Anti-war pinko lefty journalist dispatch on Iraq

Article here

We weren’t greeted as liberators…right?


it looked and felt like an entire country's drawing of a deep breath after years of suffocation. Like every woman there, I was swathed in black from head to toe. Throughout the day, I could feel myself being sized up by people, and this, I'll admit, made me a little nervous. No need: when they were sure of the foreignness of my face, people did not insult or attack me. They smiled and said: "Thank you Bush, thank you Blair."

None of this was really surprising. In the months prior to the war, I had spent almost all my time in neighboring, not-so-democratic countries. Among average people, the biggest sentiment expressed about the ever-more-likely prospect of American action in Iraq wasn't "how dare you come to our region and topple a sovereign government!" It was, "jeez - why don't you come here too?" Once in Iraq, when I would get e-mails from concerned friends and family as to whether people hated me because I was an American, I'd laugh. It wasn't the idea of Americans being disliked that cracked me up; it was the idea of Americans being alone on the list, or even in the top ten. Let's see: Iraqis hated the French and the Russians for doing so much business with Saddam. They hated other Arab governments for leaving them to be brutalized by him. They hated the Palestinians for having sided with Saddam in the war of '91, and they hated the Syrians for sending in - or at least allowing the sending-in of --- jihadists to make trouble now. As for anti-American sentiment, that which was most commonly expressed was not against George W. Bush for having taken Saddam out. It was that expressed against George H.W. Bush for not having done so when, as they viewed it, he had had the chance.

...It is true that even the most brilliant, best organized administration would have been hard pressed to bridge the gap between the expectations of Iraqis and the limits of reality - but also true that the U.S. established a tyranny of ineptitude that baffles me to this day. In short, by that time, I would absolutely have bet that as far as the Iraqis were concerned, anything, including Saddam, was better than this. But I had that wrong.


...Finally, what depresses me, and makes me despise so much war criticism even when I agree with it, is that so many of those positing it seem so happy about what's gone wrong. They seem to relish the probability that Iraq will get worse and worse so that they can be righter and righter.

This isn't new.

I remember an anti-war activist who was staying in our hotel in Baghdad, who had not come to Karbala for that first ashura. A good person trying to do good things, she had stayed behind to prepare a media alert on the horrors of the occupation -- which, especially at a time when the coverage out of Iraq was largely very upbeat, was a very worthy thing to be doing. Still, one thing really bothered me about her. When, upon everyone's return from Karbala, the activist heard that the day had actually been free of violence, and full of jubilation, she looked as if she had tasted a bad olive, and spit out her response: "Oh, fuck."


I gravely doubt that the troop surge - so little so late -- will do anything to save Iraq. But for the sake of the Iraqi people, I sure hope it does - even if that helps the Republicans.


Perhaps the most honest lefty appraisal of the war I've heard since it started. The fact that this was made at HuffPo is simply staggering. I can't wait to read the meltdown the readers have in the comments

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