The Politics of Indignity
When proud people feel like afterthoughts they get angry, whether in restive Iraq or rural America. And some get violent
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Nov 28 — Thanksgiving is not an Iraqi holiday. So maybe it’s not surprising that few Iraqis were in evidence when President George W. Bush made his gutsy whistle-stop at the darkened Baghdad airport on Thursday. He was there to share turkey with the troops, after all, not with the people they liberated. Security considerations are great. The natives are restless. Bush managed to meet briefly with four local officials, but to paraphrase an earlier maxim of campaign strategy, “It’s not about the Iraqis, stupid.”
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In the last few weeks, as I’ve driven around the United States and read through the hundreds of emails sent to Shadowland@newsweek.com, I’ve discovered an awful lot of anger at home, too. It’s far from the savagery encountered in Mosul, thank God. But it’s plenty intense. And a lot of the American anger, like that of average Iraqis, comes from the feeling that Washington treats them as second-class, as afterthoughts in the Establishment’s great scheme of things, as pawns in someone else’s game of kings.
This home-grown fury isn’t directed only at the Bush administration, but at the whole Washington scene, with the daily tragedies in Iraq and the known excesses of the Patriot Act contributing to the anger. A reader in Atlanta, for instance, wrote an apoplectic letter after he discovered that only six U.S. Senators were present on the floor when the $87 billion for Iraq was passed with a simple voice vote—no roll call—at the beginning of the month. “Those that supported the bill didn’t want to explain to their constituents why they supported it, and those that were against it didn’t want to be painted as unpatriotic,” wrote D.B. from Atlanta. “These soul-less, ball-less cowards don’t even want their votes recorded. How would you feel if you were in Iraq seeing your buddies die every day knowing that your leaders are too chicken-s—- to even say whether or not they support you?”
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http://www.msnbc.com/news/999029.asp?0cv=KA01&MSID=298c065837dd4fa8a91fb68a2a9344c2