Jeanne D’Arc, in a very personal
post on Body and Soul, talks about why the Iraqi people are not welcoming their US “liberators” with open arms:
From the first time I heard the neoconservative dream that Iraqis would refuse to fight for Saddam and welcome American “liberators” with open arms, it seemed to me not only highly unlikely, but dehumanizing as well. As if oppressed people don’t have the same mixed-up emotions that the rest of us have. As if complex inner lives were unique to technologically advanced societies. We want to believe that there’s a small number of bad Iraqis who fight for Saddam, and an enormous number of good ones who are on our side, or will be as soon as they can break free enough to express their true emotions. After all, we’re good, right? How could they fail to see that?
While I’m sure there are some people who fall into those neat categories, I expect most Iraqis don’t know what side to be on right now. And that confusion really shouldn’t be hard for any human being to understand. Oppressor or invader — there aren’t any good choices.
All of which is directly related to an observation of mine I’ve been thinking about the past couple of days. Common wisdom has it that
us lefties (and you liberals especially) are whoollyheaded, naive dreamers, unlike those hardheaded, realistic conservatives and libertarians. So why is it that so many of the stalwards of the right were and still are so incredibly naive about this whole war?
What made them think that the Iraqi people would not fight back? I thought all these hawks were such great WWII buffs? Don’t
they know what happened when Russia was invaded, or how the Germans kept fighting for Hitler until the bitter end? More to the
point, if the Shia population of Iraq didn’t rise when Iraq attacked Iran, what makes them think they would rise for the Great Satan,
again?