Jewish World Review Feb. 27, 2003 / 25 Adar I, 5763

Jack Kelly

Jack Kelly
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Consumer Reports


Iranian student: Can America hurry up with Iraq already, so they can get on with attacking us?


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Goli Afshar, a 23-year-old college student in Tehran, is worried about an American attack on Iraq. The Americans, she fears, are taking too long. "Are they changing their mind?" Goli asked a Los Angeles Times reporter. "Can they hurry up with Iraq already, so they can get on with attacking us?" Goli's attitude is widely shared by young people in Iran, who have no love either for Saddam or for their own tyrants.

"The day Saddam is arrested, killed or exiled, Iranians will pass out sweets in the streets," Mehdi Ansari, a newspaper vendor, told Azadeh Moaveni, the LA Times reporter.

Iraq and Iran are historic rivals who often have been enemies. But on the question of an American attack on Saddam, there is a meeting of the minds. On Sunday, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz addressed a meeting of about 300 Iraqi emigres in Dearborn, Mich.

"Wolfowitz, one of the administration's leading hawks on Iraq, frequently found himself in the unusual position of being urged to swift action, as if he were overly dovish," reported Tom Ricks of the Washington Post.

Amir Taheri, an Iranian expatriate who lives in Paris, went to London with a few Iraqi friends to take part in the big anti-war march.

"Our aim had been to persuade the organizers to let at least one Iraqi voice be heard," Taheri wrote. "Soon...it became clear the organizers were as anxious to stifle the voice of the Iraqis in exile as was Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

"The Iraqis had come with placards reading 'Freedom for Iraq' and 'American rule, a hundred thousand times better than Tikriti tyranny.'

"But the tough guys who supervised the march would have none of that," Taheri said. "Only official placards, manufactured in the thousands and distributed among the 'spontaneous' marchers, were allowed...The thugs also confiscated photographs showing the tragedy of Halabja, the Kurdish town where Saddam's forces gassed 5,000 people to death in 1988."

The most blatant and despicable of the lies "activists" tell is that their opposition to war with Iraq is driven by concern for the welfare of the Iraqi people. Salima Kazim, a grandmother whose three sons were murdered by Saddam Hussein, found out how phony this claim is when she approached the Rev. Jesse Jackson and asked for permission to speak.

"Could I have the microphone for one minute to tell the people about my life?" the 78-year-old Salima asked Jackson. He refused.

"Today is not about Saddam Hussein," Jackson snapped. "Today is about Bush and Blair and the massacre they plan in Iraq."

Saddam Hussein has killed about a million Iraqis in the course of his bloody reign, and he has killed most of them ugly.

"This is a regime that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents," said Kenneth Pollack, who was President Clinton's point man for Iraq policy. "This is a regime that will crush all the bones in the feet of a two-year-old girl to force her mother to divulge her husband's whereabouts. This is a regime that will hold a nursing baby at arm's length from its mother and allow the child to starve to death to force the mother to confess."

"The Iraqi nation is like a man who is kept captive and tortured by a gang of thugs," said Abdel-Majid Khoi, son of one of Iraq's foremost religious leaders. "The proper moral position is to fly to help that man liberate himself and bring the torturers to book. But what we witness in the West is the opposite: support for the torturers and total contempt for the victim."

To compare today's war protesters to Vidkun Quisling or the Vichy French would be unfair...to Quisling and to the French collaborators. They sucked up to Hitler, but they were bowing to a superior power which had occupied their land. The support Jackson et. al. are giving the Butcher of Baghdad is entirely gratuitous.

The activists say we should be impressed with the turnout for their protests. But the Nuremberg rallies attracted bigger crowds. Neville Chamberlain was never more popular than upon his return from Munich.

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02/25/03: Yahoos on both the Left and the Right are trying to prevent government from maximizing technology in protecting us
02/20/03: Anti-war group gets it right about great humanitarian tragedy in last Gulf War
02/18/03: Iraqis: Why are these people marching for tyranny?
02/07/03: French kiss(ed)-off
02/05/03: Does the FBI have the ability to protect us from terrorists already here?
02/03/03: The "Axis of Weasels"
01/29/03: A bit of the jitters
01/27/03: The world's mediocre intelligence agency
01/21/03: By reaffirming GOP opposition to racism, president demonstrates willingness to confront liars
01/16/03: Why the United States should withdraw all of its military forces from South Korea as rapidly as we reasonably can
01/14/03: Federal incompetence driven by political correctness, not trampling of civil liberties, is what we should fear
01/09/03: Bag this boondoggle: The V-22 Osprey would hurt our national defense
01/07/03: Another Korean war?
01/02/03: Ostriches
12/26/02: Learning from Canada's economic suicide
12/24/02: A moral dilemma: Support a vicious fascist dictator or the poor and downtrodden?
12/20/02: Time to tell the truth: The great movement of blacks to the Democratic Party took place for economic reasons, not because of civil rights
12/18/02: Nothing better illustrates Trent Lott's unfitness for the post of Senate Majority Leader than his desperate efforts to cling to it
12/16/02: Debunker mentality: It's hard work not seeing ties between Iraq and al-Qaida
12/12/02: GOP ideologues turning on Lott --- better sacrifice the leader than the party
12/06/02: Curing our democracy of afflictions
12/02/02: Conscription, like the horse cavalry, is an artifact of a bygone time
11/27/02: What Saddam faces
11/25/02: Why war with Iraq can be averted
11/19/02: A draft would harm the military
11/12/02: The 2002 elections and Nixon
11/07/02: Democratic overreaction to our recent "cosmically important" election
10/30/02: Show North Korea we're serious: Polish off Saddam
10/22/02: The squealing in the Pentagon is a proof of Rummy's effectiveness
10/16/02: The tactical challenge we face
10/10/02: Silence more despicable than seditious noise
10/08/02: Bu$h and the bu$ine$$ of war
10/01/02: Gore's calculated risk may well get him the Dems' nomination
09/25/02: Schroeder may find the fruits of victory sour
09/25/02: Making Saddam change his spots
09/19/02: Bush's resolve already has paid dividends
09/17/02: Courageous Iranians
09/13/02: If you never served in the military, you have no right to an opinion
09/10/02: Why the 'air marshals' will fail
09/05/02: Resurrecting the "Happy Darky"
08/31/02: Are Bush's inactions against Iraq calculated?
08/23/02: Dems can't take the minority vote for granted any longer
08/20/02: No proof of Saddam's wrongdoing? Yeah, right
08/15/02: Mineta's war on what?
08/13/02: When Gore said he wanted to be his 'own man,' what was he thinking!?
08/08/02: Picking a tree for Cheney's hanging
08/06/02: Fears about the Department of Homeland Security are misplaced
08/01/02: The greatest strategic deception since Eisenhower convinced Hitler the Allies were going to land at the Pas de Calais?
07/30/02: State Dept.'s anti-American actions
07/26/02: Journalists are making sure Americans can't differentiate between the stock market and the economy
07/23/02: Iran's is on the verge of a social and political explosion. So why is media ignoring it?
07/17/02: FBI isn't supposed to stand for Foolish, Blind and Incompetent
07/12/02: The ICC tramples on rights Americans take for granted
07/09/02: Was LA International Airport shooting, in fact, good news?
07/02/02: What the "intelligence community" can learn from Alexander the Great
06/28/02: Muslim link in Oklahoma City bombing revisited
06/25/02: A good environmental scare needs two ingredients - an impending catastrophe, and someone to blame for it
06/21/02: Stirring the security pot
06/18/02: Why the military is so messed up
06/14/02: Vast majority $68.7 billion proposed for weapons will be spent on systems of little use in the war on terror
06/12/02: Bush saw them and raised them, and he's holding the aces
06/10/02: Some heads need to roll
06/04/02: A new draft for the 'war on terror'?
05/31/02: So the FBI has finally caught up to our priorities?
05/29/02: Taking on common sense
05/23/02: Political terrorists
05/21/02: There is a great deal to fret about, but I've never been more optimistic
05/15/02: If there is a way for America to lose the war, Gen. Tommy Franks can find it
05/13/02: Impartial justice against Americans by the UN?
05/07/02: Want to win the 'war on terror'? Reinstate the draft
05/03/02: An expanded NATO is needed as a counterweight to the UN and the EU
04/29/02: Islamic 'smarts'
04/26/02: Did Bush play his Aces with Abdullah wisely?
04/23/02: Why peace in the Mideast is closer than ever
04/19/02: What the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank gained from the "peace accords"
04/17/02: Logical Muslim allies
04/10/02: How to guarantee an infinite Mideast war
04/08/02: Saddam's American friends
04/05/02: Arab winners and sinners
04/01/02: Why is the commander of U.S. Central Command not coming clean to the American people?
03/31/02: Dubya under attack … by conservatives
03/26/02: Saddam watch coming to an end?
03/21/02: Get the Jews!
03/19/02: It's time pols and gov bureaucrats be held to the same standard of accountability we insist for corporate execs
03/15/02: Khaki Throat
03/12/02: Making foreign cheaters pay
03/08/02: Timidity and indecision by senior American commanders
03/04/02: Why 9-11? Ex-CIA officials come clean
02/25/02: Don't rule out a quick victory --- even if prez says otherwise
02/21/02: Saving our military from itself
02/19/02: Front Page fiction
02/15/02: Our European allies are like the fat kid who wants to play quarterback
02/13/02: Is the Army in danger of becoming "irrelevant"?
02/11/02: So, I "propagate hatred" …
02/06/02: Bush whacking the media
02/04/02: Why serious folks disregard the European Union --- and why Bush must, too
01/30/02: Give economy pneumonia in order to protect it from a cold
01/28/02: Media is its own worst enemy
01/25/02: Journalists making road to peace a bumpy ride, or: A case study in stupidity
01/23/02: Toward a stronger defense at a lower cost
01/21/02: How Bush could be Generations X and Y's Kennedy ... and guarantee a GOP victory in the midterm elections

© 2002, Jack Kelly