Riverbend: Just Go
If we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost the war.
— Lyndon Johnson
One of the thing that has always made Riverbend’s Baghdad Burning weblog so interesting to me is that she represents, in many respects, the target audience for the US message in Iraq. She’s young, educated, professional, has attended school in the West and speaks excellent English; in short, she’s exactly the sort of thoughtful, cosmopolitan Iraqi who we’d hope would be willing to give our message of liberation and democracy a fair hearing. If Iraq is ever to emerge from the US occupation while avoiding the twin pitfalls of repressive authoritarianism and theocratic dogmatism, it is Iraqis like Riverbend who will make it happen.
In her previous post, she spoke of the revulsion that she and other Iraqis felt at the revelation of the Abu Ghraib prison abuses: Those pictures…. As she’s thought about it more, and as she’s watched the reactions of various players to the events, her views have hardened. Now, in a heartbreaking post that rings with the moral authority of our own Declaration of Independence, she speaks on behalf of all Iraqis to the country that has done her such wrong: Just go…
I sometimes get emails asking me to propose solutions or make suggestions. Fine. Today’s lesson: don’t rape, don’t torture, don’t kill and get out while you can- while it still looks like you have a choice… Chaos? Civil war? Bloodshed? We’ll take our chances- just take your Puppets, your tanks, your smart weapons, your dumb politicians, your lies, your empty promises, your rapists, your sadistic torturers and go.
If we’ve lost Riverbend, we’ve lost the war.
May 8th, 2004 at 11:03 am
How did “we” lose the support of a blogger who wasn’t in support of the US action in the first place (that I’m aware of).
May 8th, 2004 at 1:23 pm
We lost her in the sense that where previously she was standing back, cautiously giving the US a chance to deliver on its implicit promises to the Iraqi people, she’s now done with that, and would rather take her chances with us gone. And she’s not alone. In fact, it’s the US that is now more or less completely alone in Iraq. As in, without a shred of local support, or the prospect of generating it.
Which means the president’s grand plan has failed, completely and utterly. Iraq will cost the US vast amounts of money, an obscene number of lives, its moral stature in the world community, and its longterm prospects for security. In return for… nothing.
Nice going, Bush. Nice going, Bush supporters.
June 29th, 2004 at 7:27 pm
I checked on riverbend tonight and she was gone. Yes? … or service error?