During the war Salam Pax was once the darling of the “uh-huh” crowd of right-wing bloggers – he offered confirmation to these blog evangelists of the ‘power’ of their medium and he (critically) supported the war.
Then he committed two unforgivable ‘crimes’:
1. He began to write for the Guardian.
2. He had the cheek to ask George Bush to try and sort out the mess in Iraq.
So now leading American bloggers are telling him to “f**k off” and giving him colonial style lectures on how grateful he should be especially as he didn’t have the “stones” to rise up and overthrow Saddam himself.
Thankfully, he still has some friends in America such as Dan Drezner who responds to the grunting brigade.
You’re absolutely right — Salam and his buddies would never have taken up arms to overthrow Saddam. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that back in 1991, when President Bush encouraged ordinary Iraqis to overthrow Saddam, the results weren’t so good.
Bush’s call worked perfectly. Seventeen out of eighteen provinces were in open revolt. Hussein was at his weakest. And what did the United States do after our call was answered by the Iraqi common man? Did we help in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 1991? Nope. We looked the other way while Hussein violated the no-fly zones to put down the Shi’ites, Marsh Arabs, Kurds, etc. We did it for realpolitik reasons, many of which the current Bush administration, to its credit, seems ready to reject. But we, the United States, did it. Why, on God’s green earth, would anyone ever choose to rise up after that Mongolian cluster-fuck of U.S. foreign policy?
Let me explain this in simple terms, habibi. This was a debt that had to be repaid. Yeah, they owe us for getting rid of Saddam. But we owe them for going back on our word in 1991. As a result, Iraqi’s languished under Hussein’s rule an extra twelve years. That don’t buy a lot of sympathy.
Too right.
Salam if you ever pass this way here’s a little message for you:
Keep at it.
Real blogging is telling it how you see it and not conforming to what either the media or the self-appointed leaders of the blogs tell you is acceptable.
We who read blogs want to know how you see Iraq. They’ll stop linking to you, they’ll stop telling you how great you are but I am sure that is the least of your problems.
The truth of the matter is – they don’t have a f*****g clue.