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Kurdish blogger's open letter to George Galloway

Trevor Stanley | 26.04.2005 04:29 | Anti-militarism | Repression | Social Struggles

An Iraqi Kurd has recently written an open letter to Respect Party candidate George Galloway in the lead-up to the British general election.

A weblogger in Iraqi Kurdistan has written an open letter to George Galloway, the Respect Party election candidate whose numerous meetings with Iraqi military dictator Saddam Hussein bolstered the military regime and dismayed many Iraqis.

Kurdo's words contain in microcosm the response of many Iraqi bloggers to Galloway's recent encounter with Iraqi blogger Salam Pax:


Dear Mr. Galloway,

I know that you are campaigning hard to win the hearts and minds of the British public, and I wish you good luck in failing. I and many other people from Iraq, just like the father of the Iraqi blogs, Salam Pax, will never forget the scenes in which you were sitting and joking with Saddam Hussein on the screens of the Iraqi television.
We were wondering what you were laughing about. Were the jokes of the dictator who filled the lands and the rivers with mass graves, who terminated birds and rivers, who did not differentiate between a killing baby and a soldier, were his jokes too funny? Or were you laughing at the Iraqi people for having a leader like Saddam Hussein?!


Galloway was recently publicly confronted at the launch of his party's manifesto by Salam Pax, whose pseudonym means 'peace peace'. Salam Pax asked Galloway why he supported immediate withdrawal of British troops from Iraq when polls show only one fifth of Iraqi citizens support such a move. Galloway was dismissive of the blogger, contending that the opinions of the Iraqis were irrelevant to British policy in Iraq.

Kurdo also said in his open letter;

The people of Iraq regardless of our ethnic and sectarian differences are happy about the removal of Saddam Hussein and are working hard to bring back peace and stability to our new baby democracy.

I know that many people in the world can not understand this and your harsh comment to Salam Pax that your country's troops have nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's removal and should not have intervened, are only adding more salt to our deep wounds.

I know you now will regard me as a Kurdish collaborator and accuse me, just like you accuse any freedom-loving and Saddam-hating person of Iraq of "selling your country".

We are not related to anyone in power in Iraq. We are just ordinary people loving freedom and democracy and want to live free just like anyone else in the world. We do not appreciate you stealing our cause and using it to steal the hearts and minds of the British public for your own benefits.

. . .

We are thankful for the forces of United States and United Kingdom and the rest of the world for getting rid of a dictator like Saddam Hussein. Many of us died and didn't live to see their long dream of a world-without Saddam, but those who are living today in that dream-come-true world, are not appreciating your works.

Warmest Regards


Kurdo's weblog also has words for British voters who may be influenced by the Iraq war in casting their vote:


I find it very disturbing if the British public judged Tony Blair over his decision to get rid of Saddam Hussein. It will be a humiliating defeat for freedom and democracy if the British people, the prime founders of democracy, think that if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Baghdad, Iraqis would have been better off.

The decision to topple Saddam Hussein was the most courageous and beneficial decision a British Prime Minister could have ever taken for the sake of the freedom of the Iraqi people.

. . .

If you are voting against Tony Blair for the sake of the Iraqi people, then don't please, because the majority of Iraqis don't appreciate that.

When we see the anti-war protests around the world we think "Where were these people when we were entering our mass-graves alive, when our babies were being gassed, when our villages were being destroyed. Why you didn't protest against Saddam Hussein for our sake ?"


Kurdo's message to British voters can be found here:
 http://kurdo.blogspot.com/2005/04/british-elections-and-iraq-war-as.html

Trevor Stanley

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

lies and more lies.

26.04.2005 13:07

was getting rid of sadam hussien worth the distruction of 100,000 lives.

salam pax family is banked rolled by the US of course he will support the war.

peacenik


Die you you kids killing wanker

26.04.2005 17:13

Eat shit you yankee paid scum and die! Long live Gallaway and fuck you!

Death warrant!


Think before you write...

26.04.2005 17:54

If you truly belive Salem Pax to be a patsy of the US administration, I strongly recommend that you simply read his reports of the progress of the US led invasion, written during the war. This is clearly not a man writing in order to massage the international reputation of Washington Neo-cons. Please, let's grow up a little and move beyond simply insulting those whose opinions we may not share, and instead engage in something approaching salient dialogue.

Munchie
mail e-mail: Oli R


Oona King Must Be Getting Desperate!

26.04.2005 17:58

Oona King must be getting desperate if she has started posting on Indymedia. Look forward to seeing her join the dole queue on May 6th.

respectnik


Kurds as american lapdogs

27.04.2005 04:20

' know you now will regard me as a Kurdish collaborator and accuse me, just like you accuse any freedom-loving and Saddam-hating person of Iraq of "selling your country".

We are not related to anyone in power in Iraq. We are just ordinary people loving freedom and democracy and want to live free just like anyone else in the world. We do not appreciate you stealing our cause and using it to steal the hearts and minds of the British public for your own benefits. '


Yes, thats exactly what the you and the Kurds are: collaborators with an illegal invasion that has killed 100000 iraqis. Its not Galloway who is the problem: its those who aid and abet an illegal and monstrous occupation that has doomed the iraqi people to chaos, cluster bombs and a privatised economy.

brian


Munchie go screw and die!

27.04.2005 18:07

I say what I please dick face! You don't like it then fuck off then!

Death warrant


Surprised response

30.04.2005 15:57


Brian,

"Yes, thats exactly what the you and the Kurds are: collaborators with an illegal invasion that has killed 100000 iraqis."

So you're saying that it would have been better for Kurds to collaborate with the regime of Saddam Hussein, a military dictator who committed attempted genocide against them, rather than cooperate with your own country, a democracy, Britain?

"Its not Galloway who is the problem: its those who aid and abet an illegal and monstrous occupation that has doomed the iraqi people to chaos, cluster bombs and a privatised economy."

A privatised economy? What???

Do you understand that the former Iraqi military dictatorship systematically distorted the economy in order to starve out those it disliked and enrich a clique of thugs? Do you understand that the material conditions of most Iraqis have improved drastically since the Ba'athist logjam was removed from international aid flow? Are you aware that prior to the invasion, actions that would not even be illegal in the West (such as trading in the wrong currency, speaking ill of the leader or performing a mission poorly) were punishable by having ones arms broken or cut off, one's tongue cut out, or by being thrown from a high wall? What right do you have to tell the people who suffered under this most illiberal of tyrannies that their gratitude to Britain and her allies is not welcome, and that their attempt to change their own country for the better makes them "the problem"?

OK, Britons, Americans, Australians etc can debate whether their own country should have invaded in the first place. But when you insult citizens of Iraq for helping to end repression (and even then only by exercising their freedom of speech), you have well and truly left the orbit of anything that can possibly be called 'progressive'.

Trevor Stanley


Iraq for Iraqis

30.04.2005 16:39

I will tell all these anti-war idiots (akl khara) or in Arabic (eat shit).


Where the fuck where you when Saddam killing Iraqis you fucking scumbags

Long Live Iraq
Long Live USA
Long Live UK
Long Live Freedom

Death to Saddam and his supporters.

Iraqi


unfortunately not

01.12.2005 17:16

"OK, Britons, Americans, Australians etc can debate whether their own country should have invaded in the first place. But when you insult citizens of Iraq for helping to end repression (and even then only by exercising their freedom of speech), you have well and truly left the orbit of anything that can possibly be called 'progressive'."

thank you for showing some clarity here. i have no doubt that you consider yourself a progressive, but i have to disagree with your belief that the reactions here leave progressivism. every u.s./british/nato led conflict in the leftwing hagiography of "democracy defferred" has followed this form, wherein white western progressives reserve the right to brand sympathetic members of the goup or nation in the theater of conflict as "the people" and people who welcome intervention as "collaborators" who deserve whatever the radicals assailing their country inflict upon them.

the fact is, progressives do not care about iraqi people, who have been bannished from speaking at antiwar rallies and made invisible by a leftwing international press. they hate the west more than they love liberty.

jummy


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