I Liked His Enthusiasm So Much ...

that I wrote a letter to Alaa:

Alaa,

Hang in there. You and Zayed are doing a great job!

Unfortunately, we in the West are experiencing something of a civil war ourselves. I apologize for both our leftists and rightists. They both let your suffering go on far too long and then when 300,000 mass graves are discerned, it's primarily only those on the right who start to get it. The left is too busy trying to twist it in some way to hurt Bush to care much about you. (It's pretty impressive how rampant Bush-hatred is in the Democratic Party.)

The irony is that we actually do have the talent to win the propaganda war, but most of that talent is on the left (a long story why but more true than I care to admit) and is sleeplessly focused on defeating Bush instead of actually putting their talent to positive use in the world.

I have also been suspicious all along of the bureacracy and incompetence of the CPA. The irony there is that given the freedom our country achieved before "big government" came into being in the middle of the last century, we have actually been somewhat content to accept this level of incompetence. It's a sort of "warehousing" of our incompetents -- most (not all of course!) of our really smart people are in the private sector, not the government bureaucracy. And the private sector is where our good "quality of life" stems from primarily.

I have linked you on my blog and will do all I can to support your cause!

My apologies for this mess and my pledge to do what I can,
Bob Gronlund

UPDATE: A very interesting comment I found on Alaa's blog:

I have faith in the Iraqi people. Six thousand years of history, the first written laws, the first writing, I don't think the first democracy in the Middle East is so farfetched.

And I would add the removal of their throats -- however tentatively -- from under one of the most horrific "metal boots" in the history of the planet! Why do you think the Eastern Europeans "got it" about Iraq far more than the Western Europeans? Could it be because they too know the clank of the metal boot? Check out Vaclav Havel for instance...