This is the size of the crowd that felled a dubya effigy in London today:
This is the size of the crowd that felled the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad (hint: it was PR stunt):
I wish I were there to be a part of the shutdown of England by dubya's army fun. Less than one year until we get to tear down dubya's regime for real and regain freedom for America.
Err, someone should have told you the latter photograph was taken in what was still a 34-year long dictatorship, and at the end of a war, while the regime was technically still in power.
While the former was taken in a century-long democracy where everyone has *always* been able to jump naked onto a football pitch or Trafalgar square fountain or parade with papier mache theatricals as they fancy, without getting shot or arrested or tortured.
The goal being for the citizens pictured in photo B to be finally free to do what citizens in photo A are doing. They couldn't have done that before.
Not that you didn't know this, but I have a feeling those facts didn't quite sink in with you.
Regards,
CT
Of course, there's no mentioning that the people who didn't show up for the photo are now sheltering and aiding those who shoot at our troops every day.
Asking a Libertine to face the facts that this war in Iraq just doesn't have the popular support that they claim it does invites impressive displays of spin. And they're whirling faster than dervishes now.
Posted by: Joel at November 21, 2003 11:41 AMAlso take a close look: there are tanks in that photo. I wouldn't want to show up for any event where there are tanks prominently displayed. Not after Tiannimen Square. These tanks belong to the United States. The photo thus symbolizes how little the locals trust their "liberators".
Posted by: Joel at November 21, 2003 11:44 AMCT, the second picture was not taken during a dictatorship but after the fall of a dictatorship.
The goal - at least the one given that day - was not the liberation of the Iraqis from a dictatorship but the defense of the United States from an imminent threat of nuclear attack from Iraq. The latter goal was a lie. The former goal, the pre-emptive attack of one country by another - was a violation of international law.
Further, the location you dismiss and critique now was widely hailed by the US government, TV and print as a triumph of the spirit of the Iraqi people. Tearing down a statue of their fallen leader. Well, the wide shot proves what witnesses have said: it was a staged event. A lie. Like the lies that led to the war. Like the lies about the Tonkin Incident that led to the Vietnam war. Like the lies that we are told every day. We deserve better.
As for liberation, look closely. Iraq has not been liberated. Its infrastructure was decimated by ten years of US mismanagement of sanctions. What was left was severely damaged by a foolhearty U.S. military attack. Since then, its utilities and businesses have been annexed by United States businesses. The United States retains control over the government and brutally punishes anyone who disagrees with it. There is no liberation. An economic dictator has been substituted for a political dictator.
Posted by: arthur at November 21, 2003 02:57 PMCT: Even though I am still a US citizen, as a permanent resident of Britain, I must protest at the absurd notion that democracy is only one century old in Britain. How on earth did you work that out?
Geeky history stuff (C students should stop reading now). "Universal manhood suffrage" in England dates from about the 1830s when a series of reform bills greatly extended the vote. Britain abolished slavery about 40 years before the US did. Britain gave women the vote about the same time as the US - right after WWI. By that measure, democracy is a little less than 100 (let's say 83 or so) years old - everywhere in the world. So if you don't use that measure, you could say British democracy is 800+ years old (from Magna Carta), 400+ years old (from English Civil War), 300+/- years old (from more or less modern form of Parliament) or 170 years old (from 1st Reform Bill). But none of those is "a century" or even close. And what do you mean by always having been able to jump naked onto football pitch? Are you saying that a 17th Century English woman would not have been tortured if she had jumped naked onto a football pitch?
And anyway, all of that is beside the point. The real point is (1) that the Saddam statue event was staged; (2) that the London even was meant to mock the Baghdad event, not to compete with it and (3) the fact that the London demos were so huge does not prove that Brits are wacky rebels who love to get nekkid for a cause but that there is something glaringly wrong with either the premises or the conduct of the war in Iraq and possibly both.