Rededicated

Sometimes I waver in my commitment to the whole Iraq project. Sometimes it seems the Bush administration is just too incompetent to do the job and the American media is openly committed to defeat and failure, and that combination is too much to overcome, even for the best intentions. Sometimes I think my girlfriend is right, that I'm a hopeless idealist. Then I read the indispensible Mohammed at Iraq the Model and remember who we're doing this for, and why we're doing it:

This reminds me of a friend of mine, whose house was the target for a grenade attack a few days ago (we thank God, no one was hurt) just because he works to build this country with the coalition. He said “Ok, I’m ready to leave this job, but those who attacked my house, what are they going to offer as an alternative? They just want to see everyone paralyzed with fear and hate.”

Love is another subject. It demands that you think a lot, fight against what you are told about "the others" and to give a lot for others. Building love takes more time and keeping the faith in it requires patience and sacrifices and a vision that exceeds the limits of today or tomorrow, and this is what the losers can’t afford. That’s why they chose the easier road of hollow criticism that lacks the spirit and creativity and this would be obvious if you looked closer at the nature of the efforts that counteract the changing process: they provide no alternatives at all, or sometimes, with great foolishness, try to compare the current situation with the previous one or to go back to it saying that things were better then.

Some say that the US must withdraw from Iraq right now for the best of Iraqis; I say, Ok, the US withdrew from Somalia long time ago and what was the result? What’s Somalia like now?

Humanity, in its nature, has an inclination to move forwards and those people are acting against this nature and once again I tell you that their job is very easy and it won’t need much to be done while my job is a hard one that needs a lot but I’m not giving it up.

A prosperous and democratic Iraq will be a reality; it’s just a matter of time. Everyone should believe in this, more than this, we should start to feel it from this moment and the obstacles we’re facing right now will be a history that we would only discuss in the future to get some lessons from.

Finally, I have a question to the anti-change and to our friends in the biased media wherever they might be; if all your stories were true and if we were wrong about everything we did, what suggestions would you offer to make things better? what are your plans?

What?! What did you say? I'm listening.

What indeed? And before you proposed the United Nations at the savior of Iraq, consider what you'd be sending in:

Teenage rape victims fleeing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are being sexually exploited by the United Nations peace-keeping troops sent to the stop their suffering. (Don't look for repeated images of that on the world news, of course. No Americans were involved.)

Or try this:

Michael A. Sells reports, in "The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia," that "in the summer of 1992, U.N. peacekeepers under the command of Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie frequented the rape camp known as Sonja's Kon-Tiki, in the town of Vogosca near Sarajevo. Even after they learned that the women at the Kon-Tiki were Muslim captives held against their will, abused, and sometimes killed, U.N. peacekeepers continued to take advantage of the women there and to fraternize with their nationalist Serb captors."