The Iraqi Resistance

Jason writes a letter that reveals much of the mindset of the pro-invasion set:

So, Ted, I was wondering if you were willing to acknowledge, at this point, that the despicable terrorists in Iraq aren’t quite the bold Freedom Fighters that you had painted them out to be. Not too long ago, you were

painting them out as to be noble fighters for the common Iraqi against the oh-so-sinister American regime. I’m just wondering if your opinion has changed now that they have bombed Iraqi mosques, killed Iraqi judges and done everything they can to usurp the democratic process.

First and foremost, let’s get our terms straight. There is no democratic process in Iraq. Iraq is occupied by 150,000 U.S. troops. The Baath and other parties are proscribed from participating in elections or holding public office. In a real democracy, voters are free to choose from any party. In a real democracy, a foreign occupation force does not exert any political influence whatsoever. And in a real democracy, people aren’t afraid to venture out into the streets, risking rape or kidnapping in order to vote. You can’t have democracy without basic security, period.

So this is not democracy.

Which gets us to the next term: “Iraqi judges,” etc. By definition anyone who holds public office in an occupied country is a collaborator. This would include, for example, Palestinian Authority “leaders” under the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Now a collaborator may or not be a good person, and he may or may not be laboring under a benevolent occupier, but he is certainly a collaborator and thus a fair target for nationalist/patriotic resistance forces seeking to expel the occupiers.

Collaborators are, in some ways, even more of an enemy to the Iraqi resistance than the Americans. They demoralize the resistance and set an example of subservience that other Iraqis may emulate. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Iraqi guerillas would choose to execute them.

I can understand your fear that we, the filthy Americans, seek to set up a puppet regime in Iraq. However, I can’t see how any civilized person would believe that blowing up voting stations and killing candidates is the proper

way to retaliate against such an alleged invasion.

The puppet regime is already a given. And the election is a lame attempt to legitimatize that puppet regime. Iraqis who vote in this show election are no different than Frenchmen who cheered Marshall Pétain during the Nazi occupation. Had there been an “election” under Vichy rule, it would have been the patriotic duty of every Frenchman to bvoycott it.

I’ve known many of your type and I know that you never, ever are willing to admit to a wrong. You were unwilling to admit that you had severely overstated your case against the Nazi werewolves, and I’m sure you’d be unwilling to admit that you were incorrect in your support of these vile murderers.

I can and do admit when I’m wrong, as readers of the well know. And, by the way, I checked into the comparisons with the Nazi “werewolves” resistance after the fall of Germany at the end of World War II. As I wrote originally, there are no documented cases of casualties inflicted by them. None. They may have cut a few power lines, but they had nothing like the effectiveness of the current Iraqi resistance fighters–to which the Hard Right tried to compare them.

So go ahead and put my e-mail address up on your blog if you wish. All of your fanatical fans are just as blinded with anti-American hatred as you are, and I always love to hear from such idiots. And, please, Ted, drop the

pretense about you being a great patriot. You’re not. You’re a fucking socialist piece of shit who abhors everthing about our nation – other than the wealth and the freedom of speech that it bestows upon you.

I only run your email address if you cross the rhetorical line outlined in my email rules. (Which Jason didn’t.) Whether or not I am a patriot is for others to judge. I do love this country, however, and I’m fighting my damnedest to remind my fellow Americans of our core values, those we all learned as children, and to stop the Hard Right from revolutionizing us into a neofascist nightmare. (By the way, I don’t recall labeling myself. And another by the way: since when are socialists anti-patriotic?)

If you would in some way condemn the Iraqi terrorists, then perhaps I’d think a little bit better of you, but – until then – you are disgusting.

And I might think better of you when you stopped using loaded rhetoric like refering to resistance fighters (a clearer and more neutral term) as “terrorists.” Unless, of course, you also consider George Washington to have been a terrorist, in which case we’ll let it go.

For the record: I don’t share the vision of radical Islamism that some of the anti-US resistance in Iraq apparently wants to impose on Iraq and the Middle East. I wish nothing more than to see the people of the world rise up, overthrow their dictators and autocrats, and create just, peaceful, representative political and economic systems that reward people for their hard work and provide security in their everyday lives. Taliban-like theocracies are obviously antiethical to that goal.

But ultimately it’s up to the citizens of each nation to decide for themselves, sometimes via civil war and acts of violence, to determine how they want to live. Who is to say that my vision, that our vision of democracy, is best for every country? Besides, we still have too much work to do here in the United States of America before we can hold ourselves up as a shining beacon of hope to the rest of the world. We have an unelected dictator for a a”president,” a nation that denies tens of millions of people access to basic healthcare, kids throwing their unwanted babies into Dumpsters, young adults plunged into student loan poverty, systemic racism that divides our cities and suburbs into haves and have-nots, a wildly inadequate retirement system that the ruling party is trying to get rid of–like I said, we have a lot of work to do.

The choice between radical Islam and American-style pseudodemocracy is a false one presented by the Hard Right. There is 0.0% danger that Islamists will take over the United States. And it is 0.0% our business whether it takes over other countries.