Read this, from McClatchy’s Baghdad correspondent Laith, and think about how the violence and social collapse set in motion in Iraq by President Bush’s decision to invade the country has affected just about every Iraq family.
If you are Iraqi, as a US citizen I say to you I am sorry beyond words for what my government has done to your country. Many of us here in the US tried to prevent the invasion before it happened, but we failed to rein in our government. We should take responsibility for that failure.
If you are an American or any other non-Iraqi reading this, think about how you would feel if these catastrophes happened in your country.
In poll after poll after poll, Iraq’s citizens tell us they want a fixed timetable for a total US troop withdrawal from their country. They are willing to take responsibility for what happens after that. For American politicians to claim they have to keep US troops in Iraq “for the sake of Iraq’s people” is (a) quite simply mendacious, and (b) incredibly imperialistic and patronizing.
Stop the harm inflicted by the continuing US occupation. Pull the US troops out, and let Iraq’s people find their own way to heal.
2 thoughts on “Searching for a brother’s body in Iraq”
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While I was in the Middle East in April I spent some time with a family member and her husband in Amman. She told me a few stories of things that happened, that she witnessed and experienced before leaving Baghdad in despair three years ago. Nothing she experienced – at least nothing she told me about – was among the most horrendous things, but it was bad enough, believe me.
She and her husband are among the lucky ones who have fled the country. They have a comfortable life in Amman, and would like to stay there, but now they are threatened on an hourly basis with being instantly deported because they are unable to come up with the $100,000 they must keep in a Jordanian bank (without touching it) in order to get their visas renewed. They cannot leave the city, and could not even pick me up or take me to the airport for fear of being stopped at a checkpoint. There are lots of Iraqis in their position. She does not want to leave Amman. She says that at her age being uprooted and having to establish herself yet again is too much to deal with, and she is one of the strongest, most competent people I know.
And they are the lucky ones compared to most.
Patrick Cockburn: Iraq is a country no more. Like much else, that was not the plan
The death rate in Baghdad has fallen, but it is down to ethnic cleansing
If Allah give us long life we may here like this sorry but who cares after 100 years of crimes and theft of a country.
So Please stop speaks about the dictator Saddam crimes or Kuwait invasion Saddam dead he is gone but we have Iraq invasion by Bush and his father who are full of crimes of Iraq they still life and breathing this the disaster now.
George won’t listen to DC.