Want a better perspective on the Iraqi resistance?

[Mairead]

Read While Still We Live by Helen MacInnes.

She wrote it in 1944, and it's a very powerful, well-researched, and painfully true-to-life story. It's about the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland, and the beginning of the Polish resistance. It's told from the standpoint of a young Scotswoman who was visiting an aristo family near Warsaw during the summer before the invasion. Repelled by the uncaring selfishness of the foreigners fleeing the country on the eve of the invasion, she decides to stay and try to help.

Even if you only read the first part of the book, from the looming shadow of the invasion through the Nazis beginning to pillage as they settle in to occupy the country, you'll come away with a new appreciation of what the Iraqis have been going through and the need for war-crimes trials. We've seen and been sickened by the photos from Iraq, but they're in some sense only snapshots that can't convey the feelings of loss, rage, sorrow, helplessness, desperation, despair, and the grim determination to drive the invaders out that MacInnes captured in her prose.

[sam sarrha]

1. historian the other night said..'no popular insurgency was ever put down'

[lonestarnot]

3. And that would be the Big Dog himself! Brilliant man he!

[Double T]

2. If we truly tried to put ourselves in the position that the Iraqi people..

..have been put in by this bogus war, we would discover that the insurgents are largely the Iraqi citizens fighting back against an outside invader and occupier, the United States. If another nation tried to occupy the United States, I'm certain that the citizens of this country would also fight to the death to reclaim their country as our ancestors have done in the past.