a great write-up in yesterday’s ‘Sunday Times’, which I reproduce here (hope this isn’t too long for you guys):

[…]
“The activities of the religious police – a Taliban-like agency known as the “mutaween” – have paradoxically inspired an unexpected source of Saudi dissent. In a country where satellite dishes are theoretically banned and internet access is closely monitored, an English-speaking “blogger” – writer of an online diary – has been making waves around the world with what he describes as “a Saudi man’s diary of life in the ‘magic kingdom’, where the religious police ensures that everything remains as it was in the Middle Ages”.

The blogger describes himself as a US-educated member of a senior Saudi tribe unrelated to the house of Saud and “not trusted by the royals”. Calling himself Alhamedi, he casts a sceptical eye on claims of antiterrorist success by Nayef’s interior ministry.

In response to one claim that eight terrorist suspects had been arrested, Alhamedi wrote last week: “Call me a cynic, or has this come from the Ministry of Truth’s ‘Good news, not necessarily 100% correct, maybe even fabricated, but it’s good for morale’ department?”

On another occasion he noted that terrorists who were initially said to have been “surrounded” were subsequently reported to have “slipped away”. He added: “There are some scurrilous suggestions that the security forces don’t want to catch the terrorists.

American sources insist that last year’s Riyadh attacks persuaded the royal family it could not be soft on Al-Qaeda. Yet Alhamedi repeatedly cites official accounts of gun battles with police where “the ending is always the same – the terrorists escape”.

He adds: “Many of us believe that we are witnessing a ‘fault line’ between the relatively moderate policies of Crown Prince Abdullah and the darker motives of other members of the royals, and parts of security forces themselves, who would like to see the terrorists succeed. And it’s very scary.”

[…]

Hope all that isn’t too beside the point.

Agricola is correct that we haven’t interfered with the Kurds as much aftr the invasion because they have developed civic institutions.
However, we didn’t try to control them during the 10 years or so that we supported their quasi-independence; had we conquered the Kurdish people to try and set them on the road to good governance, they might be as hostile to us now as the Sunni Arabs and increasingly the Shiite Arabs are.
Bottom line: the Kurds had a long period of relative independence, and were able to use this so that when Saddam fell they could run their own lives to a great extent, while the Arabs in Iraq went directly from Baathist dictatorship to foreign occupation with no chance to live independently or to develop institutions their own way, and must endure a much heavier hand of occupation. Unsurprisingly, the Kurds see us a lot more positively than the others.

“What happened in Iraq would be more equivalent to this:
Imagine if in 1773 France had invaded, thrown out the British, removed all Tories from office, and then proceeded to occupy the colonies and to help us to write a constitution, with the understanding that they (The French) had the final say over whatever government we were to adopt, and with the idea that our courts and constitution had to reflect French ideals.”

Agreed, that is a better analogy. It points out the hopelessness of imposing freedom and democracy on medieval barbarians. The resentment towards the outsiders in 1773 would have been based largely on the knowledge that we were quite capable of handling the writing of our own constitution, etc. The resentment in Iraq is based on the knowledge that they are in fact totally incompetent to do so, which is provocative in a medieval honor/shame society. The Proposition Nation idea that we can set up anything like our form of government there is absurd.

Continuing the analogy with 1773, do you think that Americans would have reacted to French interference by destroying the country in the hopes that the country would turn into a disaster and the French would then grow tired of the place and leave? In other words, the 1773 equivalent of blowing up oil pipelines in Iraq?

I wonder if the anti-war spin machine has had any insightful commentary on this aspect of the situation in Iraq. It does not fit the simplistic picture of Iraqis just wanting to run their own country and wanting us out, does it?

As a member of the anti-war spin machine, I’ll offer this. The Iraqi resistance believes that control of Iraqi oil was one of the American war objectives. Whether we believe that or not is beside the point. The point is that they believe it and because they believe it they’re trying to deny that objective to the enemy.

Pipelines and pumping stations can be replaced after the war, but for now, a scorched earth campaign against a long, undefended pipeline provides cheap propaganda victories and prevents the occupation from paying for itself.

Note though that it hasn’t been all that successful. Oil production is now at 75-80% of pre-war levels, up from 25% last summer when there were daily attacks on the pipelines.

I am continually surprised by some of the strange terms of abuse attached by some at VFR to the Iraqis. The Iraqis are not immature, nor are they savages — far from being primitive, they are an incredibly decadent civilized people. As for medieval, they and the rest of the Middle East should be so lucky! The medieval west saw the birth of constitutionalism, parliaments and the origins of science. It was the most advanced and “progressive” society that existed up to that time. The decadent, stagnant, Oriental despotisms of the Middle East do not deserve such a favorable comparison.