Those they can't co-opt, they destroy (UK Guardian)

[huckleberry]

Najaf proves that the US will never allow democracy to flourish in Iraq

Kamil Mahdi
Saturday August 14, 2004
The Guardian

The US military offensive against Najaf is a dangerous and ill-judged escalation, revealing the violent reality of an occupation that has undergone only cosmetic change since the supposed handover of power to an interim Iraqi administration in June.

snip

The way to deal with this situation is not to pour petrol on the fire, but to look for an imaginative and honest political way out.

Having been appointed by the occupation authority under a corrupted UN oversight process, Ayad Allawi's interim government lacks any legitimacy whatsoever.

snip

Some liberals who opposed the war subsequently adopted an argument that the US and Britain now have a responsibility to remain in Iraq and to see to it that the country arrives at the safe shores of democracy and stability.

This argument is based on the presumption that, left alone, Iraq would fall into internecine conflict which only the US and Britain, being such civilised and civilising nations, could address. This was always a convenient myth, but the repeated military offensives against Iraqi cities must now make it clear that chaos and internecine conflict is with us already, and it is being expanded and prolonged by foreign military forces.

It is time to set an early date for a complete withdrawal of foreign forces and then to ask what can and should be done to help Iraq.

more at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1282989,00.html