Aussiescribbler
Experienced
- Joined
- Mar 6, 2003
- Posts
- 69
One of the principle beliefs underpinning current U.S. military strategy with regard to Iraq is the belief that the Iraqi people, once they realise that Saddam can't win the war and that the U.S. are coming to liberate them from his tyranny, will, at the very least, welcome the U.S. invasion and hopefully themselves rise up against their leader.
An article by Gary North on gun ownership in Iraq raises some interesting questions about whether this is a realistic assumption :
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north165.html
"I have twice seen the same film clip on CBS news: an Iraqi citizen buying what looks like a machine gun (Kalashnikov), and another citizen trying out a semi-automatic pistol’s slide action. Both times, the voice-over warned of Iraqis preparing to defend themselves.
Nobody mentions the obvious: unless the film clip was staged, Saddam Hussein lets Iraqis buy guns and ammo.
This testifies against the theory that Saddam fears an organized uprising. If he fears assassination – his supposed use of look-alikes in public – he doesn’t fear it enough to impose complete gun control."
Apparently Hitler introduced strict gun control in 1938, because he realised that the ownership of guns by members of the general public, especially Jews (who were barred from businesses involving firearms and barred from owning any weapons including clubs and knives), would make it hard for him to maintain his dictatorship and would leave him in danger of assassination.
Assuming that the footage referred to above was not staged (and if it was, what are CBS doing broadcasting pro-Iraqi propaganda without contextual explanation?), then why would Hussein be less afraid of armed uprising and assassination than Hitler was?
There are a couple of things we have to keep in mind.
One is that the Iraqi media is strictly controlled by the government. So the Iraqi people do not read newspaper accounts of Hussein's slaughtering and torturing the way that we do. Joseph Stalin was, perhaps, the most brutal dictator of the 20th century, overseeing the massacre of millions of his own people, and yet the Russian people were largely kept ignorant of his worst excesses, and even when Glastnost brought a full exposure of the truth of his crimes to the Russian people many continued to cling stubbornly to their nostalgic love of "Papa Joe".
Secondly it has to be remembered that Iraq is a divided country. The Sunnis may well not object to Saddam's slaughtering and torturing of members of the Shi-ite majority if such measures prevent the kind of fundamentalist revolution which took place in neighbouring Iran, whose Shi-ite regime is not exactly known for it's tolerance of other ethnic groups.
The U.S. strategists may be inspired by the relative ease with which the Taliban were overthrown in Afghanistan, but the situation was very different there. Firstly the Taliban were a very artificial construct, alien to traditional Afghani culture. The seeds of the Taliban were sown in Afghanistan by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (both U.S. allies) and fed with money, men and guns from those countries. The Taliban were also covertly supported by the U.S. government for as long as it appeared that they might be the only group capable of providing a Afghani government stable enough to allow the building of an oil and gas pipeline through the country. When it became obvious that they were not capable of doing that, and when they began developing a distinctly anti-American attitude (such as providing refuge for Osama bin Laden), it was only a matter of putting pressure on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to cut off support for the Taliban and aligning the U.S. with the Northern Alliance (many of whom were inveterate rapists, torturers and mass murderers themselves) and letting them do most of the dirty in-close fighting.
The situation that Americans will face in Iraq will be far different. There is no doubt that subduing the country with the use of vastly superior weaponry can be done very quickly. The strategy is being called "Shock and Awe". Drop more bombs on Iraq in two days than were used in the whole of the first Gulf War. Critics say it will be the equivalent of the fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo during the Second World War. Adherents claim modern "smart bombs" will minimize civilian casualties. We hear this promise with every war now, and later, when the war is no longer front page news, we hear of the real impact, from the wedding party blown to pieces in Afghanistan to the children suffering from leukemia in Iraq due to exposure to depleted uranium ammunition. And reassurances about "smart bombs" do not tally well with comments by Pentagon officials that "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack". And Ari Fleischer's attempt to reconcile these two views when questioned by the American press was neither comforting, nor terribly coherent :
"Q Ari, two things. You said last week that, "Every step will be taken to protect civilian and innocent life in Iraq." But Pentagon officials have said that under a battle plan called 'shock and awe,' "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack." Baghdad is a city the size of Paris, with five million residents. If there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack, then how do you plan to protect every civilian?
"MR. FLEISCHER: First of all, I think that any construing of any statements that are made by anybody at the Pentagon to suggest that the Pentagon does not and will not take every step to protect innocent lives is an unfair representation of what the Pentagon would say. It's well-known how the United States conducts itself in military affairs. We are very proud of the fact that any time force is reluctantly used, the force is applied to military targets and innocents are protected."
The real difficulty for America will come with any attempt to install an American-controlled interim government in Iraq.
1. The Shi-ite majority are aligned with neighbouring Iran. They are liable to hate America for labelling Iran part of the "axis of evil" and having it on their hit list.
2. The Kurds are liable to hate America for having encouraged them to rise up against Hussein during the first Gulf War and then refused to supply them with any back up, thus leaving them to be slaughtered by Hussein's soldiers. Also, in order to get Turkey to support the war, America had to promise them that the Kurds would continue to be denied a homeland.
3. Any Iraqi who has a relative killed by American bombs or bullets, whether civilian or soldier, is liable to hate America for that.
Any U.S. occupation of Iraq is liable to be less like the liberation of Nazi Germany than like the Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories or British presence in Northern Ireland, only on a much larger scale.
An article by Gary North on gun ownership in Iraq raises some interesting questions about whether this is a realistic assumption :
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north165.html
"I have twice seen the same film clip on CBS news: an Iraqi citizen buying what looks like a machine gun (Kalashnikov), and another citizen trying out a semi-automatic pistol’s slide action. Both times, the voice-over warned of Iraqis preparing to defend themselves.
Nobody mentions the obvious: unless the film clip was staged, Saddam Hussein lets Iraqis buy guns and ammo.
This testifies against the theory that Saddam fears an organized uprising. If he fears assassination – his supposed use of look-alikes in public – he doesn’t fear it enough to impose complete gun control."
Apparently Hitler introduced strict gun control in 1938, because he realised that the ownership of guns by members of the general public, especially Jews (who were barred from businesses involving firearms and barred from owning any weapons including clubs and knives), would make it hard for him to maintain his dictatorship and would leave him in danger of assassination.
Assuming that the footage referred to above was not staged (and if it was, what are CBS doing broadcasting pro-Iraqi propaganda without contextual explanation?), then why would Hussein be less afraid of armed uprising and assassination than Hitler was?
There are a couple of things we have to keep in mind.
One is that the Iraqi media is strictly controlled by the government. So the Iraqi people do not read newspaper accounts of Hussein's slaughtering and torturing the way that we do. Joseph Stalin was, perhaps, the most brutal dictator of the 20th century, overseeing the massacre of millions of his own people, and yet the Russian people were largely kept ignorant of his worst excesses, and even when Glastnost brought a full exposure of the truth of his crimes to the Russian people many continued to cling stubbornly to their nostalgic love of "Papa Joe".
Secondly it has to be remembered that Iraq is a divided country. The Sunnis may well not object to Saddam's slaughtering and torturing of members of the Shi-ite majority if such measures prevent the kind of fundamentalist revolution which took place in neighbouring Iran, whose Shi-ite regime is not exactly known for it's tolerance of other ethnic groups.
The U.S. strategists may be inspired by the relative ease with which the Taliban were overthrown in Afghanistan, but the situation was very different there. Firstly the Taliban were a very artificial construct, alien to traditional Afghani culture. The seeds of the Taliban were sown in Afghanistan by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (both U.S. allies) and fed with money, men and guns from those countries. The Taliban were also covertly supported by the U.S. government for as long as it appeared that they might be the only group capable of providing a Afghani government stable enough to allow the building of an oil and gas pipeline through the country. When it became obvious that they were not capable of doing that, and when they began developing a distinctly anti-American attitude (such as providing refuge for Osama bin Laden), it was only a matter of putting pressure on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to cut off support for the Taliban and aligning the U.S. with the Northern Alliance (many of whom were inveterate rapists, torturers and mass murderers themselves) and letting them do most of the dirty in-close fighting.
The situation that Americans will face in Iraq will be far different. There is no doubt that subduing the country with the use of vastly superior weaponry can be done very quickly. The strategy is being called "Shock and Awe". Drop more bombs on Iraq in two days than were used in the whole of the first Gulf War. Critics say it will be the equivalent of the fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo during the Second World War. Adherents claim modern "smart bombs" will minimize civilian casualties. We hear this promise with every war now, and later, when the war is no longer front page news, we hear of the real impact, from the wedding party blown to pieces in Afghanistan to the children suffering from leukemia in Iraq due to exposure to depleted uranium ammunition. And reassurances about "smart bombs" do not tally well with comments by Pentagon officials that "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack". And Ari Fleischer's attempt to reconcile these two views when questioned by the American press was neither comforting, nor terribly coherent :
"Q Ari, two things. You said last week that, "Every step will be taken to protect civilian and innocent life in Iraq." But Pentagon officials have said that under a battle plan called 'shock and awe,' "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack." Baghdad is a city the size of Paris, with five million residents. If there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack, then how do you plan to protect every civilian?
"MR. FLEISCHER: First of all, I think that any construing of any statements that are made by anybody at the Pentagon to suggest that the Pentagon does not and will not take every step to protect innocent lives is an unfair representation of what the Pentagon would say. It's well-known how the United States conducts itself in military affairs. We are very proud of the fact that any time force is reluctantly used, the force is applied to military targets and innocents are protected."
The real difficulty for America will come with any attempt to install an American-controlled interim government in Iraq.
1. The Shi-ite majority are aligned with neighbouring Iran. They are liable to hate America for labelling Iran part of the "axis of evil" and having it on their hit list.
2. The Kurds are liable to hate America for having encouraged them to rise up against Hussein during the first Gulf War and then refused to supply them with any back up, thus leaving them to be slaughtered by Hussein's soldiers. Also, in order to get Turkey to support the war, America had to promise them that the Kurds would continue to be denied a homeland.
3. Any Iraqi who has a relative killed by American bombs or bullets, whether civilian or soldier, is liable to hate America for that.
Any U.S. occupation of Iraq is liable to be less like the liberation of Nazi Germany than like the Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories or British presence in Northern Ireland, only on a much larger scale.
Sorry, I know I shouldn't tease you over a misprint, but it was just too much of a temptation. 
