Thread: June 30th
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Old 14-06-04, 10:08 PM   #4
Mazer
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Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
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The opposite may in fact be true: they've been forced to face an unregimented life for over a year, in the abcence of public services, police protection, and the fear of arrests by the occupying force, and soon they will return to the daily grind. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say these protesters are unemployed people with a lot of time on their hands. The rest of the nation is busy working daily to put food on the table, and nothing is going to change for them in two weeks. This violent minority however has little to gain and nothing to loose, so they'll protest the transition and cheer any attack on the US troops and the new Iraqi government. They're not the real problem, though. The new government will be attacked constantly by terrorists, mostly foreign, who will use the mob to their advantage. A single car bomb isn't going to make world wide headlines unless it appears to have popular support, and these looters and rioters will happliy act as the terrorists pawns in that regard.

If disruptions continue due to acts of terroism then the mob will not shrink, not for a long time anyway. I'd still like to think that the majority of Iraqis are intelligent, educated citizens of an industialized nation who understand the benefits of democracy, but they face severe pressure from foreign threats that surround their borders, something that most democracies don't have to put up with. So despite all the progress that Iraq is likely to make over the next decade, it's not going to go smoothly and the nay sayers are going to keep saying nay. My solution, take away the terrorists' megaphone by ignoring the popular media, and then arrest the rioters and punish them; they're criminals, they should be treated as such. The rest of the nation can go about its business, secure in the knowledge that by obeying their own laws they are strengthing their nation far more than anti-American ballyhoo ever will.
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