Well, it's official -- all my favorite Iraqi bloggers have gotten out of Iraq

[beachmom]

The Kid is in Jordan. Zeyad is in NYC. His brother is currently trying to get enough dough to emigrate to New Zealand. Zappy is in Jordan. True, the right winger favorites are still in Iraq, but they'll be on the 1975 Saigan helicopter if you get what I mean.

This thing is OVER. The most intelligent Iraqis have voted with their feet. They're not going to waste any more time waiting for things to get better. Because they won't.

Now let's get our troops out.

[whometense]

1. I'm glad for them,

though it's miserable that they were forced to leave.

NPR did a few interviews this morning with Iraqis who were forced to flee to Jordan. The saddest stories ever of hopes dashed, and lives completely shattered. Audio is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6564639

[beachmom]

2. Thanks for the link. The woman really got to me.

She really wanted freedom and democracy. But Bush was only interested in taking out Saddam, not doing the work necessary to build institutions, create law and order, and have a constitution for everyone. He talked big, but did little. And now they are all suffering for it. Do you ever wonder that had Kerry become president that he could have made Iraq right? Or were the mistakes from 2003 too much to overcome? I don't know the answer to that question.

And, by the way, from what I have read Bush is now going to focus his blame on the Iraqi people and the American people for the failures in Iraq. Sorry, that sounds like Hitler, who blamed the German people right at the end from his bunker. I don't compare Bush and Hitler lightly, but if he goes this route then he will be imitating a Nazi dictator.

[Noisy Democrat]

3. What about Riverbend?

She's the awesomest blogger, IMHO, and I worry about her. I hope she gets out.

[beachmom]

4. She caters too much to the American Left -- I just found her less

credible than some of the others. She never, ever had a positive thing to say in 3 years. I opposed the war; yet there were times when I saw some positive effects of ousting Saddam Hussein. Yet she only dwelled on the negative, and on a particularly joyous day in Iraq (Election Day in January 2005), all she could talk about was how her water was turned back on. She didn't even mention the vote. For me that was too much. Her blog is to the Left as Iraq the Model is to the Right. For me, they cancelled each other out. Nevertheless, I read her. She's just not my favorite.

As far as her safety, sometimes she leaves the country or at least goes to Kurdistan from what I understand. She is very, very depressed, understandably so. She doesn't post that often anymore. I guess she's had two books published, which is great. I guess I'm just more nuanced than her, that is all.

[WildEyedLiberal]

5. Fair enough, but honestly

I can't really imagine being nuanced if my country were invaded, either. I mean, if I had to deal with the complete destruction of the infrastructure of my city, neverending violence in the streets, probably dealing with the deaths of some of my friends and family... well, I don't think I'd have anything positive to say about an occupying force coming in uninvited and wrecking my country, either.

I mean you could very well be right that she saw an unfulfilled niche in blogging to the antiwar left, but I can honestly say that if some occupying army invaded the US, leveled cities, and fomented an insurgency which quickly turned into a bloody sectarian grab for power, I'd probably have nothing good to say, either, and hell, I'd probably be out in the streets fighting. Of course, that's just me.

[beachmom]

6. Except . . . Saddam Hussein wasn't your president

The fact was a lot of Iraqis were truly happy that he was ousted. Life under 10 plus years of sanctions and over 20 years under a butcher president wasn't all that pleasant. And, they could absolutely NOT blog before that; the Mubharak (sp?) spied on the internet and monitored everything. Zeyad got around that because he was into video games and chatted with people all over the world on message boards about the games. Even then, it was risky, and sometimes he was scared he'd be caught. The NPR program Whometense linked to has an interview with one Iraqi woman who was clearly happy about having a democracy, and initially was VERY hopeful that a bright future awaited her and Iraq. The biggest problem (once we went in) was the lack of law and order the Americans provided. The looting was horrible. And then, by August 2003 the insurgency truly was born. But many bloggers have said that some positive things did happen. And even Captain Powers (who spoke before Kerry at the Dissent speech) spoke of going to the Iraqi people's homes and volunteering at an orphanage. Those were positive things.

I will admit that getting interested in the Iraqi blogs is risky emotionally. It represents a true dichotomy -- the invasion ALLOWED the blogs to be born so that they could . . . criticize the occupation. And Riverbend is a legitimate voice in that she represents the "losers" to the occupation. She is a Sunni coming from a family of high regard (her English is impeccable), and she lost just about everything. I do sometimes wonder if she or her family wasn't somehow connected with the Baathists to have lost things so quickly (perhaps a victim of Bremer's draconian de-Baathification), but that's just speculation on my part; and to be clear, I'm not talking about the bad Baathists, but people who were members just for better pay, etc. But . . . it was hard to know what was going on from her blog. I never knew how bad it was from her, because she said it was ALWAYS bad. It was the pro-American blogs that convinced me that after the Samarra shrine bombing, that things were REALLY bad, and that's why I ultimately decided that our troops needed to leave (before that, I really, really wanted us to make it right; after Feb. '06 I knew it was not possible). Still, Riverbend's info has been good -- her scoop on chemical weapons being used in Fallujah (the white phosphorous) ended up being true.

Hope that explains it a little better.