Yesterday, I was coming home from the Gym, tuning in to the news to get
the latest reports on Iraq, Israel and Lebanon etc. when I hear a little
blurb about “hundreds of thousands Iraqis marching
in Baghdad in support of Hezbollah, shouting death
to Israel and death to America”. I’m thinking I
didn’t hear this right, “hundreds of thousands”? So I get home, jump on
the internet and sure enough it’s being reported there as well.
I turn on the radio because now I’m thinking every talk show host
is going to be talking about this. Muqtada al-Sadr
leads “hundreds of thousands” of
Shiite Muslims in an organized march which included stepping and
spitting on images of the American and Israeli flags (previously drawn
on the roads in preparation for the “stepping and spitting”)
while shouting “death to Israel” and “death to America”.
Now correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t Muqtada al-Sadr the guy
who held up in a mosque in Fallujah trying to kill our troops, and who
was later given a position in the interim government and, to the best of
my knowledge is still a very influential cleric?
And, are not the Shiite Muslims the ones who were horribly oppressed and
tortured by Saddam and the Sunni, the ones who danced in the streets and
tore down the images of Saddam and waved American flags by way of saying
“thank you”? I’m confused, and my increasingly
tenuous belief that Iraqis would embrace and fight for freedom and
democracy once they got a taste of it has been thoroughly shaken, and
there is no one analyzing this on the air waves!
I
think about this mess every day. I was, and have
always been, a reluctant supporter of the war for all the reasons stated
innumerable times by the administration: WMD, peace
treaty violations, violations of the seventeen UN Security Council
resolutions, human rights violations, WMD, and on and on and on.
After we ousted Saddam and discovered no WMD, I still felt it was
our duty to stay and secure the country for the Iraqi people and to give
them an opportunity to be free. I believed in the
idea that freedom was catchy. I believed that in the
long run and in the grand scheme of things freedom in that region would
be our best defense against terrorism. It made sense
to me. It is alarming in the extreme to hear that
in a matter of days reportedly “hundreds of thousands” of people in the
city of Baghdad can be organized and rallied to march and spit on our
flag and the Israeli flag in support Hezbollah terrorists, but we can
not get them to organize and rally to grasp freedom and fight for
control of their own country – to spit on terrorism and oppression.
Is this completely hopeless?!