> Bradford DeLong wrote:
>
>> There was *some* grandeur in being a stooge for Lenin. There is none
>> in being a stooge for Saddam Hussein.
Maybe you actually believe that people are fighting for Saddam Hussein. That's your choice, but it is a fatal error. People fight for their country and for their lives. Many Britons who rallied under Churchil hated him - we don't like remembering that he was a strike breaking thug who gassed kurds to save pennies and waged war on the Bolsheviks, a very unpopular move with the working class back then. There is nothing like a sound bombing to unite a people. You should know that from your recent experience with disaffected Saudis.
As for the Iraqis, they perceive, probably correctly, that the US is not going to free any living body. They have no basis on which to make the opposite inferrence: if they know anything, they can look at Nicaragua, Granada, El Salvador, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Somalia, Panama, Haiti and other such shining monuments to US benevolence. If they go with their gut feeling, they need only look at what the US did in Iran, Lebanon or its continued support for Israel, which weighs like a nightmare on the conscience of all Arabs and Moslems I have ever met. You can ignore this, and call people names in the great tradition of American liberalism, but that doesn't change anything except your self-perception.
I don't like Saddam Hussein one little whit. I rather resent being told the opposite while your government is making a martyr out of this second rate Cucescu wannabe. But if can't see that this war is rallying support around him, you really have fallen into the mirrored waters.
Thiago Oppermann
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