This rat resents the comparison...
Posted on 04/10/2003 2:42:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
An excellent decision was made at the very start of the Coalition intervention to liberate Iraq. No British or American flags were to be flown by the arriving troops on Iraqi soil.
This was not to be an invasion, but a strike against an aggressive, sadistic, totalitarian regime. However, I did glimpse an American flag in the streets of Baghdad yesterday.
It was being flourished by an enthusiastic Iraqi civilian, as the statue of the despised dictator was pulled down and broken up. (The surviving plinth, with its pathetic stumps, looked like the famous shot of Stalin’s boots, which were all that was left in the middle of Budapest in 1956.)
Equally heartening but more significant was the other flag that some people produced from somewhere. It was the national flag of Iraq as it had been before Saddam disfigured it in 1990. That year, in order to try and justify the rape of Kuwait, he added a verse from the Koran to the flag and attempted to pose as a Muslim hero. This profanity did not go down well.
Try to imagine the person who treasured a copy of the old national flag, day in and day out, so that it could be waved again on the day of liberation. If it had been discovered in a private home, the owner’s tongue would have been torn out and his family thrown into a wet cellar (if they were lucky).
And what of the man who the statue represented? He seems to be hiding like a rat in the purpose-built political sewer that he constructed for himself and his verminous gang. Let us hope that he is able to surrender to Coalition forces and face a speedy trial, rather than fall into the hands of those who are now pouring out of the jails and the wretched slums that he built for them.
Soon, they will be strolling wide-eyed through the colossal, vulgar palaces that he erected with the sweat of their labour, while pretending that the sanctions were the cause of their misery. These people were evidently not so easily fooled.
I hope I am not alone in finding this demonstration in Baghdad rather more impressive, and more genuine, than the marches through the streets of London, Washington, Paris and Rome.
I wonder when the next such peace march is supposed to be? I really must remember to pencil it in to my calendar, and try and go along. A few weeks ago, the organisers were telling me that there would be heaps and heaps of slaughtered Iraqi civilians, and massive casualties among Coalition troops.
Baghdad would become a Stalingrad, with house- to-house resistance.
Israel would be rocketed, thus providing the pretext for a general regional war. The Arab streets would rise, to spit in the face of Zionism and imperialism.
Well, the Arab streets HAVE finally detonated.
And the only “Stalin” element in Baghdad is as I described above – a clean sweep of Arab de-Stalinisation.
As of yesterday’s tally, the number of American fatalities was still just under one hundred, many of them clumsily and regrettably self-inflicted.
For the British the losses – even more of them sadly “friendly” – are proportionately less. We can’t yet tell how many Iraqi civilians had to die, but we can say with certainty that their deaths were the responsibility of a cruel and vicious regime, which put them in harm’s way as its only military and political asset, and which sent black-shirted Saddam Youth out in marauding gangs to intensify the death agony of the despotism.
And as for the smashed Republican Guard, it is just as well to begin the new Iraq without them.
What will the Arab state television screens choose to show now? In the past few weeks, they transmitted the flashes of night-time bombing to make it look as if Baghdad had been deliberately set ablaze. They did the same when the Ba’athists ignited huge pits of flaming oil a few days ago.
Soon it will become evident to the naked eye that the city is substantially undamaged. It will also become obvious that its inhabitants waited patiently through what must have been very stressful days and nights, trusting and being able to tell that the targeting was careful and the intentions honorable.
One wishes the same could be said for half the newspaper columnists in England. Only on Tuesday I was being told that the single shell on the Palestine Meridien Hotel, which hit some reporters, was a deliberate targeting of the press by American tanks.
Obviously, they wanted to prevent one per cent of the media from transmitting Wednesday’s triumphant images.
In the coming days, we shall see even more scenes of prisons bursting open and mass graves and torture centres being exposed to the light. We shall hear stories that will make us cry, as well as celebrate.
We shall also need to give the inspectors more time! Then the long and tedious task of rebuilding Iraq can begin, and will be subjected to cynical criticism at every turn – by the people whose attitude would have made the liberation impossible in the first place.
But nothing can erase the memory of Baghdad’s dawn.
This rat resents the comparison...
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I think there's one scheduled for the 12th. I'm going to take my signs:
I'm With Stupid=>
Wankers Opposing War! (WOW!)
A Prison for Every Child
I Miss Saddam
OK, No Wars After This One
I will be there. I think it will be my last chance for a while to do rally video ... if, of course, anyone shows up.
Incidentally, International ANSWER is featuring our old pal Fisk as justification for the rallies to continue.
D
Soon, they will be strolling wide-eyed through the colossal, vulgar palaces that he erected with the sweat of their labour, while pretending that the sanctions were the cause of their misery. These people were evidently not so easily fooled.
His swing to the right is probably part of a movement. I'm optimistic, because it's a sign of vitality in our civilization that people can change their minds in the right direction.
His admitted ideology remains: "Pure socialism is good. We just don't find it anywhere, yet."
yitbos
Argument criticizes Bush sr. for not finishing off Hussein.
The "Arab Street" should be made to look upon these truths, not by us but by the Iraqis themselves.
Self determination can only flourish in the light of truth, without that it can not survive. I hope the Iraqi people will understand that.
I'd like to see some credible citations to back up your implied claim that he's still on the left. He's adamant about having people in the USA vote for Bush in 2004.
Arkie, I must be getting dyslexic...I read your post to me yesterday as "he's my favorite columnist" rather than "he's my favorite communist"!
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