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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (94234)	4/17/2003 1:01:53 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 281500

Re Steinbeck. I don't have much time for the left vs. right political baloney. However, I was very happy to see AQ getting whacked in Afghanistan though. OBL and co. were getting entirely out of hand. My only concern was it might not be feasible. The troops did a great job. Similarly, Saddam was breaking the law after gulf war 1. I am very happy he has been whacked too. Troops do another great job. Lesson has been dished out. Now it's well known that the USA can invade your country if they decide to do so. Some had forgotten, and were actually suggesting the legal governments of countries should be overthrown in favor of a religious dictatorship. Exit strategy is now what I am interested in. Sure it could take 20 years, but what's the plan? Otherwise it will be an exercise in how much flypaper can you hold down unfortunately imho. I'm looking forward to Britains and USA governments plans on those fronts. The USA withdrawl from SA should unruffle a few feathers I think.

To: JohnM who wrote (94234)	4/17/2003 2:02:24 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 281500

A lady with real attitude By Paul Belden BAGHDAD - On the first night of bombing in Baghdad, I recall having written about a much-loved young peace activist named Uzma Bashir who had gone to Iraq to serve as a human shield, and whose many friends had gathered in an Amman hotel to hear the latest news from Iraq. They were all very frightened for her safety, I wrote. They needn't have bothered. As it turned out, the bombing campaign didn't hurt Uzma one bit. It did, however, really really piss her off. When the first American tank column arrived in Paradise Park, on the east bank of the Tigris River (the park that later produced the now-famous images of Saddam Hussein's statue being pulled down by an American tank) on the morning of Wednesday, April 9, they met a young woman who was still pulling on her shoes while running out into the roadway holding up a huge hand-lettered sign that read: "How many children did you kill today?" Naturally, one of the tank operators lowered his gun barrel so that it pointed directly at Uzma's face. "Bring it on!" she screamed. "You bastards! Murderers! Go ahead and kill me, you pricks!" Some liberation. And some Uzma, too. In the time since, as US forces have methodically consolidated their hold on the city, the legend of Uzma has grown in the telling, until she has become something of a force of nature in her own right. Nothing seems to stop her, and nothing shuts her up. The US Marines who patrol the east bank of the Tigris River still talk about the candlelight vigil that Uzma organized around a tank. The tank had parked itself outside the Palestine Hotel, and Uzma persuaded about 30 fellow activists to surround it in the dark while holding candles and singing Kumbaya-type campfire songs. "And now we'll observe five minutes of silence for all the civilian casualties," Uzma announced to the crowd, and when the soldier in the tank spoke out of turn, she followed it up with: "And now we'll observe another five minutes of silence for all the civilian casualties of this war." And this time the soldier kept quiet. Seemingly every soldier has heard of her. On hearing her name mentioned in passing, one US Marine told me: "Yeah, we drove over to the the hospital in Saddam City to provide security the other day, and she was standing out front yelling, 'What, did you come to finish them off'!?" As this Marine - who was just a young kid himself, no more than 19 - was telling me this story, he didn't seem to know whether to grin, curse or cry. So he just ended up shaking his head in bewildered wonderment. A fellow peace activist, LaRita Smith, from Mississippi, recalled, "There was one little captain who came out and told us, 'We've come to liberate you', and he didn't know what hit him, you know? Uzma just lit into him, calling him everything in the book. And he just stood there and took it for a while - he was really taking it on the chin - but finally you could see it was getting to him. So finally another soldier came over and very gently removed him from her vicinity. Just guided him gently away. He wasn't the only one, either. When she gets started, some of them start getting mad, you know?" They're not the only ones. "Yeah, my parents saw me on the BBC, and they called to tell me that they weren't impressed," Uzma said. So the legend lives on, and grows in the telling, until it's not likely that many soldiers in this town who happened to cross her path will ever forget the name Uzma. Some of them even have listened to a word or two she has to say. "I managed to bring one soldier to tears," she crowed. atimes.com