The Culture of Genocide II posted by Richard Seymour

It's worth mentioning that Sunni leaders have pleaded for an end to US military operations in the 'Sunni triangle' so that there might be some chance of the people there participating in the elections scheduled to take place in December.

Little chance of that, and even less chance if the Project for the New American Century get their way. The increasingly common didactic strategy is pursued - Shiites and Kurds are good guys who are desperately trying to get these recalcitrant Sunnis on board, with the assistance of "US officials"; Sunnis are bad guys, refusing even to acknowledge the potential benefits of federalism, desperately trying to retain their old Ba'ath era privileges etc. The resistance to the occupiers, thus compressed into a useful fairy tale, demands not negotiation (which may as well be capitulation), but liquidation. When it comes to Iraq, choose death by any means possible:

Contrary to most commentary, then, the key to succeeding in Iraq is no longer putting in place a grand political bargain in which Iraqis of all sectarian stripes live happily ever after. In fact, by suggesting that this is the goal, we probably have fueled the Sunnis' own misperception of their future status in Iraq and hardened their own position.

The goal, of course, is to create a political order by which Iraq is made relatively stable and the normal democratic politics of give-and-take are made possible. But that will be a decidedly uphill struggle until the prospect of a successful insurgency is taken off the table and the Sunni Arabs come to the understanding that the new constitution is, in practice, a pretty good deal after all.

Politics cannot solve what ails Iraq now. It can help, and certainly the constitution is an important step in that direction. But at the end of the day, it's only when the so-called dead-enders are either dead or vanquished that one can count on the political process moving decisively forward as most Iraqis desire. [Emphasis added]

What "most Iraqis desire" is a matter of irrelevancy for the PNAC. Most Iraqis desire the end of the occupation, and a significant number - probably a majority in non-Kurdish areas - support resistance attacks on the occupying troops. That, and the distribution of resistance attacks, means that when you speak of the resistance you can't append the qualifier 'Sunni' without deceiving either yourself or your audience or both.

But what is the recommendation here, objectively? What does killing and vanquishing the resistance involve - particularly one as popular and populous as that in Iraq? That a population had better die than try to resist the New American Century. That 'we' know better than 'they' what it is that subject populations need, and if 'they' cannot be made to see it, then 'they' must die. They must be melted, or cut to ribbons or exploded. They must be given no peace, no legitimacy, and no consideration beyond what you might accord a rodent infestation. The exterminators, rather than negotiators, are best placed to deal with such a problem. The only reason the analogy fails is that the rodents would never have to hear that is was for their own good if only they'd see it.