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[ This message has been sent to you via the CASI-analysis mailing list ] Dear all Robert Cooper has a rather idiotic article in this week's New Statesman arguing that military occupation is not the road to democracy. You need to be a subscriber in some fashion to access the article online, though I did manage it once. www.newstatesman.com Here's a letter to the editor about it: Robert Cooper observes that 'The mistake in 1991 was to leave too much of Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard intact'. He neglects to point out that this was a conscious policy decision, made in Washington, overruling the commander in the field (General H. Norman Schwarzkopf), which had the predictable consequences of enabling the regime to survive the turmoil of the immediate postwar period. In other words, the US deliberately sought to stabilize and maintain the (undemocratic) regime in Iraq (by allowing it to operate helicopter gunships against the rebels and so on). Democracy was not the objective in 1991 and it was not the objective in 2003. Leaks throughout the year preceding the war made clear that the preferred outcome of the crisis was a coup. As the Telegraph pointed out days before the war began, Washington and London had 'an incremental strategy that applies mounting pressure and allows time for Saddam's henchmen to decide their self-interest lies in risking a move against him'. A British military source told the Telegraph 'This is about getting someone to tip him over.' Cooper's essay presumes that the objective of the occupation is 'democracy'. All the evidence suggests that the objective is 'control' and that undemocratic methods are quite congenial, today as in 1991. Milan Rai author of Regime Unchanged -- Milan Rai Justice Not Vengeance landline 0845 458 9571 (UK) +44 1424 428 792 (int) mobile phone (0)7980 748 555 www.j-n-v.org _______________________________________ Sent via the CASI-analysis mailing list To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-analysis All postings are archived on CASI's website at http://www.casi.org.uk