An interesting article...

[Will Robinson]

Christopher Hitchens wrote an interesting article on the ups and downs of winning the hearts and minds in Iraq. linkage...

Here's a taste:

The enemy has understood our domestic and insular mentality from the beginning. I call your attention to a report in the London Independent from Patrick Cockburn, published on Dec. 1, 2004. I should say that Cockburn is an old friend of mine, an extremely brave veteran of Iraqi reportage for three decades, and no admirerâ??to say the very leastâ??of the war or the occupation. He reprinted a letter from Naji Sabri, Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, to his supreme leader. It is dated five days before the fall of Baghdad. In the letter, Sabri expresses concern that world opinion is receiving an impression of too much fraternization between Iraqis and American forces. A cure for this, he argues, is "to target their vehicle checkpoints with suicide operations by civilian vehicles in order to make the savage Americans realize that their contact with Iraqi civilians is as dangerous as facing them on the battlefield."

This delightful suggestion possesses many points of interest. It demonstrates that the Baath Party already had organized links with jihadist suicide bombers. And it shows a cruel but shrewd understanding of how public opinion, and indeed American policy, might be forcibly altered. (It also illustrates the stony evil of the Saddam regime and its fedayeen, which at about that time also publicly hanged a woman who had applauded the arrival of coalition forces in Nasariyah. One would not need to emphasize this if it were not for those who sneer every day at the idea that Coalition troops were greeted as liberators. They often were. I saw it myself and will not be told that I did not see it. But the disincentive to such greeting was higher than the sneerers know.)

[Birdseye]

I think he is taking his points wayyyy too far. Organized links with jihadist bombers? Could they all have not had the same idea?

[roid]

i don't dispute the letter, but i also dispute Christopher Hitchen's "suicide bomber = jihad bomber" definition.

jihad = holy war.

there was nothing holy about Saddam's reign, it was socialist. suicide bombers would not be islamists, they would be nationalists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ba'ath_Party

The Arabic word Ba'th means "rebirth". Ba'athist beliefs combine Arab Socialism, militarism, nationalism, and Pan-Arabism. The mostly secular ideology often contrasts with that of other Arab governments in the Middle East, which sometimes tend to have leanings towards Islamism and theocracy.

The motto of the Party is Wahda, Hurriya, Ishtirakiya means "Unity, Freedom, Socialism". "Unity" refers to pan-Arab unity, "Freedom'" emphasizes freedom from Western interests in particular, and "Socialism" specifically references Arab Socialism.

so i think Chris is wrong

[Will Robinson]

I'd have to say that my guess is there wasn't enough national pride in Saddams Iraq or among his army to muster suicide bombers as a spur of the moment tactic to be deployed to stem the friendly receptions the U.S. soldiers were recieving.

I would venture that the mentality to blow ones self up in a car bomb is that of a religious nutjob.
I don't think Hitchens is trying to say Saddam had a division of al Queda islamikazi's at his command, but that there was a contingent in Iraq of jihadi's that could be persuaded to help out.
There were reports of forigners entering Iraq in the lead up to the invasion that were suspected of traveling there specifically to fight the americans.

So I would think Hitchens choice of words is based on, at the least, a reasonable assumption.
But really that's a minor point, read the whole article, it's pretty good.

[roid]

i skimmed it. it seems heavy on the editorial, light on the facts (for the original letter it quoted - it gets a cookie)

if i analyse it i'll just get angry at the rhetoric. please spare me and just quote one of these "major points" you want to talk about.

[Will Robinson]

I think the major point that it raises is the fact that we have adopted the zero tolerance policy that keeps he bodycount of soldiers to a minimum and results in the death of a lot of innocent Iraqi's...which plays into the hands of the insurgents and Saddams strategy that we will become unwelcome if we appear to be indiscriminantly killing everything that moves.

Clinton was praised for not losing american soldiers by flying at 20,000 feet over the Balkans, bombing from a safe distance....safe for the pilots anyway, civilian casualties never became newsworthy there.

But trying to apply that same strategy to an occupation while rooting out civilian dressed combatants is getting us some negative results. The solution, unfortunately is to raise the risk level to our troops on the ground, make them take more hits to protect the innocent civilians.