Flowers? Open arms? Not so much.
100,000 March Against U.S. and Israel in Baghdad.
More than 100,000 followers of the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr marched today to show support for Hezbollah, denouncing Israel and the United States for the violence in Lebanon.
The protesters filled 20 blocks of a wide boulevard and dozens of side streets in the Shiite-dominated Sadr City section of the capital.
Waving Lebanese flags and posters of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the protesters chanted, “No, no, no, Israel, no, no, no, America,’’ challenged Americans to fight them in their neighborhoods, and called on Hezbollah to strike at Tel Aviv.
The fighting in Lebanon has caused a rift between the United States and the Shiite parties that lead Iraq’s new government, which feel a strong solidarity with Hezbollah, also a Shiite group. Mr. Sadr was one of the first to denounce Israel for the conflict, saying last month that “we will not sit by with folded hands before the creep of Zionism.” He also accused the United States of culpability in the bombardments because of its close relationship with Israel.
So the US has made war on Iraq illegally, has been negligent in devising a coherent Afghanistan policy (welcome back, Taliban!), has tortured many Arab persons from many Arab countries, indefinitely imprisoned many, and extraordinarily renditioned others, has sided w/ dictators, despots, and anti-democratic elements in most Arab countries, and it has been unabashedly uncritical -- and here's the important bit -- and therefore seen as unabashedly supportive of Israel's policies and actions, all in the name of what -- war on a noun?
As a result, the US is inextricably linked to all that is oppressive, undemocratic, and if not outright anti-Arab, then certainly Arab-indifferent in the lands where Arabs live. Hence 100,000 people march to denounce Israel and the US for the violence in Lebanon. Nevermind that there are no US soldiers involved, nevermind that the US has not declared war on Lebanon, we supply Israel w/ its armaments, we drag our feet in calling for and in facilitating a cease fire, we uncritically align our interests with Israel's, and we are -- against all of our protests otherwise -- frightfully undemocratic in our practices and in our supports. The world's only superpower, as we never tire of admiring ourselves, is culpable.
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