You mean we're not liberators?
As if this should come as a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention:
A recent poll suggests that very few Iraqis (2%) see the occupying American and British forces as liberators. Here's more from a recent story in The Independent -
The poll results are devastating for both President George Bush and Tony Blair, who are fond of saying that future generations of Iraqis will thank them for liberating their country. Tony Blair has consistently said that history will prove him right for engineering the downfall of a cruel tyrant, even if weapons of mass destruction were not found.Really. Why shouldn't the Iraqis see us as liberators? I mean, we've tourtured their fellow citizens, failed to restore basic utilities to their cities, and revamped their flag without even asking - seems like we should win some sort of award for the amount of "liberating" we're doing.President Bush, giving a pep-talk to American soldiers in Florida yesterday, said: "We have come not to conquer, but to liberate people and we will stand with them until their freedom is secure."
....
The White House spokesman, Scott McClelland, put on a brave face when reacting to the survey: "The President has previously said no one wants to be occupied. And we don't want to be occupiers," he said
But a coalition official in Baghdad interviewed by the Associated Press news agency, which obtained the survey, was despondent. "If you are sitting here as part of the coalition, it [the poll] is pretty grim," said Donald Hamilton, a career diplomat who helps oversee the CPA's polling of Iraqis.
In Washington, Congressman Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said he found the poll "disturbing. ... It demonstrates quite jarringly that we are not winning the hearts and minds" of Iraqis.
Comments
i'm pretty antiwar but i really think that the polls coming out of Iraq are overly dramatic. first - i'd call what the media is calling torture more like humiliation... not trying to justify what happened but it's no where near the caliber or scale of what Saddam was doing. second - if the poll was "reinstall Saddam and pullout or rough it for a few years until the country comes back together" i think you'd get different results. third - i believe the education level and the rational mindset over there is nearly non-existent right now. forth - i can't believe the Iraqi's really want us to leave - that'd be a blood bath - even the mullahs know this. fifth - given the radical elements in Iraq (Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds don't see eye to eye on anything) - perhaps a psychotic dictator is the only way these groups will ever "live" with each other.
saying "i wish we never went in" is like saying "i wish Saddam was still in power". from an American perspective i wish we'd never gone in (way too expensive). as an American looking at this from an Iraqi perspective (if that's possible) i'd definitely have voted for US intervention instead of the status quo, but, again, maybe the three groups over there will never learn to work together - it's going to take a long time if it ever actually happens.
wars are never pretty and i wish they didn't exist. as far as wars go though, i don't really think anyone could have done a better job of taking Saddam out of the picture. it might have been more warm and fuzzy and harder to place blame on one party if the UN had done this (which they never would have, they never do anything because they're "controlled" by opposing super powers) but it'd be the same mess with a less efficient management architecture.
as best i can tell we're they're for one reason only, to bring something closer to civilization to the middle east in a hopes that it'll spread. i've really tried to find a different reason because the above statment reaks of PR campaign and silly jingoism but i don't see us getting any oil out of this, i can't believe we did this for haliburton contracts (that's just too ridiculous)... i don't know... i guess it's kind of messy but i don't think we took a completely wrong path... maybe 51% wrong but it's close.
what do you think?
btw: on the very off chance you don't have a gmail account yet, let me know, i've got tons of invites to use.
-ben
Posted by: ben | June 17, 2004 7:38 AM
You obviously hate freedom.
Posted by: mark | June 17, 2004 10:00 PM
Please tell us why you hate America so much. You and the terrorists you support are just jealous of our freedom, I think.
Posted by: guyPaulo | August 5, 2004 10:17 AM
let me clarify a few things (fwiw):
1) saddam was a bad, bad guy
who
2) we (US intelligence) put into power
and
3) while not encouraging his oppressive regime, certainly didn't do a whole lot to stop it with our repressive sanctions that really hurt the iraqi citizens rather than the government
which caused
4) those folks to view the US forces with skepticism when we invaded and occupied them
which means
5) that we shouldn't be shocked to find out that they aren't exactly celebrating our presence there
and
6) that we're going to be facing an uphill battle to win their "hearts and minds" in the coming months/years.
Posted by: adrienne | August 5, 2004 11:54 AM