NY Times: In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq
The New York Dhimmis has a front page story about Sunnis wanting the US military to stay in Iraq.
The Sunni Arab leaders say they have no newfound love for the Americans. Many say they still sympathize with the insurgency and despise the Bush administration and the fact that the invasion has helped strengthen the power of neighboring Iran, which backs the ruling Shiite parties.But the Sunni leaders have dropped demands for a quick withdrawal of American troops. Many now ask for little more than a timetable. A few Sunni leaders even say they want more American soldiers on the ground to help contain the widening chaos.
Typical Arab cognitive dissonance, sympathizing with the insurgency (which is trying to drive out Americans) yet wanting “more American soldiers on the ground to help contain the widening chaos.”
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Mitch:
Apparently after over 1200 days of occupying Iraq, the New York Times reports that the U.S. military has finally decided that Shiite attacks on Sunnis deserve its attention just as much as Sunni attacks on Americans, and submits a front page article cheerily titled, “In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq”. On the U.S. reversal, the Times reports:
“The Americans insist they are striking at the militias. On July 7, American and Iraqi troops stormed a building in a Shiite slum in Baghdad, killing or wounding 30 to 40 gunmen and capturing a high-level Shiite militia commander. Residents said the man was Abu Deraa, a leader of the Mahdi Army, which answers to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.”
But independent journalist Aaron Glantz reported on how the motivation of this crackdown was to punish proponents of a measure in the Iraqi Parliament that would have demanded a timeline for the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq:
“’We asked them to put a timetable on their withdrawal, and they think that they should stay. This is the main reason of the conflict,’ explained Sadr movement spokesman Fadil el-Sharra, adding it was Sadr’s representatives in Parliament who had put forward the resolution demanding a timeline on a U.S. troop withdrawal.”
The New York Times piece continues:
“Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a military spokesman, said it was clear that civilians were suffering heavily from ‘the activities of these illegal armed groups through murder, intimidation, kidnappings and everything else.’
“He added, ‘We’ve made a very conscious decision here in the last few weeks to deal with them just as severely as we can.’”
The article reports that this U.S. military reversal garnered plaudits by many Iraqi Sunnis. But absent polling data to show a diminishing of the 80-plus percent of Iraqis who want the U.S. out, I wouldn’t have gone so far as to pat ourselves on the back for turning around Iraqi sentiment.
And judging by the ulterior motives sited by Glantz, I certainly wouldn’t have allowed the explanation by a U.S. military spokesman ascribing noble causes to the U.S. reversal to go unchallenged.
17 July 2006, 7:47 pmAdministrator:
Mitch
Where is the link for the Glantz report?
And why ignore the bulk of the story to focus on one statement by the US military, ignore these:
Sheik Abdul Wahab al-Adhami, an imam at the mosque, said later in an interview: “Look at what the militias are doing even while we have the American forces here. Imagine what would happen if they left.”
A year ago, the party of Tariq al-Hashemi, a hard-line Sunni Arab who is one of Iraq’s two vice presidents, was calling for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops.
“The situation is different now,” Mr. Hashemi said. “I don’t want the Americans to say bye-bye. Tomorrow, if they were to leave the country, there would be a security vacuum, and that would lead inevitably to civil war.”
“The problem is that American crimes are only a hundredth of the crimes committed by the militias,” said Omar al-Jubouri, the human rights officer for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a powerful Sunni group that still considers itself the vanguard of political resistance to the Americans. “It’s like one hair compared to all the other hairs on a camel.”
“We want to tell the American people to increase the presence of the Americans here, to control the situation,” he added.
“If the Iraqi forces come without American soldiers, people will shoot at them, because we’ll know they’re militias,” said Sheik Akrim al-Dulaimi, the head imam of the Holy Mecca Mosque in Dawra. “Civilians don’t trust the government.”
A telling sign of the new dynamic is the growing tension between some Shiite leaders and the ambassador. When he came to Baghdad a year ago, Mr. Khalilzad was so warmly embraced by Shiite leaders that they often referred to him by a Shiite nickname, Abu Ali. Now, the same Shiites refer to him as Abu Omar, a Sunni nickname.
Mitch, it sounds to me like you’re cherry picking data that fits your assumptions, ignore that which goes against them.
And also, what’s the source of that 80% figure of Iraqis who want the US out?
18 July 2006, 6:27 amAdministrator:
Mitch
Don’t bother. I googled Glantz and found that he’s a solid anti-war activist with little professional cred. If you insist on calling him an “independent journalist” I’m afraid that I must ask that you apply the same title to me.
Also, you realize that the “Sadr Movement” is really a euphemism for Muqtada al-Sadr – an Iranian backed anti-American demogogue? That’s kind of like asking David Duke why the US supports Israel.
18 July 2006, 6:36 am