“They knocked out Saddam and brought a hundred Saddams.”
Next time the GOP says that Obama is to blame for ISIS, give them that quote from one Iraqi citizen and then ask them "Who took out Saddam?"
this from a New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/world/middleeast/protests-in-iraq-bring-fast-promises-but-slower-changes.html?emc=edit_th_20150901&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45299538&_r=0
Protests in Iraq Bring Fast Promises, but Slower Changes
BAGHDAD — Surrounded by the clamor of protest — a sea of Iraqi flags, vendors selling coffee and melon drinks, protesters singing the national anthem and railing against politicians — two friends paused and described their dreams.
“I want to find a job opportunity,” said one of them, Yasir Abdulrahman, 21, who recently earned an engineering degree but remains unemployed. “I want to build a country. I want an opportunity.”
His friend Hussein Ali, 22, quit university to support his family and now works as a taxi driver. He said that even the specter of bombings would not keep him away from the square.
“We are only thinking of reforms,” he said. “If you want to change, you have to sacrifice yourself.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/01/world/middleeast/protests-in-iraq-bring-fast-promises-but-slower-changes.html?emc=edit_th_20150901&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45299538&_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
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A protest in Baghdad's Tahrir Square last week. The demands for better public services have grown into calls for broad reform........ Security forces containing protesters in Baghdad on Friday.
For five Fridays now, thousands of mostly, but not entirely, youthful and secular Iraqis have gathered in central Baghdad’s Tahrir Square to demand change. At first, the demands were small, like improving electricity amid a summer heat wave. But the list has grown longer and more complex: Fix the judiciary, hold corrupt officials accountable, get religion out of politics.
Still, for the first time in a long time Iraqis have been given the space to voice grievances. As in Beirut, where piles of trash on city streets incited popular demonstrations, the protests here have evolved into a broader rebuke of the political establishment. Under orders to treat the gatherings with kid gloves, the Iraqi security forces have protected the protesters rather than shoot them, as they did in 2011 when Iraqis, after the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, sought to foment their own revolution.
“People are finally starting to express their opinions,” said First Lt. Ali Thamir, a police officer on duty at Tahrir on a recent Friday. “It’s a really great experience for the people. The security forces are with the people. We are protecting them.”
Since the protests began, Iraqis have noticed a modest improvement in electricity, but not much else. “If the current reforms prove little more than window dressing, they will mean the end of the political life of the prime minister and large portions of the political class,” the International Crisis Group said in a recent report. “In their place, militia commanders would ride popular anger and military supremacy to power.
On a deeper level, the demonstrations represent a popular reckoning with the American legacy here, with the corrupt and dysfunctional political system that has been in place since United States forces invaded in 2003.
For many of the young protesters, the invasion is the most formative event of their lives. When the American bombs began falling, Mr. Abdulrahman said, “it was terrifying, but my parents told me it was good.” “We thought we would be freed,” he added. “They knocked out Saddam and brought a hundred Saddams.”
If peaceful protest fails, the right ("militia commanders"
will 'ride to the rescue' on the basis of "military supremacy".
The Iraqi people are trying peacefully to solve problems that we created using the military. Good luck to them though it is hard to be optimistic.
