Thursday, January 12, 2006

This Guy Must Read the DU

Surfing about for reconstruction info, I noted this little opinion gem in the Azzaman news of Iraq:

What if America’s presence in Iraq is crushed?

Those putting all their eggs in the U.S. basket in Iraq should remember that America is not a land from the outer space and Americans are not superhuman.

Despite its massive military and economic power, it is very likely for America to be defeated in Iraq. The world’s only superpower has a history of cut and run.

It also has a legacy of injustice right from the very beginning of its history which is based on the extermination of the Red Indians who, from time immemorial, had for themselves the plateaus, the mountains, the rivers and the falls of the land.

The history of the U.S. as a nation started with a tragedy, the victims of which were the original inhabitants of the land known today as America.

The Indians must have cursed their tormentors for not only usurping their land but having them finished off as a nation.


On one hand, you can understand that the guy is responding to the political bru-haha in the US about "cutting and running" and his hopes that the people of Iraq and its politicians will get their act together and act on behalf of the Iraqi people. On the other, one must wonder what the heck "red Indians" have to do with it?

Of course, we've seen this on the DU, European commenters on blogs and it is basic Ameircan History 101 (ie, your ancestors were not heroic pioneers, they were mass murderers) in places like Berkely and other nifty liberal education joints. But, just as I find any European comment on the subject rather disengenuous and dishonest, I find the same in regards to this opinion piece. Particularly from a land where the last 2000 years, long before Europeans even knew there was another land across the ocean, has seen one massacre and displacement of people after the other.

But it's nice to know people don't see us as perfect.

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