This weekend in many major cities across the world the anti-war movement will be marching to call for troops out of Iraq now. As opinion polls show very clearly such a demand is against the wishes of the Iraqi people.
Those of us who wish to see Iraq become a successful democracy tend to get angry when we see these protests, knowing that they will be beamed into Iraqi homes via satellite television, we wonder what Iraqi democrats think when they see the banners and slogans on these marches.
In the past at Harry’s Place we have channelled our opposition to these marches by producing our ‘virtual counter demonstrations’ to challenge the propaganda of the ‘anti-war’ protests.
But this time we have decided to do things differently and we think more positively.
From today until Monday we will be providing links to campaigns, projects and charities that are directly helping Iraqi people – either in material terms or other forms of solidarity aimed at assisting the strengthening of democracy, civil society and human rights.
Our four day campaign is called Do Something For Iraq and we are urging all our readers to follow the links that will be provided in the coming days and choose at least one campaign or cause to support. We also welcome your suggestions of what we should be linking to – please send your ideas via email (on the top left corner ‘Dear Harry’).
Some of the links will be to charities that are doing good work that needs supporting financially – its time to put our money where our mouths are.
Other links will be to Iraq related websites, projects or campaigns who would welcome an email or other message of support from people in Britain, Europe, Australia, the USA or wherever you are.
If you run a weblog or website yourself we are also asking you to join in this campaign on your own site. Either simply let your readers know about what is happening here or produce your own Do Something posts and let us know about them.
It is not good enough just to criticise the protestors (although we will still be doing some of that!) but those of us who think differently should also act differently.
There are now thousands of blog readers who have shown a great deal of interest in what is happening in Iraq. Let’s try and channel that into practical solidarity.
Do Something For Iraq this weekend.
