Riverbend on Saddam’s death sentence

… Read the latest post of this wise and talented young Iraqi blogger:

    we all knew the outcome upfront (Maliki was on television 24 hours before the verdict telling people not to ‘rejoice too much’). I think what surprises me right now is the utter stupidity of the current Iraqi government. The timing is ridiculous- immediately before the congressional elections? How very convenient for Bush. Iraq, today, is at its very worst since the invasion and the beginning occupation. April 2003 is looking like a honeymoon month today. Is it really the time to execute Saddam?
    I’m more than a little worried. This is Bush’s final card. The elections came and went and a group of extremists and thieves were put into power (no, no- I meant in Baghdad, not Washington). The constitution which seems to have drowned in the river of Iraqi blood since its elections has been forgotten. It is only dug up when one of the Puppets wants to break apart the country. Reconstruction is an aspiration from another lifetime: I swear we no longer want buildings and bridges, security and an undivided Iraq are more than enough. Things must be deteriorating beyond imagination if Bush needs to use the ‘Execute the Dictator’ card.
    Iraq has not been this bad in decades. The occupation is a failure. The various pro-American, pro-Iranian Iraqi governments are failures. The new Iraqi army is a deadly joke. Is it really time to turn Saddam into a martyr?
    … Iraq saw demonstrations against and for the verdict. The pro-Saddam demonstrators were attacked by the Iraqi army. This is how free our media is today: the channels that were showing the pro-Saddam demonstrations have been shut down. Iraqi security forces promptly raided them. Welcome to the new Iraq.
    … It’s not about the man- presidents come and go, governments come and go. It’s the frustration of feeling like the whole country and every single Iraqi inside and outside of Iraq is at the mercy of American politics. It is the rage of feeling like a mere chess piece to be moved back and forth at will. It is the aggravation of having a government so blind and uncaring about their peoples needs that they don’t even feel like it’s necessary to go through the motions or put up an act. And it’s the deaths. The thousands of dead and dying, with Bush sitting there smirking and lying about progress and winning in a country where every single Iraqi outside of the Green Zone is losing.
    Once again… The timing of all of this is impeccable- two days before congressional elections. And if you don’t see it, then I’m sorry, you’re stupid. Let’s see how many times Bush milks this as a ‘success’ in his coming speeches.
    A final note. I just read somewhere that some of the families of dead American soldiers are visiting the Iraqi north to see ‘what their sons and daughters died for’. If that’s the goal of the visit, then, “Ladies and gentlemen- to your right is the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, to your left is the Dawry refinery… Each of you get this, a gift bag containing a 3 by 3 color poster of Al Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr (Long May He Live And Prosper), an Ayatollah Sistani t-shirt and a map of Iran, to scale, redrawn with the Islamic Republic of South Iraq. Also… Hey you! You- the female in the back- is that a lock of hair I see? Cover it up or stay home.”
    And that is what they died for.

A true cri de coeur. Do you think Bush has read this?
(Footnote. For JWN commenters who have in the past expressed doubts that Riverbend is who she says she is: Go over to her blog and see the photos she has on that post of what various Iraqi TV channels have been broadcasting today… Also, be aware I’m not going to give any further space on the blog’s comments boards for comments calling her authenticity into question.)

10 thoughts on “Riverbend on Saddam’s death sentence”

  2. Helena
    Raed Jarar .. Faiza’s son, predicted the sentence on his blog yesterday..
    http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/
    He and two other speakers are doing a speaking tour of part of the US. If Charlottesville isn’t on the list of their stops perhaps you would like to drop them a line.
    I like his blog a lot. He has some very sensible ideas and will eventually be one of the people who puts the place back together again.
    Despite having the skills and capability to do so, I am not sure that well meaning people like you and I would be terribly welcome.
    Riverbend’s disdain for living at the whim of domestic politics in some distant country stikes a chord with me. It is the cri de cour of everybody who has suffered from colonialism. It is very similar, in a way, to President Khatami’s speech to Chatham House where he talks about how western countries see Iran through their own perceptions and how he is fed up with being underdeveloped.
    What we can do to help is to harness the revulsion that is being expressed by the majority of people at this bungled adventure and make sure that the departure of the occupying troops does not coincide with a capital and skills famine in the country like that which occured in Vietnam after the US departure. It seems to be the typical reaction of the vanquished after they leave. The oil majors will try and hold the country to ransom for capital and knowhow to rebuild the oilfields.
    It was Enlightened Self Interest that led George Marshall one of the remarkable American Generals produced in the 1940s to propose the Marshall Plan after 1945. This in order to avoid people voting communist in despair.
    You have proposed that the pullout be … generous. Perhaps we could put a little more flesh on the word and start discussing what we can offer unfortunate young people like Riverbend who should be be on a fasttrack career path somewhere instead of sitting at home watching the TV to fulfill their potential as they rebuild the place.
    A good first step might be to think through how to avoid tying the country up in endless litigation in US courts about ownership of major capital plant abandoned during the pullout. Who would own the turbines and generators left behind? Would they be yet another burden on an already indebted country. You have commented on the nonsense of them still paying reparations to Kuwait.
    Dont forget. Tuesday. Vote Early Vote Often on behalf of those at the whim of foreign domestic politics in some country a hemisphere away.

  4. I find Faiiza al- Arji (who also posted today)and Riverbend a constant source of inspiration, their courage and will to deal with the facts head on, their constancy in their search for truth and their love of mankind despite their intimate knowledge of the depths of horror we are capable of creating.

  5. As the Queen of Hearts loved to roar: “Sentence first! Verdict later!”
    Deputy Dubya Bush pronounced sentence on Saddam Hussein and Iraq long before he actually invaded and occupied that doomed country in March of 2003.
    So now after three-and-a-half-years of President Bush’s bloody, blundering “sentence first” we get yet another announced “verdict later” on the eve of yet another staged American political farce. But a verdict upon what and whom?

  6. in case you were born yesterday, the references to Iran and things iranian are coded wahabi slang for shiites, who have been on the short end of Iraq’s Apartheid stick for centuries and most especially recently. No I don’t feel bad for miss riverbend. sorry.

  7. She has Sunni and Shia in her family, jackass.
    She doesn’t wear the hijab, nor does she want to.
    You seem to have started reading yesterday.
    You have some time to make up, so I suggest you get to work.

  8. “jackass” = not courteous, Seth. Tsk, tsk.
    However your broader defense of River’s position and her writings is a valid one. In the context of Iraqi discourse, I don’t see references to the “Iranian” color of the present regime as being “wahabi” code for anything, but more straightforwardly as articulating a concern that many Iraqis –including, crucially, many Shiite Iraqis– have about domination of their country and society by Iran. People in Iraq don’t all jump neatly into the little boxes that the US MSM and the occupation authorities prepare for them: “Kurd”, “Sunni”, “Shiite”. There is a lot more Arab-nationalist and Iraqi-nationalist sentiment among Iraqi Shiites than most westerners realize. Of course these things are fluid, and all Iraqis are caught up in some very emotionally wrenching and potentially lethal identity politics these days… Riverbend has described this well, as a sustained, calm reading of her posts over the past three years will reveal.
    To accuse her of being any kind of a closet “wahabi” and to say that on these grounds you have no sympathy for her, Lester, strikes me as both factually ill-informed and humanly very harsh

  9. oh yeah I forget she’s an angel who has only the most pristine perfect motives. no way she has any prejudices towards more vertyl religious shiites who the secular baathists and sunnis beat down for a millenia. I stand by what i said. and i am not really aware of the arab nationalists sentiments in shia Iraq. is al sadr one? sistani? those ar the influential people there.

  10. I can say from most of the comments made here on this sit, you misreading Iraqis and there very strong loving their country and their land.
    Regrettably you miss leaded by your media and your political tool that beating drums for more that 16 years crying for one religious group and accusing other group for their suffering.
    For start Saddam not Sunni neither Shiite, he had his religious dictator religious for himself and any Iraqi opposes his regime, is his personal enemy and should be removed, his mad thinking that’s the way he built his pyramid of power.
    Iraqi what’s ever group or religions believes either Muslims or Christians or Jews and other (like Yaziddi and Sabe’ah “Mindiaeien” or others) having very strong love and nationalist toward their country and their land if you think other way sorry to say you are on wrong track and you misleading yourself in this believe.
    I still saying again and again Iraqi all loving Iraq and whatever hard time they facing it’s due to external power/conspiracy taking place right now, but beer in mind the time will fix and prevailed and will tell us.
    This is not the only case or occasion in Iraq history of external occupations and conspires came to Iraq, they tried to dismantled this land to annexation to their land. But the history still replaying again and again with different time frames and different occupiers with different lies and claims.
    Riverbed’s last paragraph that’s Helena put here to me its very clear and understandable for long time, I knew what she means and what Iraqis feel of this which they suffer from it before I personally heard from my Mum and other family relatives (most of them decide now) so its not new in Iraq and its again back.
    God Bless

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