Notes on the Resistance

David Brooks writes in the New York Times about the so-called Iraqi resistance:

Um Haydar was a 25-year-old Iraqi woman whose husband displeased Saddam Hussein’s government. After he fled the country in 2000, some members of the Fedayeen Saddam grabbed her from her home and brought her out on the street. There, in front of her children and mother-in-law, two men grabbed her arms while another pulled her head back and beheaded her. Baath Party officials watched the murder, put her head in a plastic bag and took away her children.
Try to put yourself in the mind of the killer, or of the guy with the plastic bag. You are part of Saddam’s vast apparatus of rape squads, torture teams and mass-grave fillers. Every time you walk down the street, people tremble in fear. Everything else in society is arbitrary, but you are absolute. When you kill, your craving for power and significance is sated. You are infused with the joy of domination.
These are the people we are still fighting in Iraq.

I have a question for those who think the Iraqi “resistance” is popular. Why would we create an armed Iraqi security force of 200,000 people if they hated us? Wouldn’t that be like arming the Vietcong? Do you really think we’re that stupid?
Meanwhile, Tariq Ali swoons over the Iraqi “resistance” in the Guardian.

Even the bien pensants who opposed the war but support the occupation and denounce the resistance know that without it they would have been confronted with a triumphalist chorus from the warmongers.

Well, it’s a good thing for Tariq Ali that there’s terrorism in Baghdad. Otherwise, gosh, he’d be embarrassed.

Iraqis have one thing of which they can be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an opposition.

Oh yeah, nice one, Tariq. Wouldn’t it be just peachy if we had an “opposition” that blew up hotels, police stations, and Red Cross centers with rockets and car bombs.