Posted on 11/23/2003 3:28:35 PM PST by CanadianPete
LONDON, Ont. -- The increase in terrorist violence in Iraq's Sunni triangle was not unforeseen. American military commanders anticipated that, once Baghdad fell without a fight, Saddam loyalists would eventually resurface in some lethal manner.
They expected, even discussed in public, al-Qaida recruits made up of the whole spectrum of fanatics, fascists and fundamentalists who hero-worshipped Osama bin Laden, making their way into Iraq.
Since a violent end game between the liberating American-led coalition forces and Saddam loyalists, joined by the fanatics of the Arab-Muslim world, was expected and has occurred, the interesting question is why there is so much mock surprise and gloom in the media.
If the daily round of Monday morning quarterbacking by media experts carries any credence, then we are to believe this motley crowd of Saddam loyalists and fundamentalists will succeed in forcing the withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq.
The gloom pervading this sort of analysis carries the odour of a self-fulfilling wish.
It is to be found in the language used to portray the nightly roundup of the day's events in Iraq - of endlessly piling up the costs of war, its after-effects and casualties, with scant reference to gains being made in rebuilding a country plundered by Saddam and his kinsmen. All this to drive the message home to Americans, not Iraqis, that the overthrow of a tyrannical regime was an illusion and defeat is now inevitable in an Iraqi quagmire that ignites memories of Vietnam.
It is strange, even obscene, to hear those sending out suicide bombers against soft civilian targets, assaulting American and coalition soldiers, and perpetrating terror against Iraqis, referred to even in some of our media as "resistance" fighters." And even stranger to hear their efforts to return Iraq to the tyranny of the Saddam years described as a "liberation" struggle.
Iraq is not becoming another Vietnam, despite the spike in the recent round of terrorist violence. Moreover, describing the desperate, losing campaign of murdering thugs as a "resistance" struggle is an insult to the memory of those Iraqis who perished resisting Saddam's regime in the uprising of 1991, betrayed by a former U.S. president, the elder George Bush.
Return to normalcy
A recent fact-finding effort mounted jointly by ABC News and Time magazine reported life in Iraq, outside of the Sunni triangle with Baghdad at its centre, is rapidly returning to the sort of normalcy of which Iraqis have little memory after decades of despotism.
The basic infrastructure of a functioning civil society is being restored, or built entirely new, where, as in the south, it was inadequate despite the country's wealth.
A recent poll by the Gallup organization found Iraqis by a 2:1 ratio accepting of any hardship as a cost of being liberated from Saddam's gulag.
The same poll found that a substantial majority, while acknowledging the dislocating effects of the war, remains optimistic of Iraq becoming more prosperous and free five years hence.
It is worth repeating. Iraqis overwhelmingly - Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south together constitute about 85% of Iraq's population - recognize the difference between tyranny and freedom.
No surrender to terrorism
They are not about to surrender to terrorism after having so recently acquired their freedom. The terrorists know this. But they are in a race against the coalition forces to see if they can succeed, before being defeated, in convincing the American public to abandon Iraq. To convince Americans that the price that must be paid for securing Iraq's freedom is too steep.
Ibn Khaldun, one of the greatest Arab thinkers from the 14th century and considered by many as an intellectual giant of the Middle Ages, would have made no mistake about his methods in dealing with terrorists.
He would have recognized them as the fanatics and fundamentalists of his time, who, posing as men of religion, brought ruination to the Arab-Islamic civilization between Cordoba in Moorish Spain and Baghdad.
He would have counselled the Americans and their coalition partners to proceed unwaveringly with their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, preventing terrorists from spreading elsewhere.
For Ibn Khaldun understood through experience, unlike so many of today's media "experts", that civilization periodically must contend forcefully with those who seek its destruction.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca.
And NO, I DID NOT ACCUSE LIBERALS OF BEING UNPATRIOTIC OR UNAMERICAN. I was merely saying that there are two courses of action, and it's clear how people choose between them.
To better understand what's happening in Iraq today, it's useful to examine previous American military occupations. The study of the American experience in Germany, for example, is revealing in that it shatters some commonly held myths regarding the post-World War II American occupation experience.
But, as Bush said, it's great that we have the right to say whatever.
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