** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16513

How the Left Betrayed My Country - Iraq 
By Naseer Flayih Hasan
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2005

Before the last war, we Iraqis spent decades cut off from the outside
world.  Not only did the Baathist regime prevent us from traveling
during the Iran-Iraq conflict and the period of the sanctions, but they
punished anyone possessing satellite television. And of course, internet
access was strictly limited.  Because of our isolation, most of us had
little idea or sense about life beyond our borders.
 

We did believe, however, that democracy and human rights were important
factors in Western civilization.  So it came as a shock to us when
millions of people began demonstrating across the world against
America’s build-up to the invasion of our country.  We supposed the
protests were by people who had no idea about the terrible atrocities
that the regime had inflicted upon us for decades.  We assumed that once
they learned what had happened in Iraq, they would change their minds,
or modify their opposition to the war.

My first clue that this would not happen was a few weeks after Baghdad
fell.  I had befriended a French reporter who had begun to realize that
the situation in Iraq was not how the international media or the
so-called “peace camp” described it.  I noticed, however, that whenever
he tried to voice his doubts to colleagues, they argued that he was
wrong.  Soon afterwards, I met a Dutch woman on Mutinabi Street, where
booksellers lay out their wares on Friday morning.  I asked her how long
she’d been in Iraq and, through a translator, she answered, “Three months.”

 

“So you were here during the war?”

 

“Yes!” she said.  “To see the crimes of the Americans!”

 

I was stunned.  After a moment, I replied, “What about the crimes of the
regime?  It killed millions of Iraqis.  Do you know that if the regime
was still in power, the conversation we’re having now would result in
our torture or death?”

 

Her face turned red and she angrily responded, “Soon will come the day
that the Americans will do worse.”  She then went on to accuse me of not
knowing what the true facts were in Iraq—and that she could see the
situation better than me! 

 

She was not the only “humanitarian” who expressed such outrageous
opinions.  One afternoon, I was speaking to some members of the American
anti-war group “Voices in the Wilderness.”  One of the group’s members
declared that the Iraqi Governing Council (then in power at the time)
were “traitors.”  I was shocked.  Most of the Council were people whom
we Iraqis knew had suffered and sacrificed in a long struggle against
the regime.  Some represented opposition parties who had lost ten of
thousand of members in that struggle.  Others came from families who had
lost up to 30 loved ones to the Baathists.

 

After those, and many other, experiences, we finally comprehended how
little we had in common with these “peace activists” who constantly
decried American crimes, and hated to listen to us talk about the
terrible long nightmare that ended with the collapse of the regime.  We
came to understand how these “humanitarians” experienced a sort of
pleasure when terrorists or former remnants of the regime created
destruction in Iraq—just so they could feel that they were right, and
the Americans wrong! 

 

Worse, we realized it was hopeless to make them grasp our feelings.  We
believed—and still believe--that America’s removal of the regime opened
a new way for democracy.  At the same time, we have no illusions that
the U.S. came to Iraq on a white horse to save our people.  We
understand this war is all about national interests, and that America’s
interests are mainly about defeating terrorism.  At this moment, though,
U.S. interests are doing more to bring about democracy and freedom in
Iraq than, say, the policies of France and Russia—countries which also
care little for the Iraqi people and, worse, did their best to save
Saddam from destruction until the last moment. 

 

It’s worth noting, as well, that the general attitude of peace activists
I met was tension and anger.  They were impossible to reason with.  This
was because, on one hand, the sometimes considerable risks they took to
oppose the war made them unable to accept the fact that their cause was
not as noble as they believed.  Then, too, their dogmatic anti-American
attitudes naturally drew them to guides, translators, drivers and Iraqi
acquaintances who were themselves supporters of the regime. These
Iraqis, in turn, affected the peace activists until they came to share
almost the same judgments and opinions as the terrorists and defenders
of Saddam.  

 

This was very disappointing for someone like me, who thought for decades
that the Left was generally the progressive power in the world.  You can
imagine how aghast I was when my French reporter friend told me that the
Communist Party in his country actually considers the “insurgents” to be
the equivalent of the French Gaullists!  Or how troubling it is to hear
Jacques Chirac take satisfaction from the violence wreaked by the
terrorists—those bloody monsters that we Iraqis know so well—because
they justify France’s original opposition to the war.

 

And so I have become disillusioned, at least with the Leftists I met in
Iraq.  So noble in their rhetoric, they looked to the stars, yet ignored
what was happening around them, caring only about what was inside their
minds.  So glorious in their ideals, their thoughts were inflexible and
their deeds unnecessary, even harmful.  In the end, they proved to me
how dogma and fanaticism had transform peace activists into—lifeless
peace “statues.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, visit:

        http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/aam.html

AAM Website:  http://www.africanassociation.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------------