Iraq

Perhaps some of you think this way already,
some may think it is way off base, anyway
for what it is worth here is a reflection
on the current situation in Iraq.

I'm hoping that the US will come to its senses
and stop the attacks in Iraq, and listen more
to Iraqi politicians (other than the prime minister
of the interim government who is being seen
as a US puppet).

An Iraqi speaker was on the radio here
today and he said that just before the attack
began they had reached a breakthrough in the
political negotiations - then heard on the
radio that the attack had been initiated,
which brought it to an end.

Also some of the politicians are planning
to boycott the elections, which they think
will be too US dominated.

It won't stop these kidnappings and
executions, if that is what the US had
in mind, will just make those involved
madder about it. They must be pretty
loony to do such a thing anyway and
probably it must be partly a result of
the trauma many Iraquis must feel as
the result of being a battle ground
for a modern battle with high tech
weapons that can suddenly appear out
of the sky and instantly destroy
a building and quite possibly one of
your friends or relatives. If one has
experienced such a thing, many probably
just retreat into shock, but some probably
get aggressively anti-american and if a
bit unstable, may be pushed over the edge
into madness even.

They said on the news too that there were
50,000 civilians in the city still
at the time of the attack, so ther
civilian casualties of the street
to street fighting must surely have
been large.

Anyway just saying this as we get a different
perspective on the news here in the UK
I think, not the same spin though surely
our media has its own spin on it too
- that can't be avoided, only reduced.

And here in the UK we have
too many memories from history and
relatives etc of the Blitz of WW2
and understand what it is like to have
bombs fall on your country - it is
really terrible. The US news pictures
of smiling Iraquis are propoganda
I'm sure - they can't be that happy,
not when so many of them have lost close
friends or relatives - the New Scientist
leader pointed out that in the last year
the war has been the leading cause of
death in Iraq. So if one knew of someone
in Iraq who died in the last year, they would
probably be dead as a result of the US
action. Of course a few may be happy,
ones who have had relativs released from prison,
or far from the action and benefiting from the
war in various ways. Many must be miserable,
wailing (some reports describe Iraqi mothers wailing
over their lost children), and may have had lost ones
who they will miss for years or the rest of their life.
The ones who have died of course have lost even
their life because of the war.

We don't see those smily faces here in the
UK papers and I think they wouldn't be believed
here. Personally I think the best solution would
be if the UN could be involved in the
reconstruction of Iraq at the highest
level - then maybe it might be more respected.
Bush seems at least to some of us here in the UK
and apparently in the Arabic world too, to be
too much concerned in how his policy is seen
in the US and too little concerned
with how it seems to other countries and the
Arab countries too. I don't think the
US has a particularly bad government
and don't feel that Bush is necessarily
a bad president, since it seems he is
representative of at least a majority of US
opinion - but it has the misfortune to be so powerful
which means that they can easily do things
which they may well come to regret later
and they need to listen more to the rest
of he world, as should any other country
which ever becomes so powerful.

E.g. if China or Japan say or the middle
East or - who knows, even India
or whatever were a world power with
this amount of power - and were to start
invading other countries to root out
insurgents, one would hope that they
would listen to the politicians in those
countries and not go to war needlessly,
and that if they felt it necessary to
work for a change of govenrment in a conquered
country before handing it back, that they
would do so with UN participation rather
than go it alone.

If yuo think about it- e.g. if it were the
Japanese - they aren't particularly bad
people. They would probably do it kindly.
But they do have a very different culture
from ours and a Japan imposed and supervised
government might cause a lot of discontent
if they did it alone without UN support
and supervision and without listening
to us.

So probably it seems very like that to
Iraqis on the ground when they see a US
supervised change of government in their
country - and if the US doesn't listen to
their leading politicians and even starts
new internal wars - admitedly with the support
of a prime miniseter but one seen as a US
sympathiser, with many of the politicians
are strongly in protest against,
in this way, it must seem to them that
the US isn't listening to them and
is handling the fomation of the new
government inline with its own interests
rather than in the interests of the
Iraqis.

They just need to listen to Iraquis a bit more
- and to involve the UN a bit more,
and it can surely be put back on track.
I hope it does.

Robert