Quote:
Originally posted by dave
Many people in Iraq <b>are</b> gracious.
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Exactly what the war mongers were saying in 1965. Exact quote if we change Iraq to VietNam! Are we doomed to repeat the lessons of history? We were so sure that they loved us because we were giving them free speech and no dictator. And they kept saying in the streets, "Joe number one".
What were we suppose to have learned from VietNam? That what you think they want is not what they want. In VietNam, they told us repeatedly how they loved having the Americans there. Then when they got together in secret, they said dfiferently what they really wanted.
That reality was expressed in one of those VietNam movies - Platoon or Full Metal Jacket - a scene in the bathhouse that apparently was totally lost on Dave.
They don't want free speech or no Saddam. That was secondary. They want the electricity to work, bombings to not happen, and jobs. Unemplyment is still rampant - unlike the days of Saddam. Take away the rhetoric of Iraqi dissidents, and you have a completely different 'want' from those people. Stop trying to put an American bias on what they want.
Saddam was not 'that' bad for most Iraqis. They did not like him, but they really would not risk anything to remove him - because they did not hate Saddam 'that' much. Saddam was bad, but not that bad as George Jr would have us believe.
Dave needs to get that bias out of his thinking to understand the volatility of Iraq. He is using an American perspective. Wrong. To understand what they want, he must use an Iraqi perspective. Currently Dave is thinking as the ill-informed were thinking in 1965. I know. I was one of those who believe those lies - mostly because we could not get an honest story. Dave should have an advantage - the lessons of VietNam. And yet Dave is rationalizing just as America's domestic enemies rationalized all through the Johnson and Nixon administrations.
People did not miss free speech in Iraq. But they now miss the security, jobs, and government services that were provided by Saddam. Free speech and freedom is not number one on their lists. A smiling American soldier does not mean all is OK. Things could go either way. And that is what reporters in-country are reporting - as some were reporting in mid 1960 VietNam.
Back then, many called the NY Times a communist newspaper because it was but the few who actually reported accurately about VietNam. Today, read the details - which means readers of the Daily News or Fox News will not get sufficient information. Those details are really where the actual mindset in Iraq is found.