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http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/...oxnewspoll.pdf
19. Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?
Yes No (Don’t know)
16-17 Jan 07 63% 22 15
Democrats 51% 34 15
Republicans 79% 11 10
Independents 63% 19 17
So who in here is part of the 37% of the population that wants Bush's plan to fail or doesn't know?
If you are part of that 37%, what is your reasoning? You may hate Bush or the US government in general, but do you really think we will all be better off if we fail in Iraq? Or would you just get pleasure in seeing Bush fail regardless of how many lives are ruined in the process?
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The thing is, the USA will fail in Iraq regardless of what any of us wish for. The poll is therefore asking respondents' feelings about a moot point.
What do I mean by that, and how can we know this to be true?
Well, the USA might temporarily enforce more "peace" in Iraq than has been present during the last few years, by putting the hammer (or "Surge") into play for a while. What happens after the USA leaves, though (whenever that might be)? Answer: the old strifes will resurface and dominate the political landscape in Iraq as before. The Shi'ites will send death-squads against the Sunnis - as before the USA left. Iran will become even less circumspect about trying to influence affairs in Iraq.
The country will not become a democracy with civil rights protected as we in the West understand democracy to be. The USA will ultimately fail in trying to implement the Neo-Con grand dream.
A large percentage of Iraqis would like to see Shari'a imposed. Shari'a is antithetical to Western-style civil rights and Western-style democracy.
This Neo-Con attempt, this naive foolhardiness, to try to forcibly spead democracy in Iraq is simply a lost cause. Why? Because America will not convince the huge slice of Iraqis to abandon their widespread desire for Shari'a, and because America will not alleviate the ancient mutual hatred of the Shi'ites versus the Sunnis (let's leave the Kurd-related difficulties out of the discussion for simplicity).
When America leaves or can no longer afford the 12 billion dollars or so it cost each month to maintain order (if some semblance of order can even be maintained), Iraq will revert to the problems of sectarian loyalties and sectarian violence and the desire to dominate the other sect.
Iraq may also fall under Shari'a law, after the Shi'ites dominate the Sunnis (with Iran's help). An Iraq under Shari'a law could be as bad for human rights as Iraq under Saddam, and would certainly be worse for the West than was Iraq under Saddam.
So whether one wishes for the USA to succeed or fail in Iraq is esentially meaningless. Failure is assured eventually. Iraq will not become a genuine democracy with constitutionally protected rights like the West. The Neo-Con architects are naive about the Middle East and hubris-filled. The average-Joe-politically-interested citizens who are "hopefuls" that the USA will succeed are not sufficiently knowledgeable of several Middle Eastern forces, all of which forces are far stronger than forces in the Middle East which incline towards freedom, democracy or civil rights. Those Middle-Eastern forces which are so antagonistic to Western ideals, and so much stronger, are: 1) Sectarianism/tribalism and centuries of fighting along those lines, 2) a background of Islam/Shari'a, 3) to a lesser extent, a cultural viewpoint which is geared more towards domination/submission rather than towards mutual cooperation towards an end.
Any democracy achieved in Iraq will eventually be utilized for the domination of the majority over the minority.
The USA cannot succeed in Iraq; it can only put a larger bandage on the wound and hold it in place for a while to staunch the flow of bleeding. A temporary "surge" resulting in a mere temporary cooling of violence cannot be considered success, nor can a new government which only temporarily "supports" human/civil rights.
Wishing that the USA will succeed in Iraq (or in the Middle East) is like wishing Don Quixote "Godspeed!" in his battles with windmills.