[Marxism] RE: Iraq One Year Later

[Calvin Broadbent]

I don't understand why Marv is so keen to portray the Iraqi resistance as 
motivated primarily by purely political, so to speak, considerations, and a 
sort of xenophobic unwillingness to be ruled by 'foreigners'. Iraqis are 
suffering under an occupation regime whose primary sponsors utterly 
devastated the country for 13 years (bombing and starving and 
'deconstructing' the whole of Iraqi society). Iraqi people are faced by mass 
unemployment, lack of public services, lack of water, food, electriticy, 
etc. etc. When Iraqi trade unionists have taken to the streets in mass 
protest in the last few months, they have been fired on by British troops 
who chased them with automoatic weapons. It looked to me as if some cowering 
was going on then as Iraqi civilians ran for their lives (I saw it on BBC 
tv).
Why is it so hard for Marv to believ that Iraqis might be resisting their 
occupation as a matter of life and death?
cheers.


>Message: 6
>Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 08:15:12 -0500
>From: "Marvin Gandall" <marvgandall at rogers.com>
>Subject: Re: [Marxism] Iraq one year later
>To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition"
>	<marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
>Message-ID: <00c901c40e7d$60aabe80$6501a8c0 at LAPTOP>
>Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>But "street" Iraqis are frequently interviewed by US, British, and other
>Western reporters -- often after a suicide bombing or civilian casualties
>caused by American troops -- and they show no compunction about venting
>their hostility against the occupiers. Many such articles have been posted
>to this site as evidence of the depth of popular Iraqi opposition to the
>occupation. How does this square with your agitated analysis that the 
>Iraqis
>are terrified to reveal their real attitudes to pollsters? You make it 
>sound
>as if the majority, except for the armed guerrillas, are cowering in 
>tunnels
>like Hussein. In fact, through a combination of armed struggle 
>predominantly
>by Sunnis, and the threat of armed struggle and the seizure and exercise of
>certain democratic rights by the Shia and Kurds, they have the US very much
>on the defensive -- not the other way round.
>
>Marv Gandall
>

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