From Friends Of Democracy, a Iraqi blogger, comes this great piece on the Iraqi PM recent show of gratitude to the American people:
The words of thanks and gratitude expressed by PM Ibrahim Ja’fari for the American people and president Bush were not simply complements made during diplomatic visits and meetings as some would like to explain. They mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new one for both Iraq and America. An era of strategic partnership between the world’s greatest superpower, the USA, and the most ancient civilization known in history; Iraq, Mesopotamia, the land of the two rivers, the land of Ali and Al-Hussein, where the first word was written, where the first laws were enacted (an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth).
We can confidently say that those simple, yet articulate, words of thanks expressed by Ja’fari, representing the first elected Government in Iraq’s modern history, have pulled down the curtain over an era of empty slogans and false speeches appealing to emotions such as “America the Great Satan,” “Arab oil is for Arabs, death to the reactionaries,” “The Imperialist mother,” and other leftovers of the cold war era which prevailed in Iraq for long years
pushing us decades back behind the rest of the civilized world.Bush’s new project in the Middle East came to confirm this new relationship between Iraq and the US. A political, economical project in which America protects and sponsors the new liberal, democratic Iraq.
Several well-known powers wanted Iraq to remain isolated from the west, and particularly from the US. It was also planned for Iraq to turn into a huge lab for experimenting abstract ideologies such as communism at the time it swept the region, or the united Arab nation and common destiny concepts designed by those who found Arab nationalism an ideal method to turn Iraq into a milking cow for others while its own citizens suffer from hunger and poverty, and the concept of an Islamic state, in both its moderate version of Shura and the extreme one of Wilayet-e Faqih which predominated after the Iranian revolution.
Bush’s project and Ja’fari’s words of thanks put the final bullet of mercy in the head of these withering ideologies which were the reason behind this unjustified enmity between Iraq and the west, one which Iraqis paid dearly for in the process.
…Therein lies the importance of Ja’fari’s thanks to America and the west. They are of huge significance for both Iraq, and for Ja’fari himself. Iraq will soon, God willing, become the Japan of the Middle East and its center if everything goes will with our friends in the west and America.
Much more where that came from, go check it out.
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