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Ah... so, when you said:
It's an article on the current state of Iraq and supplies sufficient detail, all of which can be verified because of the quality of the citations, on the colonial occupation of Iraq.
that was unrelated to the statements you made in the second paragraph, of which you say:
And I quoted Watkins 'Iraqi maquis' I did not claim this latter statement was accurate or truthful - the former statement (presumably the description of Allawi's history and other data that undermines the comparison of the Vichy régime to present-day Iraq, but it's a bit hard to follow) however is, as the sources for the information are readily available
The Watkins article does not mention them, and you merely put them in to give us a bit of backstory, since the one thing Barbelith is lamentably short on is information on the occupation of Iraq. Fair enough. I fear I was misled by the thread title and the topic abstract, both written to the best of my knowledge by yourself rather than la Watkins, referring to the "Iraqi Maquis".
It is you who proceeded to get upset at the idea that a Watkins writing in NLR who draws a comparison between the two regimes and assumed that this was necessarily what I believed to be true
I'm not sure what the missng clause in this sentence was going to say so I don't follow its intent, but I don't think I was *upset*. I certainly don't recall being upset. I was confused, and felt that the evidence presented did not support the "Maquis" statement, which has now been explained by the fact that the evidence I took to be corroborating is not in fact related to the article at all, and that I had been misled by the appearance in the thread topic and abstract blah blah fishcakes.
What I *am* is a little bored with the way that, if you are not immediately hailed as the cleverest and best of all, you move in with the personal speculation and insults, such as:
It is your always apparant desire to stand of the edge and never to take the risk of commitment - you can never be wrong from such a standpoint, though i am amused by the fact that your answer to the original question is obvious but never stated...
What does this add to the discussion? Nothing, except a depressing awareness that you are more interested in talking about me than about the actual subject matter, because it is easier, and means you do not have to pay attention to the actual arguments. This "upset" cant is of the same order - you seem intent on proving, at least to yourself, that anyone who does not immediately agree with you is not reasonable, is rather somehow driven by primal chthonic urges - emotions, damn them - that must be exposed as the grim simulacra they are in the face of your effulgent categorical imperative. It's Modzero with an A-level and it is wearying.
If you are unhappy with the idea of being questioned or challenged, to the extent of having to pathologise it when it happens, is there a way you could flag it up in the topic abstract next time? We have had non-debate threads before - I'm sure we could revive the tradition. If you would like to take this further, could I ask you either to PM me or to start a thread in the Conversation or the Policy? Thanks.
Now, to bring this back to *Iraq and Vichy* - as we discovered again today, the primary targets of at least some opposition is other Iraqis, and specifically Iraqi policemen, on the grounds that they are softer targets than the heavily protected US military. There is, to extend the colonial metaphor, a tradition of poorly-equipped local troops being used as cannon fodder, from the Roman Auxiliaries to the Sepoy Legions and beyond, which seems to suggest that a case could be made that much the same thing is being done here.
Problem being, once you overthrow the colonial oppressors, you are still going to need, unless you manage to overthrow Statism and Capitalism at the same time, some form of policing. Having been purged of Ba'athists and subsequently repurged of American and administration appointees, the Iraqi police force might look a bit thin on the ground. So, what do you do? To look at another conquered nation, there was a long silence over the involvement of the Dutch police in helping to identify Jews. Indeed, if I recall correctly, one policeman was dismissed for refusing to participate, applied to be reinstated after the war and received a distinct cold shoulder. There's an article by Frank Bovenkerk which I think has some useful stuff on this, if anyone can find it.
So, whjy did the Netherlands choose not to purge its "collaborationist" police force or civil service? Refusal to admit responsibility? Shame? Pragmatism?
This strikes me as a problem - right now, from the Maquis point of view, any Iraqi not taking action against the Iraqi administration is a collaborator and an enemy, and thus presumably subject to military action, or at least, if neither helping nor hindering, an allowable if regrettable casualty. However, what is the actual aim of the activity? On one level, to talk about a single Iraqi resistance, with a single aim, is I feel oversimplifying. However, was the aim of the Maquis to impair to the best of their ability the capacity of the occupying nation to resist the liberation by external forces of the country (that is, the removal of the occupying force), or simply to cause as much damage to the structure of the occupying forces as possibel, with no other aim? Since there seems to be no immediate likelihood of the forcible removal of the occupying force by forces from another quarter, the aim of the Iraqi resistance, broadly, is presumably to make it logistically too costly for a US/Coalition/UN presence to remain within Iraq, and then to remove the "collaborationist" government, replacing it with a form of government favoured probably variously by different groups, or possibly to register displeasure at the presence of the aforementioned by causing as much damage as possible?
Does that seem like a reasonable surmise? Now, is that an aim we should be supporting? And if so, how would we like to see it done (a) and what should we do to support it (b)? |
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