How can this right-wing argument on the war be refuted?

[Some Moran]

"The Kurds and Shiites are extremely happy with American liberation. All of the terrorism going on in Iraq is done by the Saddam-loving Sunnis who make up 20% of Iraq's population and is being exploited by liberals to make it appear as though the Iraqi people oppose the liberation."

[JackSwift]

1. Cite?

Probably the same sort that says all the Iraqis are happy with Operation Iraqi Liberation. It's an assertion absent any factual support.

[wtmusic]

7. It's Operation Iraqi Freedom

The acronym was a little too convenient

[Supply Side Jesus]

2. i believe sunnis represent 40%

i could be wrong.
If the shiites are so happy how come a week or so ago a gun battle was fought with US soldiers and a shiite cleric and his men?
(grant t the cleric is a bit of a firebrand, but they dont know this. I doubt Hannity mentions that.)

[Aidoneus]

3. technically yes (+answers to the original posters' question)

Shias are about 55-60%, Sunni Arabs 15-20%, Sunni Kurds 15-20%, 5-15% "other" (Christians of various sects, Shia Kurds, etc..)

The battle a short time ago in Karbala wasn't Sadr's people, but rather involving the bodyguards of another student of Sadr's martyred father, Ayatallah Sayyid Mahmoud al-Hassani.

There are reportedly around 40 resistance groups in Iraq from all ideologies, to say it is just the "Saddam lovers" or somesuch bullshit is just rubbish.

[Catholic Sensation]

4. Here's what I want to know

and maybe it's been said on here, but I'll repeat it, because it bears repeating. Somalia was considered a failure the moment the Black Hawk helicopters were shot down and we lost several soldiers. If the standard for failure is a helicopter being shot down and troops being killed by Muslim radicals, then I guess this is a failure. Just using logic with how the right wing treats shit like Bosnia (where no American troops were killed by hostile fire, but a plane did crash) and Somalia (where I believe like ten troops were killed).

[JHB]

31. Not quite right (but that's a good thing)...

...Somalia was considered a failure (by the right) because after the helicopters were shot down and we lost several soldiers...we packed up and left, letting them "get away with it."

It's only partly that we lost people. By leaving and not carrying out reprisals, the complaint is that in the end, those guys died for nothing.

[ma4t]

34. mostly right

I think that Somalia was judged to be a failure because we packed up and left more so than because the helicopter was shot down. However the who "Black Hawk Down" episode was a different kind of failure - a failure of command in that troops were put in harm's way without adequate resources being available to protect/extract them if something went awry.

Packing up and leaving following the shoot-down was worse than a failure. Like it or not, that sent a powerful message to the rest of the world that America could not and would not tolerate even a moderate level of casulties in an armed conflict. That sort of image invites more incidents. It's the same dynamic where each time Hitler was appeased it only increased his appetite. (No, I'm not comparing anyone to Hitler; I'm only saying that many people operate on the "give me an inch and I'll take a mile" principle.)

[Military Brat]

5. The Kurds are pleased up to a point

But it was about to really hit the fan when Turkey considered sending in troops. We were looking at a potential civil war. Thus the bombing of the Turkish embassy as a warning. Wisely, they have elected thus far not to send troops.

To say they're all "happy" is a gross exaggeration. Let's say for now they're all jockeying for position.

All the terrorism is not being committed by the Sunnis. That's BS. No one knows who is behind it. I would guess a reasonable number of attacks are being committed as revenge for loss of family members, or simply being pissed off at their country being invaded to appropriate their oil and privatize their companies.

[leesa]

30. Prior to the war, Bush tried to make a deal with the Turks to let

them have their way with the Kurds if the Turks would play ball with the US. Why on earth would they be happy about a US occupation? Also, they know we supplied Saddam with the means to harm their people You think they just forgot about that?

[jfxgillis]

6. It so happens that I've been mostly supportive

of the Iraq invasion.

However, I've been refuting this argument by dumb-shit right-wingers for months. Here's one angle:

IT DOESN'T MATTER. It only takes 5% of a population to be engaged in active, violent resistence to keep a country in continual chaos. Throw in another 10% or so passively resisting, and you have a recipe for disaster. Those numbers probably already apply to to the Shiite areas, let alone the Sunni Triangle, where the numbers are greater.

Throw in an influx of foreign fighters and you have a steady stream of violence that the Coalition forces are bound to deal with.

[wtmusic]

10. Mostly supportive? Still?

What 'coalition', the one that the DOD and Fox News insist actually exists? Please explain.

[Bushknew]

8. Iraqis oppose occupation not liberation.

[wtmusic]

15. It's the same thing

Hitler called the 'annexation' of Austria and the 'invasion' of Poland 'liberations'.

Funny how the liberated people never use that word.

[Cat Atomic]

9. Most of Iraq's population lives in the "Sunni Triangle".

The name is misleading. It's not that the attacks are taking place in a small section of the country that is composed of mostly Sunnis. The population in the triangle is still minority Sunni (20% if I recall correctly), it's just that that is where *everyone lives*.

It's like saying that most of southern California is crime-free, and only the tiny area of Los Angeles has a crime problem. Well, sure the rest is crime-free. It's open desert.

Here's a map:



Incidentally, you'll notice on the map that the violence is not contained to the infamous 'triangle', but is found in the south, around the major city of Basrah, and all the way north along the Euphrates. Wherever people live, basically.

[wtmusic]

12. Yes, and defense is virtually impossible to mount

in sparsely populated areas.

[Cat Atomic]

14. That's true. I imagine militants from the sticks would go to the

cities to actually perform attacks. It's also probably where you'd find the most targets.

That'd be a map worth having, as well (assuming they aren't classified). I mean, a map of the dispersal of US forces in Iraq. I'd bet you anything the vast majority are in the triangle.

[Aidoneus]

16. that is not true

most Iraqis live in the area between Baghdad and al-Basrah.

The so-called "Sunni triangle" (a propaganda term invented by the occupation forces and media lackeys) has probably around 20% of the population.

As a point of fact, besides the resistance stronghold of Fallujah, one of the most anti-occupation locations in Iraq is the Shia areas of Baghdad (approx 2mil people), a section of which was renamed "Sadr City".

[Cat Atomic]

19. Thanks for the correction.

Very interesting population density map, by the way.

Actually, now that I look at it- if Baghdad has a population of 5 million, and Iraq's total population is 24 million, then more than 20% of the population lives in Baghdad alone.

[coda]

17. Here's an ethnographic map.

No #'s though.

[Aidoneus]

18. another map (a bit better, IMO)

A very good map that does have numbers. Remove the space between ".edu/" and "maps/" to view.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ maps/middle_east_and_asia/iraq_ethno_2003.jpg

along the same lines, a population density map. Again, remove the space between ".edu/" and "maps/" to view.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ maps/middle_east_and_asia/iraq_pop_2003.jpg

[coda]

20. LOL yer opinion ain't worth much.

You're much too polite, Aidoneus. :-)

My map sucks.

I knew the lines in mine were very broad (as well as sectioning off into only three groups).

Thanks, they're excellent. :thumbsup:

[aeon flux]

11. They are more hopeful than happy

Seeing the fall of the dictator Saddam and upon hearing the promises of the Americans, its only natural that Iraqis want to be optimistic about the future.

But as time passes and as American promises of a better future fails to materialize, their initial hope turns into bitterness and anger.

[Bombtrack]

13. It's not a right wing argument

it's more true than false but it's not absolutly right

Alot of the violence is coming, in all liklihood from Shi-ites. Either fundamental/extremist ones from the south, or foreign terrorists from Iran and elsewhere

[maggrwaggr]

21. I don't care if the Iraqis are having mass orgasms

who gives a SHIT who's happy over there? I sure don't. We never should have gone there, we've killed thousands of people, our military is now useless and hopelessly bogged down in a country halfway around the world where it doesn't do it a damn bit of good and our boys are getting picked off like ducks in a pond.

I don't see a damn thing worth cheering about.

It wasn't about liberation, it was about the country being a threat to the U.S.

Which was a fucking LIE.

So I don't care if the Iraqis are having orgasms every time they see an American soldier, we don't fucking belong there.

[Lexingtonian]

22. Lord, they're stupid.

The Kurds and Shiites are extremely happy with American liberation.

Oh, I'm sure both groups have totally forgotten the last times the U.S. sold them out- the Shi'ites in a dreadfully bloody way in 1991, the Kurds in 1975, 1988, 1991, and presently the U.S. has tried to stick them with a Turkish occupation.

The story with the Shi'ites is that they have a separate truce arrangement with the British, and their clerics have already informed the U.S. that they are simply going to wait until the Americans leave to implement the Islamic state that they want. (It's documented.)

So for Kurds and Shi'ites it's not love for the Americans, it's about letting the less patient- the Sunnis- do the fighting and dying. They've waited 40 plus years, waiting another two or three isn't a problem given the dismal state of the whole country at present.

All of the terrorism going on in Iraq is done by the Saddam-loving Sunnis who make up 20% of Iraq's population

Well, Saddam did preferentially enlist, train, and promote Sunnis in his army. So almost all the most experienced fighters in the land will be Sunni. Presumably Saddam left them the largest weapons caches and their internal networking is the basis of the their relative high efficiency among all Iraqi guerrilla groups.

As for popular support, I don't see any evidence in any of the groups that the Americans are popular enough within Iraq for them to turn in those guerrillas they don't like in any quantity, let alone people they know.

and is being exploited by liberals to make it appear as though the Iraqi people oppose the liberation.

I suppose that part derives from Rush or Fox News Channel.

[DeepModem Mom]

23. Surfed by Fox yesterday, and "Sunni Triangle" was mantra....

Watched Fox for a short time yesterday after the copter went down, and heard the words "Sunni Triangle" repeated over and over (must be in the Fox memo-from-on-high to staff), implying that all of our problems come from that area, and its inhabitants.

[Lexingtonian]

25. Our Problems Are Small And Managable

except when they're not.

And there's always a need to give the True Believers some image of the Enemy Deserving Absolute Hatred. IMHO "Sunni Triangle" is code that means 'Saddam Hussein, Really!'.

[sandnsea]

24. Dead is dead

And right now we have way too many soldiers ending up dead. There were Vietnamese who wanted 'liberation' too, there were just a whole lot more that didn't think Americans were the ones to do the liberating.

[DeepModem Mom]

26. kick: this is today's response to yesterday's copter horror

So far, I've noticed this topic, Fox News, and a Safire NYT op-ed. Rove must have blasted a Sunni-Triangle fax.

[mrgorth]

27. Again we can't continue to let the neo-cons

act like the war was the only way to oust Saddam. The neo-cons said that we needed to get in before the summer because of the heat as opposed to waiting until the fall, giving diplomacy more of a chance. It's rediculous.

[Iverson]

28. a number of ways

First, the claims of fact are open to challenge. They are very shaky, since they rely on monolithic opinion of "the Kurds," for example, and they are nearly impossible to verify.

Second, even if those propagandistic assertions are true, it means that the finest fighting force in the world is unable to contain a beaten foe opposed by 80% of the native population.

I would say to whomever that such a desperate attempt to justify an illegal war doesn't deserve much of a serious response, but you have a higher regard for our armed forces than that (just not for the idiots telling them what to do).

Cheerio.

[leesa]

29. No proof of that. Virtually ALL Iraqis are against the occupation.

You have to ask them for proof because it is an invalid propaganda statement.

[rasputin1952]

32. Ideology in population means nothing...

The Common Bond here is invasion of a soveriegn nation without due cause.

You can refute that argument by stating, honestly, that if the US were invaded by another nation, Dem's, Rep's, Ind's, and Greens wouold gather together and fight the enemy on the beaches, in the air and on the ground. Ideology would have nothing to do with survival as a nation at that point.

7 Dec 41, that date saw an immediate change in a disparate US. There were large parties of Fascists, Communists, Nazi's, and Isolationists throughout this nation. Those groups evaporated instantaneously once the security of the nation was compromised. The Iraqi's are reacting to what they perceive as an invasion, and arguably, they are right.
There were no flowers and kisses sent to US troops, and as time goes by, there will be more munitions sent tneir way. Every occupied nation has reacted in this way, and I suspect the Iraqi's are no different than anyone else.

The argument that it is only a small segment of the population is a strawman. The Iraqi's know that their future is dependent on how THEY deal with their problems.

:kick:P

[Trajan]

33. These premisses are false ...

"The Kurds and Shiites are extremely happy with American liberation...." ... while they may be happy about libertion, the americans have become occupiers .... which I can assure you is NOT A pleasant fact for a shiite ....

"All of the terrorism going on in Iraq is done by the Saddam-loving Sunnis who make up 20% of Iraq's population ..." ... again not true: many of the attacks were apparently planned and executed by 'foreign forces', a euphemism used by the west to denote any non iraqi arab who may have entered Iraq in this period of discord and disarray ... there is no evidence that non-iraqi-shiite-muslims are saddam-loving-secular-baathist-sunnis .....

"and is being exploited by liberals to make it appear as though the Iraqi people oppose the liberation."...

The Chechens would LOVE to be liberated from Russia ....

Are YOU prepared to free the Chechens from the awful subjugation imposed on them ?????? ....

This isnt about freedom or liberation .... and it isnt about left versus right: its about right and wrong ....

Its about paranoid delusion, personal enrichment and a father's son's ego ....

[Scott Lee]

35. The Sudetenland Germans were Happy to see Hitlers army...

In Czechoslovakia running up to WWII. That didn't mean Hitler did right by invading Czechoslovakia.