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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 19-Mar-07
New optimistic poll of Iraqi people barely mentioned on Sunday TV news shows

Web Log - March, 2007

New optimistic poll of Iraqi people barely mentioned on Sunday TV news shows

And Bob Shieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation" asked really dumb questions of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

The poll is described in a series of London Sunday Times articles. The poll was conducted by the British polling firm ORB (Opinion Research Business) Group.

Oddly enough, outside of the London Times, the mainstream media is barely mentioning the poll. The only reason I know about it is that someone mentioned it briefly on one of the Sunday morning news shows (Stephanopolous' show, I think, but I'm not sure). It took a while to find anything about it online, but it finally turned up. There was a story about it in The Australian.

You can bet that if the poll results had been bad for America or for the Adminstration, then the results would have been all over the place. In fact, as I'm typing this, CNN International has just spent several minutes talking about some poll that says that Americans have lost faith in the war. This is big news to CNN, but not something that says things are getting better in Iraq. It's really disgraceful.

And they keep replaying Donald Trump's truly moronic hate rant. But no mention of anything getting better. I find it really sickening.

Incidentally, if you go to the ORB link above, you can download a 76-page PDF file filled with tables on the poll results. I'll just quote some of the highlights from the Times articles.

Of the 5,000+ adults polled in face-to-face interviews throughout Iraq, only 26% preferred life under the regime of Saddam Hussein, with 49% preferring life under the current political regime of Noori al-Maliki.
This is despite the fact that in Baghdad, one in four has had a relative murdered (15 percent of Sunnis and 34 percent of Shiites) and one in four has had a relative kidnapped.

Sunnis were most likely to back Saddam's regime (51%) with the Shias (66%) preferring the current administration.

Only 27% believe that the country is in a state of civil war. Of the remaining, 22% believe "we are close" and 18% believe the country is "still some way from civil war."

The most interesting thing, from the point of view of the Generational Dynamics, is that only 27% believe it's a civil war. I've been saying since 2003 that a civil war was IMPOSSIBLE in Iraq, because Iraq is in a generational Awakening era. All the Washington nonsense about calling it a civil war was purely political.

Other news reports indicate that violence has decreased significantly since the surge began. In addition, the Shia Mahdi militia has mostly disappeared, and Sunni citizens are turning against al-Qaeda and the Sunni insurgents.

There's no way to tell whether the level of violence will continue to level off, or whether it will rise again.

But if there were anything like a civil war going on, 100% of the Iraqis would know it, not just 27% thinking so, and the level of violence wouldn't come down until it had reached a climax.

Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense) interviewed by Bob Schieffer on <i>Face the Nation</i> <font size=-2>(Source: CBS)</font>

Robert Gates (Secretary of Defense) interviewed by Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation (Source: CBS)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appeared on Face the Nation on Sunday morning. If you go to the CBS News web page for the appearance, you'll find that they made Gates' appear as negative as possible, and they left out the most important part.

Fortunately for you, dear reader, I've transcribed the most important part of his appearance, where host Bob Schieffer asks some really dumb questions about it being a civil war:

Schieffer: Let me just challenge the conventional wisdom here. The President said that if we leave then they're gonna follow us here. And this appears to me to be a civil war. Why would stop fighting each other, which is what they seem to be doing now -- why would they take a break in that and decide to challenge America somewhere down the line if we leave?

Now, you can see from this question how contemptuous Schieffer is of Gates. He asks Gates an incredibly stupid question, to the effect of "Why are you so dumb that you believe they're going to take a break from their civil war and come after us." Once again, a really sickening display from the mainstream media.

Incidentally, Schieffer isn't "challenging the convention wisdom"; Schieffer is spouting Washington politicians' and pundits' "conventional wisdom." It's Gates who's trying to tell him what's actually going on.

Gates: This Washington game of is it a civil war or isn't it -- this characterization is a problem because it oversimplifies.

The reality is that stoking sectarian violence is a very specific strategy on the part of al-Qaeda and the insurgents. That was behind the bombing of the [al-Askariya mosque in Samarra]. It's behind their efforts today. And they make no bones about the fact that it's their strategy.

You don't have thousands of Shia and Sunnis falling in on each other or attacking each other. You have hit squads going around the city. So this is a purposeful strategy.

It seems to me there is the opportunity to create a political environment in which these issues can be sorted out among the Iraqis themselves, and that's what we're trying to do.

Gates is probably used to incredibly ignorant journalists who think they know more than anyone else, so he has to explain what al-Qaeda's strategy is to Schieffer. But we know from the articles by Jeff Stein, national security editor for Congressional Quarterly, Washington journalists, analysts and politicians have no idea what's going on in Iraq.

I doubt very much that Schieffer even knows what the words "Sunni" and "Shia" mean, except that someone must have told him that they're fighting each other. In his simpleminded thoughts, there's nothing else going on.

So Gates explains to him that Shia and Sunnis aren't killing each other, but there's an explicit al-Qaeda strategy to make him think they are. Obviously, al-Qaeda has succeeded with Schieffer.

Schieffer: But I think [Vice Admiral John Michael McConnell], the head of National Intelligence, testified the other day on the hill. [He was asked whether], if we pulled out troops back, would they pursue our troops, and he said that's not likely, which suggests that they're gonna stay there and fight one another.

In other words, simpleminded Schieffer, who may be going senile, essentially asks again whether the Iraqis are going to stop fighting each other long enough to attack the American troops. What the hell is he thinking?

Gates: First of all, I think that they are not going to follow our troops into Kuwait. The notion that al-Qaeda is going to follow our troops is probably not right.

But I would say that it'd been clear all along that Zarqawi -- [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] is Jordanian, the current leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq is an Egyptian -- and they've made no bones about the fact that once they've been able to establish a firm base in [Iraq's Anbar province] or in Iraq more broadly, that they intend to try and destabilize the neighbors and eventually attack the United States. They've not made any secret about that.

From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, what Gates is describing is exactly what's to be expected of a country in a generational Awakening period. No country in history, as far as I can tell, has ever had a civil war in an Awakening era, with a few exceptions that fizzled out quickly. The primary example of that type is Julius Caesar's famous "crossing the Rubicon" civil war, that ended almost before it began.

I've been saying for years that a civil war is impossible at this time. The reason is that, in a generational Awakening era, the people themselves don't want any part of a war. I knew that, sooner or later, it would be the Iraqi people who would turn against the "civil war" concept, and now it's happening. The Iraqi people were stirred up by Iran and al-Qaeda, but finally it all seems to be fizzling out, and Iraq is settling down to a normal Awakening era country.

Incidentally, while I'm on this subject, I might as well repeat that I also said this of Lebanon, which is also in a generational Awakening era. For months last fall and winter, you could hardly turn on CNN or the BBC without hearing them predict that there was going to be another civil war in Lebanon. It was a steady drumbeat, and it was predicted by pundits around the world.

I said, and I'll say it again, a country CANNOT have a civil war in an Awakening era.

Since 2003 I've posted hundreds of articles, and most of them contain Generational Dynamics predictions. NOT A SINGLE ONE has turned out to be wrong. People called me "ideological" (without telling me what ideology they believe I followed) because I said that a civil war in Iraq is impossible, and I've been proven right over and over, while all the highly-paid analysts and pundits have been proven wrong time after time.

People used to call me "crazy" because I predicted in 2003 that Yasser Arafat's death would signal a generational change that would lead the Mideast into war, and there's hardly been a day since Arafat's death that the level of Mideast conflict hasn't gotten worse.

People used to call me "hysterical" when I said, as far back as 2002, that we're entering a new 1930s style Great Depression, probably by the 2006-2007 time frame. Now, with the housing bubble meltdown in full progress, there are a lot of "hysterical" people, just like me. Being hysterical is almost (but not quite) mainstream.

I said in 2004 that the U.N. was completely irrelevant to the Darfur genocide, and they would never stop it until it reached a climax. Now, three years later, the ongoing genocide is as bad as ever, and people are still holding vigils and such to get the U.N. to "stop the genocide." Sorry folks, genocide is as important to being a human being as sex is.

Generational Dynamics has proven itself to be right, time after time. Not every Generational Dynamics prediction has yet come true, but they're all getting close, and not a single one has been proven wrong.

I like to say that it's easy to get a million predictions right -- just make two million predictions. That's what the pundits do; their predictions are no better than chance guesswork, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But Generational Dynamics predictions are never wrong.

I've challenged everyone to find a web site anywhere in the world with anything close to the predictive success that this web site has had. No has ever pointed one out to me, because none exists.

I thank all my readers for continuing to come back, making this an increasingly popular web site for people who really want to understand what's going on in the world. I'm still keeping up with the e-mail questions, though sometimes it takes a few days to answer, so as before you're welcome to send me a question or click on the COMMENT link at the top of the page. (19-Mar-07) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 19-Mar-07 New optimistic poll of Iraqi people barely mentioned on Sunday TV news shows

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 19-Mar-07
New optimistic poll of Iraqi people barely mentioned on Sunday TV news shows