Saddam Killed Us

clipped from www.pajamasmedia.com Go to Iraq. Not for a few days, like our politicians do, but for months. Spend those days living and working with Iraqis. Try answering the question I often heard from them while I was there: “Why are you Americans saying you are going to leave my country before it is safe?” The first time I heard that question, during a heated political discussion with some of my Iraqi friends, I shot back saying, “When are you Iraqis going to start fighting back when terrorist thugs roll into your neighborhoods? Where are your Washingtons, your Jeffersons, your Gandhis, your Martin Luther Kings? Surely, in a country of 30 million people there must be some of them.” It was unfair of me to say that. I am an American. I had never lived in a place where a slip of the tongue could get me killed. After my outburst, one of the Iraqis explained to me that what I was interpreting as cowardice among Iraqis was deeper than that: “Saddam killed us,” he said.