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Old 14-06-04, 04:32 PM   #1
theknife
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Default June 30th

16 days till the handover to Iraqi authorities...any predictions?

Quote:
A car bomb shattered a convoy of Westerners in Baghdad Monday, killing at least 13 people, including three General Electric workers and two bodyguards. Crowds rejoiced over the attack, dancing around a charred body and shouting "Down with the USA!"
this story could have been written last month or the month before, but it was, in fact, today's news. while the Iraqi elite is busy preparing for their new era, the people in the street don't appear to have gotten the memo.

Quote:
Moments after the thunderous blast, which shook the heart of the capital, young men raced into the street, hurling stones at the flaming wreckage, looting personal belongings of the victims and chanting slogans against the occupation.
no doubt it was some sort of foreign element responsible for the bombing, and, quite predictably, is likely to continue...but the reaction of the Iraqis at the scene, even at this late date, is the disturbing part. and this is not Fallujah or Najaf, and there are no militant clerics sowing the seeds of discontent here - this is pure spontaneous anarchy in beautiful downtown Bagdhad. bodes poorly for the immediate future, no?

Quote:
As flames and smoke enveloped the vehicles, youths taunted American troops and threatened Western journalists. American troops beat one man with a stick, but after failing to restrain the crowd, the troops and police withdrew.

Crowds chanted "Down with the USA!" and set fire to an American flag. Young men gleefully displayed a British passport and identification card issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
if we are to take the CPA at their word, the moment of Iraqi independence is at hand - so why are these people not smiling? do they not grasp the concept of independence or do they simply not believe what we are telling them (and the rest of the world, for that matter)? or is the day-to-day task of surviving an occupation/guerilla war so grueling that they are simply beyond caring?

i think it's a matter of education...while the Western-educated Iraqi intellectual elite is preparing for democracy, the average Iraqi is having difficulty grasping the concept and the promise it holds. i'd bet good money few in that crowd could tell you much about Thomas Jefferson.

Quote:
Iraqi police stood by helplessly — unable to control the crowd only weeks before they are to assume more security responsibility under the U.S. exit strategy.
and what do you get when you can't reason with the people in the street? you either allow anarchy or you break out the big sticks and beat them into jelly - either way, you're a long, long way from democracy.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp..._re_mi_ea/iraq
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Old 14-06-04, 05:18 PM   #2
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Sounds like they just want the Big Bad Americans leave; we'll humor them. Of course a crowd of locals caught up in a short moment of mob madness is not an accurate statistical sampling of the whole nation, so I wouldn't go crying 'Anarchy! Anarchy!' just yet.
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Old 14-06-04, 07:36 PM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mazer
Sounds like they just want the Big Bad Americans leave; we'll humor them. Of course a crowd of locals caught up in a short moment of mob madness is not an accurate statistical sampling of the whole nation, so I wouldn't go crying 'Anarchy! Anarchy!' just yet.
i concur, Mr. Mazer...i doubt this is representative of the Iraqi people as a whole.

but i try to imagine myself in their position...i've been living under a brutally repressive regime for as long as i can remember....and now, my country is on the threshold of self-determination. it would be monumental in the course of life as i know it and i should be completely stoked, no? or is the daily grind such a struggle that i simply can't relate to the future and the promise it holds?

i have to wonder if some of the Iraqi people are not unlike those who have spent much of their life in prison...who have been so institutionalized that they are afraid of an unregimented life, and prefer the order and structure of repression.
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Old 14-06-04, 10:08 PM   #4
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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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Old 15-06-04, 07:41 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by theknife
this is pure spontaneous anarchy in beautiful downtown Bagdhad.
Pure naivity if you think that.
Public demonstrations have been a tool of political organizations long enough for you to have gotten a clue already.

Just because you see a crowd in front of a camera you seem to automatically think: "why that's everybody in Iraq there, all expressing their unanimous opinion."

Get some unbiased, scientific poll results if you want to get an idea of what people think.
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Old 15-06-04, 05:14 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by albed
Just because you see a crowd in front of a camera you seem to automatically think: "why that's everybody in Iraq there, all expressing their unanimous opinion."
did you read the whole thread? i think not. let's go back through the thread and look at what i seem to think:

Quote:
Originally Posted by theknife
i concur, Mr. Mazer...i doubt this is representative of the Iraqi people as a whole.
that's what i seem to think - pay attention next time.
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Old 15-06-04, 06:29 PM   #7
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I was in a hurry, but I see now what you seem to think. for the moment

I wanted to relate a short BBC news bit where they put a camerman behind a camerman and showed, truthfully for once, how those demonstrations really were.

While the first camera showed a street crowded with arabs yelling the usual death to Israel, US, etc., the second, zoomed out, showed a tight wedge of people in front of the first camera while the rest of the street was 90% empty and other people were carrying their groceries home not giving a damn about, and probably accustomed to the commotion.

I noticed other "demonstrations" where CNN started its footage a little early during the intro and you see empty street for a second and then people rushing into the camera's view for the standard "mass protest" of a dozen or so people.

It's all completely worthless for an accurate portrayal of the reality over there, but the media is seldom concerned with the unbiased truth.
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Old 15-06-04, 07:27 PM   #8
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ok, maybe this is better data:

Quote:
Washington-AP -- Not a lot of positive news from a poll of Iraqis.

It finds that radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's (mook-TAH'-duh ehl SAH'-durz) popularity is surging, that 92 percent of Iraqis consider the U-S an occupying force, and more than half believe all Americans behave like those in the Abu Ghraib (grayb) prison abuse photos.

More than half of Iraqis also believe they would be safer if U-S troops simply left.

The poll was commissioned last month by the U-S-backed governing authority in Baghdad. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the survey.

One career foreign service officer working with U-S Administrator Paul Bremmer calls the poll "pretty grim."

And several other officials say the results reinforce the sense that a transfer of Iraqi sovereignty couldn't come soon enough.
http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1944508
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Old 15-06-04, 10:22 PM   #9
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Yeah. More thorough results: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5217874/site/newsweek/

"Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed also expressed no confidence in the United Nations."

"61 percent said they either strongly oppose or somewhat oppose Allawi,(the newly designated Iraqi prime minister)."

They don't seem to like much of anything over there, though the poll does seem to be oriented toward negative questions.
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Old 16-06-04, 02:55 AM   #10
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i see a bad moon a risin'
i see trouble on the way
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Old 19-06-04, 10:21 PM   #11
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I think they'll go straight to martial law with the US as permanent police presence. All the bad-ass warlords will be bought off with the stolen oil profits and in 25 years they will be broke, sick, decimated and more pissed off than ever.
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