if the occupier had just liberated us, and was promising to leave, we would try to work with them, I think.
I agree with that.
There is another element, though, and that's why I constructed my scenario with the Soviet Union. It's not just liberate and leave. It's liberate, convert, and leave. Iraqis are facing a liberator that is expecting them to convert, that is in effect telling them that their culture is all screwed up and they need to me more like us. If the Soviets did that to us, if the Soviets came in and looked down on us as backwards because of our religiosity, for example, we fight back with fury. Even if we knew it was true, for why else would they have had to come in and bail us out, we would be full of anger and shame and fight. |
