Posted on 07/30/2007 5:53:43 AM PDT by .cnI redruM
It wasn't on Ice, but it was a Miracle. Iraq 1- Saudi Arabia 0.
So just how important is athletic competition? I think it’s obvious that it’s more than just a game. On the surface, no one in Baghdad or Tikrit will suddenly have a better life this morning than they did yesterday. However, I doubt any intelligent individual would argue they won’t have a nicer day.
Athletic competition, especially between national teams, matters more than most people would readily admit. People in Iraq are genuinely proud that their soccer team just defeated Saudi Arabia’s 1-0 in the title game of International Soccer’s Asia Cup. Not because they have any reason to dislike the Saudis more than they dislike Iran or Israel for example, but rather because this is the first time since the downfall of Saddam Hussein, they’ve had a reason to collectively high-five as a nation.
Anyone who doesn’t understand the reason Iraqis celebrate this victory wasn’t glued to the front of a television, watching the Lake Placid Olympics, during the dreary winter of 1980. That was the year when our boys in Red, White and Blue beat the Soviet Union’s national team in hockey. I was only eleven at the time, but that mob-scene celebration after we won is a memory that will last a lifetime.
One of my aunts, about the most liberal partisan you’d ever want to meet, still occasionally complains to this day that Team USA scored the go-ahead goal while she was using the rest room. Even with Democrat Jimmy Carter in the White House, she believes it was a Republican conspiracy. In fairness to my aunt, she is a rather rabid hockey fan.
So this is a day on which Iraqis celebrate more than just a well-played soccer game against a deeply-financed and talented opponent. The new Iraq may have just come of age. International Soccer probably didn’t quite make the list of eighteen benchmarks we wanted the Iraqis to work on, but who can argue that this particular collective enterprise of the Iraqi nation didn’t just deliver the mail?
Realists would stipulate that Iraq still has enough problems to give God a migraine. They have to figure out how to work together off a soccer pitch as well. However, the process of truly becoming a new nation may have started last night. People from every region and religious background in Iraq put it together and seriously kicked some butt.
That can’t be the sort of thing that Osama Bin Ladin or Harry Reid wants to see happening on a regular basis. No one can claim the US just handed them this one. The Iraqis reached out and took it as theirs. Those of us who want the Iraqis to build a new nation in the face of both Al Qaeda and the anti-war movement in the United States greet the conquering Iraqi Soccer Team with one word.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was an incredible win and it will show the Iraqis that they can accomplish anything if they work together. The US will miss their best opportunity if they don’t capitalize on that and make sure that sentence is repeated every day in ads on TV, posters, repeated on radio and in conversation.
Very proud of them, but part of me thinks they should be building schools for their children and ensuring militias aren’t taking over their neighborhoods rather than kicking a stupid ball around.
You wrote that it would be better to build schools than to kick a ball around.
Everything has its importance. It’s called a well-rounded life. Give them a break! They’ve had so many horrible years, can’t they just have one day where they win something?
This moment of shared victory did more towards building a cohesive, terror-resistant Iraq than a whole armoured brigade.
They should kick the “stupid ball” around some more.
Amen - it’s a damn healthy thing for the country’s ‘tude, and the best use I’ve ever seen for the “sport.”
everyone is talking about the possibility of civil war in Iraq. This is the kind of thing that unites the country
your comment makes a point.........
young fit iraqi men, playing a game, while Americans fight for their freedom..........????
a diferent perspective?
You’re right of course. Like I said, it was a part of me. A larger part is absolutely stoked to hear that those raghead Saudis took it in the shorts from a country pockmarked with car bombs.
All that training Uday made them do with concrete soccer balls after a loss must have paid off. /s
Amen.
You'll be happy to know that schools ARE being built and Iraqi's ARE ensuring militias aren't taking over their neighborhoods.
Lighten up.
Of course you're right. Let's make the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL illegal this very moment. Let's abolish all college sports, too, since those draft-dodging weasels are only in college to avoid military service anyway. Anything else is an abdication of our national collective responsibility!!
(Do I really need the tag?)
how many pulled their tops off to show their sport bra?
Given your vast concerns on the matter, I’m amazed you haven’t signed up yourself and volunteered. You could set the example for all those recalcitrant Iraqi footballers and carry The White Dude’s Burden.
You seem condescending enough to look at it that way. A different perspective? Sheesh....
Kill our enemies whom we happen to find there - fine with me.
Spend a drop of American blood trying to make them into something they're not - obscene.
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