contexploration

Kanan Makiya: at New York University, November 2002. Quoted by George Packer, The Assassin's Gate:

"The Iraqi opposition is something new in Arab politics. It can be encouraged or it can be crushed just like that. But think about what you’re doing if you crush it. I rest my moral case on the following: If there is a sliver of a chance of what I just said happening [military success in freeing Iraq from Saddam Hussein], a five to ten percent chance, you have a moral obligation, I say, to do it."

Rashid Ghewielib, Iraqi Communist Party, March 2004. Quoted by Truls Wyller in Agora:

"We don’t regard the armed insurgents [in Iraq] as an alternative. Together with the majority of Iraqis and the political parties, we work to end the occupation with political means. We are not pacifists, but as the situation now stands, violence doesn’t solve any problems. On the contrary, violence creates new problems and postpones the end of the occupation. Among the violent insurgents we find both Saddam-loyalists and people who belong to al-Qaida. The last group are affiliated with small numbers, like the Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, but most of them are foreigners who slip over the borders. In addition we have individuals and families who react with rage at American brutality against the civilian population – especially the criminal, collective punishments and bombings of civilian areas."

"It’s wrong to compare the Iraqi insurgents with the French resistance against Hitler, or the legitimate struggle of the Vietnamese. The Iraqi insurgents want to establish a new dicatorship. They have no political program. They want to sabotage the reconstruction of Iraq. These groups are made up of people who only thrive under lawlessness. The majority of Iraqis don’t want violence. They only want to live in a peaceful and stable country."

Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and member of the Socialist International, from a speech held at the Brookings Institution, September, 2005:

"Most Iraqis understand that democracy is the best therapy with which to cure the horrors of being ruled by a criminal state. Iraqis are aware that the challenge ahead of them is unique. Ba'athist Iraq was the longest lived fascist state in history. Saddam's regime was guilty of multiple acts of aggression and genocide, a substantial bill of indictment. The effect of this vile administration upon Iraqi society has been profound and damaging. In Saddam's Iraq, infants were surrounded as much by fear as by their mothers' arms."

"When I say those words, I wish in my heart that they were rhetorical exaggeration. But the tragedy that I know is that the mass graves contain many remains of children who paid the ultimate price for the imaginary crimes of their parents. The horrific image that George Orwell thought up of the future of humanity under totalitarianism was of ‘a boot stamping on a human face-for ever.’ Saddam managed an improvement on that bleak view of humanity degraded. In the mind of every Iraqi, Saddam tried to install a torturer. Saddam wanted Iraqis to fear even thinking freely, to not dare forming words to express their desire for freedom. To build a democratic Iraq, therefore, we have mobilized the principles of democracy and the arms of democracy. Because of the continued virulence of Ba'athist fascism, we must defend our democracy while we build it, we must fight even as we go in to vote."

"Dear friends, the principle of equality is vital in a country that for most of the last century was ruled by supremacists, and by nationalists and narrow-minded nationalists, who felt that their minority was better than other Iraqis and who believed in a divine right to rule."

"Friends, we will talk to all, but we will not sell out democracy to the few who threaten violence if their demands are not met. We will not betray the democratically expressed wishes of Iraq's two constituent people, the Arabs and the Kurds, and the other communities of Turkmen and Assyrians, to the unrepentant Ba'athists who seek a new centralized, repressive state. We will never surrender to the terrorists and to the remnant of fascists who despise democracy and distort religion. Never!"

Raïd Fahmi, Iraqi minister, member of Iraqi Communist Party, November 2006:

"What we need, is for those who support the independence of Iraq, and this country’s development, wherever they may be in the world, to express their solidarity for those who are fighting for these objectives. Unfortunately, stances have been taken by some of these forces which play in favor of political currents which are opposed to democracy. On the one hand, they talk about democracy and secularism, but in fact, they take positions which weaken, rather than reinforce the democratic and progressive trends in the country. It’s possible to establish a frank and sincere dialogue with the range of progressive forces, in Iraq and throughout the world, in a mutually respectful manner. This should be done with a view to achieving our shared goal for a peaceful, independent, unified and federal Iraq."

Statement from Iraqi Communist Party, January 2006:

"We have to note, with regret, that the Iraqi democratic forces have not received, in their difficult struggle, effective solidarity and support from international forces of the left. As a result, most of the latter have unfortunately been rendered observers of events, rather than exerting positive influence on the ongoing struggle over the future course of developments in Iraq, especially in supporting the struggle for a democratic prospect, at a time when the Iraqi patriotic and democratic forces are in urgent need for such concrete and multifarious support and solidarity."