While just looking at Teresa’s blog a minute ago gathering the link
for the previous post, I saw her link to an amazing blog. I had read
this one a while back and forgotten about it but she reminded
me of it. It is a blog from
an Iraqi kid. Here is an excerpt from shortly before the “war” began:

No one inside Iraq is for war (note I said war not a change of
regime), no human being in his right mind will ask you to give him the
beating of his life, unless you are a member of fight club that is,
and if you do hear Iraqi (in Iraq, not expat) saying “come on bomb us”
it is the exasperation and 10 years of sanctions and hardship
talking. There is no person inside Iraq (and this is a bold, blinking
and underlined inside) who will be jumping up and down asking for the
bombs to drop. We are not suicidal you know, not all of us in any
case.

I think that the coming war is not justified (and it is very near now,
we hear the war drums loud and clear if you don’t then take those
earplugs off!). The excuses for it have been stretched to their limits
they will almost snap. A decision has been made sometime ago that
“regime change” in Baghdad is needed and excuses for the
forceful change have to be made. I do think war could have been
avoided, not by running back and forth the last two months, that’s
silly. But the whole issue of Iraq should have been dealt with
differently since the first day after GW I.

The entities that call themselves “the international community” should
have assumed their responsibilities a long time ago, should have
thought about what the sanctions they have imposed really meant,
should have looked at reports about weapons and human rights abuses a
long time before having them thrown in their faces as excuses for war
five minutes before midnight.

What is bringing on this rant is the question that has been bugging
for days now: how could “support democracy in Iraq” become to mean
“bomb the hell out of Iraq”? why did it end up that democracy won’t
happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for
a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy?
Well, thank you! how thoughtful.

The situation in Iraq could have been solved in other ways than what
the world will be going thru the next couple of weeks. It can’t
have been that impossible. Look at the northern parts of Iraq, that is
a model that has worked quite well, why wasn’t anybody interested
in doing that in the south. Just like the US/UK UN created a protected
area there why couldn’t the model be tried in the south. It would
have cut off the regimes arms and legs. And once the people see what
they have been deprived off they will not be willing to go back, just
ask any Iraqi from the Kurdish areas. Instead the world watched while
after the war the Shias were crushed by Saddam’s army in a manner
that really didn’t happen before the Gulf War. Does anyone else see
the words (Iran/not in the US interest) floating or is it me
hallucinating?

This is wildly sensible stuff. Reading his (is it a him? I haven’t
read enough yet to get a feeling of the person behind the posts)
matter of fact description of the details of life in a city under
siege reminded of Joe Kubert’s incredible but harrowing Fax
From Sarajevo. What really disturbs me about the pro-war
people who are cheering as they watch shit blow up is that there are
people very much like you and me, with similar or identical dreams,
goals, aspirations who are bearing the brunt of this. Kids not being
able to get food because no one wants to go out for fear of being
killed, that’s what you are cheering on, friends. It’s not a big
fucking video game, it is honest citizens who at best have their lives
disrupted and at worse ended, every time a bomber unloads.