to appear in Portland this weekend
So apparently, Raed Jarrar, the raed of (Iraqi) salam pax’s “dearread” blog which was a must-read through the — um — “Major Combat Operations Phase” of the Iraq War, is going to be a featured speaker at the Portland 4th Annual of the Event in March of 2003 Peace March / Anti-War Protest. Amazing, because he may be the first speaker at any of these things I have ever heard of.
As an aside for these things, in the past these nationally-coordinated marches were sponsored by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and end Racism), a fairly dismal entity which the right wing could beat up mercilessly. Now I do not believe they have International ANSWER to kick around anymore, but I know they will continue to do so nonetheless.
Raed Jarrar has always fascinated me in certain respects. Salam Pax was always in a strange way, within a plethora of mixed emotions, a crypto-war supporter, in the sense that he could shrug when it came, state that the Iraqis would never dispose of Saddam Hussein or his two sons, and at the end of the statue-dropping make a statement that the Americans had better get this right. Raed is of an entirely different mind, Take:
But if the Americans hadn’t invaded, do you believe that internal resistance would have been able to depose Saddam? If Iraqis decided to change their political regime, it’s their business. If they decided not to change it, it’s their business as well. My uncles were deported outside the country because we come from an Iranian descent. Many relatives died during the Iraqi/Iranian war and we were living with daily oppression. So, when I say that it’s fine with us to have an oppressive government that we have to change, I mean it and I know what I’m talking about.
If Iraqis decided to change their political regime, it’s their business. If they decided not to change it, it’s their business as well. My uncles were deported outside the country because we come from an Iranian descent. Many relatives died during the Iraqi/Iranian war and we were living with daily oppression. So, when I say that it’s fine with us to have an oppressive government that we have to change, I mean it and I know what I’m talking about.More aptly is this analysis, which downplays internal strife:
The current civil conflict—Iraqis in general don’t view it as a civil war—is caused by the foreign intervention. If we took into consideration Iraqi Sunnis and Shia have been living together for the last 1,400 years and they had one period of civil conflict that happened 600 years ago and they have never had any ethnic or sectarian clashes in the last century, and that they started having more political tension among themselves in the last three years, after the presence of the U.S., I think the clear conclusion is what’s happening now is caused by the foreign intervention, because it didn’t exist before then.
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In a sense that would alleviate many Americans from its last impulse to remain, the “We can’t leave a bloody civil war”… (Not that we seem to be leaving. We appear to be ready to cut up the oil — one part to Sunnis, one part to Shiites, one part to Kurds, one part to Chevron, one part to Exxon.)
But starting with the bombing of the Golden Mosque, I really can’t exactly tie into that one. But I would really like to believe it.