anti war please respond
* Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq's most famous satirical writer: "Don't these marchers know that the only march possible in Iraq under Saddam Hussein is from the prison to the firing-squad? The Western marchers behave as if the US wanted to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussein."
* Awad Nasser, one of Iraq's most famous modernist poets: "These people are mad. They are actually signing up to sacrifice their lives to protect a tyrant's death machine." (Comment about human shields.)
"Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the United States?" (Comment on antiwar marchers in London, who vociferously welcomed Tony Benn onto the podium, the day after he had appeared on TV to tell the Brits that his friend Saddam was standing for "the little people" against "hegemonistic America")
* Fadel Sultani, president of the National Association of Iraqi authors: "I had a few questions for the marchers. Did they not realize that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent civilians are also forms of war? Are the antiwar 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?"
* Hashem al-Iqabi, one of Iraq's leading writers and intellectuals: "The death and destruction caused by Saddam in our land is the worst since Nebuchadnezzar. These prosperous, peaceful and fat Europeans are marching in support of evil incarnate."
He said that, watching the march in London, 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 "antiwar" discourse: "The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured by a gang of thugs. 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."
Khoi said he would say "ahlan wasahlan" (welcome) to anyone who would liberate Iraq.
* The Iraqi grandmother who was refused the microphone at the London antiwar demonstration. Here's part of the article by Amir Taheri, an Iranian journalist who also used to write for the Guardian (nationalreview). The authoritarian behaviour of protest organizers is scandalous:
'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 "antiwar" marchers in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been to persuade the organizers to let at least one Iraqi voice to be heard. Soon, however, it became clear that the organizers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussein 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.
...
But the bulk of the crowd consisted of fellow travelers, those innocent citizens who, prompted by idealism or boredom, are always prepared to play the role of "useful idiots," as Lenin used to call them.
They ignored the fact that the peoples of Iraq are unanimous in their prayers for the war of liberation to come as quickly as possible.
The number of marchers did not impress Salima, the grandmother.
"What is wrong does not become right because many people say it," she asserted, bidding us farewell while the marchers shouted "Not in my name!"
Let us hope that when Iraq is liberated, as it soon will be, the world will remember that it was not done in the name of Rev. Jackson, Charles Kennedy, Glenda Jackson, Tony Benn and their companions in a march of shame.
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Mark H
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