GRAPHICS: What do Iraqis want? An important Q if teaching democracy

[yurbud]

The Coalition Provisional Authority did a poll of Iraqis on a number of questions and one was whether they view us as liberators or occupiers.

The results were pretty grim:



LINK TO POLL DATA: http://wid.ap.org/documents/iraq/cpapoll_files/frame.htm

A Gallup poll done around the same time was only slightly more supportive of us staying.

The only poll that has shown anywhere near majority support for us being there was from a right wing think tank, that has a vested interest in making this Neocon adventure look good.

The argument that we are fighting terrorists there instead of here assumes there's a set number of people who are mad at us, and we can eventually kill enough of them to make the problem go away.

The problem is, at the base of all of it, is a resentment of our involvement in propping up their dictators, who don't share the oil wealth with their own people. All this gets channeled into religion because they have no effective political outlets in most countries over there. So by intervening militarily, we are making more not less people resent and want to attack us.

Polls of reaction in other Arab countries to our invasion of Iraq confirm this. A Zogby poll in 2003 found that 90% disapproved of our invasion
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030317-025106-3821r

Zogby's most recent poll of Arab countries shows MORE disapprove with 98% of Egyptians (our allies) disapproving.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7080-2004Jul22?language=printer

If you want to teach people democracy, you can't do it with a gun in their face.

Gorbachev accidentally showed us an easier way to do it. He told the dictators of Eastern Europe the Soviets couldn't afford to help them oppress their people anymore. Within a few years, those dictators were out of jobs, and those countries were more or less democracies.

And I don't think a single Russian soldier was killed.

Musharraf, Mubarak, the Saudis, various kings and generals, would all wither away and die without our money and help of our intelligence services. The results might be messy, but the people over there wouldn't blame us for it--they'd thank us.


Hillbilly Hitler art:



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[mike_c]

1. kicked and nominated....

This is one of the best posts I've seen in some time. Simple and to the point. We cannot win a "war on terrorism" because the act of fighting creates more of the resentment that fosters terrorism, and our support for oppressive regimes channels that resentment directly into terrorism. The U.S. could not have picked a worse way to address this problem if it set out to do so deliberately. Hmmmmm....

Gorbachev accidentally showed us an easier way to do it. He told the dictators of Eastern Europe the Soviets couldn't afford to help them oppress their people anymore. Within a few years, those dictators were out of jobs, and those countries were more or less democracies.

And I don't think a single Russian soldier was killed.

This needs to be a mantra of the anti-war pro-justice movement.

[dutchdoctor]

2. kicking, recommending, Says it all.

[greyl]

3. Yes, we need our government to place value on reality

as it is, not how they want it to be. There is no evidence that what they want is attainable or pragmatic.

[yurbud]

4. They don't want to teach democracy, just fool enough of us and Iraqis

so we don't notice the stealing.

Hillbilly Hitler art:



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[yurbud]

5. Print this out, and send it to your congressman and senators

and tell them to stop treating us and the Iraqis like fucking idiots.

They are there to steal the oil. Stop it. Don't use our tax dollars and soldiers lives to enrich a very, very few. Or we'll start wondering about how seriously they take democracy here.


Hillbilly Hitler art:



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