one Iraqi's reply

Via Satan's Anus:

AN IRAQI BLOGGER WRITES AN OPEN LETTER TO HOWARD DEAN: He's responding to Dean's claim that Iraqis' standard of living is "a whole lot worse now" than before the war, and his response is quite tart. It's a must-read.

Ali's post says in part:

What did Mr. Dean meant by this statement? I didn’t want to write about it from the beginning despite what I felt and the questions asked by some of the readers. I said, “this is an American affair and I might offend some of my American friends through expressing my opinion”. But the statement was too irritating and insulting and as I said before there’s no such thing as an internal affair anywhere in the world, not to mention the USA, the country in which the tiniest change in policy might well have a great impact elsewhere in the world. Anything that happens in America concerns everyone on this planet, and moreover as an Iraqi who his whole country’s future relies considerably on how the things go on in America I have additional reasons to care about such things.

To summarize my response I was not surprised, but it added to my confusion about the justification of the position of some Americans regarding this issue.

To have such approach from some Arabs and Muslims, it’s more than expected, still nauseating though. To have such an approach from some European countries is also (natural). But to come from Americans? Well, this is just more than I can understand.

I’d like to (debate with) Mr. Dean and his supporters on few points.

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

Don’t you agree that by saying those words you accuse the American soldiers of one of two charges each of which is worse than the other;

You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield.

By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morality of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.

And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?

And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences.

Obviously, this doesn't settle any big-picture questions, but this is an opinion straight out of Iraq. The thing I wish Ali had done, though, is offer some specifics on how life is better. For me, I'm honestly curious. Different aspects of the media and blogosphere spin the subject in very, very different ways, so on top of chastising Dean, I'd like to know something of how Ali's own life has improved.

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