Thursday, November 08, 2007

"God, I love freedom!"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Here's one of the stupidest and most ignorant things George W. Bush has ever said:

If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying: God, I love freedom, because that’s what’s happened.

And there are killers and radicals and murderers who kill the innocent to stop the advance of freedom. But freedom’s happening in Iraq. And we’re making progress.

He said this during a press conference yesterday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy -- TP has the clip.

The "freedom's happening" and "we're making progress" lines are stupid and ignorant, of course, but we've heard them before, in various forms. What deserves attention here is the "I love freedom" line.

Of course, Saddam was a brutal dictator, his regime among the most monstrous ever. I don't deny that, and, indeed, the removal of Saddam and the destruction of his regime was what I was hoping for when I supported the war way back when. I am a strong critic of the war and occupation now, like so many others, like the majority of the American people, but such criticism does not imply retroactive support for Saddam and his regime.

Regardless, the "I love freedom" line exposes Bush's massive and profound ignorance as much as anything he's ever said.

Would Iraqis prefer Saddam and his regime to what they have now? No, likely not. Do they "love freedom"? Well, some do, surely, if they have much of an understanding of it at all. But to suggest that Iraqis should be expressing their love of freedom, or of whatever they imagine freedom to be, while the despised U.S. occupation continues, while sectarian violence rages throughout the country, while bodies pile up in the morgues, given the Sunni insurgency and the Shiite militias and al Qaeda and local tribalism and Kurdish separatism and a central government that is impotent and corrupt, given the lack of electricity and health care, given widespread poverty and sickness, given social discord and infrastructural collapse, given a state of chaos and uncertainty -- well, with all that, and more, I think an Iraqi, even one with Saddam and his regime on his mind, would tell Bush to take his freedom and shove it up his ass.

Freedom is great, don't get me wrong -- but what does it mean when you live in fear, when your country is occupied (by America, no less), when you can't even walk safely down the street, when death and destruction are all around you?

Not much -- and you might just think it's not everything it's cracked up to be.

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2 Comments:

  • Do Iraqis love freedom? A sample size of one hardly qualifies as a public opinion poll. Nevertheless, I have been following an online diary called Riverbend (aka Baghdad Burning) for about a year. I believe this blog represents the views of many Iraqis.

    Riverbend is the pseudonym of a young Iraqi bloggist who has been writing about the American occupation since 2003. Once a computer programmer who enjoyed considerable personal freedom, even under Saddam, Riverbend is now unemployed and largely restricted to the safety of her family's home. In her post of April 26, 2007, she writes about leaving Iraq and becoming a refugee:

    So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? … There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what? It's difficult to decide which is more frightening - car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.”

    Heartbreaking! Here is her link:
    http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:34 AM  

  • I agree, Swampcracker, Riverbend's writing is exceptional, and her accounts of life in Iraq, and now of life as a refugee, are deeply moving.

    By Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings, at 9:33 AM  

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