My response to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's article published in the Independent on Monday.
"Ms Alibhai-Brown, in an opinion piece published in the Independent on Monday, insults the Iraqi people by callously claiming that “the sanctions and war killed, maimed and destroyed more civilians than Saddam did.” Ms Alibhai-Brown’s crass comments were, clearly, more about scoring some cheap political point than it was about giving facts" [More...]
19 comments:
It is difficult to understand how some Iraqis continue to defend an illegal and catastrophic invasion of their own country that resulted in far more death and destruction than Iraq has witnessed since the invasion of the Mongols.
Furthermore, even we are to accept your version of modern Iraqi history, and all the alleged crimes of the progressive Ba'ath regime, the numbers do not support your assertions.
Iraq is far worst than it ever has been. In fact, Iraq is in ruins, and the state has ceased to exist, and the entire civilization has been destroyed.
The only way anyone can claim Iraq is better of is if he prefers a ruined Iraq presided over by Shia parties and murderers than a modern progressive state ruled by an Iraqi and Arab Nationalist.
Which is what I suspect is the case here.
Saddam's Alleged Crimes
1) The so called Kurdish massacres was an effort by the central and legitimate authority to preserve its territoral integrity in the face of an ARMED insurgency, operating in collusion with the Iranian army INSIDE Iraq.
2) The So called "Shia uprising" was also an armed insurgency assisted by the Badr(ghadr) organization under the command and control of Iranian revolutionary guards.
3)The Iraq Iran war was instigated by Khomeini who interfered in Iraq and called for the overthrow of the regime, and waged a terrorist campaign inside Iraq. The Khomeini regime at the time supported a terrorist campaign carried out, by guess who, the DAWA party, the same party that came to power with the help of the Great Satan. Nuri Maliki was the man responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks on Iraq civilians and officials at the time
4)It was Kuwait, which is part of the Basra province, that in collusion with the US was waging an economic war against Iraq, and siphoning off Iraqi oil.
None of these actions would have been accepted by any self-respecting regime anywhere in the world.
So spare us the lies. They have become boring. Sure, Sadam Hussein was a dictator, and did not tolerate opposition, but that's as much as you can say. The rest of it is propaganda and nothing more than a caricature created by the Western media.
Just admit you are a sectarian Shia thug who is thrilled the US destroyed Iraq and brought to power Shia militias. That would be more honest.
The Ba'ath regime may have been over-representative of Sunni Arabs in Iraq but that has a lot more to do with Saddam's obsession with security than it does with sect. The Ba'ath regime was never a "Sunni" regime and many high ranking officials were Shia. Many of those who tortured innocent Shia were Shia. This has nothing to do with sectarianism and everything to do with Saddam's bloody record that neither you nor anyone else can even attempt to clean.
Kuwait was part of what Iraq? Iraq was created at the same time Kuwait was, but "Iraq" was part of the Ottoman Empire. Should Turkey now annex the country? Palestine shouldn't exist because it was part of an earlier Jewish state (!) Should India invade Pakistan now? Stop playing silly games.
Again, the uprising was not a "Shia" uprising. Forces returning from the humiliating defeat (thanks to Saddam) in Kuwait simply had enough. It was a spontaneous moment and sparked a rebellion across the country. Yes of course the Badr Brigade, under command from the IRGC, tried to hijack the intifada, and maybe even succeeded to an extent, but that does not mean the others were all Iranian agents and that certainly doesn't justify their mass murder. I wonder what you think about the Palestinian intifadas, they are all armed insurgencies, so does that give the IDF right to murder them all?
As for being more honest, I think the Shia militias in Iraq are just as much a danger to Iraq as the Ba'ath regime was in its early days.
The progressive Baath regime of the martyred President was not a "Sunni regime", and that is the only accurate statement you made. But the regime was also not "over-representive of Sunnis exept in a tiny circle of security surrouned the President, and that has to do with his reliance on tribe and family for his own personal security. So you are partially correct here, but to be completely honest you must point out this "over-representation" existed only in a tiny segment of the security establishment surrounding the President, and not in the Iraqi state.
The Baath regime was a secular progressive Arab nationalist regime. The evidence of this is found in the policies of the regime which did not discriminate based on religion, sect, or region in the areas of the military, civil service, health, education, infrastructure, and overall government spending.
Kuwait is indeed part of Iraq, and your analogy about the Ottoman empire is, excuse me, but very silly. We all know the history of how the modern map of the Arab world was drawn after WW1 by the colonial powers. So you should also know that Kuwait was not even a province, it was a DISTRICT within the province of Al-Basra and the geograhpic, historical, and political logic would have included it in the modern Iraqi state.
All Iraqis know this. They may disagree with Saddam's decision in 1990 to liberate this district from the Sabbah family puppets, eliminate it as an American oil-colony and reunite it with Iraq, but that is purely an argument about timing and geo-political calculations, and does not go to the popular demand or legitimacy of the goal of reunification itself.
What is silly is all your analogies about Pakistan/India, or Palestine which was colonized and ethnically cleansed of the indigenous Arab population by European Jewish colonizers. Again, I believe you should know these facts.
As for your description of what you call the "uprising" in 91, it is simply false, and again, the comparision to the Palestinian uprising against Zionist occupation is beyond silly, its stupid and shameless. Why do pro-American invasion Iraqis defend Israel all the time?
The "uprising" 91 was organized and carried out by the Iranian revolutionary guard using its proxy Shia militias, and it was, I admit, crushed with force, but which regime would not put down a foreign sponsored armed rebellion.
Had it not been crushed the same Shia militias under the command and control of Iran that came into Baghdad on the top of American tanks in 2003 and engaged in some of the worst atrocities Iraq has ever witnessed, including the cleansing of Baghdad of all Sunni Arabs at the behest of Iran, would have done the same back in 91.
Again, the alleged "crimes" are little more than propaganda. Sure he was a dictator, and dealt harshly with organized and armed opposition, but given what we have learned about this opposition since 2003, can we blame him?
God Bless Iraq and God Bless the Nation that gave rise to the Martyred President Saddam Hussein and his comrades.
Liberated Kuwait? Can't you just accept that Kuwaitis do not want to be part of Iraq?
For them, an absolute monarchy is preferable to a progressive Arab regime. Is this too much of a blow to you and your Ba'athist friends?
Come on, you are writing anonymously so at least be brave enough to admit that much.
The '91 intifadha was sparked by returning Iraqi soldiers fed up with Saddam and his "progressive" regime. It had nothing to do with the Iranian IRGC, although of course they may have taken the opportunity (as they have done post-2003) to interfere for Iran's strategic interests in the region. It is unfortunate but that does not take anything anyway from the martyrs who stood up to Saddam's tyranny.
I am not anoynoymous. I am the voice of the Arab nation that you hate.
As for your question about "Kuwaitis", the answer is an unequivocal NO. I do not really caer about 200 thousand spoiled brats (the # of Kuwaitis back in 91) in the city of Kuwait. My concern is for Iraq and the Arab nation, not an artificial city-state ruled by a preverted family. I dont care about tribes, I care about nations. In short, why can't you accept that this map is illegitimate and very few people in the Arab world give a dam about the Sabah family or Kuwaiti "sovereignty". Kuwait is now an Iraq province under Western occupation just as the other 18 provinces of Iraq are under occupation.
As for the martryed President, he as not a tyrant. This propaganda is getting a little old and tired. It may have worked before the US invasion but now everything is clear. Even the Arabs who believed some of the lies said about Saddam's regime no longer do so. The Iraqi opposition which he supposedly "brutalized" has been exposed as a bunch of sectarian gangsters and traitors, not authentic Iraqi patriotic opposition.
But I doubt this matters to a sectarian thug like you. As far as youre concerned, the US invaded Iraq, destroyed it, killed Sunni Muslims, expelled them from Baghdad, and handed the country over to Iran and the Shia militias under Iran's control. That's all that you really care about, isnt it? So save the rest of it for Westerners who might fall for your rubbish, but those of us who know Iraq and the region know you and know better.
"Anonymous said...
I am not anoynoymous."
If only I had a prize to give out for the best comment of the year. You would lose a few points because of spelling and still walk away the winner.
''The Shia also embraced nationalism enthusiastically. In the aftermath of World War I, new national identities were forged - sometimes out of thin air - to define the struggle against colonialism and the character of the nation-states that were to follow. For the Shia, especially where they were a minority, secular nationalism was an inclusive identity. It defined them above and beyond the polemical debates of old and as equals to Sunnis in the eyes of the nation. Shias had failed to dominate the Islamic world theologically or politically and had faced the pains and perils of marginality. The modern state showed them a path forward that was free of the baggage of their religious identity. In Iran nationalism did not have these connotations, because Shias were a majority; but where Shias were a minority or ruled by Sunnis, nationalism appealed to them in the same way that inclusive ideologies attract minorities, who are drawn by a promise of a level playing field. Shias therefore embraced Arab nationalism, Pakistani nationalism, and Iraqi or Lebanese nationalism, in each case imagining a community where Shia-Sunni divisions would not matter. The modern world, at least in its nationalist guise, held the promise of ending centuries of painful prejudice and persecution."
--Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival
"The promise, however, proved to be illusory, as the modern states grew increasingly authoritarian and showed a penchant for using Sunni sectarian prejudices to shore up their own authority. The entrenched the very divisions that the Shia hoped they would bridge. These nations solidified Sunni rule and Shia marginality and, worse yet, gave impetus to sectarianism. The founding ideas of these nations, despite a certain surface rhetoric of inclusiveness, never truly encompassed the Shia. Nor did they make provisions to include the socioeconomically disadvantaged classes, who often were predominantly Shia (as in Iraq and Lebanon). Marginality continued to dog the Shia as they faced institutionalized discrimination, persecution, and vicious prejudice in their everyday lives."
--Vali Nasr
"...Shias have never risen beyond the glass ceiling that separates them from the Sunni elite. A few, such as Saddam's last and highly colorful information minister, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, rose to prominence. But they were tokens in a world where Shia feet never trod the real halls of power. Saddam Hussein liked to make much of the second part of his name before his Shia subjects - especially during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s - but he nevertheless characterized Shias as Iranian lackeys, and he periodically purged the Ba'th Party of its Shia members in order to make sure that the levers of state power and the banner of Arab nationalism remained firmly in Sunni hands. Shia privates filled the ragtag conscript ranks of Saddam's poorly equipped and ill-trained regular army, but the elite Republican Guards and Special Republican Guards were Sunnis almost to a man. Iraqi Shias revealed what they thought of the Ba'th Party when they insisted on including a clause in the August 2005 draft constitution that would ban all "racist" institutions, meaning among other things the Ba'th Party, and that barred former Ba'thists from holding office."
--Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival
"When Saddam took over absolute power in the summer of 1979, he presided over a rich country with wonderful infrastructure and good public services, a strong and healthy economy expanding at a fast rate of 8% per annum in real terms, and a treasury of foreign exchange reserves of $35 billion. All of that was dissipated in a matter of two decades of tyrannical rule and foolish military adventures, which left Iraq under a huge burden of $120 billion foreign debts, battered infrastructure, rampant unemployment, collapsed services system and a crippled economy."
Save it for the Westerners. They may fall for this nonsense and the woe is me Shia story, but it does not work with us.
ihna zein ni3rifkum w ni3rif shlon nitsaraf wayakum
Thank you Mojo.
Anon, If you are going to threaten anyone, the least use can do is use your real name, it makes you look more of a man, as apposed to a coward repeating the rhetoric of his Ba'athi heroes like a parrot.
You're the only coward kid, and the traitors you support in Baghdad are also cowards hiding in the green zone behind the US Army.
Like I said, your target audience is the West, and I think you know that we know you. :)
Anonymous
Salam u'alaykum. Rest assured the martyred President and his honorable history can't be denied, and those traitors who welcomed the invading US army will be left in the trash bin of history. We are all together
To our Shia brothers, please wake up. Please stop lying. Saddam did not persecute you. Tell your Sayids to leave you alone and stop lying. Join the modern world. Throwing yourselves at the feet of America is not in your own longterm interest.
Get over your sectarianism. It is eating you alive and hindering your progress. Take pride in your Arabism. You are Arabs, not Persians or Americans. Wake up before it becomes late. You are Iraqis and Arabs and part of this great Ummah.
Join the resistance and come back to al3urooba wal islam. If you don't you will pay a heavy price.
To Anonymous - YOU and your kind are doing the death and destruction to Iraq.NOT Americans.American's are not suicide bombing,Americans are not planting IED's.In your words 'the entire civilization has been destroyed" YOU AND YOUR KIND destroyed it because you believed the stupid would believe it is the American's faults.However the majority of people are not that stupid and the blame is ON YOUR KIND.
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