ANOTHER IRAQI FREEDOM LOVER SPEAKS
With my brief sarcastic remarks yesterday on last weekend's annual (and dwindling, apparently) anti-liberation rallies, I neglected to point my readers to the other perspective, from inside Iraq. Let me rectify that now.

Husayn has been posting to his blog, Democracy in Iraq since December 04, and on Sunday he wrote an eloquent reflection on the last two years in his country, knowing that around the world that day, the "anti-imperialist movement" would be rallying in support of the "resistance".

So you ask me, Husayn, was it worth it. What have you gotten? What has Iraq acheived? These are questions I get a lot.

To may outsiders, like those who protested last year, who will protest today. This was a fools errand, it brought nothing but death and destruction. I am sheltered in Iraq, but I know how the world feels, how people have come to either love or hate Bush, as though heis the emobdiement of this war. As though this war is part of Bush, they forget the over twenty million Iraqis, they forget the Middle Easterners, they forget the average person on the street, the average man with the average dream.

Ask him if it was worth it. Ask him what is different. Ask him if he would go through it again, go ahead ask him, ask me, many of you have.

Now I answer you, I answer you on behalf of myself, and my countrymen. I dont care what your news tells you, what your television and newspapers say, this is how we feel. Despite all that has happened. Despite all the hurt, the pain, blood, sweat and tears. These two years have given us hope we never had.

Just around three weeks ago, Husayn wrote that he had lost a close family member in a recent terror bombing -- you may remember it, more than a hundred Iraqis died. Husayn's cousin, he wrote, was a peaceful man whose children are now without their father. He said he won't be able to blog as much now, because he needs to take up extra work to help out his cousin's family. I include this just for a background information here, now we go briefly back to his essay on the anniversary:

We have been brought from darkness to light. And not only has the future been made better for Iraq, but the martyrs of our nation, their blood is watering the roots of democracy across the world. We are watching our neighbors come closer to the light, and this only pushes us more, and makes us stronger in our burning desire to reach the finish line, to realize the dream that our people have had for so long.

No, we will not give up, and we will not say that the last two years were a waste. They for all their trouble have been momentus. They for us, have been a turning point in history. Whether or not you agree, this is how it looks from Iraq.

OK, so Agam has found another Iraqi who is glad to be free -- big deal, right? Husayn's blog is only one of many on my sidebar, written by Iraqis who are equally determined to embrace democracy at the end of a long nightmare under their ex-tyrant. But wait -- Husayn was rewarded for his eloquence and idealism by many reader responses, some of which he answers in a follow up post yesterday. While he says the vast majority of responses were positive (his "2 Years" post was mentioned and linked by quite a few other bloggers), it still amazes me that there are people who would be so nasty, and stubbornly anti-everything toward him. Perhaps these few angry respondents may have written in haste, pumped up by the day's anti-America rants and giant puppet heads, and all the wonderful Nazi-like regalia on display, that they couldn't consider their words more carefully. A sample from a reader in Boston:

Sure you have hope, but do your countrymen? Do those who died for imperialism have hope? How does it feel to get robbed for oil by the worlds strongest nation? Talk about these things, and then I might start reading your blog.

A constant refrain of these folks who slam people like Husayn, and the Iraq the Model brothers, are that they are sure they know what it's like in Iraq, better than Iraqi people who live there. Another reader, this one in UK:

Despite what everyone else in the world says, you are saying that things in Iraq are good. Ignorng the fact that everyday bombs are blown up, you are happy. Despite the fact that Americans are wasting money in Iraq, you thank them. May I ask you, are you blind or just stupid?

And there are worse, including someone who writes, "I hope you get yours." It was signed Nameless, to which I would like to add also Brainless and Soulless. Please check out how our Iraqi friend answers these, and note his surprise that there are people in the West who are content to live under dictators (most of these negative insulting stuff came from outside the Arab world, indeed from first world western countries).
- posted by Agam @ 12:06 PM 0 comments

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