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Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Robert Frisk, independently embedded in Baghdad 

Tompaine.com interviews journalist Robert Frisk in Baghdad:
Frisk has these observations


Then Fisk has this to say, brilliantly so, about the tradition of anti-colonialism in Iraq:

"And the truth of the matter is that Iraq has a very, very strong political tradition of strong anti-colonial struggle. It doesn’t matter whether that’s carried out under the guise of kings or under the guise of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party, or under the guise of a total dictator. There are many people in this country who would love to get rid of Saddam Hussein, I’m sure, but they don’t want to live under American occupation. The nearest I can describe it- and again, things can change- maybe the pack of cards will all collapse tomorrow- but if I can describe it, it would be a bit like the situation in 1941-- and I hate these World War II parallels because I think it’s disgusting to constantly dig up the second world war -- Hitler is dead and he died in 1945 and we shouldn’t use it, but if you want the same parallel, you’ll look at Operation: Barbarosa, where the Germans invaded Russia in 1941 believing that the Russians would collapse because Stalin was so hated and Communism was so hated. And at the end of the day, the Russians preferred to fight the Germans to free their country from Germany, from Nazi rule, rather than to use the German invasion to turn against Stalin. And at the end of the day, a population many of whom had suffered greatly under Communism fought for their motherland under the leadership of Marshal Stalin against the German invader."

The war planners have tremendously underestimated the resistance they would encounter, obviously, in Iraq.






# posted by scorpiorising : 4:15 PM |

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