How can the US expect to "win" the war or even "pacify" Iraq without pro-US Iraqis?

[BurtWorm]

This, as pointed out over at TPM, is one big difference between Iraq and Vietnam, yet another difference that spells ill for the future of whatever the mission is there.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2006_11_26.php#011326


Over at TPMCafe, Todd Gitlin has a post up which, in turn, picks up on a column by Harold Myerson. And it reminds me of a conversation we had here at TPM a few days ago along the lines that the comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam may actually be far too optimistic.

During the Vietnam war (and to an extent during all the Cold War proxy wars) the US always had a substantial anti-Communist constituency in the country. You can debate how large that constituency was and how great a constituency they were to support. But there's no questioning the fact that they existed, just as there was in pretty much all the Latin American insurgency/Cold War proxy wars in the 20th century. What's more, in the country's in question, those anti-Communist constituencies were often quite powerful -- certainly, in most cases, powerful out of proportion to their numbers.

In Iraq, however, it's not clear we have anything remotely like that. True, there's a smattering of western-educated sophisticates and liberals who probably would like Iraq to be more like the US. But that's not to say that they necessarily like what we're doing in the country -- a mistaken leap of logic that routinely gets made. And among the major, powerful groups in the country we have at best, contingent and often momentary support from whomever we're not against. So, we have a marriage of convenience with the Shi'as while we're mauling the Sunnis, and vice versa. The Kurds are a significant exception to this general observation, but because of their relatively small slice of the population, their inherent antagonism toward most of the neighboring states and the fact that they're geographically limited to the north, I'm not sure it's an exception that changes the general truth.

[whistle]

1. Can shrub actually name or point out 1,000 Iraqis who in their hearts

....really want Americans in their country helping them get reestablished? How about 100? Or even 10? I propose that NOT ONE Iraqi wants Americans to stay in their country any longer based on the experience they have had with American and British occupation since the Iraq Invasion began in March 2003.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. The ninth level of hell...

is reserved for traitors.

And pro-US Iraqis are pretty much traitors by default. So the only people that we can trust to help us in Iraq, unfortunately, are people utterly untrustworthy.