FRIEDMAN: Are There Any Iraqis in Iraq?

[hadrons]

We are at a perilous juncture in Iraq. Two things are clear, and there's only one question left to be answered. What's clear is that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there are no Viet Cong in Iraq. The key unanswered question is: Are there any Iraqis in Iraq?

When I say that there are no Viet Cong in Iraq, I mean that the Iraqi "insurgents" opposing the U.S. today cannot plausibly claim to be the authentic expressions of Iraqi nationalism — as the Viet Cong claimed to be in the Vietnam War. The forces killing Americans and Iraqi police are primarily Sunni Muslims who want to restore the rule and privileges of their minority community and Baath Party, or foreign and local Islamists who are trying to undermine any prospect of modernism, pluralism and secularism in Iraq.

Virtually every poll taken since the fall of Saddam indicates that neither of these groups — who have tried to disguise their real objectives behind a mask of anti-Americanism — represents the vast majority of Iraqis, who want to elect their own government, free of intimidation.

....

I know the right thing to do now is to stay the course, defeat the bad guys, disarm the militias and try to build a political framework that will hold the now wavering Shiite majority on our side — because if we lose them, the game is over. But this will take time and sacrifice, and the only way to generate enough of that is by enlisting the U.N., NATO and all of our allies to make the development of a decent state in Iraq a global priority.

Without more allies, without more global legitimacy — and without an Iraqi center ready to stand up against their Khmer Rouge now posing as their Viet Cong — we cannot win in Iraq. We will be building a house with bricks and no cement. In that case, we will have to move to Plan B. Too bad we never really had Plan A.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/08/opinion/08FRIE.html

Friedman uses the term "Iraqi silent majority" to express that - I guess - most Iraqis actually want to be occupied and controlled by the U.S. :eyes: ... and in the face of everything he STILL will not admit he was duped; he "thinks" this thing can work and that's its just Dumbya's bumbling that's blowing it

This a-hole, like many of the millions who voted for Bush, would see millions dead before admitting that they were ... gasp ... wrong!

[aquart]

1. This man is an idiot. And I have a friend who reads him.

[izzie]

2. Well from the blog I would say they want their own govt.

How to get it without religious nuts taking over, or Bush and Co running it I do not know and I guess those people do not know either.

[TexasProgresive]

3. Artificial construct

Iraq like much of the post-colonial world is an artificial construct that is the result of Franco-British manipulations to divide the world for their own purposes and not so that viable nations could develop. This can be seen in Africa, South East and West Asia. The only thing that might unite these 3 disparate groups in Iraq is a common enemy. Whether that is happening know only time will tell.

A fatal mistake that the Bushites have made is common to Americans. We forget that our history is unique in the world. Most came to the new world with the thought of making a new life. The leaving of every thing and every one to cross the oceans was a paradigm shift that created a totally different mindset then you have in Iraq. The new Americans had a shared commonality by virtue of being immigrants.

Personally I don’t see any honorable exit strategy for the US or the UN if they can be persuaded to enter the fray. Before the war several opinion writers suggested that Saddam’s heavy handed tactics are likely necessary to hold this can of worms together. This is being proved to be the truth. My deepest concerns have to do with what this is causing here in our country. We tend to not like complicated strategies and certainly not long term commitments. Iraq is doomed and God help us that we don’t have our freedoms sucked under by the suction.

[Toronto Ron]

4. But this paragraph of his is right on:

From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party — let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do."

[Cocoa]

5. but he leaves out the role of people like him

the cheerleaders for war in the media, the intellecutals with their theories and the columninsts with their happy anecdoetes.