Faiza Al-Arji writes at A Family in Baghdad:
A few weeks ago we went to meet a group of some Iraqi detainees out of the occupation force's prisons. We listened to their stories; full of pain, injustice, and torture, and the killing of relatives and loved ones of their families.
I got out of the meeting with my heart squeezed by sadness. I felt myself suffocating because of what is happening of the crimes against humanity in Iraq.
And the stupid international media collaborated to ignore talking about the wasted human rights in Iraq. They agreed to cheer and praise the democratic process, the freedom, transparency, and the empty talk that the silly Bush is propagating, along with the criminals in his administration, since the war on Iraq, till now.
Iraq has turned, due to their malicious policy, into a heap of rubble, on top of, and under which lies the bodies of the Iraqis.
There are different prisons and detention camps, numerous victims of men, women and children, and Iraq has turned into a piece of hell, in which the occupation forces are devastating corruption and shredding. And along with them works sectarian militias, Iraqi or Iranian, the identity is no longer important, but they do waste the innocent Iraqi blood on the streets, in the houses, and everywhere. And the whole world is watching, and no body can stop the Iraqi bloodshed; not the Iraqi government, nor any else.
We have an old proverb saying: when a madman throws a stone into the well, a thousand sane people couldn't remove it out…
And here is Iraq now, if thousands of wise people gathered to solve the chaos and the ruin which the American war against it produced, they wouldn't be able to solve that; for the threads are entangled, the hands are multinomial, and so are the interests.
And we, the Iraqis, are the only victims.............
I suppose you could argue that whether or not the US is loved by the Iraqi people is irrelevant - I wouldn't, but I'd imagine someone would. If Iraq has confidence in their own government, then that's what would really count. But, if Faiza's any measure, they don't.
We can sit here in the US or Canada or Europe and calm ourselves with comforting theories regarding Iraq and the middle east. But so many of the theories are being proven wrong before our eyes. One comforting theory that has died is that democracies don't go to war with each other. Israel's a democracy, Palestine's a democracy, Lebanon's a democracy - theory dead.
From our vantage point, Iraq looks like chaos, from Iraq, it looks like a hopeless disaster. As Faiza says in the same post:
Why don't they stop the outside forces that are assaulting the Arab-Muslim people?
Is the problem a lack of money?
Is it the lack of human resources?
Is it a lack of scientists, intellectuals, and nationalist people in this nation, who want to defend it?
I do not think there is a shortage in any of these items, for we are one of the richest nations, one of the most populated, and we have many scientists, intellectuals, and nationalists among us…
But the dilemma is in these cowardly, corrupt leaderships, who agreed upon the ruin of this nation, present and future.
Behold God, our Lord, and the best of allies.
Iraq is a nation with a cardboard cutout for leadership. The US has become no more than just another militia - no more effective, no more stabilizing, and no less corrupt. We can set up a government, we can have all those purple finger elections, we can shoot the living hell out of the place.
But, once we leave, it's very likely that there won't be any such place as Iraq and the middle east will be even worse off for the meddling of western idiots.
--Wisco
