Perhaps this currrent project in the mid east will transform it in some way or other, who knows. however what is also happening is the transformation of the US and that can be seen much more clearly and is much more clearly terrifying.

if bill clinton was the first “black” president there is no doubt that GW Bush is americas first “arab” president so completely does he reprise the act of a gulf potentate, his appeals to perverse religious doctrine, the easy recourse to repression and deceit, the nepotism and sense of entilement that his class and allies enjoy, his unreasoning ignorance and the self confidence that is truely ghoulish and inhuman, in short what is being constructed in the US is a new feudalism, we recognise its features because we live it and have done so for a century or so. are there really able bodied young men of the republican and war supporting fraternity who do not sign up in this hour of their armies need despite casting the current issues in terms of a dire threat to the state, how unutterably shameful, how despicable.

the iraq war, the phoney al-quaida insurgency, i mean a new caliphate, please it makes us laugh bin laden was derided as the “disney mujahid” by many, he would have trouble selling raffle tickets with his tired platitudes and meaningless rhetoric. in short though we may be be the instrumental objects of american force you are the real targets, it is the american insurgency that your rulers fear, a new crisis of democracy.

how mwny vets go from the front, to poverty, addiction death or prison in short order.

the democrats confuse us non-americans seeming if anything to be more extreme, (excepting the current administration which seems to be unprecedentedly deranged,) than the average real consrvative.

after watergate it seems that the intent of the powerful in US society is to recreat the passivity of the 50′s (amongst the mainstream of american society)

under which money and consumption are to be everyones primary goals, with god and country providing the drumbeat of an emtional political cadence which in no way provides an avenue for real expression of the political and social needs of the american people, we may be the neo-conservatives far enemy, with whom peace will eventually be possible, you however are the near enemy with whom no peace is either envisaged or indeed possible.

goodnight and thank you all, including Ed for this brief conversation

i remain your devoted friend
gkk

Do you understand the concept of “primary source”? Posting deceptive pieces by leftist opinion websites that selectively report and edit results doesn’t prove squat. Your first 2 links are nothing but misleading editorials.

If you can’t cite the exact poll questions asked, the choices for answers, and demographics of the sample group, you have no business citing a poll. If you ever get in the mood for serious research, here is a good place to start: http://www.iraqanalysis.org/info/55

Let’s take your first link.

“A U.S-sponsored poll in May 2004 shows that 92 per cent of Iraqis viewed the invaders as “occupiers” rather than “liberators”, 85 per cent wanted them to leave immediately, and only 2 per cent (2%) of Iraqis viewed the U.S. as “liberators”. The Washington Post survey revealed that; “Public opinion polls show 80 per cent [of Iraqis] want the Americans out of their country. In the election campaign, one common theme among candidates was the withdrawal of occupying forces”. The Iraqi people have rejected this U.S-imposed form of colonial dictatorship.”

The quote is deliberately misleading. There are actually two separate polls being cited. However, no source is provided for the first poll, no data, no questions, no answers, nothing. Which “US sponsored poll in May 2004″ is the author citing?

The Washington post survey mentioned in your first quote is the same poll cited in your third link. Nice touch, citing the same poll twice to confirm itself. That poll did not say that Iraqis want the US out of their country “immediately”; it was merely a relative rating of confidence in various institutions. Here are actual results on the poll from the Post itself:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/daily/graphics/iraqipoll_051304.html

Now you’ll try and strawman this by arguing it proves that the coalition is unpopular. But I’ve never argued the coalition is popular or that people want us to stay foever. Stop shifting the debate to strawmen. The question is simple and clear: should the US leave now, or after the completion of the elections and the establishment of a legitimate Iraqi government. Both our positions on that are clear too.

The second poll you cite is the widely reported British secret poll. Again, there is nothing at all in that poll to indicate that Iraqis favor immediate withdrawal. It is never difficult for you to “infer” anything you want, but that’s hardly a persuasive argument.

You don’t care about Iraqi public opinion, except as it supports your position. If you cared, you wouldn’t ignore the widespread Iraqi support for the constitutional process, ratified by 78% of voters. You wouldn’t dismiss the legitimacy of a government elected in a free vote by the Iraqi people, and you wouldn’t label as “collaborators” an army and police force widely supported by the population.

I leave in a week, and I need to spend more time with my family and less time at my computer. This will probably be my last post for 6 months, so goodbye for now. If I can find a computer downrange that allows forum posting, I’ll send you some nice souvenier photos from the elections in December. You know, smiling people with purple fingers: http://www.economist.com/images/20050205/0605MA1.jpg

As to the situation there and whether Iraqis favor an immediate end to the occupation:

“Aidan Delgado, a 23-year-old U.S. Army reservist with the 320th Military Police Company told Bob Herbert of the New York Times recently, that he “had witnessed an Army sergeant lashed a group of children with a steel Humvee antenna, and a Marine corporal planted a vicious kick in the chest of a kid about 6 years old”. After he was deployed to Abu Ghraib Prison, Mr. Delgado told Herbert: “The violence [in Abu Ghraib] was sickening, some inmates were beaten nearly to death”. In one of the many detainees’ protests at Abu Ghraib, the “Army authorized lethal force. Four [unarmed] detainees were shot to death”, said Delgado.

“An eyewitness female detainee at Abu Ghraib, who identified herself as ‘Noor’, told Al-Jazeera that ‘U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison raped women and, in many occasions, forced them to strip naked in public’. She admitted seeing ‘many female detainees got pregnant’. Iraqi lawyer Iman Khamas, of International Occupation Watch Centre, said; “One former detainee had recounted the alleged rape of her cell mate in Abu Ghraib.” “[The detainee] had been raped 17 times in one day”, said Khamas.

“A U.S-sponsored poll in May 2004 shows that 92 per cent of Iraqis viewed the invaders as “occupiers” rather than “liberators”, 85 per cent wanted them to leave immediately, and only 2 per cent (2%) of Iraqis viewed the U.S. as “liberators”. The Washington Post survey revealed that; “Public opinion polls show 80 per cent [of Iraqis] want the Americans out of their country. In the election campaign, one common theme among candidates was the withdrawal of occupying forces”. The Iraqi people have rejected this U.S-imposed form of colonial dictatorship.”

full at http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan090505.htm

“82 per cent of Iraqis want all occupation forces removed from their country, less than one per cent feel occupation forces have improved security, and 45 per cent openly admitted to feeling that attacks against US forces are justified; the different Iraqi forces which cooperate with the occupation and agreed to take part to the reconciliation conference, issued a joint call to the UN Security Council to extend the mandate of the occupation. Resolution 1546 stated that except on the Iraqi government’s request, the current date for the end of the occupation was set for December 2005. It seems obvious that these forces are not ready to change their policies and respect the Iraqi people’s interests. Although they declared that they are ready to reconcile with the Sunni community of the population, they are currently waging, alongside US forces, an attack of unprecedented scale since the siege of Fallujah in the Al-Anbar province.”

full at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/768/re5.htm

Here’s one from a year and a half ago:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001927572_iraqpoll13.html

The poll was not framed to put timetables on the demand for withdrawal, but when resistance is this overwhelming with 45% of respondents supporting armed resistance and 85% opposing the occupation, it’s very difficult to infer that these people want the US to “finish the process” when the process involves things like the Guernica treatment visited on places like Fallujah, thousands of random round-ups and detentions, sexual abuse, checkpoint killings, death squads in the guise of US-backed Badr militias, runing over civilians with military vehicles, breaking into their houses in the middle of the night, peppering the entire nation with a radioactive heavy metal, and imposing conditions on the structure of their post-occupation economy.

Again, you are not Iraqi. The US has no right whatsoever to be there at all. The very act of declaring that it is your “responsiblity” to “finish” what is a fundamentally illegal process is the declaration of a dominator, a foreigner imposing his will with a gun, and painting over the dissonances with the claim of white man’s burden (or the cleaned up version, since you have some melanin in the occupying forces).

I’ve said repeatedly that the occupation should end. But leaving right now, instead of finishing the process we started, is a really stupid and irresponsible idea.

I don’t really care whether you’re flabbergasted or offended. You have no business lecturing anyone on tone. You wear your self-righteousness like a hair shirt and screech at anyone who challenges you. You’ve tried about a dozen times to tell me what I think and why I think it. Stop trying to make every debate about me. Argue the merits of the case, or go sell shoes.

And if you don’t want to show contempt for people, don’t write ultimatums, ie, if you want us to leave, then vote….or VOTE, in bold, capital letters like a drill field command.

They want you to leave. Period. You can’t dictate the conditions to them. It’s not fucking George Bush’s country, and it’s not yours either.

Your last sentence is pure poppycock, and even if it were true (it’s not), it’s not how any American feels that matters… unless you frame this as an imperial ‘responsibility.’ White man’s burden?

I remain flabbergasted by the cynical spohistry of your apologies for this war, and by the plain gall of telling someone what the conditions are under which you will leave THEIR home.

We’re getting close to the bone of the matter, though. You believe that the US has the right to direct the futures of anyone they want.

You owe me no apology for anything you say. You speak directly to the problem as you see it, as do I. I mean no disrepect to you personally when I oppose your viewpoint.

I have talked to plenty of Iraqis. I’ve personally witnessed suicide car bomb attacks. A suicide attack is unmistakable to anyone who has seen one.

There were two more suicide attacks today, making a total of 130 Iraqi civilians killed in 3 days of suicide attacks. In one of the attacks today, a car drove into a mourning tent at a Shiite funeral and blew up, killing 30. In the attacks at Khanaqin yesterday, two bombers walked into mosques full of worshippers and blew themselves up. None of these attacks would have been possible to stage as non-suicide attacks and fool so many witnesses into thinking they were suicide attacks.

These attacks are not accidents. They are deliberate, intentional targeting of Iraqi civilians by AMZ and AQIZ for a specific purpose. That purpose is to foment war between the Sunnis and Shia and stop the democratic process. It is to the anti-war movement’s great shame that they ignore them or attempt to deflect blame.

I don’t claim to speak for Iraqis. The Iraqis speak for themselves. 63% of them spoke on Oct 15, risking their lives to vote in the constitutional referendum, with 78% of voters approving it.

On December 15, they will speak again, voting for a permanent government. It will be my honor and privilege to witness that event; I leave next week. By next summer, the government and army should be able to stand on their own. Then we will leave and the Iraqis will fully control their own destiny.

You keep talking as if I have hate, contempt, or disdain for the Iraqis. Nothing could be further from the truth. I am in awe of the courage and quiet resolve I have seen by Iraqis determined to rebuild their government despite murderous threats. The restraint the Shia have shown in the face of a relentless campaign of suicide bombings amazes me. In many ways the Iraqi people are better and stronger than Americans. I am not eager to die, but I’m willing to risk my life to give those people a chance to have the government and freedom they deserve. The vast majority of American soldiers feel the same way.

Ed

God save America
My home sweet home!

The French general who raised his tricolour
over Nagrat al-Salman where I was a prisoner thirty years ago . . .
in the middle of that U-turn
that split the back of the Iraqi army,
the general who loved St Emilion wines
called Nagrat al-Salman a fort . . .
Of the surface of the earth, generals know only two dimensions:
whatever rises is a fort
whatever spreads is a battlefield.
How ignorant the general was!
But Liberation was better versed in topography.
The Iraqi boy who conquered her front page
sat carbonised behind a steering wheel
on the Kuwait–Safwan highway
while television cameras
(the booty of the defeated and their identity)
were safe in the truck like a storefront
on rue Rivoli.
The neutron bomb is highly intelligent,
it distinguishes between
an ìIî and an ìIdentityî.

God save America
My home sweet home!

Blues

How long must I walk to Sacramento
How long will I walk to reach my home
How long will I walk to reach my girl
How long must I walk to Sacramento
For two days, no boat has sailed this stream
two days, two days, two days
Honey, how can I ride?
I know this stream
but, O but, O but, for two days
no boat has sailed this stream

La L La La L La
La L La La L La
A stranger gets scared
Don’t fear dear horse
Don’t fear the wolves of the wild
Don’t fear for the land is my land
La L La La L La
La L La La L La
A stranger gets scared

God save America
My home sweet home!

I too love jeans and jazz and Treasure Island
and Long John Silver’s parrot and the terraces of New Orleans
I love Mark Twain and the Mississippi steamboats and Abraham Lincoln’s dogs
I love the fields of wheat and corn and the smell of Virginia tobacco.
But I am not American. Is that enough for the Phantom pilot to turn me back to the Stone Age!
I need neither oil, nor America herself, neither the elephant nor the donkey.
Leave me, pilot, leave my house roofed with palm fronds and this wooden bridge.
I need neither your Golden Gate nor your skyscrapers.
I need the village not New York.
Why did you come to me from your Nevada desert, soldier armed to the teeth?
Why did you come all the way to distant Basra where fish used to swim by our doorsteps.
Pigs do not forage here. I only have these water buffaloes lazily chewing on water lilies.
Leave me alone soldier.
Leave me my floating cane hut and my fishing spear.
Leave me my migrating birds and the green plumes.
Take your roaring iron birds and your Tomahawk missiles. I am not your foe.
I am the one who wades up to the knees in rice paddies.
Leave me to my curse.
I do not need your day of doom.

God save America
My home sweet home!

America
let us exchange your gifts.
Take your smuggled cigarettes
and give us potatoes.
Take James Bond’s golden pistol
and give us Marilyn Monroe’s giggle.
Take the heroin syringe under the tree
and give us vaccines.
Take your blueprints for model penitentiaries
and give us village homes.
Take the books of your missionaries
and give us paper for poems to defame you.
Take what you do not have
and give us what we have.
Take the stripes of your flag
and give us the stars.

Take the Afghani Mujahideen’s beard
and give us Walt Whitman’s beard filled with butterflies.
Take Saddam Hussain
and give us Abraham Lincoln
or give us no one.

Now as I look across the balcony
across the summer sky, the summery summer
Damascus spins, dizzied among television aerials
then it sinks, deeply, in the stories of the forts
and towers
and the arabesques of ivory
and sinks, deeply, from Rukn al-Din
then disappears from the balcony.

And now
I remember trees:
the date palm of our mosque in Basra, at the end of Basra
the bird’s beak
and a child’s secret
a summer feast.
I remember the date palm.
I touch it. I become it, when it falls black without fronds
when a dam fell hewn by lightning.
And I remember the mighty mulberry
when it rumbled, butchered with an axe . . .
to fill the stream with leaves
and birds
and angels
and green blood.
I remember when pomegranate blossoms covered the sidewalks,
the students were leading the workers’ parade . . .

The trees die
pummelled
dizzied,
not standing
the trees die.

God save America
My home sweet home!

We are not hostages, America
and your soldiers are not God’s soldiers . . .
We are the poor ones, ours is the earth of the drowned gods
the gods of bulls
the gods of fires
the gods of sorrows that intertwine clay and blood in a song . . .
We are the poor, ours is the god of the poor
who emerges out of the farmers’ ribs
hungry
and bright
and raises heads up high . . .
America, we are the dead
Let your soldiers come
Whoever kills a man, let him resurrect him
We are the drowned ones, dear lady

We are the drowned
Let the water come

Damascus, 20 August 1995

Translated by Khaled Mattawa and reprinted from Banipal No 7.

Saadi Youssef

>>>Ghassan Zaqtan