Juan Cole - 11/22/05

Iraqis ask for Withdrawal Timetable

AP reports on the results of the Cairo national reconciliation conference, attended by the major Iraqi political factions, including Sunni Arabs.

Al-Hayat gives the orginal Arabic wording of some articles of the agreement. One provision says, "We demand the withdrawal of foreign forces in accordance with a timetable, and the establishment of a national and immediate program for rebuilding the armed forces through drills, preparation and being armed, on a sound basis that will allow it to guard Iraq's borders and to get control of the security situation . . ."

Sharon's Critique of the Authoritarian Likud Party

Ariel Sharon's resignation from the Likud Party is a more forceful critique of that party than any I have offered.

Likudniks are notoriously unable to deal with being criticized, so my simple and accurate characterization of the party as having colonialist and fascistic tendencies has driven its acolytes on this side of the Atlantic into a piranha-like frenzy. Being cultists of a sort, they play all sorts of dishonest political games, such as equating criticism of their party with racism (?), or equating their party with Israel itself and then saying that I called Israel a fascist state because I had so characterized the Likud. (I did not, of course, but then the surrogate American Likud has millions of dollars with which to smear me and an easy in with the major media, whereas I just have this little web site; so their megaphone is rather louder than mine.)

Guest Editorial on Murtha: Achcar & Shalom

"On John Murtha's Position"

by Gilbert Achcar and Stephen R. Shalom

There is much of which to approve in the recent speech of Rep. John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on Iraq. The hawkish Murtha had been critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war for some time, but until now his solution had been to call for more troops. On November 17, however, he recognized courageously that U.S. troops "can not accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. IT IS TIME TO BRING THEM HOME."