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In the last few months, just like everybody else, I have been getting a crash course on Iraq. Not the war that has come and gone, but the people and the place itself. From what has been reported lately, our government and military are also learning plenty.
According to the Washington Post, while our President and Prime Minister Tony Blair were so focused on finding “weapons of mass destruction” and getting rid of the evil dictator Saddam the Merciless, they overlooked a few things. Namely, the people who make up the majority in Iraq, the religious sect known as the Shi’ites.
Of course, I didn’t give them much thought myself. Then again, I wasn’t the one who was charging head first into a country that I was planning to restructure into a democratic country. I mean this is what the people of Iraq wanted, right? They wanted to be free from all the tyranny that had plagued them for years, didn’t they?
Apparently the Shi’ites did want that freedom, they just didn’t want us to supply it. Unlike their neighbors to the North, the Kurdish sect, who welcomed us with open arms, the Shi’ites seem to have a problem with Uncle Sam. Here we are, two weeks after ousting Saddam the Wicked, and during a religious pilgrimage that they haven’t been able to participate in for over 20 years, the crowd shouted “No to America and Saddam, yes to Islam.” Holy Shi’ite!
Wait just a damn minute. How did the United States get lumped into the same category as Saddam? We send our brave soldiers over to fight and die for you. We sent them in to do what you were incapable of doing since big bad Saddam took power 24 years ago, and you turn around and start bad mouthing us? I wish we could find Saddam so we could put him back into power for a month or so, just as a reminder as to how good they have it now.
The Shi’ites, in a brief two weeks, are already concerned that we want to run their country when nothing could be further from the truth. Believe me when I tell you that our service men and women would like nothing more than to get the hell out of your beautiful country and get home to their families. Unfortunately, they have been put in the position of acting as babysitters due to the fact that you can’t control yourselves. If you weren’t so easily manipulated you wouldn’t have needed our help in the first place.
I don’t know what the Shi’ites beliefs are; to be honest I really don’t want to know. Any group who, during the aforementioned pilgrimage, beat themselves with chains and cut their heads open with swords, are a group that I would just like to stay away from. If that is what the 60 percent majority does for fun I suggest we pull our troops out now.
Of course that won’t be happening any time soon due to the little miscalculation I mentioned at the beginning. That little misjudgment was that we, that’s we as in our elected officials, thought we would be able to help establish and put a democratic government in place. The Shi’ites, who again are the majority, want a fundamentalist government, one that is ruled by religion. Oops.
Their next-door neighbor, Iran, has already started pushing the Shi’ites buttons in that direction. In case you didn’t know, this is a bad thing because Iraq could end up with somebody worse than Saddam. Of course if that happens we probably will have the troops back in Iraq in twenty years to kick out whatever demigod they have in place and all of our current efforts would be for not.
This “love us when you need us, hate us when you don’t” stuff is getting old. During this last conflict the French reminded us of what merde heads they are. Not only did they not back us in the beginning, now they are trying to rear end us now that it’s over. France is now insisting that the U.N., not the U.S., be in charge of the reconstruction that has to be done in Iraq. I don’t think so cheese breath.
You see there are some serious bucks to be made in the aftermath of a war. France is understandably concerned that it won’t be cut in on it if the U.S. is in charge. Gee, maybe you should have thought about that before deciding to sit on the sidelines Pierre. We’ll let you know if Iraq needs any wine or cheese factories.
Better still why don’t you send them a statue or two? It seems as though a few are missing after the Shi’ite hit the fan.
The Shrub Speaks: It's a different kind of war than we're used to in America. It's a war that requires patience and focus.
-- I guess all those old wars were really undisciplined and unfocused.
Washington, D.C., Mar. 4, 2003
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