In May 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority conducted a poll of Iraqis and found that 97 percent viewed the U.S. forces as 'occupiers,' while only 2 percent saw them as 'liberators.'
A Zogby opinion poll conducted in January found that 82 percent of Sunnis and 69 percent of Shiites were in favor of the withdrawal of American and coalition forces "either immediately or after an elected government is in place."
For the most part, we are not fighting "foreign terrorists," but instead, pissed-off Iraqis. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "Non-Iraqi militants made up less than 10 percent of the insurgents' ranks -- perhaps even half that." What's more, "most were motivated by "revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country."
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) (when asked about this)said, "As long as our troops are there they're going to be a continued irritant in the situation, partly because -- and this is a very important point -- the troops are just kids put into a foreign land where they don't know who the enemy is and they don't know the language.
"So they protect themselves and innocent Iraqis get killed, and that fans the fires of the insurgency. Whose fault is it? The administration's, not the 20 year-old's."
Last month, Major General Joseph Taluto, head of the US 42nd Infantry Division which covers "trouble spots" including Baquba and Samarra, told the Gulf News that "good, honest" Iraqis are fighting us:
"If a good, honest person feels having all these Humvees driving on the road, having us moving people out of the way, having us patrol the streets, having car bombs going off, you can understand how they could [want to fight us]."
That our presence in Iraq is the source of this is no longer a debatable point. In July, the Royal Institute of International Affairs - a British defense think-tank - reported that "the invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath had boosted recruitment and fund-raising for al Qaeda."
And the University of Chicago's Robert Pape, who has compiled data on every suicide bombing in the past 25 years, wrote in an Op-Ed for the New York Times:
Al Qaeda is today less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries.
Meanwhile, none of those who argue that Islamic militants hate us for our "values" have ever had an answer for Osama Bin Laden's straightforward challenge to the 'Clash of Civilizations' narrative: "explain why we did not attack Sweden, for example." |
