Jim MacDonald points out in Electrolite’s
comments:
\\I’ve figured it out. Why the Iraqi conscripts are fighting to the
last ditch rather than surrendering, why people who fled Saddam’s
terror are returning to fight on his side, why Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr
al-Hakim, the leading Iraqi Shiite cleric, has sent instructions to his
supporters and secret cells in Basra, Najaf, Karbala and other southern
Iraqi cities not to start an uprising or support the American-led
coalition in any way.
It’s Ann Coulter’s fault.
Listen to her, back in 2001:
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them
to Christianity.”
That got transmitted worldwide.
So the good folks of Iraq are looking at that and saying, “Okay,
gotcha. ‘Kill their leaders,’ check. ‘Invade their countries,’ check.
Any reason to think they aren’t planning to convert us to Christianity
too? Nope. Allah akbar!”
Poor fellows, they live in a place where what’s in the newspapers and
on TV is what the government wants to put in the newspapers and on TV.
How were they to know Coulter’s a nutjob who’s only speaking for
herself rather than stating official government policy?\\
Me, I tend to use one of the numerous lessons of 9/11: when your nation
is attacked by outside forces, people in the country will rally around
a leader even if he is a brutal moron who gained power by dubious
means.