Troops out now?
In this post Johann Hari notes that Noam Chomsky seems to have a myopic view of Iraqi opinion polls. Chomsky says that non-Kurdish areas want coalition troops out immediately, and thus they should. Hari points out that logically therefore he should support the troops staying in Kurdish areas.Of course the same point can be made to Hari. Does he support the immediate withdrawal of western troops from the Sunnia and Shia areas, which is what all opinion polls show is the view of the Iraqi people? A few months' ago he said that he did - now I am not so sure.
Furthermore he chastises Chomsky for not taking account of opinion polls that showed that the Iraqi people wanted their country invaded and Saddam overthrown. But here is surely another problem -- did the opinion polls show that if you exclude the Kurds? Usually there are good reasons for not excluding parts of the population, but if Hari thinks it is ok to do it with respect to the troops out question, he can't really disallow it on whether the war was desired by the Iraqis.
I should point out, as I have done in the past, that I think this day-to-day analysis of opinion polls is rather silly.
posted by Matthew @ 8/03/2004 04:34:00 PM
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