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Sat. Mar 22, 2003

Saturday Summary

Saturday Summary – There’s so much going on, and so little time for commentary. So I thought I’d just point you to some events I find indicative, many of them found via the new Technorati feature, Current Events in the Blogosphere.

Upon encountering US/UK forces, Iraqi civilians are chastizing them ... for taking so long: “Ajami Saadoun Khlis, whose son and brother were executed under the Saddam regime, sobbed like a child on the shoulder of the Guardian’s Egyptian translator. He mopped the tears but they kept coming. ’You just arrived,’ he said. ’You’re late. What took you so long? God help you become victorious. I want to say hello to Bush, to shake his hand. We came out of the grave.’ [...] Their 29-year-old son was executed in July 2001, accused of harbouring warm feelings for Iran.” Imagine if in the US, you could be executed by the state because you were suspected of having warm feelings for France. You’d wonder why the liberation took so long, too.

Iraqi troops are shooting their officers rather than fight: “British soldiers from 40 Commando’s Charlie Company found a bunker full of the dead officers, with spent shells from an AK47 rifle around them. Stuck between the US Seals and the Royal Marines, whom they did not want to fight, and a regime that would kill them if they refused, it was the conscripts’ only way out [...] These were the men who had left their soldiers hungry, poorly armed and almost destitute for weeks, judging by the state we had seen them in, while appearing to keep the money for themselves”

The most excellent BBC Reporter’s Log says [scroll to “Basra:: David Willis :: 1303 GMT”], “Coming into Basra as part of a massive military convoy, I encountered a stream of young men, dressed in what appeared to be Iraqi army uniforms, applauding the American marines as they swept past in tanks. American predictions that many here would choose to surrender rather than fight appear to have come true.”

I mentioned yesterday that the citizens of Baghdad seemed to have gotten the message that we aren’t after them, and here’s confirmation from the Guardian: “But so long as the rest of Baghdad remains almost unscathed, ordinary Iraqis appear relatively buoyant, as they reach for the possibility that maybe this war will be less punishing than they had feared [...] ...on the streets of Baghdad, small signs of confidence emerged, reflecting the belief that this time the Americans might show mercy to cilvilians, unlike the confrontation over Kuwait in 1991. That war opened with attacks on Iraqi power stations and water treatment centres, plunging Baghdad into darkness during a bombardment that dragged on for more than 40 days, and inflicting a blow on its infrastructure from which the city has never recovered. ’This war looks different. When you have light, when you have water, when you have food, I think you feel more secure. You can feel the change,’ said Dhia AK al-Jaddue, a doctor in the casualty ward of al-Kindi hospital. ’We expected something much more severe.’”

And if you think those embedded reporters aren’t having an effect, check this out from the same article: “Yesterday’s television pictures showing American tanks trundling across the desert and long files of surrendering Iraqi soldiers, seem to have unnerved officials. ’Where is this desert? It can’t be in Iraq,’ said [Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Sayeed al-Sahaf]. ’They are not Iraqi soldiers.’”

Robert Fisk is in Baghdad, so far has not been beaten by angry locals as he was in Afghanistan, and after witnessing shock and awe, even he seems to have a glimmer of a clue: “But many Iraqis are now asking an obvious question: how many days? Not because they want the Americans or the British in Baghdad, though they may profoundly wish it. But because they want this violence to end: which, when you think of it, is exactly why these raids took place.”

As they did in 1991, the

Haifa and Tel Aviv” href=”http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/275530.html”>Palestinians are supporting Saddam: “’Saddam is not an angel, but we should support him,’ she said. In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, thousands marched in support of Iraq, burning U.S. flags and chanting, ’Oh beloved Saddam, hit Haifa and Tel Aviv.’” One should also remember than when the first Gulf War was over, and the Kuwaiti’s had reclaimed their country (with a little help), they forcibly ejected a quarter million Palestinians from their country.

Protests continue in some parts of the US, notably San Francisco: “San Francisco arson investigators removed 12 Molotov-type cocktails on Friday from a backpack discovered by a groundskeeper cleaning up debris left by anti-war protesters in a downtown alley way [...] Police said they had obtained a security videotape showing two men throwing the backpack into bushes in the alley.”

Jonah Goldberg talks about the “vomit-in” that protesters held in San Francisco yesterday, where people puked for peace, and closes: “If the war goes well and the people of Iraq are saved, let the useful idiots cheer the liberation if they like. Let them applaud the alleviation of famine and disease should they feel so inclined. Indeed, let them claim all they like that they wanted all of these good things too. But don’t let them forget that they never believed these things would be worth it if the price was letting America have its way.”

On the fact more than a thousand have gotten themselves arrested, Eugene Volokh notes, “What’s also interesting is that the costs of arresting and prosecuting thousands of demonstrators is going to come home to haunt the left. Where is the money going to come from? California is already in deep trouble financially. San Francisco isn’t going to be able to raise taxes. Instead, they will have to cut services. Every arrest is dozens to perhaps hundreds of dollars that will come out of social service programs over the next year or two. A peaceful, lawful protest shouldn’t take any money out of social service programs. Getting yourself arrested is a theft from hungry children, homeless people, and mental illness treatment. If conservatives cut these budgets, there would be rage and screaming about it. But when leftists, without any debate or discussion, force these sort of budget cuts, where’s the rage?”