re: littletee...18 italians dead in iraq - what a
Not too deep thinker i suspect.:
Sunday, November 2, 2003
It's slow going, yes, but Iraq is getting better each day
By JOHANN HARI BRITISH COLUMNIST
I want one person to dare to write to this newspaper and say with a straight face and a clear conscience that the Iraqi people would be better off now if we had left Saddam Hussein in power. Just one.
I sense a pen somewhere hitting paper. Pause a moment. Forget that fewer than 5 percent of Iraqis have told pollsters -- in the tens of scientific surveys so far -- they want Saddam back, if you must. Think about this. Barely a decade ago, the marshes of southern Iraq were home to 400,000 hunters, fishermen and boaters, living as part of a delicate ecosystem so lush that it was long considered to be the location of the Garden of Eden. Their homes were built on floating islands made from reeds. They had inhabited this peaceful, self-sufficient world for five millennia.
But then Saddam seized control of their country. He damned the Marsh Arabs as "lawless gypsies" and set about "civilizing" them. Desperate to preserve their way of life, they made a mistake. They trusted President George H.W. Bush in 1991 when he said the United States would back this persecuted minority if they rose up to overthrow Saddam. They did; and Poppa Bush stood by while Saddam drained and poisoned their swamps, butchered their leaders, burned scores of their villages and drove the survivors into desert slums. He had much of their water diverted for his personal enjoyment, to create artificial lakes around his palaces. Emma Nicholson, the Liberal Democrat peer who has been one of the few public figures in England to champion the unfashionable Marsh Arabs, accurately describes Saddam's behavior as genocidal.
This time last year, I visited a Marsh Arab family crammed into a tiny straw hut in the stinking heat in the Iraqi desert. It was not their poverty or grief -- overwhelming though they were -- that changed my mind and made me resolve to support the military overthrow of this Stalinist tyranny. It was the fact that in this -- the tiny patch of sand and straw that remained to them -- they were forced to hang a vast, menacing portrait of the man who had done all this.
If British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush had listened to the opponents of the war, they would still be festering in that shack. Instead, the marshes are being flooded with water once again. After the liberation (not a word Marsh Arabs scoff at), they began to hack away at the dams that destroyed their lives and sympathetic officials have opened the massive al-Karkha dam to help them. Blair always said, "The greatest beneficiaries of the war will be the Iraqi people." No, this is not the primary reason why we went to war but the liberation of the Marsh Arabs was an entirely predictable result of military action -- and many of you marched to stop it.
The marshes will not be redeemed overnight. Ecosystems cannot be re-created easily -- if at all -- but Emma Nicholson's research indicates that a third of the marshlands could still be revived. You can support her campaign -- and alleviate your anti-war conscience -- at www.amarappeal.com. Even very skeptical journalists who have interviewed the Marsh Arabs admit that they welcomed the war.
Do you imagine that the people launching savage attacks on aid agencies in Baghdad care about the Marsh Arabs? Do you delude yourself that they care about the Iraqi people at all? Thugs have blown up the United Nations and Red Cross headquarters. What more will it take for good liberal people who opposed the war to realize that these are not democrats who want a decent Iraq? What kind of Iraq do you suppose these bombers want to build?
You might have doubts about America being a friend of Iraqi democracy -- given their one-time backing for Saddam and myriad tyrants, all sane people should -- but you can be absolutely certain that the bombers -- attackers of the Red Cross -- are its resolute enemy. America helped the Kurds to build democracy in Northern Iraq; neither jihadists nor Baathists have ever built democracy anywhere. America offers some hope; the bombers, none. Any possibility of a better Iraq is being shaken with every blast. Of course, we should not play their game by exaggerating the bombers' successes. Ninety percent of the attacks are happening in just 5 percent of the country, so most Iraqis, and most coalition troops, are unaffected by these attackers.
The real danger confronting us in Iraq is not from free-lance bombers. They can murder aid workers, but they cannot defeat us. The risk is, instead, that opinion back home will cave in to the tiny minority -- mostly, it seems, non-Iraqis -- who are attacking American troops. Brits and Americans are beginning to assume -- in defiance of all the evidence from piles of opinion polls -- that the coalition is not wanted by the Iraqi people.
The real picture, away from the frantic TV cameras, is that Iraq is getting steadily better by the day. Iraqi teachers today are earning between 12 and 15 times their Saddam-era salaries and almost every primary and secondary school is now open. Doctors' salaries have octupled and 22 million vaccination doses have been given to Iraqi children. The Kurds have never been happier or safer (they have, for over a decade now, been living in a thriving democracy on the land clawed back from Saddam in the first Gulf War, but they wanted the threat of Saddam removed forever). All of Iraq's 240 hospitals and 400 courts are open and in business; 40,000 police are on duty.
Yet Iraq has become a magnet for international jihadists who venture across the world, from Afghanistan to Chechnya to Palestine. The notion of an Arab country moving toward the depravity of democracy (as opposed to rule by the Word of God) horrifies them. They care nothing for hospitals or schools. I have interviewed jihadists in both London and the Occupied Territories, and they believe, like old-style Marxist revolutionaries, that it is a good thing if material conditions get far, far worse under the corrupt current system, because this will precipitate a revolution. With these people prepared to make conditions far worse for the Iraqi people, a massive amount of disruption can be achieved with minimal manpower -- a few thousand jihadists in a country of 23 million.
These attacks are calculated to undermine our will to carry out a proper transition to Iraqi self-rule, along the path that has already been traveled by the Kurds in the North. A hasty withdrawal would give Islamic theocrats or recidivist Baathists a far better chance of seizing power than free elections.
All decent people, including those who opposed the war, must now work to establish a consensus in Britain and the United States behind the path that Iraqis, in every single poll of their opinion, are begging us to take: stay for a few years to ensure a transition to democracy, resist the fascistic bombers attacking those who have come to help and gradually accord more and more power to the Governing Council in advance of elections.
A bomb will always get bigger headlines than a slowly refilling marsh or a burgeoning school but we must keep focusing on the big picture. Nobody wants the occupation to continue indefinitely. Iraqi democracy is getting closer every day. We must keep siding with the Iraqi people, not the bombers who want to drive away their doctors and peacekeepers.
Johann Hari writes for The Independent in Great Britain.
***** November 04, 2003, 8:15 a.m. Hacks of Baghdad The cabbie read of Iraq.
By Steven Vincent
BAGHDAD, IRAQ — If you want to feel the pulse of a city — or so the saying goes — talk to local cabbies. Personally, I've found this advice rather ill-advised in New York, where taxi drivers are more likely to offer some alarming conspiracy theory than rough-hewn wisdom from the street. In Baghdad, though, the chestnut is true: Cabbies are good meters of public opinion. Ranging from working-class guys to teachers and other professionals forced by economic hardship to drive for a living, these men are generally honest and observant. Best of all, they're mostly pro-American.
When asked about their opinion of the U.S., drivers will smile, brush their palms together in a "good riddance" gesture and crow, "Saddam gone! America good!" Others will flash the thumbs-up gesture and exclaim, "America, thank you!" One cabbie became so worked up over the liberation of his country, he exclaimed, "We love U.S.A., do you believe me? They bring us freedom! We need U.S.A!" Worried, perhaps, that I was not American (I try to avoid revealing my nationality unless directly questioned), he added, "We also need Britain, Spain, Poland — even Turkey!"
Some cabbies, however, take a more temperate view of the U.S. "America not good, not bad," one driver mused. "Right now good, because they want what we want. But in the future — ?" Another told me, "Bush finish Saddam — good. Now America go home" — a sentiment echoed by many of his colleagues. Others express qualified support for the occupation, but complain about the slow restoration of law and order: "Iraq people very tired. When will America bring peace?"
Occasionally, you meet cabbies who are straightforwardly anti-U.S. "America no good," one maintained. "We thought when American people come we sleep safe in our homes. But no, Iraqi people very afraid. When I drive, my mother prays I have no troubles with thieves, fedayeen, the U.S. Army." The more critical the hack, I've found, the greater the chances he is a Sunni Muslim: Long favored by Saddam, Sunnis stand the most to lose in a democratic Iraq, where power will almost certainly shift to the more numerous Shias. This, in part, explains one Sunni's diatribe: "America good only for America, not Iraqi people. Where are their promises of security, jobs, peace? Where is freedom?" When I asked what "freedom" meant he replied, "Good government respectful of Islam — not freedom to drink alcohol on the streets or believe what you want or have women do what they want." I had the feeling this last possibility was the real scenario he feared.
Still, even the most anti-American drivers treat me with respect. Which is good, considering that cabs are my main means of transport (unlike many NGOs and high-profile journalists, I can't afford to thunder around town in a dreadnought-like SUV). They are ubiquitous, these groaning, rattling, overheating Volkswagen Passants, Chevy Malibus, and Nissan Sunny Super Saloons, each car a marvel of mechanical persistence in the face of ten years of crippling sanctions. Windows fail to open, upholstery is torn or nonexistent, shocks are gone, while exhaust fumes frequently seep into the vehicle's interior, adding another nuance to Baghdad's palette of aromas. The windshields of many cabs are spider webbed with cracks and bullet holes from the war: In one cab, you could actually trace the trajectory of projectiles as they pierced the front window and burrowed into the upholstery of the backseat. By the same token, even though newer cabs increasingly appear on Baghdad streets, many drivers — and their fares, as well — prefer these broken-down jalopies, believing they make less-attractive targets for carjackers and thieves.
Cabbies work 12-hour shifts, making around $7.50 working days, and $8.00 working nights — a "good:" amount, one driver told me. Fares are incredibly cheap: to travel four miles from my hotel to Coalition headquarters I offer $2.00 — an amount some Iraqi hacks have actually refused, claiming it's too much. (Fortunately for these drivers, gas is also inexpensive, around 15 cents a gallon.) In a small, but telling, detail of Iraqi life, a single passenger rides in the front seat — to sit in the back, New York-style, implies that you are somehow subservient to the driver, a gaffe abhorrent to the Arab sense of egalitarianism.
Not everyone agrees with my informal cab poll. An Iraqi woman critical of both the U.S. and her own people argues that "Iraqis always curry favor from whoever's in power. If Saddam ever came back, the taxi drivers would sing `Oh, Father Saddam, we love you." Perhaps (although I doubt it). Still, how would she explain this cabbie, perhaps my most memorable in Baghdad to date? A big, burly, genial fellow, he picked me up on al-Rasheed Street, his Super Saloon festooned with strips of artificial flowers and the familiar 1970's rock-star-like images of the Shia icons Hussein and Ali. When I asked for his opinion on the occupation, he bellowed, "U.S. good! U.S. fantastic!" After I revealed that I was American, he cried, "God bless President Bush!" Calling Karl Rove, I thought.
Over the tape-recorded sermons of a Shia cleric, my driver related how last spring he took his two children on a pilgrimage to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf, something he couldn't do under Saddam. "I was so happy, my family happy!" His comments began tumbling out one after another. First he criticized "Arab media — Al-Jazeera and Arabia TV. They only say bad things about U.S., only talk about bombs and killing Americans. Never about how things are growing in Iraq, getting better." Then he turned to the entire Arab world. "They fear Iraq will become a democracy, then every country will want to become democratic and the rulers will be in trouble-they only want people with one thought, one mind." As for Iraq's future, he had great optimism, provided that the new constitution included religious freedom for everyone — "Muslims, Christians, Jews, because Mohammad said 'Let there be no forcing of religion.' Mohammad said we are all brothers and to kill a man is to kill your brother."
By the time I reached my hotel, I had a Koran-sized lump in my throat. I peeled off a wad of dinars, but the cabbie refused to take the money. After I implored him to accept payment, he finally took the bills, slipped them in his shirt pocket, then took them out and handed them back to me. "You give me the money, now I give it back to you — a gift to my friend from America." Then, turning up the volume on the imam's sermon, he gave me a big missing-toothed smile and drove off in a cloud of exhaust. Watching him disappear into traffic, I had tears in my eyes, and they weren't from the Baghdad smog.
— Steven Vincent is a freelance writer. He's previously written from Iraq
