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

To: Michael Watkins who wrote (153323)	12/4/2004 7:39:34 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Do you have anything to say to the modern victims of tyranny? Yes, indeed I do. I shall write this as coming from your hand: Dear Iraqi Citizen, So, Michael Watkins, what would you write to this Iraqi citizen? iraqithoughts.blogspot.com Anyways I decided to start writing about stories and experiences of being an Iraqi living all over the world, as I realised I have so many interesting ones from the time an American news agency interviewed me and my two friends in the streets of London in the summer on the day Uday and Qusay were served their justice, to the time I was arrested and charged with crimes I didn't commit just because my passport (not my Iraqi one) had Baghdad, Iraq as my birthplace. Bad things do happen to Iraqis outside Iraq to you know and we all have to pay the price for the actions of a murderous few who make more than 25 million people look like criminals. Today I would like to recall a story from my last year of university in Canada, I was sitting at my University's Tim Hortons (Canada’s equivalent to Starbucks) when a Pakistani girl (no disrespect to Pakistinis I am sure they are not all this way) comes round to the table me and a bunch of people were sitting down at and she is like I am invitttttinggggg you and allll offfff youuuuu tto a rrrrrally to get US troops out Iraq ………..I got filled with rage…… I was like what? Are you kidding me? She is like what do you mean? and her being female and being male maybe I shouldn’t have shouted at her, but after hearing from my relatives how glad they were they no longer had Saddam around and being shortly after the fall of the dictator I had no other way than to be angry. So I shouted and asked her: ARE YOU IRAQI? She was like no but I am a Muslim, I said what does that have to do with anything? Are you from Iraq? She was like nope, I said have u ever been to Iraq? She said nope again and finally I said do you have family there ? She started getting angry and said nope. I said well I am Iraqi, I lived in Iraq and I have family there and I won’t allow you to walk around here promoting civil war in my country and endangering the lives of my family and friends there. She was in shock, she was like there is no need to be rude, I told her that if I came and threatened her family wouldn’t you get rude? She said she just wanted the Americans to stop killing Iraqis. I said where were you for over 20 years? Why do Iraqi lives all of a sudden mean so much to you? What about the innocent Pakistinis being brainwashed into murderers? Then she gave me the line I have heard a million and one times ‘Yes Saddam was bad but US is worse’. I swear I wanted to punch her right then and there…… but of course I didn’t …. I said to her if it wasn’t for the West you wouldn’t be here in this country, Canada free to wear your hijab free to express your opinions and free to organise rallies, why do you want to rob the Iraqi people of the same privelges? I guess now I hit the wrong buttons, she was like there is no need to show off in front of your friends and I said this isn’t a game I am playing. I am not showing off, I am defending my people for too many years we had no voice and now when slowly we are regaining our voices you and your friends are organising rallies to kill our voices once again. I asked her, ' Do I go around the campus organising rallies against Musharaf or Kashmir? Nope I don’t even though I am Muslim and they are Muslims I don’t live there nor do I have the right to speak about a place I haven’t been, so the same applies to you.' My friends were all shocked too, they hadn’t seen me so angry in a while and I guess it was built up frustration and I was happy cause I put her down nice and made her look dumb…… Every thing she argued I disproved, and I used facts and she used the media and then I realised forget this she is not worth it, just because she is religious doesn't mean she is right so we ended our argument and she left, my friends couldn't stop laughing, they thought I was trying to be an asshole on purpose but I really wasnt. Then a couple of weeks later I bump into her walking around campus and she has the audacity to come say to me ‘I am sorry I did not mean to embrass you in front of your friends!’ I was like embarrass me? You only embarrassed yourself and tell all your non-Iraqi friends before they want to go and care and talk about Iraq to find out why it is a country of 25 million plus fell in 21 days. Tell them to also go watch videotapes of Halabjah and I offered to lend them my copy so they could see what we were going through, she didnt even seem like she knew what happened in Halabjah. If our conversation was to happen right now today I would add things like why is it so many Iraqis are running for office? Are they all agents and spies? Why is it that wages for a lot of people are better? Why is it the insurgents are so desperate that they carry out the most heinous crimes? I wish I could see her now so I could shout at her once again but sadly I left Canada and don’t live there anymore. I guess the built up anxiety in me is a result of so many of these kinds of stories…… I even have one where I went to an anti-war rally…. I went because I do believe in peace and I really wish Saddam could have been gotten rid of some other way but I am a realist and can't protest the removal of Saddam if there was no solid other way ( WAKE UP UN) . Anyways that was today’s story and I'll write a different one in a couple of days. iraqithoughts.blogspot.com Most Iraqis are grateful Hussein is dispossessed and they aren't that pleased the US invaded them to do it, they aren't grateful for the ongoing violence, they are pleased they have a right to speak out now and they are angry the terrorists are trying to eliminate it. Some of them are grateful to the US, some resent it, some are indifferent. Nadine is right: the US did a good deed when it changed its ME policy from supporting dictators and invaded Iraq. That its reasons for doing so were manifold and even self interested doesn't change that. I don't think she or most other Americans think all Iraqis ought to be grateful (and saying so is part of an ad hominum argument designed to avoid the fact a tyrannical government was brought down and that that's a good thing). It is a reasonable expectation some Iraqis are grateful to the US and some not. Calling up Cold War policy (eg tolerating tyrannical governments) in an effort to invalidate present corrections of that policy (eg attacking tyrannical governments) is illogical. That was then. This is now. New times, new circumstances. If you oppose dispossessing a tyranny, then what is your message to the victims of tyranny? This is not an unreasonable question and labelling it as an expression of sanctimony doesn't change its validity.