We have a proverb that says "a broken heart can’t be mended" and that is what I experienced yesterday when I was going back home.
I hired a taxi and the taxi driver was asking me about the road that we have to go through. I told him about my daily route and he said "its too far man. Why don't we go through the airport street through Adil?". I was like "what! No way man, I still need my life".
He said " calm down man. I'm a Shiite guy and I have been there about two hours ago." I answered him "well, its up to you because its your life but for me, I have a son to live for". After he accepted to go through the street I chose, we found a very bad traffic then he said "Is this the smooth street you told me about?" I told him "at least its safe" and that was the point when the politics talk started.
He said " people now started fighting Al Qaida and they are awakened now. They formed awakening council in many Sunni neighborhoods including Adil"
I laughed sarcastically and said "why are they awakened? Were they sleeping when Al Qaida killed thousands of innocent people?"
At that point, I can say the political struggle started. We argued for about 30 minutes. After a long fight, we agreed on one point. We agreed that so many promises were made by the American administration and by the Iraqi government - so many promises that were never fulfilled.
He started laughing and said "I feel so sorry because I participated in the election. I though that Saddam's days were over but now I feel sorry because we have many small Saddams who were brought by the USA. The old Saddam had been kicked out by the Americans but who will help us to end the days of the new Saddams if the USA keeps supporting them".
I didn't answer him because I couldn't find an answer.
Ya Laith, it would be nice if what the U.S. brought to Iraq was democracy. Unfortunately, they brought a lot of things, but not that.
Posted by: Shirin | December 23, 2007 at 02:58 PM
why are you so mad guys? Calm down. Dont you believe in Democracy? the taxi driver was just explaining his own point of view. Beside no one is perfect right? even if he is American.
Posted by: Laith | December 23, 2007 at 03:31 AM
Kam, yes, Iraqis would be far, far better off had you left them to Saddam. More than a million more of them would be alive. Approximately five million of them would still be in their homes instead of living as refugees and internally displaced persons. An estimated one million of those displaced persons would still at least have homes to go back to because your bombs would not have reduced their homes to rubble.
Women and girls would still have rights and freedoms they have lost as a result of your "liberation".
College and university students would not have had their educations interrupted, perhaps forever.
Going out to buy vegetables would not mean taking their lives into their hands.
I could go on, but either you have gotten the idea by now, or you never will because you just don't want to.
Iraqis were far, far, far better off under Saddam than they are under George Bush. That is the terrible fact. So take your demands for gratitude and put them in the appropriate part of your anatomy, please.
Posted by: Shirin | December 23, 2007 at 02:09 AM
Kam,
Shall we start with Abu Ghraib and go on from there?
Posted by: Shirin | December 23, 2007 at 01:30 AM
Yes Sharin,
they are ungrateful, maybe we should have left them there for Saddam to kill. They only seem to get courage when the Americans show up. Where was Sadhr before America showed up? Such a brave warrior.
Posted by: Kam | December 23, 2007 at 12:19 AM
Before we go any futher, name for me one rape room run by the Americans.
Posted by: Kam | December 23, 2007 at 12:13 AM
Kam, you are so right! The Iraqis are ingrates.
They have no gratitude for the bombs that have flattened their cities and indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women, children, and elderly.
They have no gratitude for the home raids by gangs of heavily armed Americans who break violently into theirhomes in the dead of the night and rampage screaming through their houses terrorizing families, and destroying property.
They have no gratitude to the Americans for arbitrarily grabbing them by the tens of thousands, and hauling them off to prisons where they are held without charge for years, during which they are deprived of the basic human necessities, tortured, and left without hope.
They have no gratitude for the uncontrolled lawlessness that has gripped the country since 2003.
They have no gratitude for the destruction of their civil institutions, and the shredding of the very fabric of what was a cohesive, functioning society.
They have no gratitude for the loss of the freedom and rights and privileges that Iraqi women have always enjoyed until the United States so generously freed them.
Yes, indeed, Iraqis are an ungrateful lot, aren't they?
Posted by: Shirin | December 22, 2007 at 09:05 PM
"New book shows Saddam did support al Qaeda and the Taliban"
What utter rot! I can't believe there are still people who are desperately trying to promote this demonstrable nonsense. I suppose you are going to tell us next that Saddam gave his WMD's to Syria for safe keeping, or buried them in the Baka` Valley?
Toeg, you are right. It's irrelevant in any case. With Saddam at least the majority of Iraqis had something that had some resemblance to normalcy compared to now.
And speaking of rape rooms, now the rape rooms are run by the Americans!
Posted by: Shirin | December 22, 2007 at 08:55 PM
What ingrates, Americans have sacrificed thousands of lives to give you people the opportunity to rule yourselves without a tyrant setting up rape rooms to savage your women or throwing your young men into meat grinders. Our objective was to allow you to be free and our hope was that a free society would not pay reward money to families who blew up their children in the name of religion.
I don’t know maybe you do need one big dictator, like Saddam instead of the hundreds of small dictators you mentioned, who will bash your heads without mercy and bury your bodies in mass graves. It is not us who bought Al Qaida to Iraq; Saddam was giving aid and comfort by Saddam long before we came. It was your people who invited them in and aided them in attacking Americans and your own families.
The Americans are not your problem; your problem is your religion, as is exemplified by the questions you are asked at the phony checkpoints.
Posted by: Kam | December 22, 2007 at 05:15 PM
It's really a moot point whether Saddam had any connections with terrorists or not. He's dead. He no longer matters. This piece is about the hundreds of little Saddams who have sprung up since Saddam's fall.
It is completely useless at this point to wag one's finger at Saddam and say, "See what a bad person he was?" I think everyone has come to that conclusion. Nevertheless, when Saddam was in power only he, his sons and a few high up in his government went around killing people on a daily basis.
These people have to struggle over life and death issues just to take a taxi ride home. Saddam has absolutely nothing to do with their dilemma. The US's presence in Iraq has everything to do with it. Their dilemma is a direct result of the illegal US invasion of Iraq. To bring up Saddam at this point is to show a lack of understanding of the real situation in Iraq today.
I don't need to buy your book. It sounds like you don't have much knowledge of the situation in Iraq today. I get plenty of incomplete and irrelevent news as it is from the MSM, I don't need to pay more for it.
Posted by: Toeg | December 22, 2007 at 04:34 AM
New book shows Saddam did support al Qaeda and the Taliban:
'Both In One Trench: Saddam's Secret Terror Documents'
http://www.bothinonetrench.com/index2.html
Posted by: Ray Robison | December 20, 2007 at 09:49 PM