This was, alas, as much a vote against the occupation and the attendant
chaos as anything else--as in, "we get an elected government and maybe
they'll leave." But if that government manages to hold and become
legitimate, despite the paucity of Sunni votes, then the resistance, which
is what it's been, will indeed become insurgents--insurgence requires a
government to rebel against. With any luck all of this will result (at what
cost) in a modicum of improvement in the lives od Iraqis and a lessening of
the carnage for Iraqis and foreign troops, and the US will spend billions
of dollars repairing the infrastructure damage. But I wouldn't hold my breath.
Mark
At 06:06 AM 1/31/2005, you wrote:
>Hey, don't shoot the messenger. You go to the right places, you'll
>hear all those things being said. Hizb-ut-Tahrir are for real. The
>"protesters" taking photographs of voters in Manchester and Melbourne
>were for real. George Galloway, MP, was talking about "quislings" not
>so long ago. You hear people talk about the insurgents as a
>"resistance" all the time, usually going on to suggest that it's the
>duty of all right-thinking people to support them. Oh, and the sneer
>against "exiles" as somehow not proper, authentic Iraqis, has being
>doing the rounds ever since they started asking exiles what they
>thought of the invasion and some of them started saying they supported
>it.
>
>Dominic
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