"Legitimate Resistance"

I know that I am six to eight weeks late in commenting on this, but the recent statement by Iraqi leaders about resistance being "a legitimate right of the people" at a reconciliation conference in Cairo bears some consideration.

Specifically, this statement was made:

Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships.

Now, there are two interpretations of this.

The pessimistic interpretation is that the leaders of Iraq are saying that it is legitimate to attack coalition targets, but not Iraqi targets; i.e., kill as many American, European, and other foreign troops as you like, but leave other Iraqis, including us, alone.

Such an interpretation is the one that tradcon Lawrence Auster believes is accurate.

The optimistic interpretation is that the leaders of Iraq were okaying resistance against an occupation, but as we are not occupiers but liberators of Iraq, they are not condoning attacks on us.

Such an interpretation is the one that neocon Dan Darling prefers.

Obviously (to me, anyway) the Iraqi leaders were deliberately vague in order that both sides would be able to interpret it the way they wanted to. That is, they are allowing the insurgents to believe that they agree that this is an occupation, and allowing the coalition to believe that they are simply making a pro-freedom statement, and not one that really applies to the insurgents.

This way, they can try to appease the insurgents as much as possible by throwing the coalition troops to the wolves (or at least to appease those who sympathize with the insurgents), while still maintaining that they are loyal to the coalition.

In a very real sense, though, this amounts to a victory for the insurgents, because ultimately, we need the full and unequivocal support of the Iraqi government more than they do. So this truly is a betrayal by Iraq's leaders, at least to the extent that the Iraq leaders owe the coalition loyalty for bringing them to power. Alternately, if on is liable to be sympathetic to the Iraqi leaders and not to the coalition, one could argue that this shows how alienated the Iraqis, even their leaders, are from the U.S., and by extension the other coalition countries. Either way, it does not bode well for the U.S. and the coalition it runs.

It also shows the naivete of the neocons, who essentially believe that they get not only to define the legitimate terms of debate (e.g. whether the U.S. is an occupier or a liberator), but to expect that everyone else will accept their terms.

This is the end result of the disdain for the "reality-based community," whereas one simply wills the world to be a certain way and it is. If it isn't, then just keep pretending it is, and somehow it will be.

(By the way, this is not a Christian belief system, for those of you who want to blame this sort of belief on Bush's evangelical Christianity. Despite the common belief that Christianity teaches blind faith and that faith itself is the imporant thing, Christianity actually clearly teaches that faith alone is worthless; it is the object of that faith that matters; faith is only useful if it coincides with reality:

And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
- Corinthians 15:17, King James Version

Christianity clearly teaches that its validity is dependent on an objective reality; the quality of one's faith is not as important as the object of that faith.)

So the neocons' own faith in the universal desire for liberal democracy and freedom not just for "me and mine" but for everyone, and their belief in the power of will to make things so ultimately leads to their destruction, because they are unwilling, and perhaps philosophically incapable, of recognizing non-loyalty to their ideals.

There is also the Rich Lowry position that "they didn't really mean it."

This, I think, represents unwarranted hopefulness, and perhaps a form of transference (I don't mean what I say, so they can't, either). Both are extremely dangerous.

That is all.