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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (115190)	9/18/2003 9:08:51 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Interesting excerpts from a BBC interview with "Salam Pax": Q: When do you expect/hope the coalition will pull out of Baghdad and give you back your city? SALAM PAX: As soon as we're back on our own feet. If they pull out of Baghdad too soon, we'll have chaos. If they stay after we have a government, and when it looks like we are able to run things, it would be unacceptable. For the moment I think we need their help. It's less the military force, more people helping us in governance issues, administration, showing people the way... Q: ...I take it you've seen a lot of what the Bush administration has claimed about life in Iraq under Saddam ... have they exaggerated the hardship of life there, or do you support the coalition's attempts to oust the regime? SALAM PAX: Yes, I support the ousting of the regime. Most Iraqis don't have any problem with the coalition coming in. We needed their help. It was never going to happen any other way. I don't think they exaggerated the hardship of life... Q: If there was an election some time in the next six months, what kind of government do you think the Iraqis would elect? What kind of relationship might that government have with the neighbouring states? SALAM PAX: I'm really worried about elections so soon. We need time to learn how to use our freedom. If we were to have elections in six months we would have an Islamic government...I'd rather have them in two years... Q: I wondered if the human shields really did any good protecting civilian areas during the bombing? The media here went very quiet about them... did you see any? Were they used as stooges of the regime? SALAM PAX: I do not really understand their motivation. They were obviously being used by the regime and they knew it... Q: ...what is simple to do and would bring a lot of hope to the people of Iraq? SALAM PAX: Make them feel that there is a better future. Everybody's stuck in the now because of all these bombings and trouble. There's no feeling of progress. All we need to feel is that things are going to improve. Even if it's only a marginal improvement. Everyone's just grumbling at the moment. The improvements may be on the way, but they're not visible. They're working on other things but they should be concentrating on things that touch people's lives: law, court, police, electricity, schools are going to start soon but the streets are dangerous and people are worried for their kids. People are carrying guns on the streets and taking pot shots at people. Rounding up the dangerous criminals that Saddam released months before the war started would greatly help. Food isn't a problem - the rations programme is back and running well. Lots of countries are donating things...It's more about feeling safe in your own city, in your own house. Q: Tony Blair said that if he asked the average Iraqi if they would prefer Saddam back they would look at him as if he was insane. What would you do if Tony Blair asked you if you would rather have Saddam back? Do you think Tony Blair's once fabled feel for public opinion now applies to Iraqis? What do you think of UK and us politicians telling us what the average Iraqi thinks? SALAM PAX: There is no comparison in the problems we have with services and the issue of the fallen regime. These things are separate. Everyone is really glad that Saddam has gone. There is no one in Iraq that wants him back, unless it's someone who benefited from the old regime. So no, never. It's over. With all the problems we have with services and utilities, this is a problem that can be dealt with in time. People had unrealistic expectations. I had unrealistic expectations that everything will be up and running in two weeks...how it was done and planned could have been better. Wars are never OK, but the actual war did much less harm than everybody was expecting... chromedomezone.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (115190)	9/18/2003 10:50:51 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

another startling and vitally important pattern: Every suicide attack in the period under study was launched against a democracy Yes, democracies are softer in three important ways: they have a free press, they care about their own people's lives, and they are not as ruthless in response as dictatorships. The free press makes it much more difficult to minimize the publicity surrounding the attack. The care makes it difficult to ignore the attack even if it would be politically advantageous to do so; and the lack of ruthlessness is an important factor tipping the terrorism cost-balance analysis in the right direction. Hizbullah never pulls any of this shit on Assad because they know that it would not worth the response.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (115190)	9/18/2003 11:25:57 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Your post deals with people who promote suicide bombing -- but it does not deal at all with the people who actually strap on the bombs. The bombers themselves do not seem to the subject of this research at all.

To: Brumar89 who wrote (115190)	9/19/2003 3:59:34 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Here is the article: danieldrezner.com I suspect it might not remain at this site for long so read it now if you're interested. [Snip] Accordingly, suicide attack is likely to present a threat of continuing limited civilian punishment that the target government cannot com-pletely eliminate, and the upper bound on what punish-ment can gain for coercers is recognizably higher in sui-cidal terrorism than in international military coercion. The data on suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2001 support this conclusion. While suicide terrorism has achieved modest or very limited goals, it has so far failed to compel target democracies to abandon goals central to national wealth or security. When the United States withdrew from Lebanon in 1984, it had no important se-curity, economic, or even ideological interests at stake. Lebanon was largely a humanitarian mission and not viewed as central to the national welfare of the United States. Israel withdrew from most of Lebanon in June 1985 but remained in a security buffer on the edge of southern Lebanon for more than a decade afterward, despite the fact that 17 of 22 suicide attacks occurred in 1985 and 1986. Israel's withdrawals from Gaza and the West Bank in 1994 and 1995 occurred at the same time that settlements increased and did little to hinder the IDF's return, and so these concessions were more modest than they may appear. Sri Lanka has suffered more casualties from suicide attack than Israel but has not acceded to demands that it surrender part of its national territory. Thus, the logic of punishment and the record of suicide terrorism suggests that, unless suicide terrorists acquire far moredestructive technolo-gies, suicide attacks for more ambitious goals are likely to fail and will continue to provoke more aggressive military responses. Drezner's site has an interesting, if sometimes bizarre, discussion of Pape's article. danieldrezner.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (115190)	9/19/2003 4:44:10 AM
From: Don Hurst	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>¨Pape uncovers another startling and vitally important pattern: Every suicide attack in the period under study was launched against a democracy. Hezbollah used this weapon to force the United States and France from Lebanon in 1983; Hezbollah and Hamas have used it repeatedly to force concessions from Israel; Tamil terrorists have used it against the Sri Lankan government; the Kurds against Turkey; the Chechen rebels against Russia; the Kashmir rebels against India; and perhaps most infamously, on September 11, al Qaeda launched its suicide -terrorist attacks against America.¨<< Interesting...he says always democracies, but another way to look at it is.....against actual or perceived occupiers.