RESISTANCE

“When are the Iraqis going to fight for their own country? … We want to know when the Iraqis are going to go out there and shed their blood, as American service men … are willing to shed theirs”, a plaintive Democrat Senator Edward Kennedy asked a US Senate armed services committee hearing on February 3. Kennedy missed the point: thousands of Iraqis are fighting for their country — but they are taking up arms against the US-led occupation, not in support of it. (...) As British leftist Tariq Ali noted in July: “It is the Iraqi resistance that will determine the future of the country. It is their actions targeting both foreign soldiers and corporate mercenaries that has made the occupation untenable. It is their presence that has prevented Iraq from being relegated to the inside pages of the print media and forgotten by TV. It is the courage of the poor of Baghdad, Basra and Fallujah that has exposed the political leaders of the West who supported this enterprise.”

Iraq: The Right To Resist
by Rohan Pearce
Green Left Weekly
March 15, 2005