Who Listens To The Iraqis? What Iraqi Poets And Authors Say

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(excerpt #1)

"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" asked the Iraqi grandmother.

I spent part of last Saturday with the so-called "anti-war" marchers in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been to persuade the organisers to let at least one Iraqi voice be heard. Soon, however, it became clear that the organisers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussain in Iraq.

The Iraqis had come with placards reading "Freedom for Iraq" and "American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti tyranny!"

But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and distributed among the "spontaneous" marchers, were allowed. These read "Bush and Blair, baby-killers," " Not in my name," "Freedom for Palestine" and "Indict Bush and Sharon."

Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war. The goons also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people to death in 1988....

(excerpt #2)
..."Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the United States?" Nasser the poet demanded.

The Iraqis would have had much to tell the "anti-war" marchers, had they had a chance to speak. Fadel Sultani, president of the National Association of Iraqi authors, would have told the marchers that their action would encourage Saddam to intensify his repression.

"I had a few questions for the marchers," Sultani said. "Did they not realise that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent civilians are also forms of war? Are the anti-war marchers only against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?"

Sultani could have told the peaceniks how Saddam's henchmen killed dissident poets and writers by pushing page after page of forbidden books down their throats until they choked.

'Deep moral pain'

Hashem Al Iqabi, one of Iraq's leading writers and intellectuals, had hoped the marchers would mention the fact that Saddam had driven almost four million Iraqis out of their homes and razed more than 6,000 villages to the ground.

"The death and destruction caused by Saddam in our land is the worst since Nebuchadnez-zar," he said. "These prosperous, peaceful and fat Europeans are marching in support of evil incarnate."
He said that, watching the march, he felt Nazism was "alive and well and flexing its muscles in Hyde Park."

Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoi, Iraq's foremost religious leader for almost 40 years, spoke of the "deep moral pain" he feels when hearing the so-called " anti-war" discourse.

"The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured by a gang of thugs," Khoi said. "The proper moral position is to fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for the torturers and total contempt for the victim."

Ismail Qaderi, a former Ba'athist official but now a dissident, wanted to tell the marchers how Saddam systematically destroyed even his own party, starting by murdering all but one of its 16 original leaders.

"Those who see Saddam as a symbol of socialism, progress and secularism in the Arab world must be mad," he said.

Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq's most famous satirical writer, added his complaint. "Don't these marchers know that the only march possible in Iraq under Saddam Hussain is from the prison to the firing squad?" he asked. "The Western marchers behave as if the U.S. wanted to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussain."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles...le.asp?ID=6419

The Iraqi people are begging for relief from their tyrant. Yet the anti-war crowd just doesn't care to listen. Do the sincere anti-war activists just assume they know what is best for the Iraqi people? How arrogant. Why don't they listen to what the Iraqis are saying??? Every Saturday there is an Iraqi demonstration calling for liberation of Iraq, held in _______ Square (sorry I forgot the name of the square since I read of it several days ago and I only have 3 minutes to edit this post).

God forbid that the anti-war crowd should ever be under the heel of a Saddam, a Hitler or a Stalin: the irony of having to endure the interminable horrors and listen to demonstrators and politicians saying a war of liberation would be the worst choice for them, would surely be enough to drive one mad.

[IrishHand]

You spend an awful lot of time and energy arguing against nobody on this one. Everyone agrees that Hussein is a bad guy, and Iraq would be better off with a good guy (or guys) in power. It's the killing lots of them in order to install our guy (good or bad is open to debate) that people have a problem with.

Likewise, your "anyone is better than him" argument is worthless. While the odds certainly favor that eventuality, I'm certain you appreciate the immorality of gambling with a nation's future. A better approach would be to argue for an actual solution, as opposed to "any solution is fine so long as he's gone". There are lots of potentially good solutions. Getting rid of him and figuring it out later isn't one of them.

The issue isn't whether the Iraqi people have a dictator - the issue is how to deal with it. Is it our responsibility? You apparently think it is, I think that's an arrogant, ethnocentric, egocentric viewpoint - it's based on the idea that not only are we better, but we will make them better just like us. (The first is defensible, the second not.) And even if you believe it is our responsibility to fix the world's ills, there are a lot of other ways to encourage or force regime change (this country practically wrote the book on the topic) as opposed to launching an all-out military invasion.

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Apparently you missed the point Irish.

The Iraqi people want a war of liberation--casualties and all--and they've been calling for one--but they can't have it without help.

The people who "have a problem with it", as you put it, aren't the Iraqis--the Iraqis are the ones who for years have been calling for action to remove Saddam by force (since they believe that is the only way he can be removed).

[IrishHand]

The 'people' I was referring to were those discussing these issues on this forum.

[adios]

The "ant-war" protesters don't give a damn about the plight of the Iraqi people who have to heel under the oppressive boot of Hussein. I would think that they would be embarassed in their inhibiting free speech but I doubt if they are. Who's funding these protesters anyway? As someone pointed out in another post "follow the money" and I think you'd find some very interesting financiers of the protestors.

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So some people outside Iraq are basically the ones opposed to war, while the Iraqi people have been calling for forcible removal of Saddam for a very long time.

Put in this light, who's really the "arrogant" side in this matter: those outsiders who resist the idea of giving the Iraqis what they want and have been asking for (which is deliverance from Saddam by forcible means), or those outsiders who are willing to step in and provide this desperately needed relief?

I think the answer should be obvious--especially since those who resist a war of deliverance are doing so despite the stated wishes of the Iraqi people and the Iraqi exile groups.

[IrishHand]

My heater doesn't work, and without it I will be very cold this winter. I'd like you to fly here and fix it. (I consider this the only solution, and furthermore, you have a moral obligation to do so, since I might freeze to death otherwise.) Thanks.

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IrishHand: "My heater doesn't work, and without it I will be very cold this winter. I'd like you to fly here and fix it. (I consider this the only solution, and furthermore, you have a moral obligation to do so, since I might freeze to death otherwise.) Thanks."

That's a despicable parallel--you should be deeply ashamed of trivializing the plight of the Iraqi people, and further you are mocking the fact that they cannot help themselves out of this dilemma alone. This is probably the most obscene post I have ever read on this forum.

Try this parallel:

Half of my family's been killed by kidnappers, and they're holding the rest of us. They're torturing my child now as we speak. This has been going on for years and nobody is helping us. Please come and save us from the thugs because we are powerless to fight them all by ourselves.

response: You guys are better off being tortured and held by the kidnappers because some of you might get killed if we intervene, and it's none of our business. In fact we're going to organize demonstrations to try to convince others not to help you either.

Now that's a little more parallel.

But your response is worse by far. You are essentially saying that they have a non-problem and that they're idiots to not be able to fix it themselves, and further, that they are jerks for asking for help.

You have demonstrated both a complete lack of empathy and an inability to draw meaningful parallels with this post. In addition this is a very mean-spirited post, written in a particularly insidious manner. You are on my ignore list now (the first ever!) and I'll just say that I find your views truly disgusting. In fact after this last post of yours I have actually developed a greater revulsion towards you than towards anyone I can recall meeting in the last decade or longer, and I'm pretty sure this is reflective of your true character.

If you saw some kids torturing a dog to death--would you intervene or would you laugh? I think anyone who reads through your post in context and sees the underlying psychology at work might already know the answer to that question.

[brad]

we helped theiu out pretty good. but the damn ungrateful people didnt thank us.

[IrishHand]

What on God's earth are you ranting on about? I wasn't drawing a parallel - I'm completely serious. My heater doesn't work and both I and my pets have been cold for the last month. I have read your posts, and come to the conclusion that you would be highly motivated to come fix my heater. I have expressed to you my need, and you are both in a position to fix my need and would feel morally inclined to ensure that I have heating, such that I might experience the same positive, happy and warm life that you do.