With all the fighting going on in Iraq now -- Shiite and Sunni alike -- those Iraqis who want a peaceful and democratic government need to have the guts to stand up and be counted, even if that means opposing their fellow countrymen. Everyone was hoping the transition would be mostly peaceful once Saddam was gone, but tyranny is apparently too entrenched in the populace and there are still plenty of people who'd rather stand alone atop a pile of skulls than work together to build a skyscraper.
America needs Iraq for military purposes, but if the Iraqis can't get their act together we may have to give up on reforming them politically. Our troops aren't leaving any time soon, but once we turn the government over to the natives they're going to have to fight these battles on their own. If the emerging Iraqi government wants to be respected, it has to demonstrate that it has the support of the population. That means the Iraqi people need to take responsibility for their country and not let it be torn apart by dead-enders.
Iraqis: if you want freedom and democracy, it's time to fight for it. We can't hand it to you on a silver platter. You've got to decide, and it looks like the time is now.
(I'm sure others have written the same thing already, only better, but I haven't had a chance to peruse the web much yet today.)
I'm curious as to the average Iraqi's (is there such a thing?) options...
About what percentage of the population would that entail? i.e. what percentage of the Iraqi population - Turkey to Kuwait, Iran to Saudi Arabia, Syria to the sea - don't agree with what the Shiites or Sunnis are doing? In early April of last year, I would have said 90%. A year later, it looks like - to me - heck, it could be as low as 50%. 50% who want a better Iraq, a democratic or at least a free Iraq, and are unwilling to use oppression and intimidation to bring that about. The other 50% are having their religious, ethnic, cultural and regionalistic buttons pushed by opportunistic former Ba'ath party members, "spiritual" leaders and foreign influencers in order to drive out the coalition forces and foment chaos around the country.
Obviously the higher the percentage of freedom-loving Iraqis, the better chance they can regain and maintain the upper hand - but that's looking more and more like the odds are against them.
Oh, and that having been said - how would these regular, freedom-loving Iraqis (however many there are) go about standing up to these militia-type fanatics?
We've seen this movie many times before - the old west town is being terrorized by the local gang. The honest citizens are too afraid to do anything about it, because they might be the next one shot in a gunfight. The sheriff's too old or too scared or too corrupt to help, the naive young deputy is taken out before the 1st reel, and the brassy saloon-keeper is wondering when the posse's going to ride in and save the day.
Well, come June 30th the posse's riding on and it's up to Miss Kitty and the rest of the Dry Gulch to make sure their town's big enough for all of 'em....
Barry: I wonder about the percentage, too. If it's 90%ish, then they need to get on the ball and fight. Everyone had guns it seems, they're just afraid to fight their "Muslim brothers" (although a lot are joining the new police, which is great).
If it's much lower than that, it means that we can't win even if the US pacifies the insurgents. The whole premise is that the Iraqis want to be free. If they don't want it, what are we supposed to do? Eh.
Yep, they had better stand up and help correct our massive mistake. We went from thinking we would be greated as liberators to having Americans mulilated and drug through the streets. And we shoved this problem down their throats, whether they wanted it or not. So now they have to stand up and oppose better armed (and better trained?) fanatic militia men.
Oh, and they had better say "thank you", too.
Dast: They should thank us for eliminating the most well-armed faction that was oppressing them, formerly led by Saddam Hussein.
Michael: Perhaps they would thank us if we had any intention of truly acting in their self interest. We support Saddam when it suits us, we invade when it suits us. Let's face, it, it's all about us. Dead Iraqis don't show up very large on the radar screen.
Or to put it another way, if I'm being beat up by the school bully every day, someone like the US might come to save me. Let's say the US did so by cluster bombing the entire playground, including myself and the bully. Should I thank the US?
Everyone is glad Saddam is gone (I would venture to guess even many of his followers), and we have to deal with the current situation regardless of why it happened, but it just seems extremely disrespectful to ask Iraqis to thank us for anything when all we are doing is serving ourselves. They (and our great military) get to do all of the dying while we get to sit around and smugly ask them to be thankful.
Dast: Yeah, we spend blood and treasure to further our own interests. Welcome to Real Life. I'm sorry it doesn't measure up to your utopian ideal.
You can make the argument that we shouldn't have sided with Saddam against Iran, but I highly doubt you have any idea of the real intricacies of that situation.
The Iraqis should be grateful. Rather than bargain with Saddam (as we could have done) or despose him and install a dictator we could trust, we're trying to give them democracy.
Michael: Sorry for the long response here. To be more clear, I'm citing the particulars of your response.
Bit of a strawman argument there, Michael? I don't recall espousing any utopian ideal. Other than a shallow jab at what I consider to be a massive mistake of methods to get there, I have not claimed we should or should not have done what we did, at least on this topic. Neither today nor during prevoius administrations. I'm not concerned with whether removing Saddam or not was a good idea in this discussion.
Yet another strawman argument there, Micheal? I must admit that my memory isn't what it used to be, but I don't recall stating that we should not have sided with Saddam against Iran. Whether or not we should have is not relevant to my point. I'll ignore the personal jab about my "idea" concerning the "intricacies of the situation".
Well, it's a good thing we are smart enough to tell Iraqis what they should want, huh? And not only that, but how they will get it, when they will get it, and at what cost to them. Maybe they don't want a democracy (at least some Iraqis seem to be putting up a strong enough resistance to indicate some don't)? Maybe they didn't want it at such a high cost? Kind of hard to vote when you are dead, no? But again, this isn't a dicussion about whether or not we should have done what we did, but about whether or not it is a disrespect for us to sit back and tell Iraqis that they should be thankful for any of this.
Anyway, stimulating as always Michael. :) Later.
To quote you directly Micheal
Iraqis: if you want freedom and democracy, it's time to fight for it. We can't hand it to you on a silver platter. You've got to decide, and it looks like the time is now.
In relation to this I would like to say how eerily it seems to ring as the same sentiment to which the Americans gave the Shia, urging them for an uprising , during Saddams rule, and then, so cruelly letting them down. They got massacred.
Democracy?
For all those years during the Iran Iraq war, Iran fought so bravely against this monster Saddam and all the western world had it in for Khomeini instead.
Well I tell you what an Iranian occupied Iraq would have been a darn sight better than an American/British one.
You guys just don't fit in. That's why at Baghdad airport all the military security consists of Gurkha and Fijian British army troops instead of your common white man.
Iraq is a muslim country, Bush and Blair are alcohol swilling, pig eating imperialists who the muslim populace of the world despise and have little respect for.
Everybody's worried about an Iranian style government in Iraq. Well, why SHOULDN'T there be one. It's better than an American style government isn't it? I mean over half the populace of the country is SHIA and therefore at the very least the clergy will have common grounds for understanding (not just with the shi'a, but with the sentiment of the muslim populace as a whole).
Kerbala and Najaf are the spiritual homes of the Shia of the world, not JUST the Iraqis.
Why then were all the borders closed for the holy festivals of Ashura and Arbaeen this year. What is it that America are so afraid of?
The revolution of Imam Hussein, that the Shias (and muslims generally) believe in so vehemently lies in the heart of all of them. At his shrine there is an energy that emanates, it is almost uncontrolable.
I really do hope that Iraq does find it's true identity with all the ethnic and religious mix that is a part of it.
But the Iraqi people should never forget that it was America and Britain that supported Saddam's barbaric rule in the first instance, and, if the Iraqi people are to FIGHT for democracy, then it should be under the shadow of it's true spiritual king, Imam Hussein, son of Ali, the Martyr of Karbala.