Bloodless Coup

Bro,
Political ranting aside, isn't this just a matter of the strength of street knowledge? Baltar and I commented on the past post, that this is exactly a political rather than a purely scientific distinction. We use it and it's good at getting the enemy out of their dug in positions. Other people use it and it's excessive. The fact is that it is grey area because it has certain properties of a chemical weapon but kills in an incendiary way. But if we've never signed onto a treaty that prevents us from using it, and we've never taken and destroyed all our WP munitions, then it does seem very convenient for us to call other people using it chemical warfare.
I am a little confused as to the other post. This debate's been going on since we've been in Iraq. And on a broader scale it's been going on since I started keeping up with this sort of thing via the contras in Nicaragua, and it's probably been going on much longer than that. What's the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter? What I see in this is that the three parts of the Iraqi government have agreed that people blowing up innocent civilians is terrorism, and I think that's a good thing, especially in light of the recent bombings in Jordan. Do I think people trying to install the Bathist regime are terrorists because they support Saddam who supported terrorists? Sure I do. Some of them probably think we are terrorists when our bombs go off target.
I'm still not sure I agree with the conclusion that it's time to go. If to include the Sunnis in the political process(and let's face it, if this wasn't a huge consideration there's no way the Shiites wouldn't be condemning the Sunnis as barbarians), the government had to acknowledge their right to "armed resistance"(what I suspect is another intentional omission), then I'm not sure we shouldn't stay and wipe them out while our troops are already there. I think within this statement is an acknowlegment of how pervasive this dying-blowing-up-americans-and-jews-to-get-to-heaven idea is. They don't see this as a political resistance, but as a Holy war, getting Americans off Arab Holy lands. And if we just leave, then they're going to continue to teach their children that mentality, and it's not a far stretch from that mentality (dying to kill Americans on Arab lands) to just dying to kill Americans, so we'll have more suicide bombers showing up in American cities if we let them be. They have a racist cultural attitude against Jews and Americans, they hate us. And the more we let them be, the more we leave them alone, the less opportunity they'll have to appreciate the beauties of our culture, so the more pervasive those attitudes will become and the more common their actions based on those cognitive sets. I agree that right now they seem set on destroying us. But leaving them alone didn't work before (9/11), so we need to figure out what will work, whether it be blowing them up or something more creative.

Morris - As to your first paragraph - pop open the champagne, we agree on something! Yep, we are a big old bunch of hypoocrites on this kind of stuff - and it's because of the arbitrary and political nature of these kinds of distinctions that I think that are really ridiculous things to throw into the political discourse - much less use as part of the justification of a war. It's very clear what nukes are, but chems, much less so. And of course what nukes can do is vastly worse, so I'd really love it if we found a way to throw "WMD" out of our lexicon. It's lost any clear meaning it ever had, and has been hopelessly abused.

We also largely agree on your second paragraph, though I don't think it's a huge shock that Iraqi leaders came together to say that purposely targeting innocent Iraqi civilians is "terrorism". That's an incredibly easy thing to do politically on their part, and of course it fits with most definitions of the term. And sure, killing quite a few innocent Iraqis has led us to be judged as "terrorists" by a sizeable community in that region.

As to your last paragraph - well, I suppose it was inevitable our agreement would end. I vehemently disagree. You are talking about people in what is (or was) one of the most secular states in the region. And you are talking about, in some cases, the least religious segments of that population.

Even the US government which is regularly telling gigantic lies to frame us as fighting "terrorists" in Iraq has, for well over a year, consistently pointed out that only about 5% of the fighters there are foreign. Most of them are simply Sunni Iraqis - and most of them aren't fighting for anything particularly religious (among the Iraqis politics is framed and controled by religious leaders much more among the now dominant Shia than it is among the Sunni). They are set on destroying us b/c we are putting their enemies in power (many of whom are determined to launch vendettas against them) and killing a lot of them in the process. This has very little to do with their desire to get into Heaven - it has a lot more to do with their desire to put that off as long as possible, and live in as much power, luxury and control as they can manage before they have to get there. It looks to me more and more like what happened in Lebanon in the 1980's. We were attacked because we were seen as messing with the power structure in a very direct way that hurt large numbers or people - so they struck back. Of course in Lebanon we ended up in conflict with a heavily religious organization, Hezbollah. But it's worth noting that they weren't especally active in targeting Americans after we left the area (though obviously they have continued to target Israel - but then Israel is a much bigger direct threat to them, and continued to occupy parts of Lebanon until 2000).

In Iraq we are in the middle of a civil war - not a religious war. That said, if stabilizing Iraq is the goal, it's probably a good thing that these leaders are working together. Getting more Sunnis to accept Shia leadership is key to settling this conflict. But if this stability comes at the price of legitimizing attacks against Americans - well, don't think that's a good thing, stable Iraq or not.