America should help rebuild Iraq, says Iraqi ambassador

WP: 'Having helped liberate it, America should also share in the rebuilding the country’s infrastructure and educating its children, which will require the participation of international companies, he said.

“But (the ones competing for contracts) are mostly from India, China, Italy, Turkey, Germany, not so much from the United States. The United States is the country that paid the highest price for Iraq to be turned around. We would like the United States to be at the front of the line, not at the end of the line.'

Sulaymaniya liberated 20 years ago today

"The 1991 Uprising in As Sulaymaniyah or Silêmanî was one of biggest 1991 uprisings in Iraq. As Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish city of over 100,000 population was the first Iraqi city to be captured by rebels and the last one to fall."

It's interesting to see the uprisings of 2011 happening 20 years after the Iraqi uprising of 1991. Hopefully this time the dictators actually fall, and the people will have real democracy and freedom.

All in the name of liberty

"There is no overstating the importance of the fact that these Arab revolutions are the works of the Arabs themselves. No foreign gunboats were coming to the rescue, the cause of their emancipation would stand or fall on its own. Intuitively, these protesters understood that the rulers had been sly, that they had convinced the Western democracies that it was either the tyrants’ writ or the prospect of mayhem and chaos.

So now, emancipated from the prison, they will make their own world and commit their own errors. The closest historical analogy is the revolutions of 1848, the Springtime of the People in Europe. That revolution erupted in France, then hit the Italian states and German principalities, and eventually reached the remote outposts of the Austrian empire. Some 50 local and national uprisings, all in the name of liberty." --Fouad Ajami

Bill Clinton wanted to liberate Iraq too

'The Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 is a United States Congressional statement of policy calling for regime change in Iraq.[1][2] It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

The Act found that between 1980 and 1998 Iraq had:

1. committed various and significant violations of International Law,
2. had failed to comply with the obligations to which it had agreed following the Gulf War and
3. further had ignored Resolutions of the United Nations Security Council.

The Act declared that it was the Policy of the United States to support "regime change." The Act was passed 360-38 in the U.S. House of Representatives [3] and by unanimous consent in the Senate. [4] US President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on October 31, 1998. The law's stated purpose was: "to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq." '

The Fall of a Tyrant

I will always remember April 9 as Liberation Day for Iraq. Most Iraqis agree that Saddam had to go, although we do not agree on how he was deposed. I wish Iraqis were able to overthrow him and his regime in 1980. I'm sure Germans wished they were able to overthrow Hitler in 1940. Some tyrants will do anything to maintain power, and Saddam did plenty. Iraqis do not miss him.



Photo taken from facebook group I HATE ANYONE WHO LOVES SADDAM HUSSEIN

Hell no we won't surrender

Sometimes I feel like I should start a post by reminding people that I was born in Iraq, but I spent most of my life in the US. I am Americanized for sure, but I still care a great deal about Iraq, always have. Many of my feelings towards George (Dubya) Bush are conflicted. I had conflicted feelings about the war, before it was launched. I knew innocent people would die, like in 1991. But when I saw George Bush get on TV in 2003 and say to the world that Saddam and his filthy sons had 48 hours to leave Iraq, I felt great happiness. I thought "FINALLY" somebody powerful stepped up and did the right thing. George Bush is the cowboy who brought the end to the Arab Stalin, the unelected leader of a regime that mass murdered Iraqis before its fall and continued to murder Iraqis after the liberation.

Mine is an Iraqi American's perspective. I care about all the middle east, all of humanity, actually. So does Fouad Ajami, another Arab American. I have written about Fouad Ajami and posted his articles before. I cannot hide my admiration for this man, who is hated by many Arabs for his unwavering support for George Bush and the war against the terrorists and tyrants of the middle east. Mr. Ajami has always written about Saddam's horrors. I find it interesting that Ajami could not gain tenure at Princeton in the early 70s, maybe because he "made for himself there as a vocal supporter of Palestinian self-determination." Today he's a strong supporter of the war and George Bush. I suspect there are many Bush supporters who also support Palestinian self-determination and statehood. I believe President Bush advocates Palestinian statehood. Ajami's recent article No Surrender is another good one, although I do not necessarily agree that "Baghdad was the proper return address" in response to 9/11. Riyadh was the proper return address for 9/11. The US military was in Iraq in 1991, I'm sure Mr. Ajami remembers well, and he might agree that 1991 was the proper time to overthrow Saddam's murderous regime. In March 1991 the US and its allies (including Saudi Arabia) had already bombed Iraq (for 40 consecutive days and nights) and drove Saddam's army out of Kuwait. US troops were 50 miles from Baghdad when they were ordered to retreat. That was after the coalition bombing and destruction, right before the uprising. It took 9/11 for the US to take down Saddam. We can discuss what should have been, but we cannot change the past - it is what it is, right or wrong. The US avoided occupation and mayhem by retreating in 1991. I have argued before that Iraqi peace and democracy would have been much easier to achieve in 1991 than in 2003. For Iraqis the difference between 1991 and 2003 was 12 years of miserable sanctions and more mass murder. Most Iraqis I know left Iraq in the 1990s.

In the spring of 1991 most American soldiers returned home (a few stayed in KSA and Kuwait) to participate in an economy that soon boomed after the war. Some Americans like Anthony Arnove became even more concerned about Iraq and wrote about the devastating sanctions, some people were angry about the conditions in Iraq throughout the 1990s, and even George Clooney starred in a movie that highlighted Iraqis' suffering (not enough, imo, but the movie wasn't about the suffering of Iraqis). Most Americans, however, didn't seem to care. Even when told that some 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result of sanctions, Bill Clinton's Secretary of State said it was worth it. But removing Saddam's murderous regime, even if it results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, is not worth it. OK. Bad water and lack of medicine kills innocent Iraqis, but it is a silent death. Few people noticed in the 90s. A few Americans wrote books and raised some awareness, and the mainstream media caught the Secretary of State saying something stupid once, but there was no Code Pink in the 1990s. I don't remember any non-Iraqi Arabs complaining about Iraqi women's rights back then. Two words can describe most Iraqis' experience during the decade of the 1990s: it sucked. It took a long time for a powerful nation to stand up to the tyrants of Iraq. Iraqis have paid in so many horrible ways, awaiting liberation and democracy. Iraqis continue to struggle. But Iraqis and Americans won't surrender. We won't allow terrorists, in the guise of Islam or Arab nationalism, to take Iraqis hostage again. Iraq will be free, and with the help of America. Get used to it. The result will be a peaceful and prosperous democracy in Iraq, free of tyranny and Islamic extremism, for the first time in decades.

The Liberation

Last weekend I visited my relatives in Virginia. Their large family spent four miserable years in one of Saddam's jails because one of their older sons, who was forced to fight against Iran, decided to defect. I wrote about their story in my first post. Their son Rasool fled Iraq in 1991 and moved to Germany. His brother Haider joined him a few years later. The parents left Iraq in 1992 and moved to the Washington, DC, area to live with their oldest son, who left Iraq in the 70s. Their two remaining sons left Iraq in 2003 and moved to Virginia. They worked hard, saved money and now own a small restaurant. Rasool and Haider spent the Christmas break in the US, so I decided to visit them for a weekend. I had not seen Haider since 1980, before he was imprisoned. I was 11 years old, and he was 10. When I saw him last weekend, we didn't recognize each other. We talked a lot about Iraq and the war. Rasool and Haider spent a month in Iraq in 2004 - they helped rebuild their relatives' home, which was damaged by US bombing in 2003 (nobody was injured during the bombing). Rasool saw some US soldiers mistreating Iraqis - he described an incident in which an American soldier threw an Iraqi on the ground and and stepped on his head - it was not clear what the Iraqi had done wrong. This incident and reports of rude behavior and theft during the searches of homes left Rasool with a negative image of the US military, but they all agree that the US invasion and occupation was necessary and ultimately good for Iraq. In fact they do not call it an invasion - they call it a liberation.

Tah Hadhek Abu Uday!

I downloaded all these photos on December 14, 2003, after the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Your Luck Has Fallen, Saddam Hussein

I wasn't going to write about the imminent execution of Saddam Hussein, but then I looked through some photos I downloaded during the invasion in 2003, and the photos reveal how happy the Iraqis were after it was clear that Saddam's government had collapsed. Of course many innocent people were killed in the process, and I have many photos of dead and wounded Iraqis, but here I want to display a small collection of photos that I found interesting, to remind the world that yes, the Iraqis for the most part were happy when Saddam's regime was ended, they were happy when Saddam was captured, and they will be happy now to see him executed. My mother told me last night that they should have done this as soon as they captured him. Indeed, if he had been captured by Iraqis, Saddam could not have lasted more than a few hours. I was glad to see him given a trial, as imperfect as it was, but Iraqis like my mother believe that fewer Iraqis would have been murdered if he was killed immediately after capture.

As some Iraqis like to say, tah hadhek Abu Uday (your luck has fallen, Abu Uday)!

Downloaded April 7, 2003

Downloaded April 13, 2003

Downloaded April 9, 2003.

Downloaded April 13, 2003

Downloaded April 09, 2003

Downloaded April 11, 2003

Next I will post some pictures of Iraqis celebrating after the capture of Saddam Hussein.