I could­n’t believe it when a friend told me the news. In the wake of four coor­di­nat­ed sui­cide attacks in iraq that killed 30 and injured 200, Pres­i­dent George Bush claimed that the “attacks were mere­ly a mark of how suc­cess­ful­ly the U.S. Occu­pa­tion is going”:www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/27/sprj.irq.main/index.html :
bq. “There are ter­ror­ists in iraq who are will­ing to kill any­body in order to stop our progress. The more suc­cess we have on the ground, the more these killers will react — and our job is to find them and bring them to justice.”
This is real­ly his way of explain­ing away all oppo­si­tion to the U.S.: peo­ple must be jeal­ous of all we have and all we do. But maybe iraqis con­tin­ue to be angry that we invad­ed their coun­try; maybe they’re angry that we’ve only rein­stalled many of their gen­er­als and many of Sad­dam’s hench­men. Maybe they’re wait­ing for a democratically-elected coun­cil. I’m sure many iraqi’s con­demn yes­ter­day’s bomb­ings. But it’s still way too ear­ly to declare vic­to­ry in the war of iraqi pub­lic opinion.