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

To: Neocon who wrote (122525)	12/31/2003 3:34:52 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi Neocon; The whole problem with the Neocon occupation of Iraq, both before the war and afterwards, is their relentless refusal to acknowledge facts that are against their desires. In this case, the fact is that polls have shown that the Iraqi people do not trust the coalition government: ... Regarding the Coalition Provisional Authority, led by U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, 43.5 percent of those questioned expressed no confidence, and 29.9 percent said they had not very much confidence. ... #reply-19632917 You consider it a great victory to know that it is only a minority of Iraqis who profess *no confidence* in the CPA. If we had free elections in Iraq is it even conceivable that an organization that has "*no confidence" from 43.5% of the population, and only "not very much confidence* from another 29.9% would remain in power? Of course not. The CPA is in power in Iraq, not as a liberation, but only through the guns of our soldiers. And that our soldiers are well hated is clear from the other poll, where a clear majority expressed "*no confidence" about our military: ... Asked how much confidence they had in U.S. and British forces in Iraq, 56.6 percent of respondents said they had none at all* and 22.2 percent said they didn't have very much confidence, while only 7.6 percent had "a great deal." ... #reply-19632917 If it were just another matter of partisan bickering, to be decided by who is able to muster the most votes at the local cemetery, it wouldn't matter much. But this is war and our soldiers continue to be ground up in this pointless and hopeless war. A guerilla war requires far, far, far less than 56.6 or 43.5% of the population to be decisive against the invaders. Far less. In Vietnam or Algeria, the other side won with a far smaller percentage of support. This whole argument that the war in Iraq is going well is just a sad reprise of the same BS from Vietnam, when the authorities told us that it was raining, while they were actually pissing on our leg. If you want to convince me that the war in Iraq is going well you need to find some studies that show that support for the resistance is decreasing. Real data, not a few reports from an observer on the ground, or stretched interpretations of only the rosiest portions of badly collected polling data. What I'd like to see is a decrease in coalition / Iraqi casualties, but I don't see it yet. -- Carl