I’m a great admirer of Karma Nabulsi’s book Traditions of War . But her piece in the Guardian today is an exercise in wishfully projecting ideals onto real-world people without any critical examination of their claim either to represent those ideals or their chances of realizing them. She makes one point which seems right, namely, that sovereignty rests with the Iraqi people rather than with whoever happens to be exercising de facto authority at any time. But she then makes the astonishing leap to claim that the bearers of popular sovereignty in Palestine and in Iraq are the armed resistance groups there.
The young men who defended Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank and Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, and who recently won back the Iraqi cities of Falluja and Najaf from the occupying power, are not the terrorists - or the enemies of democracy. They are our own past torchbearers, the founding citizens of popular sovereignty and democratic practice, the very tradition that freed Europe and that we honoured on D-day.
Are they? Do they see themselves that way? All of them or some of them? Don’t some of them favour theocracy rather than democracy?
Even someone taking a fairly rose-tinted view of such groups ought to have hesitated to write such words the day after the beheading of a South Korean hostage. The anointing of the Iraqi resistance as the heirs of Mazzini is as wrong-headed as the view that some leftists took that the Iran of 1979 was a return to revolution’s classical forms, with all that Islamic talk just being surface ideological froth. Since Nabulsi’s concern is with democracy, it seems reasonable to ask whether the Iraqi people’s best chance of actually implementing self-government is via the progressive taking of power by the existing governing council and its successors and through eventual free elections, or via the triumph of armed resistance groups. And it really doesn’t help in deciding that question to see anyone as being the incarnation of the ideal of popular sovereignty. The worry with the governing council is, of course, that they remain puppets of the US forever ; the hope is that they gradually become more resistant to outside influence. But the armed resistance groups are likely to bring about not democracy but bloodletting and revenge followed one form of brutal dictatorship or another (religious or secular).
It’s worth remembering that in any resistance movement there are going to be those that are in it for themselves and those that are in it for their country, claiming that either motivation is the only one is quite wrong, IMO.
The group that is beheading ppl is AlQaida (or at least claim to be), those involved in the fighting in Falluja and Najaf were different groups.
”..but the armed resistance groups are likely to bring about not democracy but bloodletting and revenge followed one form of brutal dictatorship or another (religious or secular).”
Well after the hand over they be getting something which may very well be brutal.
And the democratic credentals of the occupation so far have not been good, elections have been moving further into the future.
At some point the Iraqi ppl might decide that the resistance groups might not be a good chance for democracy, but they would at least be a chance.
a chance for some revenge i would say - it seems some of the shi’ites wanted to storm fallujah after some shia truck drivers were executed there - funny thing about resistance fighters is that they never seem to be able to maintain the infrastructure - they can liberate it but having been tainted by the hands of occupiers, it is best left to rot at its own pace - but what the hell, the iraqis didnt have much under saddam so it will come as no surprise to have nothing upon being liberated either - and it does seem there are alot of syrians and egyptians and lebanese and jordanians liberating the iraqi people - how nice - where were they when saddam was in power?
It would be interesting to see how our government would react to Iraqi fundamentalist insurgents if they were fighting for Jesus or Yahweh instead of Allah. We seem to have little problem with Israel’s democratic theocracy or Bush’s evangelical mindset.
Well, Robbo, perhaps that’s because neither “Israel’s democratic theocracy” (whatever on earth that means) nor “Bush’s evangelical mindset” has shown any reluctance to accept full democracy, legal equality and basic democratic freedoms in their respective countries.
And if you can’t tell the difference between Israel or America and the governments approved of by the Sunni (Afghanistan under the Taliban) or Shia (Iran) terrorists, then all I can say is that you deserve to live under one of the latter.
Well, Dan, what I mean by “theocratic democracy” is that Israel is considered a Jewish state — despite having citizens of other religions, as well. And it’s a democracy. But you’re probably right that “theocratic democracy” isn’t the best label one could concoct.
I disagree with you that Bush’s evangelical mindset “has shown any reluctance to accept full democracy.” After the fraudulent Florida election — where thousands of eligible black voters were prohibited from voting — he has governed as a far-right ideologue, eroding and evading the government’s checks and balances whenever possible. I won’t go into this in any detail, as we’ve all heard it before and it clearly has no effect on you. Believe what you must.
Being from a totally different culture than the Middle East, and never having lived over there, I really can’t comment on how I’d feel about being ruled by “governments approved of by” the Sunni or Shia. Unless you’ve walked a mile in their shoes I think it’s odd that you have such a strong and certain opinion about it.
From my own perspective as an American who remembers Reagan/Bush’s various Central American death squads, I do find it intriguing that GW Bush has appointed John Negroponte to show Iraq what democracy’s all about. Why doesn’t the resurrection of various prominent Iran/Contra figures in the current Bush Administration ring any warning bells for you about W’s commitment to democracy?
The winner, or winners, will probably be brutal. The security situation in Iraq - militias, bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations - seems designed to demonstrate the cliche that nice guys finish last.
An Islamic theocracy, with its setbacks for women’s rights, also seems likely since the Bush administration made sure that the mosques were one of the only social institutions left intact.
Sovereignty will eventually rest with the Iraqi people. Americans do not have the stomach to put up with another ten year colonial war, even for cheap gas. Or maybe another Saddam will pop up in the nick of time.
I don’t see the connection - the ‘defenders’ of Jenin and/or Falluja are LOSERS. We in the West are not…
I wonder, does she also admire Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang and Menchem Begin’s Irgun?
And her Polish history is a little shaky. Most of the people involved in the Polish insurrections against the Russians were the nobility. (about ten percent of the pre-partition Polish population, evel larger as a proportion of the ethnic Polish population) Some peasants did join them, but many others were hostile, and most indifferent. In the 1846 insurrection against the Austrians the radical left wing nobles were massacred by the Polish peasants.
I wonder, does she also admire Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang and Menchem Begin’s Irgun?
And her Polish history is a little shaky. Most of the people involved in the Polish insurrections against the Russians were the nobility. (about ten percent of the pre-partition Polish population, evel larger as a proportion of the ethnic Polish population) Some peasants did join them, but many others were hostile, and most indifferent. In the 1846 insurrection against the Austrians the radical left wing nobles were massacred by the Polish peasants.
The flaw with the article, as Chris notes, is that it fails to provide any analytical basis for distinguishing between different ‘popular’ movements other than the personal preferences of the author. The claims of the different groups need to be assessed on the basis of their intentions, which are very difficult to assess. Surely we can’t just label any resistance group as being torchbearers for democracy since many of them do not have that goal.
On the terms provided by the article it would be hard to distinguish between the Terror in revolutionary France, the rise of Bolshevism, and (at the risk of invoking Goodwin’s law), the Nazi coup of 1933. Were these all the torchbearers of ‘democratic practice’? I suspect not.
”[…]
# ‘The terrorists have proved to be the dictators’ closest allies, especially Saddam. Why didn’t we see attacks from Al-Qaeda or other fanatics on Saddam’s regime? Simply because they were serving each other’s goals. They are not strategic allies (dictators and terrorists) but they have similar tactical goals.’
[…]”
In Spain ETA terrorism was stronger after the coming of democracy, do you think that means ETA and Franco were together in it?
DSW
But ETA had already been fighting Franco for years. Al Qaeda has no such history of anti-Saddam struggle. In 1990, Osama bin Laden proposed that the mujahideen, rather than Americans, should defend Saudi Arabia; that’s about it.
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