Iraq Poll: Looking a gift horse in the mouth
September 28, 2006, 3:21 pm |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
By Andrew L. Jaffee
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq gave the country’s citizens a unique opportunity: to find freedom of expression, commerce, religion, etc. It well may be that some Iraqis still see freedom and stability as a goal, but it cannot be the majority. If the majority of Iraqis wanted liberty and security, the country would not be in the chaos it is now. Just look at what happened today:
The bodies of 40 men who been tortured were found in the capital in a span of 24 hours, police said Thursday. Bombings and shootings killed at least 21 people in and around Baghdad, including five people who died from a car-bomb explosion near a restaurant.
The bodies found in Baghdad, more apparent victims of sectarian death squads, had been dumped in eastern and western Baghdad in the past 24 hours, police said. All showed signs of torture, had been shot, and had their hands and feet bound, police Lt. Thayer Mahmoud said.
The only people that bare responsibility for these horrors are the Iraqis themselves. It is beyond me why American troops are blamed for this Muslim-on-Muslim — Shiite vs. Sunni — bloodbath. Americans have spent three years trying to provide security; first it was Sunnis they were clamping down on; more recently, the Shiites have joined the slaughter. Iraqis could join the security forces, inform on terrorists, pressure their elected representatives, etc., to bring order to the nation.
Instead, Iraqis seem hell-bent on killing each other — and blaming the Americans for their lawlessness. A recent poll by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes showed:
- Almost four in five Iraqis say the U.S. military force in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.
- About 61 percent approved of the attacks — up from 47 percent in January. A solid majority of Shiite and Sunni Arabs approved of the attacks, according to the poll. The increase came mostly among Shiite Iraqis.
- An overwhelmingly negative opinion of terror chief bin Laden and more than half, 57 percent, disapproving of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
- Three-fourths say they think the United States plans to keep military bases in Iraq permanently.
- A majority of Iraqis, 72 percent, say they think Iraq will be one state five years from now. Shiite Iraqis were most likely to feel that way, though a majority of Sunnis and Kurds also believed that would be the case.
While there’s a little silver lining to this poll — the distaste for bin Laden and Ahmadinejad, and hopes for a unified nation — the shirking of personal responsibility is the central theme, at least to me. My original enthusiasm for Iraqis taking a wonderful opportunity to embrace liberty has steadily eroded into pessimism. I won’t give up hope completely, but if this mayhem goes on for another year, the U.S. needs to get the hell out of Iraq, and let its people pursue what they seem to want above all else: violence and revenge.
Share with others (social networking, bookmarking, find related):
Sphere It
Technorati: View blog reactions
Furl This
Fav bookmarking service not in the above list? It's definitely in this drop-down:
Categories, Tags: United States, Iraq
Trackback: http://netwmd.com/blog/2006/09/28/1013/trackback/
Comments feed: RSS 2.0
Subscribe to netWMD:
FeedBurner