Opinion polls

taken from an article, March 08

by

Noam Chomsky

...The US occupying army in Iraq (euphemistically called the Multi-National Force-Iraq) carries out regular studies of popular attitudes, a crucial component of population control measures.  In December 2007, it released a study of focus groups, which was uncharacteristically upbeat.  The survey "provides very strong evidence" that national reconciliation is possible and anticipated, contrary to prevailing voices of hopelessness and despair.  The survey found that a sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups . . . and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis." This discovery of "shared beliefs" among Iraqis throughout the country is "good news, according to a military analysis of the results," Karen de Young reported in the Washington Post (Dec. 19).

The "shared beliefs" were identified in the report. To quote de Young, "Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of `occupying forces' as the key to national reconciliation."  So according to Iraqis, there is hope of national reconciliation if the invaders, who are responsible for the internal violence, withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis.

The conclusions are credible, consistent with earlier polls, and also with the apparent reduction in violence when the British finally withdrew from Basra a few months ago, having "decisively lost the south - which produces over 90 per cent of government revenues and 70 per cent of Iraq's proven oil reserves" by 2005, according to Anthony Cordesman, the most prominent US specialist on military affairs in the Middle East.
 
The December 2007 report did not mention other good news: Iraqis appear to accept the highest values of Americans, which should be highly gratifying.  Specifically, they accept the principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal that sentenced Nazi war criminals to hanging for such crimes as supporting aggression and preemptive war - the main charge against Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, whose position in the Nazi regime corresponded to that of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.  The Tribunal defined aggression clearly enough: "invasion of its armed forces" by one state "of the territory of another state." The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan are textbook examples, if words have meaning.  The Tribunal went on to define aggression as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole": in the case of Iraq, the murderous sectarian violence and ethnic cleansing, the destruction of the national culture and the irreplaceable treasures of the origins of Western civilization under the eyes of "stuff happens" Rumsfeld and his associates, and every other crime and atrocity as the inheritors of the Mongols have followed the path of imperial Japan.

Since Iraqis attribute the accumulated evil of the whole primarily to the invasion, it follows that they accept the core principle of Nuremberg.  Presumably, they were not asked whether their acceptance of American values extended to the conclusion of the chief prosecutor for the United States, US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who forcefully insisted that the Tribunal would be mere farce if we do not apply its principles to ourselves.

Needless to say, US elite opinion, shared with the West generally, flatly rejects the lofty American values professed at Nuremberg, indeed regards them as bordering on obscene.  All of this provides an instructive illustration of some of the reality that lies behind the famous "clash of civilizations."

A January poll by World Learning/Aspen Institute found that "75 percent of Americans believe U.S. foreign policy is driving dissatisfaction with America abroad and more than 60 percent believe that dislike of American values (39 percent) and of the American people (26 percent) is also to blame." The perception is inaccurate, fed by propaganda.  There is little dislike of Americans, and dissatisfaction abroad does not derive from "dislike of American values," but rather from acceptance of these values, and recognition that they are rejected by the US government and elite opinion.
 
Other "good news" had been reported by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during the extravaganza staged on 9/11.  Perhaps we should call the commander "Lord Petraeus," in the light of the reverence displayed by the media and commentators on this occasion.   Parenthetically, only a cynic might imagine that the timing was intended to insinuate the Bush-Cheney claims of links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, so that by committing the "supreme international crime" they were defending the world against terror - which increased sevenfold as a result of the invasion, according to an analysis by terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, using data of the government-linked Rand corporation.