Guardian UK
The regrets of the man who brought down SaddamTry and imagine how truly horrible it must be. Something you wanted with all your heart, and this is the result? You'd rather have a homicidal despot in charge than the US Government?
Audrey Gillan
Monday March 19, 2007
The Guardian
His hands were bleeding and his eyes filled with tears as, four years ago, he slammed a sledgehammer into the tiled plinth that held a 20ft bronze statue of Saddam Hussein. Then Kadhim al-Jubouri spoke of his joy at being the leader of the crowd that toppled the statue in Baghdad's Firdous Square. Now, he is filled with nothing but regret.
The moment became symbolic across the world as it signalled the fall of the dictator. (snip)
Now, on the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, he says: "I really regret bringing down the statue. The Americans are worse than the dictatorship. Every day is worse than the previous day."
This country may never be able to make it right.
Mission Accomplished
posted by Paddy @ 11:05 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Piffle
sigh...
deep, deep sign,
and tears.
Something tells me that guy won't be interviewed on CNN.
I'm watching CNN now and that guy from Politico, Mike Allen is on. He looks like that gay guy that used to be on Sex in the City.
HA ME!! (chris matthews laugh)
Stanford? Stanton? Something like that, and yes he does look like him.
Ultimately, to anyone with a passing knowledge of history, this was predictable.
It is utterly irrational, absolutely illogical, outright loony, but it is human nature--people will tolerate the most egregious, outrageously heinous behavior from the most brutal of dictators, provided he is ONE OF THEIR OWN; but let a foreigner intervene to save them, and they will fight tooth and nail to preserve their status as oppressed.
This should be known as the Dracula Effect. Modern Romanians hold Vlad Tepes, the 15th century prince who was the inspiration for Dracula, as a national hero. Never mind that he was a psychotic lunatic of such outrageously ghoulish proclivities as to make Hitler look sane and safe; all of that is forgotten in the soft, nostalgic glow that suffuses his achievements--he defeated the Turks (always important!); made the streets safe to walk; eliminated crime (except his own); got the trains to run on time, etc, etc, etc. We know the rest, all the idyllic images people conjure up of life under a nasty dictator who kept the steets clean.
I've wondered how long it would be before the Iraqi people ventured into their blood soaked, body strewn streets one morning and asked how they got into this mess. They'll ask how their previously spotless boulevards got splattered with body parts, and they'll wax nostalgic for their "beloved" Saddam. And who took him away, the only thing keeping the chaos at bay? Those nasty Americans. (Saddam was a least an Iraqi!)
And that will be the tipping point. Each new bomb chinks at resolve; each new body widens the breach, until they will finally have had enough. And they will then ask, more likely demand, that we leave.
We have never had much choice here: we can only solve this mess by becoming what we came to kill--we will have to be Saddam, be as brutal, as callous, as wretchedly barbaric; or, we will have to leave and let them solve this themselves. Either way, we fail.
I guess we have two years before those scales tip irretrievably away from us. If, in those two years, we don't somehow bring peace to this place, we've lost it. And we will then have to deal, for decades, with the repercussions of this stupid venture through out the middle east.
Given that Dubya has neither sufficient testicular or cerebral development to be either courageous or intelligent enough to get out, and the Democrats in congress seem content to flounder about, still in a stupor induced by the fact that they WON, this wretched abomination of foreign policy will be dumped on the desk of the next president.
I don't envy Hillary or Obama (it won't be a Republican).
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