Killing Eye-rackians is FUN!! posted by Richard Seymour

If you kill forty people while fighting for the 'coalition', it's unfortunate. If you do it while fighting against a foreign occupation, it "shows the depth of depravity to which [you will] stoop" (Jack Straw). Today, as Iraqis mourn yet more dead kin, they will have also to stomach the astounding, sickening hypocrisy of those who wasted more living bodies during the war and subsequent occupation than the Iraqi resistance can even dream of. It's reassuring to hear from George Bush that he is now "even more determined to work with the Iraqi people", because I was starting to think the Iraqis might not care for his company.

Meanwhile, theories abound about precisely what shadowy organisation was behind this attack. Al Qaeda, of course, come to mind, and it was one of the first questions the Channel Four news asked this lunchtime of Lindsey Hilsum as she reported from the scene. According to Iraq's deputy interior minister, "Some countries, unfortunately, are trying to send people to conduct attacks". Or, if you don't like that, "Defense officials said they believe loyalists of fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were responsible for the wave of bombings." The President has an even better theory, according to New York Newsday: "President Bush said progress in Iraq is making insurgents more 'desperate' and fueling attacks."

Well, George, I'm not sure exactly who are the 'desperate' ones here, but I'm convinced your right. The only reason people could possibly object to the US occupation of Iraq is because of all that progress you're making. Give 'em freedom and look what happens - they bomb you! New Labour knows the feeling. They do everything they can to help the sponging, inflexible forces of conservatism out of their hidebound public service ethic, and people are so pleased that they won't even bother to go vote for them!

It is perfectly obvious, if only anyone will bother to think through the stunning lies and smokescreens, that the escalation of violence in Iraq is a direct consequence of the occupation of Iraq. The Red Cross and other aid agencies are targetted so that they will leave and create an enormously difficult situation for the Americans who will generate massive resentment through their 'shoot first, ask questions later' security policies. Other countries are already wary of offering troop commitments to help the occupation. Does that need any further explanation? Could it be any simpler? The Iraqi resistance will inevitably include a cross-section of people, groups and interests. Inevitably, it will include some Ba'athists. Inevitably, it will include some fundamentalists. Perhaps it may even include some foreign activists. But I don't suppose it's so over the top to imagine that ordinary Iraqis may be involved in some of this. And I'll even go you one further - I think it's just possible, I'm not saying its certain, just possible, that the Iraqi people really don't appreciate the US presence in their country. To clarify, let me update you on the latest Iraqi opinion polls...

Not so very long ago, the warniks were assuring us that Iraqi public opinion was, and always had been, sovereign in the decision to invade Iraq and the decision to say there. Would the antiwar crowd now admit, they wondered, that the Iraqi people had fully endorsed the US efforts to oust Saddam, and only the international gang of leftist misanthropes had ever opposed it? Surely, they reasoned, it was a mark of the left's fundamental self-righteously errant ways that they found themselves opposing the popular Iraqi will while pretending to defend the Iraqi people?

I said before that I didn't believe this argument held much water. I still don't. If Iraqi public opinion had come out 99% in support of the war, I would consider it a disappointment and a major blow, but not a refutation of the case against US imperialism. Even oppressed people can be wrong sometimes, and surely that is a truth so obvious it ought not need stating.

Still, I suppose the warmongers will change their tune now, by the same logic that they expected the antiwar movement to crawl to the victors because of some opinion polling data. The latest poll from Iraq "released this week showed that 67 per cent of Iraqis view the American-led coalition as 'occupying powers', more than 20 per cent higher than a survey conducted shortly after the fall of the former regime. According to the poll, conducted by Iraq's Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, the number of Iraqis who view the coalition as a 'liberating' force has dropped from 43 to 15 per cent, and very few feel safe in the presence of the police or foreign armies controlling the country." ( The Observer , Sunday 26th October 2003).

Another source of triumphal back-slapping and self-congratulation among the warmongers has been their 'discovery' that most Iraqis wanted a US-style government. Well, that evidence was misrepresented to begin with (it just happened that the largest minority of the tiny fractions of a highly split vote on which country Iraqi politics should be modelled on was the US), but the news is: "In a second blow to US and British hopes for a Western-modelled democracy in Iraq, the poll also revealed that the vast majority of Iraqis preferred an Islamist government - 33 per cent supporting a theocracy and 23 per cent an Islamic democracy such as that in Iran."

So! Now that the Iraqi people have had enough of US imperialism, presumably so will the coterie of journos who were so seduced by it this Spring? I await with trembling fingers Nick Cohen's simpering apologia as he realises that it was he all along who was betraying the Iraqi people. Christopher Hitchens will presumably return to his platitudinous line that a "principled policy cannot be judged by the number of people who endorse it".

At any rate, if we don't hear from the warniks, we'll assume they admit defeat. It is at least satisfying for us to note that as pollsters ask their questions and probe the Iraqi psyche, they are obliged to withhold information about which country they are operating from: "Respondents were told the poll was being done for media both in Iraq and outside their country, but no mention was made that the American polling firm was running it." (Associated Press, October 13th, 2003).