Why the pessimism?

[Dinner]

Looking around the OT I keep seeing everyone speaking very Pessimistically about Iraq. What is causing this? I'm in Iraq and no one here seems to be nearly as pessimistic as you bunch. Sure, there have been terrorist attacks and the occational IED but most of the locals I meet are fairly excited and upbeat about the up coming transfer of authority plus they are celibrating their first truly inclusive Constitution since 1932. I've meet several people who seem genuinely relieved and exicited about the bill of rights.

I can only assume you all are watching news which isn't capturing the feelings in Iraq which I see on the ground.

[chequita guevara]

Cuz Bush screws up everything he touches.

Also, I'm sure most of the people you meet are fairly friendly. The ones who don't like you aren't going to be hanging out with you now, are they?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Oerdin, its good to have a voice on the ground. The more youcan realy back to us even as anecdotal the better informed we will be.

The pessimism results from a constant negative barage of info. We often times forget the progress made and have really no frame of reference as to the 'real' attitudes of the general Iraqi populace.

I personally believe the word of folks like you with first hand experience rather than pundits and talking heads.

Good Luck

[DanS]

Looking around the OT I keep seeing everyone speaking very Pessimistically about Iraq.

Well, to state the obvious, Apolyton is not a representative sample of what real people think. Not even a reasonable approximation. IOW, Apolytoners are a bunch of nutters, by and large.

Personally, I'm reasonably optimistic about it all, given all the hurdles.

[East Street Trader]

Your impressions are confirmed in a recent poll, Oerdin. The poll asked numbers of people about how optimistic they were on various matters and the results showed extraordinary levels of optimism.

Which is good because often optimism helps to generate energy and good results.

But the pessimism being expressed here, mine at any rate, stems from the fact that Iraq had its internal problems before and recent events have not dissipated any of those problems.

The common experience where an attempt is made to set up a constitution from scratch is that it fails. By way of illustration while the UK was shedding its empire it tried to arrange that by the time each country achieved independance there was a stable government in place buttressed by a constitution that had been thrashed out with the indigenous population.

In nearly all those cases too there was optimism.

But none of the constitutions took and in only one case - Botswana - was a fully peaceful transition achieved.

Will Iraq be another exceptional case?

Well almost certainly not. The Sunni Muslims and the Shi'i Muslims have been at each other's throats since the seventh century; arabs have a complex pattern of tribal loyalties which sometimes compete with national loyalties; the Kurds in the north have ethnic connections with the Kurds in Turkey and other neighbouring states; there are underlying resentments caused by the excesses of the previous regime; and there is the oil which has fueled problems and foreign intervention throughout the region for a century and more.

Plus the current fundamentalist/secular tension which so many Muslim counties are experiencing.

And there is Iran sat in the wings, a traditional rival and enemy with whom at least two recent wars have been fought.

The notion that optimism is enough to reconcile all this is a bit unreal.

In the poll I refered to I noticed one set of answers in which the largest group responding expressed a greater admiration for a US style constitution (as against any based on neighbouring arab or fundamentalist states) but to set against that virtual ever respondent acknowledged the need for "a strong man".

What history teaches in these cases (with the rather marvelous exception of the Botswana case) is that neither collective will nor academic care in the drafting of constitutions will matter a fig. What will matter is the actions of the power hungry and the ambitious.

As soon as the occupying forces are gone a power struggle will ensue. Each tribal leader will sell his allegiance and each Imaam or Ba'ath party official will seek to strut his stuff and gain adherents. Undoubtedly the split will be between a Sunni dominated group, a Shi'ite group and a Kurd group. If a charismatic Imaam appears there may be a fundamentalist group.

They will fight.

The outcome is anyone's guess but the favourite may be further intervention from outside.

I don't know who has what current proprietorial interest in the oil or what investment (in pipelines, refinery or port facility) but it would be surprising if there is not sufficient subsisting interests for outsiders to have strong interests. And the US has its abiding interest in stability in the area.

Whether Iran or the arab league will take a hand I really don't know. Perhaps they could be warned off but that would be difficult if a Balkans type conflict was under way.

Anyway that is the point. There is a power vacuum and optimism has not, as yet, proved to be the thing which comes along to fill such things.

[Dinner]

Don't get me wrong everything isn't coming up roses but in the long run these terrorist attacks play into our hands. Why? Because most of the bombings targeting civilians are the results of foreign (mostly Saudi, Iranian, & Syrian) terrorists and the general Iraqi population is getting incenced by this. Believe it or not now many of them are blaming Arabs and Persian radicals for their security problems and are now going to the Coalition and to the Iraqi Civil Defense Corp (ICDC) to turn the foreigners in. We've had more tips and leads since the Karbala & Najif bombings then in the previous six months.

The Iraqis might prefer the US/UK wasn't here but the realize they live in a bad neighborhood and need the help. They also dispise the fact that outsiders are turning their country into even more of a war zone. As one Iraqi Shiek told me yesterday "Why don't need any more foreign visitors" (we were talking about Armed Iranian militias who want to go to Iraq to "protect" shi'a mosques).

[Kontiki]

It's likely not too dissimilar from why so many people are completely obsessed with terrorism and the terrorist threat. If you live in just about any part of the civilized world, the chances of terrorism personally affecting you are orders of magnitude less than the chances of a car accident affecting you.

In other words, it's something to talk about.

[East Street Trader]

Kontiki, I agree.

But your chance of being killed in a war are orders of magnitude greater than your chance of being affected by a car accident.

So trying to find new ways to resolve international conflict may not be too much of a waste of time.

Oerdin, your post rather makes the point. Just because the people in Iraq reconcile themselves to having been invaded (because at least they got rid of their last bad regime) that doesn't mean they will be left in peace to sort out their affairs unmolested in the future nor does it mean that the internal tensions which landed them with bad regimes in the past have been resolved.

[Cruddy]

I am mostly pessimistic because, when things DO turn out OK and smelling of roses, I get a good buzz.

I'm also rarely disappointed.

[Dinner]

The Iraqis have serious problems and serious internal disputes but believe it or not they are also intensely, intensely patriotic. This patriotism is one of the biggest reasons that Nasser's pan-Arabist dreams could never become reality and it will be one of the main reasons you will not see whole sale civil war in Iraq. Not on the scale of Lebonnon any way.

The major exception is the Kurds who are nationalistic but for Kurdistan and not for Iraq.

[bipolarbear]

B/c the world is a naturally crappy place. Crap will happen. Its better to expect crap to happen ,and have it happen ,then expect goos crap, and have bad crap happen.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The major exception is the Kurds who are nationalistic but for Kurdistan and not for Iraq.

This is one huge reason for pessimism.

If only people's perceptions created reality.

There are obvious different political aims for each group-aims not yet worked out-the most torublesome is that of the Kurds. And then the question of how Sunni's will accept their minority status, and how much authority the mayority Shiites, now at the cusp of power, will seeded away into a Federated system.

All it takes is a spark, and optimism turns into internal strife and killing.

[Donegeal]

Alot of the pessimism stem from the fact that "bad news sells".

What news group is going to want to tell about how millions of people go to work everyday just like normal when they could write about a terrorist bombing that killed 3 people?

Don't worry about me though (yeah, I know that I'm somewhere near the top of your list of people to think about ), I get to hear from alot of people over there and I get the impression that you are trying to convey from them as well.

Keep up the good work BTW!

[Ned]

Re: Why the pessimism?

Originally posted by Oerdin
Looking around the OT I keep seeing everyone speaking very Pessimistically about Iraq. What is causing this? I'm in Iraq and no one here seems to be nearly as pessimistic as you bunch. Sure, there have been terrorist attacks and the occational IED but most of the locals I meet are fairly excited and upbeat about the up coming transfer of authority plus they are celibrating their first truly inclusive Constitution since 1932. I've meet several people who seem genuinely relieved and exicited about the bill of rights.

I can only assume you all are watching news which isn't capturing the feelings in Iraq which I see on the ground.

Two words: John Kerry. The fate of Iraq depends upon the election in November, not the transfer of power to the Iraqi governing council in June. The people of Iraq cannot feel comforted that the man who voted against the funding of the troops and the reconstruction aid, the man who calls the war on terror a so-called police action and the man who openly denigrates the allies of America who form the coalition as "the coerced, the bribed and windowdressing" is anywhere near close to being elected.

[Agathon]

What are the girls like, Oerdin?