A good friend sent this to me. You may have seen it, but it’s worth “repeating”.
“We have made a lot of mistakes in Iraq. But when Arabs kill Arabs and Shiites kill Shiites and Sunnis kill all in a spasm of violence that is blind and furious and has roots in hatreds born long before America was even a republic, to place the blame on the one player, the one country, the one military that has done more than any other to try to separate the combatants and bring conciliation is simply perverse. It infantilizes Arabs. It demonizes Americans. It willfully overlooks the plainest of facts: Iraq is their country. We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war”
– CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
Thanks Ken.
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I wonder if they were even pregnant. Our heroic soldiers were told to slit them open, and led to believe that a baby would appear.
We in the West have built democracy upon the Magna Carta for nearly a millenium. Iraq, by contrast, is an artificial nation created by the British less than a hundred years ago (not even on maps of 1900) and forced upon disparate segments of Shia, Sunni, Turkmen, and Kurdish civilizations – all with their identities in other nations – for the purpose of guaranteeing British access to regional petroleum.
Sadly – especially for those who have sacrificed much – it wasn’t, and isn’t, a democracy waiting to happen.
Comment by Monte — February 11, 2007 @ 12:16
Sadly, Monte, you may be right. I’ve no doubt there are some who would love the chance to have a voice that others are trying to suppress. If they do finally get their act together, it may just bode ill for us.
Comment by olbroad — February 11, 2007 @ 8:34