The Iraqi resistance myth
Jonathon Foreman:
"MUCH of the discourse on Iraq continues to be dominated by myths - provable falsehoods that happen to confirm the prejudices of the antiwar crowd and/or those disposed to think our mission is failing now.
The mythos now culminates in the notion that a patriotic Iraqi "resistance" is slowly gaining ground against a hated occupation. But the distortions go back much farther.
"Here is Stephen Walt - a dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government! - writing in the Financial Times: 'The Iraqi people did not welcome U.S. forces with open arms and garlands and flowers.'
"In fact, the Iraqis did welcome us as liberators. I know, because I was there.
"I saw it firsthand: the old men kissing the Stars and Stripes on the shoulders of G.I.s, the children at the front of the crowds, thrusting flowers through the windows of humvees, the veiled ladies handing freshbaked bread to Bradley gunners in their hatches.
"Newspapers and networks did cover these scenes, so reminiscent of photographs of liberated France in 1944. But our elites seem to have forgotten them, perhaps because they don't fit what the chattering class believes."
"...The term 'resistance' is extremely loaded. It's more accurate to think of the Ba'athist guerrillas as analogous to the gangs of Ku Klux Klansmen who tried to thwart reconstruction in the South after the American Civil War."
A point made here before.
Jonathon Foreman:
"MUCH of the discourse on Iraq continues to be dominated by myths - provable falsehoods that happen to confirm the prejudices of the antiwar crowd and/or those disposed to think our mission is failing now.
The mythos now culminates in the notion that a patriotic Iraqi "resistance" is slowly gaining ground against a hated occupation. But the distortions go back much farther.
"Here is Stephen Walt - a dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government! - writing in the Financial Times: 'The Iraqi people did not welcome U.S. forces with open arms and garlands and flowers.'
"In fact, the Iraqis did welcome us as liberators. I know, because I was there.
"I saw it firsthand: the old men kissing the Stars and Stripes on the shoulders of G.I.s, the children at the front of the crowds, thrusting flowers through the windows of humvees, the veiled ladies handing freshbaked bread to Bradley gunners in their hatches.
"Newspapers and networks did cover these scenes, so reminiscent of photographs of liberated France in 1944. But our elites seem to have forgotten them, perhaps because they don't fit what the chattering class believes."
"...The term 'resistance' is extremely loaded. It's more accurate to think of the Ba'athist guerrillas as analogous to the gangs of Ku Klux Klansmen who tried to thwart reconstruction in the South after the American Civil War."
A point made here before.
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