PenHolder
March 3, 2003, 03:25 PM
This isn't directly RKBA-related, but recently it seems the situation in
Iraq is fair game in L&P. I found this article interesting; and hey, I
know you're all big fans of the Reverend. :)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6419
Jesse Jackson: This Is Not About Saddam
By Gulf News
Gulf News | March 3, 2003
"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people
about my life?" asked the Iraqi grandmother.
I spent part of last Saturday with the so-called "anti-war" marchers
in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been
to persuade the organisers to let at least one Iraqi voice be heard.
Soon, however, it became clear that the organisers were as anxious
to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussain
in Iraq.
The Iraqis had come with placards reading "Freedom for Iraq" and
"American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti
tyranny!"
But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of
that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and
distributed among the "spontaneous" marchers, were allowed. These
read "Bush and Blair, baby-killers," " Not in my name," "Freedom
for Palestine" and "Indict Bush and Sharon."
Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war.
The goons also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of
Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people
to death in 1988.
We managed to reach some of the stars of the show, including Reverend
Jesse Jackson, the self-styled champion of American civil rights.
One of our group, Salima Kazim, an Iraqi grandmother, managed to
attract the reverend's attention and told him how Saddam Hussain
had murdered her three sons because they had been dissidents in
the Ba'ath Party; and how one of her grandsons had died in the war
Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990.
"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people
about my life?" 78-year old Salima demanded.
The reverend was not pleased.
"Today is not about Saddam Hussain," he snapped. "Today is about
Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq." Salima had to
beat a retreat, with all of us following, as the reverend's gorillas
closed in to protect his holiness.
We next spotted former film star Glenda Jackson, apparently manning
a stand where "antiwar" characters could sign up to become " human
shields" to protect Saddam's military installations against American
air attacks.
"These people are mad," said Awad Nasser, one of Iraq's most famous
modernist poets. "They are actually signing up to sacrifice their
lives to protect a tyrant's death machine."
The former film star, now a Labour Party member of parliament, had
no time for "side issues" such as the 1.2 million Iraqis, Iranians
and Kuwaitis who have died as a result of Saddam's various wars.
We thought we might have a better chance with Charles Kennedy, a
boyish-looking, red-headed Scot who leads the mis-named Liberal
Democrat Party. But he, too, had no time for "complex issues" that
could not be raised at a mass rally.
But was it not amazing that there could be a rally about Iraq
without any mention of what Saddam and his regime have done over
almost three decades? Just a little hint, perhaps, that Saddam was
still murdering people in his Qasr Al Nayhayah (Palace of the End)
prison, and that as the Westerners marched, Iraqis continued to
die?
Not a chance.
'Blinded' protesters
We then ran into Tony Benn, a leftist septuagenarian who has recycled
himself as a television reporter to interview Saddam in Baghdad.
But we knew there was no point in talking to him. The previous
night he had appeared on TV to tell the Brits that his friend Saddam
was standing for "the little people" against "hegemonistic America."
"Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the
United States?" Nasser the poet demanded.
The Iraqis would have had much to tell the "anti-war" marchers,
had they had a chance to speak. Fadel Sultani, president of the
National Association of Iraqi authors, would have told the marchers
that their action would encourage Saddam to intensify his repression.
"I had a few questions for the marchers," Sultani said. "Did they
not realise that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent
civilians are also forms of war? Are the anti-war marchers only
against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the
war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?"
Sultani could have told the peaceniks how Saddam's henchmen killed
dissident poets and writers by pushing page after page of forbidden
books down their throats until they choked.
'Deep moral pain'
Hashem Al Iqabi, one of Iraq's leading writers and intellectuals,
had hoped the marchers would mention the fact that Saddam had driven
almost four million Iraqis out of their homes and razed more than
6,000 villages to the ground.
"The death and destruction caused by Saddam in our land is the
worst since Nebuchadnez-zar," he said. "These prosperous, peaceful
and fat Europeans are marching in support of evil incarnate." He
said that, watching the march, he felt Nazism was "alive and well
and flexing its muscles in Hyde Park."
Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoi, Iraq's
foremost religious leader for almost 40 years, spoke of the "deep
moral pain" he feels when hearing the so-called " anti-war" discourse.
"The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured
by a gang of thugs," Khoi said. "The proper moral position is to
fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to
book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for
the torturers and total contempt for the victim."
Ismail Qaderi, a former Ba'athist official but now a dissident,
wanted to tell the marchers how Saddam systematically destroyed
even his own party, starting by murdering all but one of its 16
original leaders.
"Those who see Saddam as a symbol of socialism, progress and
secularism in the Arab world must be mad," he said.
Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq's most famous satirical writer, added his
complaint. "Don't these marchers know that the only march possible
in Iraq under Saddam Hussain is from the prison to the firing
squad?" he asked. "The Western marchers behave as if the U.S. wanted
to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussain."
With all doors shutting in our faces we decided to drop out of the
show and watch the political zoology of the march from the sidelines.
Who were these people who felt such hatred of their democratic
governments and such intense self-loathing?
There were the usual suspects: the remnants of the Left, from
Stalinists and Trotskyites to caviar socialists. There were the
pro-abortionists, the anti-GM food crowd, the anti-capital punishment
militants, the Black-rights gurus, the anti-Semites, the "burn
Israel" lobby, the "Bush-didn't-win-Florida" zealots, the unilateral
disarmers, the anti-Hollywood "cultural exception" merchants, and
the guilt-ridden post-modernist "everything is equal to everything
else" philosophers.
But the bulk of the crowd consisted of fellow travellers, those
innocent citizens who, prompted by idealism or boredom, are always
prepared to play the role of "useful idiots," as Lenin used to call
them.
They ignored the fact that the peoples of Iraq are unanimous in
their prayers for the war of liberation to come as quickly as
possible.
The number of marchers did not impress Salima, the grandmother.
"What is wrong does not become right because many people say it,"
she asserted, bidding us farewell while the marchers shouted "Not
in my name!"
Let us hope that when Iraq is liberated, as it soon will be, the
world will remember that it was not done in the name of Reverend
Jackson, Charles Kennedy, Glenda Jackson, Tony Benn and their
companions in a march of shame.
The writer, an Iranian author and journalist, is editor of the
Paris-based Politique Interna-tionale. The writer can be contacted
at: ataheri@gulfnews.com
Iraq is fair game in L&P. I found this article interesting; and hey, I
know you're all big fans of the Reverend. :)
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6419
Jesse Jackson: This Is Not About Saddam
By Gulf News
Gulf News | March 3, 2003
"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people
about my life?" asked the Iraqi grandmother.
I spent part of last Saturday with the so-called "anti-war" marchers
in London in the company of some Iraqi friends. Our aim had been
to persuade the organisers to let at least one Iraqi voice be heard.
Soon, however, it became clear that the organisers were as anxious
to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussain
in Iraq.
The Iraqis had come with placards reading "Freedom for Iraq" and
"American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Takriti
tyranny!"
But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of
that. Only official placards, manufactured in thousands and
distributed among the "spontaneous" marchers, were allowed. These
read "Bush and Blair, baby-killers," " Not in my name," "Freedom
for Palestine" and "Indict Bush and Sharon."
Not one placard demanded that Saddam should disarm to avoid war.
The goons also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of
Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people
to death in 1988.
We managed to reach some of the stars of the show, including Reverend
Jesse Jackson, the self-styled champion of American civil rights.
One of our group, Salima Kazim, an Iraqi grandmother, managed to
attract the reverend's attention and told him how Saddam Hussain
had murdered her three sons because they had been dissidents in
the Ba'ath Party; and how one of her grandsons had died in the war
Saddam had launched against Kuwait in 1990.
"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people
about my life?" 78-year old Salima demanded.
The reverend was not pleased.
"Today is not about Saddam Hussain," he snapped. "Today is about
Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq." Salima had to
beat a retreat, with all of us following, as the reverend's gorillas
closed in to protect his holiness.
We next spotted former film star Glenda Jackson, apparently manning
a stand where "antiwar" characters could sign up to become " human
shields" to protect Saddam's military installations against American
air attacks.
"These people are mad," said Awad Nasser, one of Iraq's most famous
modernist poets. "They are actually signing up to sacrifice their
lives to protect a tyrant's death machine."
The former film star, now a Labour Party member of parliament, had
no time for "side issues" such as the 1.2 million Iraqis, Iranians
and Kuwaitis who have died as a result of Saddam's various wars.
We thought we might have a better chance with Charles Kennedy, a
boyish-looking, red-headed Scot who leads the mis-named Liberal
Democrat Party. But he, too, had no time for "complex issues" that
could not be raised at a mass rally.
But was it not amazing that there could be a rally about Iraq
without any mention of what Saddam and his regime have done over
almost three decades? Just a little hint, perhaps, that Saddam was
still murdering people in his Qasr Al Nayhayah (Palace of the End)
prison, and that as the Westerners marched, Iraqis continued to
die?
Not a chance.
'Blinded' protesters
We then ran into Tony Benn, a leftist septuagenarian who has recycled
himself as a television reporter to interview Saddam in Baghdad.
But we knew there was no point in talking to him. The previous
night he had appeared on TV to tell the Brits that his friend Saddam
was standing for "the little people" against "hegemonistic America."
"Are these people ignorant, or are they blinded by hatred of the
United States?" Nasser the poet demanded.
The Iraqis would have had much to tell the "anti-war" marchers,
had they had a chance to speak. Fadel Sultani, president of the
National Association of Iraqi authors, would have told the marchers
that their action would encourage Saddam to intensify his repression.
"I had a few questions for the marchers," Sultani said. "Did they
not realise that oppression, torture and massacre of innocent
civilians are also forms of war? Are the anti-war marchers only
against a war that would liberate Iraq, or do they also oppose the
war Saddam has been waging against our people for a generation?"
Sultani could have told the peaceniks how Saddam's henchmen killed
dissident poets and writers by pushing page after page of forbidden
books down their throats until they choked.
'Deep moral pain'
Hashem Al Iqabi, one of Iraq's leading writers and intellectuals,
had hoped the marchers would mention the fact that Saddam had driven
almost four million Iraqis out of their homes and razed more than
6,000 villages to the ground.
"The death and destruction caused by Saddam in our land is the
worst since Nebuchadnez-zar," he said. "These prosperous, peaceful
and fat Europeans are marching in support of evil incarnate." He
said that, watching the march, he felt Nazism was "alive and well
and flexing its muscles in Hyde Park."
Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of the late Grand Ayatollah Khoi, Iraq's
foremost religious leader for almost 40 years, spoke of the "deep
moral pain" he feels when hearing the so-called " anti-war" discourse.
"The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured
by a gang of thugs," Khoi said. "The proper moral position is to
fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to
book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for
the torturers and total contempt for the victim."
Ismail Qaderi, a former Ba'athist official but now a dissident,
wanted to tell the marchers how Saddam systematically destroyed
even his own party, starting by murdering all but one of its 16
original leaders.
"Those who see Saddam as a symbol of socialism, progress and
secularism in the Arab world must be mad," he said.
Khalid Kishtaini, Iraq's most famous satirical writer, added his
complaint. "Don't these marchers know that the only march possible
in Iraq under Saddam Hussain is from the prison to the firing
squad?" he asked. "The Western marchers behave as if the U.S. wanted
to invade Switzerland, not Iraq under Saddam Hussain."
With all doors shutting in our faces we decided to drop out of the
show and watch the political zoology of the march from the sidelines.
Who were these people who felt such hatred of their democratic
governments and such intense self-loathing?
There were the usual suspects: the remnants of the Left, from
Stalinists and Trotskyites to caviar socialists. There were the
pro-abortionists, the anti-GM food crowd, the anti-capital punishment
militants, the Black-rights gurus, the anti-Semites, the "burn
Israel" lobby, the "Bush-didn't-win-Florida" zealots, the unilateral
disarmers, the anti-Hollywood "cultural exception" merchants, and
the guilt-ridden post-modernist "everything is equal to everything
else" philosophers.
But the bulk of the crowd consisted of fellow travellers, those
innocent citizens who, prompted by idealism or boredom, are always
prepared to play the role of "useful idiots," as Lenin used to call
them.
They ignored the fact that the peoples of Iraq are unanimous in
their prayers for the war of liberation to come as quickly as
possible.
The number of marchers did not impress Salima, the grandmother.
"What is wrong does not become right because many people say it,"
she asserted, bidding us farewell while the marchers shouted "Not
in my name!"
Let us hope that when Iraq is liberated, as it soon will be, the
world will remember that it was not done in the name of Reverend
Jackson, Charles Kennedy, Glenda Jackson, Tony Benn and their
companions in a march of shame.
The writer, an Iranian author and journalist, is editor of the
Paris-based Politique Interna-tionale. The writer can be contacted
at: ataheri@gulfnews.com