I found this on Metafilter, and couldn’t stop reading it. Its a piece by Eliot Weinberger called What I Heard About Iraq. It is a long, long list of what has been said about Iraq, and none of it is pretty.
Reading it overwhelms me with pity for the Iraqi people, whose suffering didn’t end with Saddam’s rule. As a man in a Baghdad market said, “Saddam Hussein’s greatest crime is that he brought the American army to Iraq.”
This is all well and good, but what’s happening in the Michael Jackson trial?
Thank you! Louie Anderson’s up next!
As a man in a Baghdad market said, “Saddam Hussein’s greatest crime is that he brought the American army to Iraq.”
Let’s not forget:
If the Iraqis want to look for someone to blame for their current problems, all they have to do is find the nearest mirror. They support or turn a blind eye to the very people responsible for their plight – the insurgents – and blame the United States instead. If Iraqis truely want peace, all they have to do is report any and all possible insurgent activity to the U.S. armed forces, and they’ll put a stop to it. If Iraqis aren’t willing to make this effort on their own behalf, then the U.S. should pull out of Iraq and let them descend into the hellhole of their own making.
Yes, the Iraqi people suffered under Saddam. No one’s arguing that point. My point is that we haven’t done much to alleviate their suffering. In some cases, we’ve aggravated it.
As for the U.S. Army stopping insurgent activity: fat chance with current tactics. I don’t care how many tanks we bring, we cannot impose our will on the country if the people are not willing to go along. The only hope of success is to win the trust of the people and so far we’ve done a poor job of it. It goes without saying that when Gomer blows stuff just because its fun, he does little to advance the cause.
For the other points you raise, in each case the United States winked at him while pretending to be outraged. I guess a good villian comes in handy now and then.
The only hope of success is to win the trust of the people
Like I said, if the Iraqis truely want peace, they have to take an active part in achieving it. As long as they say or do nothing about the insurgents in their midst, the cycle of violence will continue. It’s no different than a neighborhood full of crime – if the people don’t do anything about the criminals, the crime won’t go away.
I guess a good villian comes in handy now and then.
I guess the U.S. government considered Saddam to be the lesser of two evils. Now we have to clean up the mess that we made by aiding a known despot.