The Enlightenment has arrived in Iraq:
“I used to love Osama bin Laden,†proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.
…
“Now I hate Islam,†she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.â€
Remember those words when you hear someone say Iraq is a “distraction.” Nothing could have done more to expose how horrible Al Qaeda really is.
This article has been all over the ‘sphere today, but few seem to realize that the most important force here is something that goes totally unmentioned: freedom. Freedom of speech, to mock those who use power foolishly or wrongly. Freedom of assembly, to form political opposition to them. Freedom to own cell phones, to spread the word. Freedom of press, to spread it farther and wider.
Freedoms Iraqis did not have before 2003.
Let freedom reign.
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“I used to love Osama Bin Laden.”
“Now I hate Islam.”
———————–
That sounds to me more like a snot-nosed university sophomore blowing noises out of her asshole, rather than someone rubbing a horsehair bow over violin strings to celebrate the Wages of Freedom arriving in Iraq.
Or does anybody here think her comments represent any kind of substantive viewpoint among the Arabs or Kurds of Iraq?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Just like your average snotnose braying about the Catholic Church, the Xtians and their goofed up values, or whatever.
Let freedom ring.
You might be right Arnold, but that is a serious improvement upon the Saddam days when ‘blowing noises out of your asshole’ usually meant a date with some thugs to rip two or three more for you to make noise from.
Does this mean we are at the end game? Of course not, but I cannot help but be heartened when formerly oppressed people have more freedom to speak and think on their own. This is a positive trend.
Sounds like these guys are starting to miss Hussein.
Seriously.
The alternative to theocracy in the Middle East has not been pretty, or intelligent. Nasser anyone? The Shah? Whatsizface in Syria?
“Sounds like these guys are starting to miss Hussein.
Seriously.
The alternative to theocracy in the Middle East has not been pretty”
It has been better than Hussein, though.
Social Engineering at its finest.
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