Yes, I was quoting the same poll you are referring to. It undoubtedly contained a lot of worrying statistics, not least the fact that many countries felt the threat of terrorism had increased as a result. However, for supporters of the war such as myself, it was heartening to see that the people most affected by the invasion still remained positive.

2200 Iraqis were polled for this survey and 74% of Iraqis said it was the right decision when the following question was asked:

“As you know, the US, Great Britain and their allies removed the government of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2003. Do you think this was the right decision or a mistake”

And apologies in advance for sounding like Bill O’Reilly but I was astounded to see how the liberal media reported this poll. The Guardian did not even mention the fact that the majority of Iraqis supported the intervention, choosing instead to lead on the terrorist threat element. This of course is understandable but later in the article, when dealing with the “removal of Saddam” question, all they could muster was:

“The removal of Saddam Hussein was branded a mistake by a majority in 21 of the countries. On average, 45% of those questioned agreed that removing him was a mistake, with 36% supporting the action. In Britain, 40% of those polled said it was a mistake, while 49% backed it.”

The full article can be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1719453,00.html

The BBC wasn’t much better, only mentioning the 74% figure in the penultimate paragraph of their report:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4755706.stm

Could you provide a link, please. Is it this poll of 41,856 residents of 35 countries? How many Iraqis participated?

Thanks.

I don’t agree. Hari continually maintained that his support for the war remained contingent upon the views of the Iraqi people. He seems to have abandoned this principle.

February’s Globescan poll revealed that 74% of Iraqis thought the invasion was the “right decision”

Poll results released a month earlier showed that 77% of Iraqis, despite the hardships they had suffered, still felt the invasion was right.

The interesting part of this survey was that Iraqis were divided into religious groups. 91% of Kurds approved of the war. 98% of Shiites agreed. The Sunnis (understandably, considering their status under Saddam) held the opposite view, thus affecting the overall figure.

What is clear is that the anti-war crowd, whatever the merits of their arguments, simply cannot claim to be representing the views of Iraqis. This charge, unfortunately, can now be levelled at Mr Hari.

Nope: I was alluding to Hitchens’ own ‘Nixon to China’ parallel as his self-conscious, even rather embarrassed pre-emptive strike against those who would chuckle at his loss of neo-con nerve. (See http://www.slate.com/id/2137560/ ).

He does love to ‘suprise’ us with his straight-talking, etc. Ho-hum!

Harry’s Place are right after a fashion. Hari’s ‘apostasy’ was always predictable because his arguments were consistently balanced and observant of proportionality and reality. Compare this to Oliver Kamm’s recent defence in the Guardian, which crammed in every scrap from GIs rebuilding schools to the pressing historical need to defeat the wiles of the Socialist Workers’ Party Central Committee. There was no sense sense of strtategy at all.

I expect that Christopher Hitchens will be left as the the last man standing, though even he is beginning to show hypersensitivity about being bitten twice, as evidenced by his espousal of Kissingerite realism, of all things, regarding Iran.

Of course if that’s what a large number of Iraqis wanted, it still wouldn’t justify the war, especially since we in the West (and most probably most of the Iraqis) knew that there was no way we’d just walk in there, topple Saddam, and politely head out the door.

Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, dropping bombs on people’s houses and on restaurants… these are things which, sadly, could have been predicted, and which contribute to making the war unjust.

To put in another way, one does not argue for torture, lashings and beheadings in Saudi Arabia, or torture and the destruction of Kurdish villages in Turkey, on the basis that people like it because it reduces (non-state) crime. Even if that were true, it would not make the argument any less disgusting. One argues against it, because it is inhuman, unjust, and it is the sort of reactionary barbarism that we are supposed to be against, whether it rears its head in the form of Al-Quaeda or in the form of a Crown Prince or a Prime Minister.

Barry, well, because there is a war on in Iraq doesn’t mean that the laws of economics are annulled. Just like Argentina or Mexico or Indonesia, when a neo-liberal regime moves in, two things happen: there’s an influx of credit that allows the middle class and upper middle to buy and take on the trappings of prosperity, and there are stories in the American papers about the success of the economy, based upon the fact that American reporters recognize middle and upper class people as fellow subjects, while considering the poor as objects upon which, at best, we can bestow a charitable and heartrending story or two. The World Bank shows an upturn in Iraq’s GDP, and to quote reporter Patrick Cockburn:

“Some Iraqis are living better than before 2003. Teachers and government officials are earning $200 a month where they used to earn $10.”

Much of the good news/bad news dichotomy in Iraq, if you bracket the war for a second, if you ask me, falls into the pattern of reports you get from any newly “globalized” economy.

But it is true, too, that the war is a factor that is definitely accelerating the second phase of the neo-liberal cycle—the collapse, with capital flight being, in Iraq’s case, doubled by real human flight. Since Iraq is a oil exporter, it should be able to avoid that phase—this is one of the richest periods for the Gulf economies since 79. There is a bit of a cause and effect quandry here—oil prices are good partly because the oil output from Iraq is so bad.

By all accounts, that was the original plan.

You’ve got to be joking. You probably believe in Santa Claus too.

One thing that is clear if you delve into the details of any poll is the degree to which Iraqis treat ‘the toppling of saddam’ and ‘the occupation’ as distinct, almost unrelated, issues. The mainstream position (consistently 70 to 90% over the whole post-invasion period) is that the first was good, and the second bad. When you merge the two issues as ‘the invasion’, you get a more finely balanced result, that swings either way based on the last month’s developments.

Considering those issues independantly is not the way the debate is usually framed in the west, but actually, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. There is nothing inherently contradictory about the idea of toppling saddam, arranging elections as soon as possible, and then sailing off.

By all accounts, that was the original plan. A specific decision was made, presumably by Bush personally, to override those plans in favour of a 5 year occupation that would restructure Iraqi society at a fairly fundamental level, using the post-WWII occupation of Japan as a model. Unlike the decision to wage war in the first place, that decision was made with virtually no public debate.

Barry in 20: “has got to have trashed large chunks of the economy.” Well, maybe. But economies are often more about differentials than absolutes. If things are good now, but used to be much better, that’s a downturn. (There must be many developing countries which would envy what the Germans would call a recession.) And if the economy is bad now, but used to be even worse, that’s progress. There are a lot of obvious barriers to business now, such as the ones you name, but Saddam, like all despots, was a bandit himself. In other words, it would be nicer if we could argue from actual figures rather than from hasgottohavem as I think the Latin is. Thing is, last time someone tried to use figures, the entire pro-war crowd moved in and said, “But it can’t have been as bad as that!”

Speaking of polls, the one cited on Harry’s Place says that 64% of Iraqis were optimistic; only two months previously, 49% had been and six months before that, 67% had been. Are polling figures supposed to be this volatile? or is there something seriously wrong with the sampling?

That’s not necessarily so. Some people have made out like bandits, but the collapse of existing businesses, and the fequent inability to move around due to banditry and political fighting, has got to have trashed large chunks of the economy.