I have received these two pieces (registration required) in an e mail last night, I read them (well, most of them actually) got pissed of, then I thought "why should I bother? It's just another piece of nonsense" so I forgot about them for a while until I saw them this morning again during my morning tour on blogs and I read Ahmed's response to it and I thought I could say a few words.
I think one of the most telling signs of ignorance is when someone pretends to know everything about a subject he's relatively clueless about. I really don't know exactly how informed the authors of these two pieces are about the situation in Iraq before and after the 9th of April but I'm positive that any common Iraqi with ordinary intelligence is way more informed.
There are actually a million stories I can tell to make a comparison between pre and post-Saddam Iraq and to show how dramatically life has improved since April 2003 and the list doesn't necessarily start from the security which is much better off now than under Saddam who murdered 3 million Iraqis during his reign; a figure that dwarfs any post-liberation body count or my salary as a dentist which increased by a hundred folds and doesn't end by the huge change in the Iraqi army that changed from a tool of repression for both, the conscripted soldiers and the civilian population to a security preserving tool that young Iraqis volunteer to join.
Technology and communications had their share too; we moved from a country where your e mail needs two weeks to pass through the filters of the Mukhabarat to a country where people like me can publish their thought to the entire world by a click!
And as our author of honor here is British I'd like to add that before April 2003, being caught while listening to the anti-war BBC radio could throw the listener in jail for indefinite time.
Anyway, if I wanted to talk about every single positive change, I should probably write a book about it as a blog post can't hold all that information.
By European and American standards, Iraq could be considered hell on earth and I agree; life is difficult here, really difficult for many Iraqis and it would be almost impossible for a European or an American but the question here is this: is it more difficult now than under Saddam?
The answer is NO.
What really irritated me was calling the historic January election "fraudulent and meaningless"!
I ask here; what are the proofs for such an insulting statement?
Could it be true that all the 8+ million Iraqis who went to cast their ballots on that day were fools!? And could it be true that those people risked their lives just to please someone!?
I believe the author here used the wrong "weakness point" to attack the administrations/policies he doesn't agree with because he actually offended a whole nation; a nation of men and women who woke up in the morning of that day and each one of them was expecting death on the hands of the terrorists yet that didn't stop them from saying their word.
Saying that Iraq was better off under Saddam is in my opinion similar to saying that Germany was better off under Hitler or that Romania was better off under Ceausescu.
The other brilliant statement of our inspired author is really amazing; I don't know how he reached the conclusion that Iraqi is moving towards having a regime similar to that of Saddam's, which he at the same time portrayed as the worst possible scenario!!
I need you to help me figure this out; if the appearance of a regime similar to that of Saddam and the Ba'ath is the worst thing that can happen, then how could things be better when Saddam himself was in power!?
And what are the signs he saw that made him come up with this theory?
Okay, let me think…
Was it the 1st free election in Iraq in half a century?
Or maybe it was the two peaceful transfers of power within one year?
Or, was it pluralism and the parliament of 275 members who represent all the components of the Iraqi society?
Maybe it's the PM, Jafari who's busting his a** negotiating with the other parties to form a cabinet that ensures national unity?
Maybe I'm not seeing the truth and maybe I'm having confused daydreams after receiving heavy doses of the Bush-Blair propaganda, after all I'm just a simple Iraqi who lived 25 years in Iraq before and after Saddam.
I leave you to decide which perspective is more acceptable.
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