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

To: Neocon who wrote (117115)	10/18/2003 2:18:30 AM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Neocon; Re: "I do not consider it productive to play badminton with you." I quite agree. But I, on the other hand, do find it productive. Re: "Since it is the Ba'athists who are armed, and you have no idea whether the ordinary Iraqi had access to guns ..." No, I have it on very good authority that the "ordinary" Iraqi has always had access to guns. It's been printed all over our newspapers. I even linked in sources to this fact well before the war started, and warned the thread that going into a hostile nation where everyone has a gun was a bad idea. The basic fact is that Iraqis have far greater rights to the ownership of weapons than Americans have, and they have had those rights since long before Saddam showed up as a dictator there. Here's some links: Allies to Begin Seizing Weapons From Most Iraqis NY Times, May 21, 2003 ... Iraqis will be allowed to keep small arms at home for protection. For a nation as dangerous as Iraq and *as rife with weapons, total disarmament is impractical, allied officials say. But Iraqis will not be allowed to take their weapons outside their home without a special license. ... The proclamation will also prohibit celebratory and other weapons firing within city limits, a measure that is likely to prove hard to enforce given the shooting that is often heard at night. ... wmsa.net U.S. Mounts House-to-House Sweeps* Washington Post, March 30, 2003 ... The Marines enter the home, in two-man teams. Soon one emerges with the AK-47 that the Iraqi man had mentioned, and leans it against a wall. "You'll get this back when we go," Simone tells the man. *It's common for ordinary Iraqis to have such a rifle.* "Have you seen Iraqi troops near here? How recently?" ... washingtonpost.com Gary North is a stock market adviser who came to many of the same conclusions I did with regard to Iraq, that is, that there were no WMDs, and that the locals would shoot the shat out of us: Gun Ownership in Iraq Gary North, March 7, 2003 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. ... lewrockwell.com Come on, admit the truth. The simple fact is that during the reign of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Iraqis, despite being saturated with guns, and despite the fact that he killed God knows how many Iraqis, no one ever killed him. This is a simple fact. Don't run from it. Use it to modify your belief system about the Iraqi people. A lot of those Iraqis with guns that are scaring the bejesus out of our soldiers, are not fighting for Saddam. Instead, they're fighting for Iraq. They think that they are fighting for freedom. The freedom to be free of a foreign oppressor. Hey, if you were an Iraqi, you wouldn't think the Americans were a foreign oppressor. Of course not. You speak English, LOL, not Arabic. The US troops wouldn't be "foreginers" to you. Re: "No one ever claimed that everything was rosy, just that progress is being made. You don't appropriate billions of dollars in aid unless there is still a lot to fix." The problem is one of winning hearts and minds. Aid won't do that, not with the history we with with the Iraqis, and the linking of US and Israeli foreign policies (in the minds of not just the Iraqis and Arabs, but in a lot of Moslems all over the world). For this reason, I deny that the expenditure of aid is "progress". The Arabs hate our occupation of Iraq. Our guns make a louder noise than our aid. The use of guns in administering assistance negates the assistance. Of course the recipient will accept the assistance, what other choice does he have, when a gun is pointed at him. The best we can hope for is the "Stockholm syndrome", LOL. The simple fact is that it is essentially impossible to win hearts and minds with a gun. -- Carl