Congratulations the Iraqi nation and the Iraqi soccer team, for the 1:0 final victory over Saudi Arabia and for winning the Asian Cup!
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July 29, 2007
Congrats Iraqi Nation
Comments
Absolutely. Great news. The revival of Iraqi unity, and nationalism, has certainly made a leap today.
link
I don’t know whether this link will work, but if it does, it is interesting to hear the puzzlement in the voices of the BBC journalists trying to explain this outburst of national celebration. After all we’ve heard about Iraq not being a country, and the plans for partition, evidently national feeling is incomprehensible.
The truth of the matter is of course that Iraqi national feeling has always been strong (apart from among the Kurds). The sectarian conflict is being stimulated from the outside to suit certain political interests.
For all the talking up of partition in Washington, it would be very difficult to get it through the Iraqi parliament. Iraq is supposedly a “sovereign” nation. Partition cannot be imposed by fiat of Washington. It would need to go through the parliament. I reckon there is no chance of getting it through. No Iraqi wants it (apart from Kurds, and Abd al-Aziz Hakim, who is on his way to the grave).
And now even less.
Posted by: Alex | Jul 29 2007 16:52 utc | 1
But the war against Iraq’s history continues at full speed.
Destroyed: The Tomb of Prophet Daniel in Diala and the Lion of Babylon monument in Basra.
Daniel’s tomb… This should be a bit hard to sell to the public as just another hit in the course of Iraq’s “sectarian civil war.”
Posted by: Alamet | Jul 29 2007 17:09 utc | 2
Well, for ages I’ve been trying to explain to skeptics that, for all Iran’s help in giving shelter to Shi’ites escaping Saddam’s purges, Iraqi Shi’ites don’t want under any circumstances to be dominated by Iran. The Persian-Arab divide is far greater than the Iraqi Shi’ite-Sunni divide. The Shi’ites fought Iran during Saddam’s invasion (1980-88) just as eagerly as the Sunnis did.
But the Neocons won’t give up trying to partition Iraq for easier handling of the oil contracts (“Divide And Rule”), while Israel naturally wants any strong anti-Israeli nation to be cut up into territories each no bigger than 10 square kilometres.
Anyway, I was hoping for an Iraqi win. It was a victory against the odds.
Posted by: Parviz | Jul 29 2007 17:12 utc | 3
And so far (according to CNN) only for people have died in shooting incidents related to celebrating the team’s victory. Still no reports of any celebratory car-bombings.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jul 29 2007 19:23 utc | 5
I intend no irony, I have played the game from youth to adulthood and enjoy watching the sport.
Soccer has much less acclaim here in North America, where we focus on hockey in Canada and the northern USA, football in rural US, basketball in the cities, and baseball in both the US and Mexico.
My cheers for the victory are heartfelt — when this national team from a country under attack gains a championship it gains also great heart and something beyond glory for itself, its fans and the Iraqi people. I guess you’d call it self-respect.
Wish I had seen some of the games.
Posted by: jonku | Jul 30 2007 7:25 utc | 7
That team captain could wind up as the Iraqi equivalent to Pat Tillman…and I somehow assume he’s not a good Christian, either.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jul 30 2007 16:19 utc | 11
Layla Anwar, on uruknet, tries to add up the deported (ah… should be displaced), the killed, the starving, the imprisoned, the tortured, etc. in Iraq:
In other words we are 5 million LESS.
link
I think it is a bit underestimated, as she says herself, it is best to be conservative. One million boys, men who can never kick a ball. Say.
Iraq has always had a football team and they performed Ok. In the middle 80s they qualified for the world cup, afaik. They have always contested matches locally and done well or as expected. If the msm press likes to splash such symptoms of normality around the globe, maybe they could run Miss Iraq contests, starving, veiled, exposed, bleeding, mutilated women, big splash, a huge internet success…in fact there was, in 2003 as far as i recall, a vague stab at that. there was a miss Iraq contest. (no links sorry, no time..)
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 31 2007 19:06 utc | 12
Neurotica writes
This morning, I asked everyone how they felt and what they did yesterday. One guy, N, said with great excitement, this was far more than a game, we beat the Wahhabis, he said. We beath tem and showed them what Iraq is. We broke their noses (An Iraqi expression). I smiled, for it seems everyone took the football as a war. Just like I did. Everyone wanted to prove a point, everyone wanted to throw the Saudi noses to the floor, and oh yes we did. The Lions of Babylon did this so gracefully. What a team. Yet even with this joy and happiness, some countries didn’t allow the Iraqis to share their rare celebrations. In Amman and Dimashq, police started beating up the Iraqi fans, and tearing up Iraqi flags. Funny how one anonymous reader asked me to be grateful to Jordan. Oh really??? Look at what theyre doing!!! Even in those rare and short moments of laughter, they kill it. Their hatred is so overwhelming. And when I talk about countries, I don’t mean the people, I mean the governments and their policies, so don’t take me wrong.
Iraq has always had a football team and they performed Ok. In the middle 80s they qualified for the world cup, afaik. They have always contested matches locally and done well or as expected. If the msm press likes to splash such symptoms of normality around the globe, maybe they could run Miss Iraq contests, starving, veiled, exposed, bleeding, mutilated women, big splash, a huge internet success
Though I agree it is a guy thing, N. underestimates the importance of this victory for Iraqis. Iraqis have gone right over the top celebrating. Look at a Sunni resistance site like http://www.iraqirabita.org (admittedly in the Arabic version, there’s not much English). It is completely covered in photos of the celebrations.
Posted by: Alex | Aug 1 2007 16:27 utc | 14
@alex
This is not a guy thing or a woman thing.
this is a humanity thing. Yes, it is good for iraq to stand up in unity, even if only for foot ball, but simply juxtapose
all the victims of katrina cheering on the
new orleans saints simply for the fact that they got their stadium back.
how empty.
please dont get me wrong, its one thing to wilfully neglect victims of a regional disaster”gotta get those nigras
OUT, there’s money to be made here!”
with raping an entire country.
but its okay, they have bought into the bread and circuses too.
Posted by: possum | Aug 2 2007 1:58 utc | 15
@alex
This is not a guy thing or a woman thing.
this is a humanity thing. Yes, it is good for iraq to stand up in unity, even if only for foot ball, but simply juxtapose
all the victims of katrina cheering on the
new orleans saints simply for the fact that they got their stadium back.
how empty.
please dont get me wrong, its one thing to wilfully neglect victims of a regional disaster”gotta get those nigras
OUT, there’s money to be made here!”
with raping an entire country.
but its okay, they have bought into the bread and circuses too.
Posted by: possum | Aug 2 2007 2:25 utc | 16