Texas Gentleman

In tribute: Steven Vincent RIP Words probably killed Steve Vincent, ....let his words be his lasting legacy. In his own words below: (from a interview) Words matter. Words convey moral clarity. Without moral clarity, we will not succeed in Iraq. That is why the terms the press uses to cover this conflict are so vital. For example, take the word "“guerillas."” As you noted, mainstream media sources like the New York Times often use the terms "insurgents" or "“guerillas"” to describe the Sunni Triangle gunmen, as if these murderous thugs represented a traditional national liberation movement. But when the Times reports on similar groups of masked reactionary killers operating in Latin American countries, they utilize the phrase "paramilitary death squads."” Same murderers, different designations. Yet of the two, "insurgents" —and especially "“guerillas" —has a claim on our sympathies that "paramilitaries?” lacks. This is not semantics: imagine if the media routinely called the Sunni Triangle gunmen "right wing paramilitary death squads." Not only would the description be more accurate, but it would offer the American public a clear idea of the enemy in Iraq. And that, in turn, would bolster public attitudes toward the war. Supporters of the conflict in Iraq bear much blame for allowing the terminology - and, by extension, the narrative - —of events to slip from our grasp and into the hands of the anti-war camp. Words and ideas matter. Instead of saying that the Coalition "“invaded" Iraq and "“occupies"” it today, we could more precisely claim that the allies liberated the country and are currently reconstructing it. More than cosmetic changes, these definitions reflect the nobility of our effort in Iraq, and steal rhetorical ammunition from the left. The most despicable misuse of terminology, however, occurs when Leftists call the Saddamites and foreign jihadists "“the resistance."” What an example of moral inversion! For the fact is, paramilitary death squads are attacking the Iraqi people. And those who oppose the killers--the Iraqi police and National Guardsmen, members of the Allawi government, people like Nour - they are the "“resistance."” They are preventing Islamofascists from seizing Iraq, they are resisting evil men from turning the entire nation into a mass slaughterhouse like we saw in re-liberated Falluja. Anyone who cares about success in our struggle against Islamofascism - —or upholds principles of moral clarity and lucid thought - —should combat such Orwellian distortions of our language. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ it's a beginning !! "Today, this editorial board (The Dallas Morning News) resolves to sacrifice another word -- 'insurgent' -- on the altar of precise language. No longer will we refer to suicide bombers or anyone else in Iraq who targets and kills children and other innocent civilians as 'insurgents.' The notion that these murderers in any way are nobly rising up against a sitting government in a principled fight for freedom has become, on its face, absurd. They drove that point home with chilling clarity Wednesday in a poor Shiite neighborhood. As children crowded around U.S. soldiers handing out candy and toys in a gesture of good will, a bomb-laden SUV rolled up and exploded. These children were not collateral damage. They were targets. The SUV driver was no insurgent. He was a terrorist. People who set off bombs on London trains are not insurgents. We would never think of calling them anything other than what they are -- terrorists. Words have meanings. Whether too timid, sensitive or 'open-minded,' we've resisted drawing a direct line between homicidal bombers everywhere else in the world and the ones who blow up Iraqi civilians or behead aid workers. No more. To call them 'insurgents' insults every legitimate insurgency in modern history. They are terrorists." --The Dallas Morning News

Anti anti-Americanism An entire industry has arisen to account for the recent anti-Americanism. In the case of the Europeans, the end of the Cold War lessened the need for subsidized American protection, emboldening them to caricature Americans as fat and materialistic. Did envy arise because the world's sole superpower ignored weaker Europeans' efforts to tie up the U.S. with multilateral strings? Did the Cold War make us forget that we were always different peoples--Americans the freer, richer, more religious, fertile, and optimistic? Perhaps George W. Bush--drawling, Christian, and Texan--earned us their fury, so unlike French-speaking John Kerry or obsequious Bill Clinton? The Middle East was spoon-fed this European anti-Americanism. Twenty-one autocratic governments also deflected popular outrage onto us through state-run media. The bogeymen Israel and America were responsible for everything from stealing oil, even when it was sold to us at sky-high prices, to killing a few hundred Palestinian terrorists, when hundreds of thousands of Arab civilians were butchered by the Husseins and Assads. But mostly anti-Americanism was a boutique enterprise, revealed as such when the U.S. was the most desirable destination of the world's migrating poor and its popular culture had swept the globe. It is always surreal to read Mexico City elites slurring the United States as millions of illegal aliens risk their lives to cross our borders and escape the corruption and racism of their home country. Things are changing, however, both here and abroad. Thousands of American troops have left Europe. Its denizens now sense that the American people no longer wish to subsidize their defense only to earn ingratitude. The E.U. dream of heaven on earth may be mired in high taxes, low growth, high unemployment, and demographic and entitlement time bombs--not the sort of platform from which to hector a supposedly sinking U.S. Things are even more evolutionary in the Middle East. Dissidents in Egypt or Beirut are not singing the praises of the E.U. or U.N. Nor are the new democrats in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is still too early to appreciate much of this shifting, but historical forces are now in play which are not conducive to vaunted European "soft power," so often a mask for crass profiteering. Soon, freed Middle Easterners are going to make a few simple deductions: France profited mightily from Saddam; America removed him. The E.U. wanted nothing to do with the new democracy in Baghdad; Americans from places like San Antonio and Tulsa died to preserve it. An Iranian knows that the U.S., not Germany or Belgium, wishes him to be free and is more likely to take the risks to see it happen. An Afghan could assure him of that. The muscle-flexing of China has given Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan second thoughts. They worry not that the United States invites them into partnerships, but that we might not. The Americans allow outsourcing to India, buy thousands of Hondas, and send young men to the Korean DMZ. Europe sells China new bombs, the French fleet goes on maneuvers with the communists, and the E.U. keeps it tariffs and subsidies high. A once-caricatured America starts to look very good again. There is another wild card at play that explains the decrease in anti-Americanism. After September 11, the American people are in a much less apologetic mood--more likely to pull troops or cut off aid than to ask forgiveness for imaginary grievances. No one here laments that we left the Philippines or are departing Germany. We took out Saddam without Belgians and Frenchmen, without bases in Turkey, and despite, not because of, the U.N. or Arab league. America runs high trade deficits with Asia and Europe. It lets 20 million illegal aliens cross our borders. It spends liberally on defense, patrolling sea-lanes and protecting commerce rather than setting up autocracies and stealing oil. Americans are finally beginning to wonder whether all these ungrateful folks are worth the toil and treasure. In response, critics abroad are beginning to sense that their cheap rhetoric may have real consequences, that maybe the U.S. was a good deal for the world, after all. George W. Bush did not cause this new round of anti-Americanism. But he may well have done more than anyone to end it.

I want to start with something I was thinking about 2 days ago while following the latest developments in the food for oil program scandal. There's nothing surprising about the extent of corruption inside the UN to me and most Iraqis. We saw those shining names in Saddam's days dining with his thugs in his palaces. The same big hot shots that attacked Saddam's regime fiercely and then dramatically changing their attitude once they get to meet him and get a grip of the reality on the ground in Iraq. I was shocked at first when I saw Hans von Sponeck defend Saddam's regime after his resignation and attacking the US and the UK while in the beginning he was blaming both the allies and Saddam's regime on the poor performance of the food for oil program. Only money, and HUGE amount of money could explain such a change in such a short duration. However I was not that shocked after hearing that Koffi Anan was getting bribes from Saddam. Oh sorry, meant his son. But that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead I want to share an idea about how to fix this problem that will surely recur again and again. To try and find solutions for the UN problems is an important issue for all of us and although I'm not naive enough to think that it can be fixed that easily or that I can actually find part of a solution, but it won't hurt to discuss the issue, as in the end we, the people are just as concerned as politicians about it and also we, Iraqis were victims of such flaws in the UN. Before trying to answer any problem we have to consider the elements. The human greed is something we cannot control and we should never expect those at high positions to be saints. The UN internal system is something I don't know much about and I also think it's not even a major element although some reforms there would surely help. But the most important element that cause such corruption in my mind is the presence of exceptionally large amounts of money and other resources in the hands of individuals whom their fate depend on the UN inspection teams' reports i.e. dictators and tyrannical regimes in general. Regimes like Saddam's in the past, Kadaffi's, Asad's and the Iranian regime now and in the future have been and will always be capable of and willing to spend millions and millions of their people's money to gain the approval and support of the UN through bribing certain influential staff members who would be sent to seek the truth about a certain violation in their countries. How are we going to guarantee that honest respectable people who were chosen by the international committee for such missions won't weaken to the sight of a 6 digit check? There's no guarantee. Yet there might be a way to avoid such a problem. First I think we should re-identify the problem. It's not that the UN is a week or corrupt organization. It's that we are dealing with two entirely different sets of regimes using one standard. One set of laws to deal with democratic and authoritarian states. That doesn't sound right. So the answer may lie in finding two different set of rules, two different organizations to deal with those different states. But that might divide the world so we will have to decide which set of states is more reliable to depend on in solving common global problems. Who's "we" is not that important and it does not mean control of the strong over the weak. Lets think of something similar to the EU. The democratic free nations whether poor or rich, strong or weak should gather and form a mass governed by a set of rules that can get a consensus from all the involved parties. The tyrannical regimes should be kept outside, isolated until they meet a certain requirements set by the new organization. So when dealing with a problem in Japan for example, the organization can send a convoy to Japan to seek facts from there combined with talks with Japanese representatives in the organization. While when dealing with a problem in Libya for example, a dictatorship that actually refuses to join the global organization of democratic countries (by its actions) but might present a danger to one or all of its members, the organization do not send anyone, or it can send a convoy but once its job is hindered it should be withdrawn immediately with no possibility of a return. It asks the Libyan government to clarify the situation, prove its innocence in that particular problem and without offering it a seat inside the organization. If the Libyan government fails to do so then the organization would take actions based on its members interests and consensus and according to how serious the threat is. Such system should not be looked at as isolating poor or "developing countries" or that such an attitude means taking the side of the strong parties. First, because the organization would include all democratic countries, not just advanced countries. Besides, we should be more worried about the UN or similar organizations taking the wrong side than them taking the strong side. And also what's most important is that such system would only weaken the regimes not the people. Can anyone tell me what good the UN was for the Iraqi people? What did I gain from that seat that was given to one of Saddam's thugs to sit and babble like he's the equal of those sitting next to him; men and women who truly represented their nations? I'll tell you what I gained from that. More years for Saddam and his gang in power, more years of torture and fear, more years of death to my friends and relatives, more years of desperation and miserable life. All this while those elegant respectable figures in the UN were filling their stomachs with the Iraqi people's flesh and blood. Do we need to repeat that? People won't lose that seat but dictators will, as it was never a seat for the people. I'd say that on the contrary, people living in authoritarian states would gain from such a 'loss', as it would isolate their rulers politically, will take their legitimacy away and would weaken them with time until they find themselves either forced to make the reforms (as the free world is concerned and entitled to look after the human rights everywhere) that allows them to get the legitimacy or face the united free world. Just an idea. Ali http://iraqilibe.blogspot.com/

Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been sworn in with 29 members of his cabinet, but the country's political impasse continues with key portfolios unfilled. Mr. Jaafari was nominated as prime minister by the Shi'ite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, following January 30 elections. But he has struggled to put together a balanced cabinet with power distributed equitably among Iraq's three main ethnic factions. Five ministries were held by "acting ministers," while two deputy prime minister posts were left empty. The situation did not change, even as the partial cabinet was sworn in. Despite an optimistic, inclusive speech, Mr. Jaafari left seven permanent positions undecided. Critically, the defense portfolio, promised to the Sunnis after months of post-election horse trading, has not been finalized. So, Mr. Jaafari has taken charge of it himself, for now. The Shi'ite bloc formed a governing coalition with the second-place Kurdistan Alliance, but the two were unable to agree on how to share power until three months after the elections. Disputes continue over how to include Iraq's Sunni Arab minority in the government in a meaningful way. The Sunnis, the main base of support for Iraq's ongoing anti-U.S. and anti-government insurgency, are severely under-represented in the 275-seat National Assembly. Prodded by religious leaders, most Sunnis boycotted the vote, either to protest the presence of foreign troops or out of fear of insurgent reprisals. The handful of Sunni politicians who are on board, meanwhile, have run into severe resistance from powerful Shi'ite parties within Mr. Jaafari's bloc. The Sunnis say Mr. Jaafari has shown an understanding of their plight, but blame "radicals" among the Shi'ite for rejecting an inclusive political deal. Prominent members of the Shi'ite bloc have rejected several Sunni nominees for alleged links to the former regime of Saddam Hussein and are calling for a purge of Baathists from Iraq's revived security forces. U.S. officials say large-scale purges could make Iraqi-US military cooperation extremely difficult. Some of the new Iraqi Army's most effective units are led by former Baathists. Mr. Jaafari says he intends to honor his agreement to give the defense portfolio to a Sunni. He says the remaining names for his permanent cabinet would be announced in two or three days.

In Arabic.. Majority of Aljezera viewers are against the bringing of the kurd Beshmerka and bader organization personall into the armed forces to fight the terrorists.. Is that telling any thing? they know the best way to snak!! that is why they are against it.. A message to the writer of the above articles Tajer thanks for your reply Would you please give a brief English translation of the "message to the writer" thanks

some Americans in Iraq on the security situation and thier concerns: Civil Society or Civil War? TUESDAY, APRIL 05, 2005 I do, honestly, believe we have come a long way in the last two years. Iraq has had elections and its new government is forming. Fallujah is a safe city, and its markets are opening. Iraqi Security Forces are making arrests and chasing down terrorists. The national electricity and water grids are slowly coming to life. These are all huge achievements. And yet, we are not out of the woods yet. While it is unlikely that things will seriously go 'pear shaped' for as long as Coalition forces remain in the country, it is still not possible to discount the chances of civil war after they leave – and nor are we out of the woods in terms of the insurgency. The past six weeks or so have been the quietest since before the fighting of April '04. So it's only natural to see a downward trend – particularly set against the various operational successes of the Marines' 'River Blitz' up the Euphrates and the large engagements by Coalition and Iraqi Forces against insurgent groups at, for example, Thar and North Babil. But I'm still uneasy. Part of my unease comes from the formation of the new government. It was always inevitable that Shia groups would gain power with a free election. And I have no immediate problem with that. The problem is that Shia organized political parties emerged as opposition to Saddam, and were nurtured by Iran. I'm not saying that the Shia are a front from Iran – of course they're not – but their political parties may have significant pro-Iranian elements. Moreover, there will be an inevitable struggle on the part of the long-repressed Shia to oust those they see as opposed to their cause, or not of their ilk. This, generally unremarked by the Western media, has already begun. Throughout the South of Iraq newly elected Governorate Councils have been pulling the rug out from under Allawi-appointed officials like Chiefs of Police, and trying to jam their own people in place. see Other develoments – albeit from a particularly complicated situation - and it's happening elsewhere too, you're just not hearing about it. It's very hard to judge how concerned we should be about this. I mean, it's the democratic will of the people, right? They elected these provincial councils, they elected this new government. And, moreover, how bad can it really be? The Iraqi Shia – with Sistani in the lead – are most certainly not the same as the the Iranian Shia. They don't see the role of religion in government in the same way. So there is hope for moderation. Never the less, many Sunni I know are very worried. "We can't trust them," they whisper, peering around as if a Shia might be listening in the backseat of my car. And if the majority of the Sunni feel that the Shia are mounting a takeover of the state, we can expect a major backlash from the Sunni/Baathist insurgency. Alternatively, if the extremist Shia elements like Moqtada Sadr feel that the government is being too accommodating to the Sunni, they, too, could start to throw their weight around. As always, it will be an interesting time. Suffice to repeat – we are not yet out of the woods. The crisis in Iraq will last a long, long time. The coming weeks – including the 2 year anniversary of the fall of Saddam – will be an important barometer of what is to come. posted by TJ @ 7:04 PM The Silent Revolution SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2005 Any one hour in the last few days would make a long post. But this time I'm going to stick to politics. Hence the title of this post. It's one of those potentially massive stories that, yet again, the press has overlooked. But in the entire country south of Baghdad it is evident that a sea-change is ongoing. Provincial Councils recently elected are now taking their seats and they are, with few if any exceptions, overridingly controlled by the Shia religious parties. The South is rife with talk of foreign influence, and appointees of the Allawi government are finding themselves being hounded out of office. This is most visibly – and most aggressively- happening in the security sector. The replacement candidates are of a decidedly religious and/or foreign background. Frankly, it’s scary. The entire political leadership in the South has taken on a new complexion, and while it does not have to be anti-Coalition or anti-Sunni by nature, there are clear signs that it will be. The only hedge I can see against this sectarianism and foreign influence is the power of the central government; it is the central Iraqi government that still maintains legal power over the security sector. So it will be absolutely critical in the coming days to watch how the new cabinet shakes out, and which parties gain control of the Ministries of Defense and Interior, the Office of the National Security Advisor, and the Iraqi National Intelligence Service. For now things remain in flux, as the new Government is not entirely formed. If some kind of balance and powersharing can be worked out, things may just hold; if the Shia parties strongarm their way into those slots there is a good chance – if not an absolute certainty – that the impact on the political and security situation in the South will be shaped for a long time to come in a way detrimental to the interests of a democratic Iraq and the USA. Another important factor in the long term will be the Constitution. I would expect to see a push by the Shia parties for greater provincial control – since it is in the provinces where they have the most influence. I honestly don't think the people of Iraq – even the people of the South – want this new religious and foreign influence in their governance. But the Shia parties were the best organized – better organized than the obvious alternative of tribal alliances – and Sistani's fatwa also had a strong influence, as did some other factors. But this is a critical time for Iraq, and what I am increasingly realizing is that the path to democracy – and, for that matter, strategic victory for Operation Iraqi Freedom – far from being accomplished is only just beginning. TJ I should have stayed home

February 24, 2005 Bush's Medicine For Old Europe By Austin Bay Chalk it up as a second VE Day (Victory in Europe), and credit President George W. Bush for following Sir Winston Churchill's wise counsel: "In Victory: Magnanimity." Bush's low-key shellacking of France's crook in chief, Jacques Chirac, signals the political defeat of "Old Europe" on the issue of Iraq. This past Monday, before a state dinner in Belgium, a reporter asked Bush if he would invite Chirac to his Texas ranch. Bush quipped, "I'm looking for a good cowboy." Remember, "cowboy" is Euro-snob code for "pathological American suffering from hyper-power and gigantisme militaire." Chirac responded by praising the excellence of U.S.-French relations. Yes indeed, my Parisian pod-nuh, we're all cowboys now -- "High Noon" cowboys dedicated to defending justice and freedom. With a 10-gallon grin, Chirac's "western front" -- a political concoction of anti-Americanism and cowardice -- quietly folds. The Iraqi people's Jan 30 electoral show of force sealed Chirac's defeat. Even in the benighted Bastilles of Paris and Berlin, those ink-stained indicators of democracy in the line of fire -- purple fingers -- point the way to the future. The ongoing and oh-so-public moral collapse of the United Nations contributes to America's political victory. Chirac banked on the U.N. as a platform for his cynical brand of political power projection. The Oil for Food travesty, sex shenanigans in Geneva and hideous sex crimes in the Congo confirm the U.N.'s deep systemic ills and the need for major reform. As Martin Peretz wrote in a recent New Republic essay, the U.N. "is not a magnet for the good. It performs the magic of the wicked. It is corrupt, it is pompous, it is shackled to tyrants and cynics." Chirac's Old Europe faced European opponents, beginning with Tony Blair's Great Britain. Poland and Italy sent significant troop contingents in Iraq and provided crucial political support. The Poles understood the stakes. When I attended an August 2004 planning session at the Polish headquarters in Babylon, one senior Polish officer told me: "Poland appreciates freedom. That's why we are here." I didn't take that as a snide shot at France -- the colonel meant it as a fact that had shaped his own life. The Dutch and Danes added battalion-sized contingents. In a late evening chat session in Baghdad, a Danish officer told me, "We have few military forces (to start with), but we're here." Why? America is addressing the central strategic issue: the need for a democratic political reformation in the Middle East. Extending democracy ultimately protects Denmark. The steady improvement of Iraqi security forces is a fourth reason. While I don't think we'll see a fully capable Iraqi military for another six or seven years, the training trend-line is positive. Bean and bullet counters in Paris can follow the trend out a decade, and it points to a self-sustaining Iraq. With 200 billion barrels of oil and Washington as an ally, this New Iraq could dominate Middle Eastern politics. Best clean your six-gun, Jacques. On Tuesday, all NATO members agreed to "assist in training Iraqi security forces, to hasten the day when they can take full responsibility for the stability of the country and the security of its citizens." While training assistance certainly serves as a political fig-leaf, it's an absolutely vital task, as is economic development. That's where France and Germany can still contribute. With Churchillian grace, Bush acknowledged that: "Today, America and Europe face a moment of consequence and opportunity. ... We can once again set history on a hopeful course -- away from poverty and despair, and toward development and the dignity of self-rule; away from resentment and violence, and toward justice and the peaceful settlement of differences. Seizing this moment requires idealism: We must see in every person the right and the capacity to live in freedom." For democracies that shirked the showdown in Iraq, Bush's remarks are gentle acid, but it's medicine Old Europe knows it has to swallow. © 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Next Step, National Reconciliation Now that the euphoria of elections day has worn out, many Iraqis sense that the political future of the country is a bit more clear than it was before January 31. Immediate steps should be taken by the interim government, with the assistance of the international community, to arrange an urgent conference for Iraqi national reconciliation. Invitations should be open to all Iraqi political and social groups, regardless of their repsective ideologies and their current stand from the occupation and the ongoing political process in the country. It is also essential that this conference includes elements of the former political order if possible, provided that they have not committed crimes against Iraqis whether in the past or in the present, as well as delegates from the largest and most influential tribes in the dissident areas and senior clerics from all over the country, encompassing religious and sectarian differences. Many political groups that boycotted the elections are now softening their tone and are sheepishly asking for a role in the political process, trying as much as they can to save face at the same time. The Association of Muslim Scholars, the Pan-Arab, Nasseri, and Socialist movements, the Khalisi group and the Sadrists are among the first groups to call for such a role. Had there been no elections, this could not have been possible. There is already a consensus among the different political powers that drafting the permanent constitution should not be done solely by the elected National Assembly. This in order to safeguard the interests of the part of the population that did not participate in the elections and to reassure Iraqis that everyone has a say in their future. No longer will one group, no matter how large its support base, dominate over others. I truly hope that Iraqi politicians realise this and can work to achieve it, leaving aside their personal interests and differences for one moment, putting the prejudices of the past behind them, and listening to what Iraqis have to say. For it is Iraqis, and Iraqis alone, that are the key to solving this whole mess. Apart from a minority that would rather burn down the country than see someone else in power, I am confident that most Iraqis are weary of all the violence, chaos and bloodshed. It is therefore the utmost duty of Iraqi politicians, the occupation authority and the international community to seize upon the moment and to quit beating around bushes. It is time to involve the Iraqis themselves, to give them the final word. Iraqis do not wish for their country to be a "frontline on the war of terror", as Bush recently stated. Iraqis do not wish for their country to be a battleground for reactionary bearded cavemen waging their holy wars. Iraqis do not wish to be fuel for the wars of neighbouring countries. Iraqis want to live and let live. Iraqis want what you have. # posted by zeyad : 2/9/2005 07:49:33 PM comments (138) http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/

My Friends Most of the western MSM has been pessimistic about security and the chances of democracy taking root in IRAQ. Today even the most pessimistic of them the "New York Times" has a change of heart. You.... the people of Iraq stood tall yesterday and proved all the pessimist and naysayers wrong. IRAQI ---- you are on your way to a better life and prosperity thru a GOVERNMENT RESPONSIBLE TO ALL THE IRAQI PEOPLE and not the other way around. Below is an aticle from the NEW YORK TIMES who has not been a big supporter of the Iraq People. It is good to see even the naysayers of doom and gloom finally seeing the light. January 31, 2005 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Looking for Purple Fingers in Sadr City By BARTLE BREESE BULL BAGHDAD, Iraq — DEMOCRACY won in a landslide yesterday here in Sadr City, the epicenter of Iraqi politics. Iraq's Shiites outnumber its Sunni Arabs by five to one, and when they rise up, this Baghdad slum is where they do it. Yesterday they rose up again, but this time it was with ballots, not with guns. Mortar shells rained down on the ghetto at the beginning and end of the voting day, sporadic gunfire rattled through the smog, and at least one car bomb rounded out the predictable symphony of violence. But inside the Martyr Primary School, which was transformed for a day into Polling Station No. 119011, there were long lines of young men in Real Madrid and Lazio soccer jerseys, women in black body coverings, old tribesmen from the deserts and marshes in ankle-length dusty robes. I watched people slide their ballots into the clear plastic boxes and dip their forefingers in the purple ink (to help poll workers combat fraud). In the afternoon I walked for a few miles and spoke with dozens of adults. About four-fifths told me they had voted, showing off their inky fingers. Of course, there are always doubters. Many observers will say that because turnout among Sunni Arabs was low, their underrepresentation in the new government will undermine the election's legitimacy. Iraq's violence is a Sunni phenomenon, and fears of violence at the polling stations were especially strong in Sunni cities like Ramadi and Falluja, mixed municipalities like Mosul, and Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad. I have a friend named Sohair Chalabi, a 55-year old economist from Mosul, who was one of the Sunni Arabs too frightened to vote. A month ago he found his name on a list pinned to the door of a local mosque, with a note saying that those on it would be killed if they continued to participate in the electoral process. He has since fled to Baghdad, and two of the other nine people on the list have been killed. Yet when I asked him what he thought of elections in which he and much of his community had been unable to vote, he said, "it's not a big problem. The real election is at the end of this year." He is right. Yesterday's vote was the first stage in a sophisticated, yearlong constitutional process that leaves plenty of flexibility for the challenges created by Iraq's combination of disorder and identity-based politics. Iraqis are scheduled to go to the national polls twice more this year: in October for a referendum on the permanent constitution that the new assembly is charged with writing, and again in December to elect a new government under the rules of that constitution. Each of the country's three main groups - Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shiites - has a veto over the permanent constitution. And each enjoys a de facto veto as well: not one is strong enough to impose majoritarian misrule on the others. It would be blatantly against Shiite and Kurdish interests for either group to try to take advantage of any Sunni parliamentary underrepresentation. They have been waiting centuries for this opportunity, and the last thing they want is to make their country ungovernable. Federalism, enshrined in the interim constitution, is another safety valve. "Regional autonomy will not tear Iraq apart," said Ahmad Chalabi, the clever Shiite politician who, although now disowned by the Americans who long sponsored him, will be a central figure in the new government. "It is the only way to keep it together." More important, it is not likely that yesterday's low turnout among Sunnis will lead to their dramatic underrepresentation in the Assembly. The latest estimates put Sunni Arabs at a little less than 13 percent of Iraq's population. Yet there were 50 to 60 Sunni Arabs in viably high slots on yesterday's ballots - even if just 40 Sunnis are elected, that would be 15 percent of the 275-seat assembly. The candidate list compiled by the Shiite religious leadership, the United Iraqi Alliance, had 11 Sunni Arabs from Mosul alone, as well as the head of Iraq's largest Sunni tribe. Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's secular list also had many Sunnis. So did the lists of the monarchists, Socialists, Communists and others. And now the betting is that a Sunni will be named to head one of the big three ministries in the new government: foreign, defense or interior. Sunnis will also likely get a vice presidency of the state and the presidency of the Assembly. None of this is by accident. Car bombs might make headlines, but the real politics in Iraq is about something much deeper than the fanaticism of the country's 5,000 or 10,000 terrorists. The people who are going to run Iraq are profoundly pragmatic. The Kurdish leaders in the valleys of the north, the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the alleys of Najaf, the radical Shiite Moktada al-Sadr in his hiding place - all understand what they have achieved over the last two years. By showing great restraint toward one another's communities and a spectacular patience with the necessary evil of American occupation, they have woven together the long, improbable, unfinished carpet of an Iraqi future. This attitude of restraint is echoed on the street. A 34-year-old Shiite engineer I met in Sadr City last week told me, "If we had wanted revenge on the Sunnis, we would have taken it in 2003." Soldiers in Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army told me that their leader has sent them to pray with Sunnis and to provide security at their mosques. And the widespread campaign of Sunni extremist violence against Shiites has been met with deafening forbearance. Iraq as a nation never rose up against the occupation, and after yesterday it does not need to. Iraqis have just elected the only legitimate government between Istanbul and New Delhi. The prestige and moral force of popular representation cannot be denied, even by Washington. When the Iraqi government tells the Americans to leave, they will not be able to stay. Whether a little too soon or a little too late, this is the way it is supposed to be. I write this from a rundown house in the poorest slum in the Middle East. Until yesterday, my hosts and neighbors had for three decades been among the most repressed people on earth. Yet when I walk out the door, I see a city smothered in posters and banners from a hundred political parties. Like Afghanistan last year, the country has endorsed the right to vote in percentages that shame the electoral apathy of the rich world. Let nobody tell you that this election was anything but real. Iraq's Baathists and Wahhabis may continue to bark, but this caravan is moving on. Bartle Breese Bull has reported from Iraq for The Financial Times, the BBC and The Telegraph of London.

Aiding and Abetting the Enemy: the Media in Iraq By LTC Tim Ryan, CO, 2/12 Cav, 1st Cav Div What if domestic news outlets continually fed American readers headlines like: "Bloody Week on U.S. Highways: Some 700 Killed," or "More Than 900 Americans Die Weekly from Obesity-Related Diseases"? Both of these headlines might be true statistically, but do they really represent accurate pictures of the situations? What if you combined all of the negatives to be found in the state of Texas and used them as an indicator of the quality of life for all Texans? Imagine the headlines: "Anti-law Enforcement Elements Spread Robbery, Rape and Murder through Texas Cities." For all intents and purposes, this statement is true for any day of any year in any state. True -- yes, accurate -- yes, but in context with the greater good taking place -- no! After a year or two of headlines like these, more than a few folks back in Texas and the rest of the U.S. probably would be ready to jump off of a building and end it all. So, imagine being an American in Iraq right now. I just read yet another distorted and grossly exaggerated story from a major news organization about the "failures" in the war in Iraq. Print and video journalists are covering only a small fraction of the events in Iraq and more often than not, the events they cover are only the bad ones. Many of the journalists making public assessments about the progress of the war in Iraq are unqualified to do so, given their training and experience. The inaccurate picture they paint has distorted the world view of the daily realities in Iraq. The result is a further erosion of international public support for the United States' efforts there, and a strengthening of the insurgents' resolve and recruiting efforts while weakening our own. Through their incomplete, uninformed and unbalanced reporting, many members of the media covering the war in Iraq are aiding and abetting the enemy. The fact is the Coalition is making steady progress in Iraq, but not without ups and downs. War is a terrible thing and terrible things happen during wars, even when you are winning. In war, as in any contest of wills with capable opponents, things do not always go as planned; the guys with the white hats don't always come out on top in each engagement. That doesn't mean you are losing. Sure, there are some high profile and very spectacular enemy attacks taking place in Iraq these days, but the great majority of what is happening in Iraq is positive. So why is it that no matter what events unfold, good or bad, the media highlight mostly the negative aspects of the event? The journalistic adage, "If it bleeds, it leads," still applies in Iraq, but why only when it's American blood? As a recent example, the operation in Fallujah delivered an absolutely devastating blow to the insurgency. Though much smaller in scope, clearing Fallujah of insurgents arguably could equate to the Allies' breakout from the hedgerows in France during World War II. In both cases, our troops overcame a well-prepared and solidly entrenched enemy and began what could be the latter's last stand. In Fallujah, the enemy death toll has already exceeded 1,500 and still is climbing. Put one in the win column for the good guys, right? Wrong. As soon as there was nothing negative to report about Fallujah, the media shifted its focus to other parts of the country. Just yesterday, a major news agency's website lead read: "Suicide Bomber Kills Six in Baghdad" and "Seven Marines Die in Iraq Clashes." True, yes. Comprehensive, no. Did the author of this article bother to mention that Coalition troops killed 50 or so terrorists while incurring those seven losses? Of course not. Nor was there any mention about the substantial progress these offensive operations continue to achieve in defeating the insurgents. Unfortunately, this sort of incomplete reporting has become the norm for the media, whose poor job of presenting a complete picture of what is going on in Iraq borders on being criminal. Much of the problem is about perspective, putting things in scale and balance. From where I sit in my command post at Camp Fallujah, Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well. We are not under attack by the enemy; on the contrary, we are taking the fight to him daily and have him on the ropes. In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets in the city. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction. Right now, as elements from all four services complete the absolute annihilation of the insurgent forces remaining in Fallujah, the area around the former stronghold is more peaceful than it has been for more than a year. The number of attacks in the greater Al Anbar Province is down by at least 70-80% from late October -- before Operation Al Fajar began. The enemy in this area is completely defeated, but not completely gone. Final eradication of the pockets of insurgents will take some time, as it always does, but the fact remains that the central geographic stronghold of the insurgents is now under friendly control. That sounds a lot like success to me. Given all of this, why don't the papers lead with "Coalition Crushes Remaining Pockets of Insurgents" or "Enemy Forces Resort to Suicide Bombings of Civilians"? This would paint a far more accurate picture of the enemy's predicament over here. Instead, headlines focus almost exclusively on our hardships. What about the media's portrayal of the enemy? Why do these ruthless murderers, kidnappers and thieves get a pass when it comes to their actions? What did the media not show or tell us about Margaret Hassoon, the director of C.A.R.E. in Iraq and an Iraqi citizen, who was kidnapped, brutally tortured and left disemboweled in streets of Fallujah? Did anyone in the press show these images over and over to emphasize the moral failings of the enemy as they did with the soldiers at Abu Ghuraib? Did anyone show the world how this enemy had huge stockpiles of weapons in schools and mosques, or how he used these protected places as sanctuaries for planning and fighting in Fallujah and the rest of Iraq? Are people of the world getting the complete story? The answer again is no! What the world got instead were repeated images of a battle-weary Marine who made a quick decision to use lethal force and who now is being tried in the world press. Is this one act really illustrative of the overall action in Fallujah? No, but the Marine video clip was shown an average of four times each hour on just about every major TV news channel for a week. This is how the world views our efforts over here and stories like this without a counter continually serve as propaganda victories for the enemy. Al Jazeera isn't showing the film of the CARE worker, but is showing the clip of the Marine. Earlier this year, the Iraqi government banned Al Jazeera from the country for its inaccurate reporting. Wonder where they get their information now? Well, if you go to the Internet, you'll find a web link from the Al Jazeera home page to CNN's home page. Very interesting. The operation in Fallujah is only one of the recent examples of incomplete coverage of the events in Iraq. The battle in Najaf last August provides another. Television and newspapers spilled a continuous stream of images and stories about the destruction done to the sacred city, and of all the human suffering allegedly brought about by the hands of the big, bad Americans. These stories and the lack of anything to counter them gave more fuel to the fire of anti-Americanism that burns in this part of the world. Those on the outside saw the Coalition portrayed as invaders or oppressors, killing hapless Iraqis who, one was given to believe, simply were trying to defend their homes and their Muslim way of life. Reality couldn't have been farther from the truth. What noticeably was missing were accounts of the atrocities committed by the Mehdi Militia -- Muqtada Al Sadr's band of henchmen. While the media was busy bashing the Coalition, Muqtada's boys were kidnapping policemen, city council members and anyone else accused of supporting the Coalition or the new government, trying them in a kangaroo court based on Islamic Shari'a law, then brutally torturing and executing them for their "crimes." What the media didn't show or write about were the two hundred-plus headless bodies found in the main mosque there, or the body that was put into a bread oven and baked. Nor did they show the world the hundreds of thousands of mortar, artillery and small arms rounds found within the "sacred" walls of the mosque. Also missing from the coverage was the huge cache of weapons found in Muqtada's "political" headquarters nearby. No, none of this made it to the screen or to print. All anyone showed were the few chipped tiles on the dome of the mosque and discussion centered on how we, the Coalition, had somehow done wrong. Score another one for the enemy's propaganda machine. Now, compare the Najaf example to the coverage and debate ad nauseam of the Abu Ghuraib Prison affair. There certainly is no justification for what a dozen or so soldiers did there, but unbalanced reporting led the world to believe that the actions of the dozen were representative of the entire military. This has had an incredibly negative effect on Middle Easterners' already sagging opinion of the U.S. and its military. Did anyone show the world images of the 200 who were beheaded and mutilated in Muqtada's Shari'a Law court, or spend the next six months talking about how horrible all of that was? No, of course not. Most people don't know that these atrocities happened. It's little wonder that many people here want us out and would vote someone like Muqtada Al Sadr into office given the chance -- they never see the whole truth. Strange, when the enemy is the instigator the media does not flash images across the screens of televisions in the Middle East as they did with Abu Ghuraib. Is it because the beheaded bodies might offend someone? If so, then why do we continue see photos of the naked human pyramid over and over? So, why doesn't the military get more involved in showing the media the other side of the story? The answer is they do. Although some outfits are better than others, the Army and other military organizations today understand the importance of getting out the story -- the whole story -- and trains leaders to talk to the press. There is a saying about media and the military that goes: "The only way the media is going to tell a good story is if you give them one to tell." This doesn't always work as planned. Recently, when a Coalition spokesman tried to let TV networks in on opening moves in the Fallujah operation, they misconstrued the events for something they were not and then blamed the military for their gullibility. CNN recently aired a "special report" in which the cable network accused the military of lying to it and others about the beginning of the Fallujah operation. The incident referred to took place in October when a Marine public affairs officer called media representatives and told them that an operation was about to begin. Reporters rushed to the outskirts of Fallujah to see what they assumed was going to be the beginning of the main attack on the city. As it turned out, what they saw were tactical "feints" designed to confuse the enemy about the timing of the main attack, then planned to take place weeks later. Once the network realized that major combat operations wouldn't start for several more weeks, CNN alleged that the Marines had used them as a tool for their deception operation. Now, they say they want answers from the military and the administration on the matter. The reality appears to be that in their zeal to scoop their competition, CNN and others took the information they were given and turned it into what they wanted it to be. Did the military lie to the media: no. It is specifically against regulations to provide misinformation to the press. However, did the military planners anticipate that reporters would take the ball and run with it, adding to the overall deception plan? Possibly. Is that unprecedented or illegal? Of course not. CNN and others say they were duped by the military in this and other cases. Yet, they never seem to be upset by the undeniable fact that the enemy manipulates them with a cunning that is almost worthy of envy. You can bet that terrorist leader Abu Musab Al Zarqarwi has his own version of a public affairs officer and it is evident that he uses him to great effect. Each time Zarquari's group executes a terrorist act such as a beheading or a car bomb, they have a prepared statement ready to post on their website and feed to the press. Over-eager reporters take the bait, hook, line and sinker, and report it just as they got it. Did it ever occur to the media that this type of notoriety is just what the terrorists want and need? Every headline they grab is a victory for them. Those who have read the ancient Chinese military theorist and army general Sun Tsu will recall the philosophy of "Kill one, scare ten thousand" as the basic theory behind the strategy of terrorism. Through fear, the terrorist can then manipulate the behavior of the masses. The media allows the terrorist to use relatively small but spectacular events that directly affect very few, and spread them around the world to scare millions. What about the thousands of things that go right every day and are never reported? Complete a multi-million-dollar sewer project and no one wants to cover it, but let one car bomb go off and it makes headlines. With each headline, the enemy scores another point and the good-guys lose one. This method of scoring slowly is eroding domestic and international support while fueling the enemy's cause. I believe one of the reasons for this shallow and subjective reporting is that many reporters never actually cover the events they report on. This is a point of growing concern within the Coalition. It appears many members of the media are hesitant to venture beyond the relative safety of the so-called "International Zone" in downtown Baghdad, or similar "safe havens" in other large cities. Because terrorists and other thugs wisely target western media members and others for kidnappings or attacks, the westerners stay close to their quarters. This has the effect of holding the media captive in cities and keeps them away from the broader truth that lies outside their view. With the press thus cornered, the terrorists easily feed their unwitting captives a thin gruel of anarchy, one spoonful each day. A car bomb at the entry point to the International Zone one day, a few mortars the next, maybe a kidnapping or two thrown in. All delivered to the doorsteps of those who will gladly accept it without having to leave their hotel rooms -- how convenient. The scene is repeated all too often: an attack takes place in Baghdad and the morning sounds are punctuated by a large explosion and a rising cloud of smoke. Sirens wail in the distance and photographers dash to the scene a few miles away. Within the hour, stern-faced reporters confidently stare into the camera while standing on the balcony of their tenth-floor Baghdad hotel room, their back to the city and a distant smoke plume rising behind them. More mayhem in Gotham City they intone, and just in time for the morning news. There is a transparent reason why the majority of car bombings and other major events take place before noon Baghdad-time; any later and the event would miss the start of the morning news cycle on the U.S. east coast. These terrorists aren't stupid; they know just what to do to scare the masses and when to do it. An important key to their plan is manipulation of the news media. But, at least the reporters in Iraq are gathering information and filing their stories, regardless of whether or the stories are in perspective. Much worse are the "talking heads" who sit in studios or offices back home and pontificate about how badly things are going when they never have been to Iraq and only occasionally leave Manhattan. Almost on a daily basis, newspapers, periodicals and airwaves give us negative views about the premises for this war and its progress. It seems that everyone from politicians to pop stars are voicing their unqualified opinions on how things are going. Recently, I saw a Rolling Stone magazine and in bold print on the cover was, "Iraq on Fire; Dispatches from the Lost War." Now, will someone please tell me who at Rolling Stone or just about any other "news" outlet is qualified to make a determination as to when all is lost and it's time to throw in the towel? In reality, such flawed reporting serves only to misshape world opinion and bolster the enemy's position. Each enemy success splashed across the front pages and TV screens of the world not only emboldens them, but increases their ability to recruit more money and followers. So what are the credentials of these self proclaimed "experts"? The fact is that most of those on whom we rely for complete and factual accounts have little or no experience or education in counter-insurgency operations or in nation-building to support their assessments. How would they really know if things are going well or not? War is an ugly thing with many unexpected twists and turns. Who among them is qualified to say if this one is worse than any other at this point? What would they have said in early 1942 about our chances of winning World War II? Was it a lost cause too? How much have these "experts" studied warfare and counter-insurgencies in particular? Have they ever read Roger Trinquier's treatise Modern Warfare: A French View on Counter-insurgency (1956)? He is one of the few French military guys who got it right. The Algerian insurgency of the 1950s and the Iraq insurgency have many similarities. What about Napoleon's campaigns in Sardinia in 1805-07? Again, there are a lot of similarities to this campaign. Have they studied that and contrasted the strategies? Or, have they even read Mao Zedung's theories on insurgencies, or Nygen Giap's, or maybe Che' Gueverra's? Have they seen any of Sun Zsu's work lately? Who are these guys? It's time to start studying, folks. If a journalist doesn't recognize the names on this list, he or she probably isn't qualified to assess the state of this or any other campaign's progress. Worse yet, why in the world would they seek opinion from someone who probably knows even less than they do about the state of affairs in Iraq? It sells commercials, I suppose. But, I find it amazing that some people are more apt to listen to a movie star's or rock singer's view on how we should prosecute world affairs than to someone whose profession it is to know how these things should go. I play the guitar, but Bruce Springsteen doesn't listen to me play. Why should I be subjected to his views on the validity of the war? By profession, he's a guitar player. Someone remind me what it is that makes Sean Penn an expert on anything. It seems that anyone who has a dissenting view is first to get in front of the camera. I'm all for freedom of speech, but let's talk about things we know. Otherwise, television news soon could have about as much credibility as "The Batchelor" has for showing us truly loving couples. Also bothersome are references by "experts" on how "long" this war is taking. I've read that in the world of manufacturing, you can have only two of the following three qualities when developing a product -- cheap, fast or good. You can produce something cheap and fast, but it won't be good; good and fast, but it won't be cheap; good and cheap, but it won't be fast. In this case, we want the result to be good and we want it at the lowest cost in human lives. Given this set of conditions, one can expect this war is to take a while, and rightfully so. Creating a democracy in Iraq not only will require a change in the political system, but the economic system as well. Study of examples of similar socio-economic changes that took place in countries like Chile, Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia and other countries with oppressive Socialist dictatorships shows that it took seven to ten years to move those countries to where they are now. There are many lessons to be learned from these transformations, the most important of which is that change doesn't come easily, even without an insurgency going on. Maybe the experts should take a look at all of the work that has gone into stabilizing Bosnia-Herzegovina over the last 10 years. We are just at the eighteen-month mark in Iraq, a place far more oppressive than Bosnia ever was. If previous examples are any comparison, there will be no quick solutions here, but that should be no surprise to an analyst who has done his or her homework. This war is not without its tragedies; none ever are. The key to the enemy's success is use of his limited assets to gain the greatest influence over the masses. The media serves as the glass through which a relatively small event can be magnified to international proportions, and the enemy is exploiting this with incredible ease. There is no good news to counteract the bad, so the enemy scores a victory almost every day. In its zeal to get to the hot spots and report the latest bombing, the media is missing the reality of a greater good going on in Iraq. We seldom are seen doing anything right or positive in the news. People believe what they see, and what people of the world see almost on a daily basis is negative. How could they see it any other way? These images and stories, out of scale and context to the greater good going on over here, are just the sort of thing the terrorists are looking for. This focus on the enemy's successes strengthens his resolve and aids and abets his cause. It's the American image abroad that suffers in the end. Ironically, the press freedom that we have brought to this part of the world is providing support for the enemy we fight. I obviously think it's a disgrace when many on whom the world relies for news paint such an incomplete picture of what actually has happened. Much too much is ignored or omitted. I am confident that history will prove our cause right in this war, but by the time that happens, the world might be so steeped in the gloom of ignorance we won't recognize victory when we achieve it.

British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq." Basically it is just that simple... a choice between Good or Evil

another Belmont Club analysis on the Iraqi Elections and the opposition http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2004/12/ir...nd-age-ago.html

December 13, 2004, 8:52 a.m. The Power of Shame Why so many American’s don’t get the Sunni opposition. By Steven Vincent The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. — Michael Moore She was a Sunni Muslim, an attractive, thirty-something writer, one of the few women I met who eschewed a scarf in public. And she was overjoyed at the demise of Saddam. "I am so happy! Freedom at last! The world is open to me now!" she exclaimed during a small social function at an art gallery in Karada. "Can you recommend some American magazines I might send my writing to?" I promised I'd draw up a list of suitable periodicals, then added — carelessly, for this was my first trip to Iraq — "You must not mind seeing American soldiers on the streets." The woman's smile vanished. Her brow darkened and she shook her head. "Oh, no. I hate the soldiers. I hate them so much I fantasize about taking a gun and shooting one dead." Stunned by her vehemence, "But American soldiers are responsible for your freedom!" I replied. "I know," the woman snarled. "And you can't imagine how humiliated that makes me feel." He was a short, intense, bespectacled lawyer from Baquba, who claimed he had connections with anti-Coalition forces in the Sunni Triangle. As we drove through the desert into Baghdad, "I hate your country," he informed me. "Every time I see a U.S. tank I feel like it is crushing my skull." Less startled by this expression — for this was my second trip to Iraq — I asked the attorney the cause of his feelings. As if explaining the most self-evident thing in the world, he replied, "America is occupying my country — as a patriot, of course I must resist." He fixed his wire-rimmed gaze on me. "Imagine if a foreign power was occupying America — wouldn't you resist?" I think of these people each time I read about violence in the Sunni Triangle, that one-hundred-mile area stretching from Tikrit to the north, Ramadi to the east, and Baghdad to the west. I think of similar Iraqi confessions of shame, resentment, or "patriotism" each time I hear of an American soldier or Iraqi civilian killed by an IED, mortar assault, or car bomb. I feel a simmering anger over the pointlessness of these attacks and those aspects of Arab psychology that cling to humiliation and rely on violence to satisfy grievances. And my anger burns hotter when I read comments from the Western media ennobling these murderous "insurgents" by calling them the "Resistance" — or, more horribly, the "Revolution" — ignoring the thousands of Iraqis who risk their lives every day opposing the nihilistic bloodlust of these men. After more than eighteen months of fighting in Iraq, there seems to be no means of dealing with this insurrection. The Kurds and the Shia (renegade cleric Moqtada al-Sadr notwithstanding) have shown a willingness to negotiate over the future of Iraq — why not the Sunnis? What do they hope to gain from their "guerrilla" war against the U.S. and against the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi? More important, what factors in the Arab Iraqi character lie behind Sunni opposition to a democratic Iraq, and why can't American politicians, military personnel and members of the media seem to understand them? ******* Nothing is more humiliating to a man than to be the subject of another man's authority. — Arab proverb We hadn't considered it, those of us who supported the war. After all, it made no sense, it was unreasonable. And yet, the moment I spoke to that woman at the art gallery, I knew: even as they were being liberating from Saddam, Iraqis felt shamed by the fact that they couldn't do the job themselves. "If only you'd given us more time, we would have risen up and overthrown him," a waiter at the Orient Palace lectured me a couple of days later. "It's terrible, when I think of it," a student at Baghdad University said. "A foreign army has to come across the world to free us from Saddam — who are we, then?" This sense of indignity, of loss of "face," explained the ungracious gratitude many Iraqis evinced toward the U.S. — the "Thanks America, now go home" syndrome. How naïve we were to believe that they would greet our troops with flowers, as Dick Cheney so famously and wrongly predicted. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies explained in a report on Iraq's reconstruction, "the United States should expect continuing resentment and disaffection even if the U.S.-led reconstruction efforts seem to be making positive, incremental improvements to the country according to quantifiable measures. In other words, the occupation will not be judged by the sum of its consequences, but rather qua occupation." In retrospect, it seems obvious. No one likes being beholden to another for his freedom. The Iraqis consider it incomprehensible that a people with a glorious Sumerian and Babylonian heritage and a country with rich natural resources had to rely on foreigners for rescue. "No wonder civilization began here," said a teacher at the Shabandar café. "We have everything — food, water, oil, minerals." This pride, however, has its negatives. Since Iraq today isn't in much of a position to fulfill its potential, its people often project their sense of superiority outward — most notably on the United States — which only reinforces their sense of national disgrace. December 14, 2004, 3:50 p.m. America the Omnipotent Many Iraqis overestimated U.S. capabilities. France may see us as a barely-restrainable "hyperpower"; the Iraqis — at least in the beginning of the "occupation" — saw us as simply omnipotent. The ease with which our armies overran their country reinforced that idea, as did America's chest-thumping over its technological know-how. As a result, many Iraqis developed a warped view of U.S. competence and intentions. Since America was all-powerful, they reasoned, we couldn't make mistakes or act incompetently: such blunders must really be part of some Bush Administration master strategy. Take, for example, the looting and fires that wracked Baghdad immediately after Saddam's fall. Where we might blame a catastrophic lack of Pentagon foresight, numerous Iraqis contended that America encouraged the looting in order to demonstrate the Iraqi people's inability to govern themselves. Approaching the status of an urban legend was the story of GIs who broke open the National Museum and invited passersby to help themselves to priceless antiquities. A cab driver swore to me that he had witnessed American soldiers exhorting crowds to ransack government buildings with hearty cries of, "Go on, people, take what you want!" I heard similar stories about Americans urging the pillage of expensive homes in Karada — although in my perambulations through the neighborhood, I saw no evidence of such damage. But that is incidental: the real point of these stories isn't truth, but rather the comfort they provide Iraqi people in shifting the blame for acts of criminal vandalism from themselves to devious Uncle Sam. The overestimation of U.S. capabilities also distorted Iraqi notions of what to expect from our country. Since America was omnipotent, why couldn't it gin up the electrical grid, restore peace and tranquility, and provide employment to everyone — today? Here again, the U.S. was victim both of Iraqi projections and its own high-tech wizardry. Try to explain to an Iraqi housewife the difficulties of repairing an electrical system decades out of date and beset by saboteurs, and she'd cock a skeptical eyebrow. This from a nation with weapons so smart they can look up a target's address in the Baghdad yellow pages? No, the only reason America dropped the quality-of-life ball was that Bush wanted to keep Iraq downtrodden and dependent. Not every Iraqi thought this way, of course. Still, I encountered these sentiments often enough to recognize that they pervade the nation's self-image and compensate for another, equally unrealistic, but even more debilitating characteristic: severe feelings of defeat and impotence. As Raphael Patai wrote in his classic, and controversial, 1974 book, The Arab Mind, "The encounter with the West produced a disturbing inferiority complex in the Arab mind which in itself makes it more difficult to shake off the shackles of stagnation." A good illustration of Patai's observation was the conversation I had with Ahmed, the piano player at Fifties. Possessed of a superb knowledge of the American songbook, Ahmed would play, at my request, medleys of Sinatra songs, accompanying himself in a reedy, but serviceable, voice. One night, however, he ventured beyond "Angel Eyes" and "A Quarter to Three" to give me the low-down on the Iraq situation. "The only reason America invaded was to steal our national resources," he confided, during a break from his ivory-tickling. Ahmed's proof? America didn't actually have to invade Iraq in order to topple Saddam, he noted; all it really had to do was beam down special radiation from super-secret satellites orbiting overhead, which would scramble Baath Party communications and enable "the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam." Why hadn't they overthrown him before? "Saddam wasn't in power just by himself, you know — he had very powerful backers." And who were these backers? "The Jews," Ahmed replied. You see, Jews not only supported Saddam, the pianist maintained, but also manipulated him into attacking Iran in order to "keep the Arabs down and — " At this point, I requested he play "Send in the Clowns," and escaped to my room. It is tempting to discount Ahmed's analysis as typical of the anti-Semitism one finds with tedious regularity in Iraq. But it reveals many of the demons that lie beneath the surface of the Iraqi national character: historical grievances, conspiratorial thinking, and a kind of bi-polar superiority-inferiority dynamic. Moreover, his comments point to another, equally troubling impulse that confuses Western observers and informs the nature of the Iraqi "insurgency": an unwillingness to take the blame for Saddam. As dissident Iraqi intellectual Kanan Makiya wrote in The Monument, his 1991 book about art and culture in Iraq, "The question of responsibility has to be posed completely differently in a state ruled by fear than it would in an ordinary state, because on the whole the populace does not feel itself responsible for the actions of its rulers, even when it knows that momentous life and death decisions are taken in its name." Iraqis refuse to accept that their society allowed a monster like Saddam to take power. Instead, they see him as an aberration, as if he were a maniacal gunman who suddenly burst into their homes, seized their families, and terrorized their neighbors, until the police finally stormed in and captured the lunatic. Now, standing amidst the ruins caused by the raid, they say to their rescuers, "It wasn't our fault this madman got in here. Thanks for getting rid of him — now, how soon are you going to repair our house?" They overlook that from 1968 to 1980, Iraq lived happily under the control of the Nazi-inspired Baath Party, while reaping the benefits of an oil-rich economy. (How many times did I hear how wonderful Baghdad was in the 1970s?) Not until Saddam seized complete control of the nation in 1979 and launched the war on Iran — and then on the Kurds, and then on Kuwait, and then on the Shia — did they realize they belonged to a madman. But by then it was too late. At the same time, though, there are many Iraqis who, like my Baquba lawyer, don't care why American troops are in their country, only that they are here — and so must pay for that offense in lost and shattered lives. The shame that many Iraqis feel is not enough to compel them to take up arms against the Coalition — if that were the case, the volume of weaponry in Baghdad alone would make the U.S. presence untenable. (The Shia, in particular, must have enormous secret depots of small-arms ordinance just to shoot into the air to celebrate marriages.) Rather, there is another, more combustible aspect in the Iraqi personality, something that seeks healing for the wound of humiliation in violence and bloodletting. To find it, I traveled to the Sunni Triangle itself. December 15, 2004, 8:58 a.m. The Oppressive Occupier? This wasn’t how the liberation was supposed to go. Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect. — Franz Fanon Nam, nam, Saddam! (Yes, yes, Saddam!) — An Iraqi boy, Fallujah, January, 2004 One beautiful late winter morning, I found myself standing on a street corner in downtown Fallujah, surrounded by a crowd of Iraqi men, each person shoving forward to express an identical sentiment: hatred for the United States of America. "America bad, worse than Saddam. They must leave our country at once!" one man growled. "American soldiers no good. Life was better under Saddam!" said another. "We have no gas, no electricity, no security. When Saddam was president, everything was fine, life was good." "Saddam was a good man. We hate President Bush! We hate America!" The conversation didn't start this way. At first, I approached two men on the corner and we engaged in a reasonable, relatively balanced critique of the U.S. presence near their city. Gradually, though, as more people joined the group, the volume of the voices rose. Each accusation against America spawned another, harsher, castigation. Newcomers entering the discussion added even more severe views, until the entire encounter took on a radical tone. It was a phenomenon I noticed several times over there, especially in the Sunni Triangle. In heated conversation, there was a rush toward the extremes: the more vehement and violent the view, the more likely it would emerge as the consensus of a group. Not that I was particularly alarmed this morning. Anticipating a flood of anti-American invective in this ancient smugglers den thirty-five miles west of Baghdad, I identified myself as a Yugoslavian journalist, gambling on Iraqi ignorance of southeast Europe to see the deception through. It worked. No one challenged me, or asked for any documents; in fact, nearly everyone was exceedingly polite, if agitated. Perhaps the residents didn't care where a reporter was from, just as long as he gave an ear to their complaints. "The people here are angry," observed Dhia, as we drove away, passing a broken-down amusement park near Fallujah's souk. I nodded, resisting a temptation to ask him what he felt about America: the last thing I needed was to be alienated from my own driver in the heart of the Sunni Triangle. I met Dhia in the fall when I asked the Armenian desk clerk at the Orient Palace to recommend someone to take me to the holy Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf. A gentle, slightly effeminate man with a soft smile and feathery voice, the twenty-nine-year-old dressed in neat slacks and polo shirts, had a good command of English, and drove his own BMW. In our travels throughout southern Iraq, he proved a good and trustworthy companion. When I returned to Iraq that winter, I contacted him, asking if he could take me to the towns of the Sunni Triangle. "No problem, Mister Steve — with me, you will be safe," Dhia promised. And so, under his watchful eye, I assessed the intensity of anti-American sentiment. In Ramadi, a bustling market town of around 450,000 people, I conversed with a man preparing for the Friday lunch rush at an outdoor café. "America should leave now, not tomorrow," he declared, chopping lamb into little kebob squares. "Iraq is not safe because they are here. Americans shoot anyone, they break into homes and steal money." At a tea stand, a studious-looking young man shook his head. "At first we welcomed America. Then the soldiers began killing people." Another crowd gathered, everyone eager to tell the inquisitive Yugoslav why they despise the U.S.: no electricity, no gas; GIs break into houses, arrest people, and "touch" women. Life was better under Saddam. I asked nine small boys gawking at me if the former dictator was a "good man." All nine said yes. One can perhaps understand why. Although totaling around 15 percent of Iraq's Arab population, the Sunnis have dominated Iraq since the mid-sixteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire used the sect as a bulwark against the Shia-influenced Persians to the east. In the twentieth century, the British and Iraq's British-controlled monarchy continued the policy of favoring the Sunnis and their well-developed administrative skills. Under Saddam, a Sunni himself, the religious sect reached the apogee of its power, thriving under a system of patronage and government benefits that awarded them top positions in all aspects of Iraqi life. In 2003, the American war machine ended their reign; suddenly, the jobs, pensions, and prestige the Sunnis used to lord over the Kurds and Shia were gone. On a Ramadi street corner, I found a graying old man wearing a tattered brown sweater struggling to serve a small knot of men gathered around his portable tea stand. "I was a teacher, in my retirement," he related when the rush subsided and he had a moment to talk. "I received a nice pension from the government. When the Americans came at first I was happy — no more Saddam! Then they cut my pension. Later, they gave me $30 a month, then raised it to $60. But how can I live on that much? I had to come out of retirement. Meanwhile, there is no gas, no electricity, no salaries for the people. When Saddam was in power, we had all this. My life was fine. Now look at me. I have to sell tea to support my family." En route to Khaldiya, we encountered a parked m-1 Abrams tank, its barrel aimed at windshield level at oncoming traffic. Dhia, however, would not enter the town itself. "They kill foreigners there," he murmured, reminding me that a few days previously, an IED killed three GIs in the area. Instead, we stopped at a roadside vegetable stand for an earful of anti-U.S. vituperation. At one point, a young man motioned toward three Bradleys lumbering down the road. "There go the Ali Baba," he spat. I noticed that Iraqis either sped up or slowed down to distance themselves from the convoy; one car actually drove off the road. No one wanted to be near a potential target of an IED or a rocket-propelled grenade. It was painful to see America the object of so much hatred and fear, the very image of an oppressive occupier. It was worse when we found ourselves behind a trio of Humvees. Dhia crept several car lengths behind the rear vehicle, and I looked at the GI manning the roof-mounted m60 machine gun (Where was he from? What city? Where did his parents live?), reflecting on the isolation of these young men out here, how the Iraqis shun and avoid them, even as they face the threat that a roadside pile of debris will erupt into fire and shrapnel. This was not how the liberation was supposed to go. December 16, 2004, 8:38 a.m. Rage Against the Foreigner Dishonor propelled the Sunni insurgency. In Fallujah, Dhia and I visit the headquarters of the Islamic Political Party of Iraq. There, I asked a Sunni cleric seated on his diwan, or long couch, why he thought his Shia brethren had proven more cooperative with the U.S. He offered a mirthless smile. "The Shia think America liberated them from Saddam. But America did not come to liberate, they came for oil. America must leave immediately." But without the presence of U.S. troops, wouldn't Iraq slide into terrorist violence? "Let the soldiers leave, peace will come," the cleric replied, fingering his prayer beads. "They are the terrorists who kill the Iraqi people." He has a point. Heavily-armed American soldiers, untrained for the kind of constabulary work that urban combat demands, are guilty of killing Iraqi civilians. In April, 2003, for example, 82nd Airborne troops in Fallujah shot and killed eighteen, apparently unarmed Iraqis; in September, 2003, troops mistakenly killed eight policemen just west of the city. In every town through the Sunni Triangle, similar incidents have taken place. (The military claims it does not keep statistics on civilian deaths.) Moreover, the day-to-day aspects of the American presence are infuriating: roadblocks, bridge closings, curfews. House searches can be brutal: doors kicked in, furniture overturned, rooms ransacked, whole families rousted. In the Sunni Triangle, American troops truly are an occupier. Over the next couple of weeks, Dhia and I crisscrossed the area, popping out of his car in towns west of Baghdad, as well as in Samarra, Baquba, and Tikrit (hometown of Uncle Saddam) to the north, to interview tea sellers, waiters, students, clerics, and unemployed Baathist-supporting thugs. Again and again, I heard the same litany of complaints about U.S soldiers — civilian casualties, thefts from houses, vague accusations that "they touch women." The charges sounded serious — a number of them were no doubt true. But could they all be true? Had each of these Iraqis actually seen or experienced such abuses, or were they simply repeating rumors? In Fallujah one afternoon, I chatted with three guys at a corner tea stand who swore that, just the day before, they saw a U.S. soldier shoot a woman dead in the street. A week earlier, they continued, another GI killed a man and his son who were working as night guards in a garage. My heart sinking, I asked for directions to the scene of the woman's murder, and within minutes, Dhia and I were at the vacant street corner, where, by good fortune, a policeman was walking by. No, the men in the teahouse were wrong, the cop explained to my relief. The woman's slayer was a local man whose father had been murdered by her son. "Revenge," he shrugged. "She was Kurdish," he added, as if that explained something. With his intelligent eyes, ruddy complexion, and barber-shop-quartet moustache, the officer struck me as a decent fellow able to separate fact from rumor when it came to reports of American crimes. I asked him about the father and son killed at the garage. "Oh, yes," his jaw clenching, "that was done by an American soldier." "What happened to the soldier?" "Nothing! Nothing ever happens to the soldiers who kill us." "Does it happen a lot?" The policeman's face turned crimson. "Americans have killed thousands of Iraqis since they came here. Do you hear me? Thousands! They killed my brother's thirteen-year-old son, his only son!" I had struck a nerve: faster and faster spilled the man's words, a kind of reverse-image of the pro-American Shia cab driver I had met in Baghdad three months earlier. "The Americans hate the Sunnis and insha'allah, we hate them. Believe me, this is why the people kill the soldiers! We were kings when Saddam was president — now what? Nothing! Life is so expensive, there are no jobs — especially for Sunnis! This is what George Bush brings us! Nothing! Saddam's shoes are better than George Bush!" Trembling with rage, he thrust a finger in my face. "In Fallujah, there are 135 mosques! This is a Muslim city. It is forbidden for Americans to be here. The people of Fallujah say, 'You must leave!' Especially to the American soldiers, for they are all Zionists! And they are here with fighters from other Arab countries, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. All here with Zionist America to steal from Iraq!" Just when I feared the policeman might explode, his feverish anger seemed to break, and he blinked and looked at Dhia and me as if noticing us for the first time. Then he invited us for lunch. It was the Iraqi temperament all over again. The policeman began reasonably enough, accusing the GIs of civilian deaths. But Arab anger is a volatile force, one that easily "sweeps over the dam of self-control and in an astonishingly short period of time transforms the entire personality," as Patai writes. From denouncing U.S. soldiers, it was a short step for the cop to declare his support for Saddam, anger at the "infidel" and hatred for Zionists, the whole ascending scale of rage climaxing with his view of Iraq as the victim of a worldwide conspiracy. (Although, in fairness, his mention of the Arab fighters was a tantalizing reference to foreign jihadists operating in the Sunni Triangle.) Then, just as suddenly, he calmed down and seemed to emerge from his fury. I felt sympathy for him, as I did for most of the Sunnis I spoke with. And yet, the same question kept nagging me: What do they want? What is the point of this "Resistance?" From Tikrit to Ramadi, whenever I asked people what they thought killing American troops would achieve, they voiced the hope that the bloodshed would drive the hated foreigner out of Iraq. When I suggested that perhaps an easier way to attain such an end would be to form a stable democratic government that would then ask the U.S. to leave — giving America no pretext to remain in the country — people looked at me with a blank expression. Even more startling, at least for me, were the Sunni responses when I asked them what kind of government they envisioned if the U.S. suddenly did up and leave. Nearly everyone declared their interest in a new Saddam ("Only more democratic," one Baquban qualified) or a reconstituted Baath Party. Never mind that neither of these alternatives was likely, given armed Kurds to the north, armed Shia to the south, and American interests in the country, not to mention Saddam's impending trial for war crimes. Nor did these Sunnis express the slightest misgivings about agitating for the return of a dictator who modeled himself after Stalin and a political party based on the National Socialists. They felt no responsibility for the crimes of the tyrant they wanted returned to power. Rather, it was the idea of the resurrected "strong man" they liked. It acted like a comforting balm on their sense of "rage" — that blind, amoral, unforgiving thirst for vengeance that fed on its own indignation until it drove many to violence. This vague, inchoate "rage against the foreigner" is nothing new in the Arab Middle East, of course. Especially in the aftermath of World War II, as David Pryce-Jones observes in his 1989 study of Arab culture, The Closed Circle. When Arab leaders began advocating nationalism, he writes, they "restricted themselves to the one-dimensional platform of evicting the Europeans," while at the same time refusing to "discuss what social and political institutions they might consider appropriate in the event of independence. One and all incited nationalism and then exploited it as the surest way of arousing the mob on their behalf, frightening the authorities, demoralizing the Europeans, and so levering themselves as their successors into the positions of supreme power holders. What would actually happen in the event of their seizing the state, they left undefined." Fifty years later, the situation is the same, only now anonymous ex-Saddmites seek to demoralize and evict the United States in their hopes of transforming a slice of Iraq into a miniature caliphate. But this is not all that stokes the fires of Sunni hatred. Beneath Iraqi religious and political affiliations lies a complex web of family, clan, and tribal associations that knits the country together in a tradition-based social order. Whereas in Shia-dominated Iraq, religious leaders tend to command more respect than tribal sheikhs, in the Sunni Triangle, kinship groups like the Dulaym federation, the Shammar, the al-Jaburi, and Saddam's own tribe, al-Bu Nasir, have for centuries wielded considerable, if poorly-understood, power. Although the Ottomans, the British, and even the Baathists tried to circumscribe tribal authority, it has stubbornly persisted, especially in the form of behavioral codes derived from the earliest inhabitants of the desert. This "Bedouin substratum," as Patai terms it, affirms as its highest principles hospitality, courage, loyalty and, above all, honor — a concept which itself comprises virility, dignity, and martial valor. "All these different kinds of honor," Patai writes, "interlock to surround the Arab ego like a coat of armor." And if this psychic chain-mail is breached? The Arab, he continues, "must defend his public image. Any injury done to a man's honor must be revenged, or else he becomes permanently dishonored," Pryce-Jones writes. "Shame is a living death, not to be endured, requiring that it be avenged." For my part, I discovered this cultural and psychological phenomenon throughout the Sunni Triangle. While conversing with dozens of residents, I felt much less the anger of a population that was "occupied," "oppressed," or "enslaved" than the self-loathing of a people in disgrace. After decades of imperious rule, the Sunni Baathists were crushed by America — shamed, humiliated, they felt they had lost something perhaps even more precious than jobs or political power: honor. Dishonor. This, I came to understand, was a huge factor that propelled the Sunni insurgency and gave it such an air of pointless, self-destructive violence. It is also the reason, I believe, why non-Middle Eastern observers have such trouble understanding the nature of this conflict — particularly Americans, who have no real experience with those extended families called tribes. Nor do we feel any longer a visceral connection between honor and self-respect, or the necessity of the lex talionis ("an eye for an eye," or, as an Arab proverb has it, dam butlub dam, "blood demands blood") to avenge humiliation. But the militants in the Sunni Triangle do. In order to reclaim their personal, family and clan reputations, these Iraqis seek to kill American troops, for only American blood can redeem their honor. The roadside ambushes and barbaric immolations correspond to archaic tribal codes where self-respect is restored only through violence and loss of life. No wonder the insurgents — and many other Iraqis as well — seem to dwell on the edge of a bottomless chasm of rage: the shame they experience from the American invasion eats away at them. No wonder, too, that the insurgents' movement seems so vague. In my travels through the Sunni Triangle and my time in Baghdad I never once saw any symbols, propaganda, or call letters (FLN, NLF, IRA, and so on) that might refer to an organized "liberation front." These "resistance" fighters — or, à la Moore, Iraqi "minutemen" — seemed to have no leaders, issue no communiqués, propound no programs, or even have a name. But why should they? Their primary interest is their own "honor." They may claim they are "patriots" fighting for Iraq — many are, in fact, soldiers and officers from the old Iraqi Army — but at heart they see themselves as tribal warriors engaged in the venerable tradition of honor killings against the biggest tribe of all: America. By failing immediately to occupy and pacify the Sunni Triangle during the war, the U.S. allowed the affiliation between tribal groups and the Baath Party to reform and reassert itself. Gradually, a combination of embarrassment, humiliation, disgrace, and dishonor, fueled by a genuine diminution in the Sunnis' quality of life, compelled these Iraqis to seek revenge rather than political negotiation. Attacks on U.S. soldiers produced American counter-responses, killing Iraqi civilians and initiating further cycles of honor and revenge slayings. Gradually, the Sunni's tribal mentality drew the U.S. into a new kind of war: an unreasonable war fought not for familiar goals like territory, riches, or ideology, but for the irrational, intangible prizes of honor and self-respect. December 17, 2004, 8:43 a.m. The Wrong Words Moral and linguistic clarity are crucial in this conflict. We must also take action against our own Iraqi citizens who choose to collaborate with the enemy. . . . If someone you know is considering taking a job with the Americans, tell him that he is engaging in treason and encourage him to seek honest work instead. If he refuses, you must kill him as a warning to other weak-minded individuals.— Ted Rall As long as we're here, we're the occupying power. It's a very ugly word, but its true.— Paul Bremer Barely a week after my last visit to Fallujah, twenty-two policemen died when their station came under a fierce and organized assault by some seventy attackers. I have often wondered if my mustachioed friend with whom I lunched was among the fatalities, but I will never know. Nor will I ever know the identity of the assailants. Hearing about the attack in Baghdad, I surfed the internet for additional information. I found anti-war websites — among them, the indomitable Occupation Watch — that called the gunmen the "resistance." The London-based news service Reuters used the term "guerrillas"; another news source mentioned "insurgents." Returning to my room, I caught a BBC-TV newscaster who reported that the fighters were "insurgents, anti-Coalition forces, whatever you want to call them." Of those three descriptions, the BBC's was the most accurate — if nothing else, the reporter captured the confusion over what to call the combatants who continue to kill American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Despite their VC-like stealth, are they really "guerillas"? Even though they appear to be rising up against a foreign "occupation," do they deserve the term "insurgents?" Although they, and others, claim they are "resisting" the Coalition, does that make them a "Resistance?" This is not mere semantics. The terms the media use to report on Iraq profoundly affect how Americans perceive this conflict and, by extension, how much blood and treasure they are willing to sacrifice on behalf of the Iraqi people. To put it another way, the degree to which America's conception of this war remains unclear and misleading constitute victories to those who would rob the Iraqis of their future. Moral clarity is crucial in this conflict. Unfortunately, America lost this clarity within weeks of the war's beginning. As soon as Saddam's statue fell in Firdousi Square, both pro- and anti-war camps accepted the notion that the U.S.-led Coalition was an "occupying" power. The term is accurate in a legal sense, of course, enshrined in international conventions and recognized by the U.N., but supporters of the war should have avoided and, when confronted with it, vigorously contested its use. For there is another way of viewing the situation. Once, in a Baghdad restaurant, I overhead some Westerners and Iraqis discussing the conflict — when the Westerners asked what they thought of the "occupation," one Iraqi retorted, "What 'occupation'? This is a liberation." Words matter. By not sufficiently challenging the term "occupation," Coalition supporters ceded crucial rhetorical ground to opponents of the war, and in the process fell into a dialectical trap. Simply put, the epithet "occupation" has a negative connotation — for example, "occupied France." Conversely, anyone who objects to being occupied and chooses to "resist" has our sympathies. (How many movies have you seen where the resistance fighters are the villains?) On an emotional level, skillfully manipulated by the Coalition's enemies, the situation in Iraq quickly boiled down to an easily grasped, if erroneous, equation: the occupation is bad; the resistance is good. Since the Coalition represented the negative pole, its motives, means, goals, and very presence were prejudged as suspect. In contrast, since the "Resistance" reflected the positive pole, it received automatic validation, if not the admiration and actual support of people all over the world. If one side suffered the burden of proof, the other enjoyed the benefit of the doubt. "America is occupying my country — of course I must resist," the Baquba lawyer had stated, a declaration that, in the minds of the anti-war crowd from Baghdad to Seattle, seems fair, legitimate, and admirable. In 2004, the June issue of Harper's featured an article entitled "Beyond Fallujah: A Year with the Iraqi Resistance." In the July 1 edition of England's Guardian newspaper, Seumas Milne, a bitter opponent of Iraq's liberation, wrote, "It has become ever clearer that [the insurgents] are in fact a classic resistance movement with widespread support waging an increasingly successful guerrilla war against the occupying armies." "Iraqi Resistance Breaks Away From Zarqawi," announced the July 5, 2004, Washington Times. The word "guerrillas" is used even more frequently: "ABC Footage Shows Iraqi Guerillas With Hostage," announced the website for ABC News on April 10. "Iraqi Guerrillas Gun Down Four Americans," declared the AP on June 21. "Guerrillas Seize Six Foreign Hostages In Iraq," read the AP headline for a July 21 article. Let's unpack these terms for a moment. What do we mean when we say the "Resistance?" Like the word "occupation," it is technically true: the people planting IEDs, piloting car bombs, and beheading foreign workers are "resisting" the Coalition. But like "occupation," "resistance" is not a neutral word. It conjures images of heroic struggles for national liberation: the French "Resistance," for example, or the Viet Cong or Algerian FLN. The same holds true with the word "guerrillas" — it, too, evokes heroic rebels, flaunting their independence in the face of impotent U.S. rage: Che, Fidel, Uncle Ho, Daniel Ortega, Sub-Commander Marcos. But apply these concepts to Iraq and you misrepresent the situation. The conflict there is not a mid-twentieth century colonial uprising. The anti-government fedayeen are not Fanon's "wretched of the earth." The gunmen are not "indigenous peoples" fighting an anti-imperialistic conflict. To view them through a Marxist-Chomskyite-anti-capitalist-Hollywood template is an exercise in false moral clarity. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in October, 2003: "The great irony is that the Baathists and Arab dictators are opposing the U.S. in Iraq because — unlike many leftists — they understand exactly what this war is about. They understand that U.S. power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world during the cold war. They understand that this is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the US has ever launched — a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world." And this doesn't include the hundreds of foreign jihadists operating in Iraq. Their car bombs and kidnappings and beheadings form part of the "Resistance," too. In February, Coalition authorities intercepted a letter they believed originated from Jordanian terror-master Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Writing to unknown associates, this murderer — the man probably responsible for bombing the Jordanian Embassy, and decapitating Nicholas Berg — complained that "America has no intention of leaving, no matter how many wounded nor how bloody it becomes." Worse, he noted, the U.S. intends to pull its forces back to bases, replacing soldiers with Iraqis who "are intimately linked to the people of this region." He went on to write: "How can we kill their cousins and sons and under what pretext, after the Americans start withdrawing? The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority. This is the democracy, we will have no pretext." Zarqawi clearly prefers that democracy fail in Iraq, thus forcing the U.S. to adopt a higher profile in the country — all to justify his terror campaigns. Campaigns specifically directed, he goes on to reveal, at Iraq's Shia population, in order to spark a sectarian war between the two Muslim groups: "The solution, and god only knows, is that we need to bring the Shia into the battle because it is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us." So here, finally, we see in all their glory the anti-Coalition forces so admired by many on the left and in the media: ex-Baathists who kill American troops out of a sense of humiliation and dishonor, and foreign jihadists who wish to see the U.S. "occupiers" remain in the country in order to justify additional attacks against their fellow Muslims. What kind of "Resistance" is this? There is nothing romantic, Che Guavaresque, or progressive about the goals of these murderers: they are thugs, fighting for the most nihilistic of causes. How, then, should we describe this war? What words and concepts define the situation more accurately? Since Iraq is now liberated, we might replace "occupation" with a word taken from the post-Civil War era: "reconstruction," as in, "the Coalition is reconstructing Iraq." We might then exchange the term "guerrilla fighters" for the more precise term "paramilitaries." Rather than noble warriors fighting to liberate their people, "paramilitaries" evoke images of anonymous right-wing killers terrorizing a populace in the name of a repressive regime — which is exactly what the fedayeen and jihadists are doing. Or we could simply dust off the venerable term "fascists." It was a good enough for the anti-Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War. Why shouldn't we use it to describe similar enemies of freedom in Iraq? I repeat — words matter. Terms like "paramilitaries," "death squads," and "fascists" clarify the nature of our enemy and underscore a fundamental point that the American media has inexcusably ignored: it is the Iraqi people who are under attack. They are the victims, their future is threatened, they are bleeding from wounds inflicted by pan-Arab Baathists and pan-Islamic jihadists. By calling these neo-fascists the "Resistance" the media reverses the relationship of assailant and defender and renders a terrible disservice to the millions of Iraqis who oppose, in ways large and small, these totalitarian forces. Hadeel gave her life resisting fascism. Yet to the Ted Ralls and Michael Moores of this world, she was a Quisling who deserved to die. How did this happen? How did the media confuse the real forces of resistance — police officers, administrative workers, translators, truck drivers, judges, politicians and thousands of others — with men who plan car bombings, assassinate government officials, and rampage through religious shrines in their quest to reinstate tyranny? Part of the reason is the anti-American bent of the international media: many reporters will sacrifice anything — including journalistic integrity — to defame the U.S. effort in Iraq. Then there is the semantic problem of the word "occupation" and its pejorative connotation: in the rudimentary arithmetic of the media, anything that "resists" a negative must, by definition, be positive. But there is another, more banal reason for the press' confusion we might consider. Reporters, like generals, are always fighting the last war. And in their need to fix upon a narrative, baby-boomer journalists returned to a decades-old script that pits indigenous Third World freedom fighters against aging imperialist powers. Iraq became Vietnam redux — Apocalypse Again — only with sand and kheffiyas instead of deltas and black pajamas. (Neoconservatives, of course, hoped the conflict would resemble World War II, with Baghdadis dancing in the streets, waving American flags, and strewing flowers on the liberators.) Or maybe — heaven help us — Gen-x reporters may have seen the conflict as a replay of Star Wars: after all, whenever the empire strikes back, we root for the rebels, right? However it happened, today we suffer for our lack of clarity in this war. Unwilling to call our enemies fascists, afraid to condemn the brutal aspects of Iraqi and Arab culture, we have allowed the narrative to slip out of our control. Truth is made, not found, in Iraq. Gradually, in the war of ideas, the U.S. became the evil occupier, opposing the legitimate wishes of an indigenous "resistance." We forgot the lessons of Vietnam and the people whom our defeat abandoned to the Killing Fields, re-education camps, and desperate flotillas of boats: sometimes, the empire is on the side of right — and it is the rebels who deserve to be crushed. — Steven Vincent is a freelance investigative journalist and art critic living in New York City. He is blogging about Iraq at www.redzoneblog.com.