one Iraqi's email ...

[welshTerrier2]

source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0520-32.htm

the following email is an extract from a recent article by the independent journalist, Dahr Jamail ... btw, if you've never read his stuff, check out his website at: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/

******************************

Abu Talat wrote back to him directly -- the longest email I'd ever seen him send -- and forwarded a copy to me. Here's what he said in his eloquent, though hardly perfect English:

"Thank you Americans (those who believe that American troops are destroying Iraq). Those who believe that facts cannot be hidden with chicken mesh. Who believe they have no right to put ideas in the minds of people of a civilized country, a country in which civilization began before the United States existed. Those people who know that democracy is not given, it is obtained. Who know that Iraqis are people who have to live just like any nation. Who believe that we are no different in the ability of our minds because God made us all so you cannot force us to have the ideas of others unless we accept it after we are fully contented. Those people of the world who raise their voices against colonialism, control, force, the invading of other countries… I thank them, I encourage them, and I ask God to save them.

"Other people of the world who are not on these ethics, who don't implement those ideas, I call them to look around themselves, to awaken themselves, to put themselves in our position. To face what we face, to remember that they don't accept in any way to be insulted, nor to be threatened or killed like what is happening in my country by the invaders. I ask God to spare any difficulty from their country rather than being invaded.

"…Is there anyone in the world who can accept to be killed? Or detained for no reason? Is there any of you who can accept to be put in the situation we are facing, to see their houses crashed or demolished, ended, to see your people treated with no respect, to have guns aimed at them wherever they go, to live without electricity when you used to have it, to see roads closed… whether they will live until tomorrow under a normal life, these are, my friends, just a few things to be told.

"So please tell your friends and people to raise their voices to pull the troops out from invaded Iraq. Seeking that God helps Iraqis to bare the situation done by the troops of the invaders."

******************************

[peacetalksforall]

1. We will. We will & we do tell our friends. Our friends are waking up.

On 9-11 they found a patriotism equal to WWII, but they did it blindly. Finally, slowly, the are waking up. They learn mostly by person to person talk, the internet, and a new radio network. They don't learn by corporate owned newspapers or tv.

Now they claim we are in a world war against terrorism. The great war on terrorism has replaced WMD and Saddam, that bad bad bad man, as our reason for killing and destroying.

You can tell from my phrase, "Saddam, that bad bad bad man", that we are being treated like children. They wish to talk to us like children; they want us to behave like children. They want us to hold hands and follow them and still believe that our country is good. They want us to believe that destruction is necessary and justified.

We are sorry for the deaths and the drastic and tragic way your life has changed and ended and the way you now have to live. Some of our citizens honor your culture and religion and want you to own all the earth under your feet and the air above.

[Auntie Bush]

2. Thanks, that was a good article and interesting to see/hear how the

Iraqis feel about us being there...quite different from those who thank us for their freedom.