More on the four-year US occupation of Iraq

Commenter Bernard Chazelle suggested we watch this very moving short video from Guardian films. It’s about some kids in an Iraqi orphanage.
And there’s a link there to this other short video, which is a powerful testimony from and about Kadhem Jabouri, the one-time Iraqi weightlifting champion who achieved a brief measure of fame when he heartily swung a hammer against the base of the Saddam statue in Firdaus Square on that day in early April 2003 when the statue was brought down.
Today, Kadhem says he wished he’d never done it. He says the four years of occupation have been worse than Saddam’s dictatorship. He says, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” He takes the cameraperson on a sad tour of his neighborhood, ending up at the echoingly empty expanses of Firdaus Square.
So when– as no doubt will happen– in the early days of April the (increasingly depleted) ranks of the war supporters in the US and UK once again replay that footage of the (partly orchestrated, partly ‘spontaneous’) assault on the Saddam statue, and the statue’s final toppling… in their attempt to reconvince themselves and perhaps some others that their war venture in Iraq really was “worthwhile” because it resulted in a toppling of that dictator and his artistic representation there in the square… in an exuberant outpouring of the Iraqi people’s “popular will”…
When you see those film clips replaying again, go back to the one of Kadhem Jabouri, and listen carefully to what he says.
You can note also that though he did swing that hammer with great verve and gusto, actually as the statue-toppling scene progresses it was not the efforts of Kadhem and his friends that brought it down. (They only succeeded in inflicting a few broad pock marks on the statue’s plinth.)
What brought it down was the US armored vehicle that was later brought into the task.
Anyway, watch both those great video clips… Kadhem, and the children… No matter how idealistic the intentions of some of those who planned and undertook the 2003 invasion of Iraq, they surely need to understand the terrible effects that that invasion had on the lives of millions of actual Iraqis.
(Thanks for the link, Bernard!)

3 thoughts on “More on the four-year US occupation of Iraq”

  1. The “good intentions” of America in Iraq would pave an eight-lane superhighway straight to Hell.
    As “liberal hawk” pundit Thomas Friedman explained America’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq: “We had to hit somebody.” So we hit anybody, because we could and wanted to; and it didn’t much matter whom as long as we didn’t hit the Saudis, Egyptians, and/or Pakistanis actually involved in funding, forming, and directing Al Qaeda against American imperialism in the Muslim world. Go figure.
    America doesn’t even know why it did what it has done and continues doing in Iraq; and America would not admit to the heinous crime even if it did. The Germans have faced what they did in WWII and have become pacifists as a result. The Japanese just refuse to think about what they did in WWII, but have become pacifists anyway. America has never faced up to what it did in Vietnam and what it has now done again in Iraq; and as a consequence of this denial, America remains as belligerent and militarist as ever.
    The Democrats in Congress have even just “won a victory” by promising to fund at least another year-and-a-half of all these “good intentions” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just more paving for a rush-hour car-pool lane straight to Hell even faster: bypassing the usual traffic jam.
    Napoleon Bonaparte said: “If you want to take Vienna, you take Vienna.” In the same way, if you want to end a war, you end it. However, if you want to continue a war, you promise to begin a beginning of an end to it sometime later on down the road after actually entering Hell years ago and descending to the ninth level looking for a way that goes even lower. As Bullwinkle Moose might have said after failing yet again to pull another rabbit out of his magic tophat: “No doubt about it: I just gotta get more good intentions.”

  3. Considering the bill passed by the Dems last week and considering that Bush has already announced that he was going to veto it, what will be the result in the end ? Can Bush get the money for the war, if he is going to veto the bill ? Can he veto only part of the bill ? I hope he can’t. If he veto it, then he shouldn’t get the money :-))

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