View From Australia

A commenter at Iraq the Model responds to another commenter. I find this interesting as it is the view, apparently, of an Australian. This represents the minority(?) of foreigners with their heads on properly:

tiny sails, "It's about DAMN time the American military took freakin Islam off the pedistal. Finally, we have a military commander who knows what the hell he is up against!"

It was strategic to go overboard feigning respect for this barbaric religion. Now is not the time to open a front with Islam. Things are more flexible now that Maliki exists. We can blame Maliki/Iraqi people for absolutely everything now. If the Imam doesn't like US troops in his mosque he needs to take it up with the democratically-elected Iraqi government. Before it would have been the US throwing its weight about. No more.

The thing to note about Afghanistan and Iraq is that to date the US hasn't forced even one tiny little thing onto the people. Not a sausage. And the other thing to note is that the US has managed to avoid having a war with the people themselves. This should not be understated. It was a small miracle that we managed to invade 2 countries who had more-or-less been indoctrinated to hate us, without having the people dig their heels in and fight to the death. Compare that to the indoctrinated Japanese.

Don't underestimate the brilliance of these wars. Absolutely everything has been accomplished at extremely low cost, at least to the coalition. The high murder rate in Iraq is just noise. It has no military effect. And the Iraqi government will soon be taking care of that internal problem more-or-less on their own.

It's a victory folks. That's one of the most productive uses of 3000 soldiers in world history. One month's road toll.

This commenter also has a blog, and notes such things as:

There was one very exceptional thing that occurred during the initial 3.5-week war. In Najaf, some Iraqis had heard a rumour that the Americans were going to stop them from praying at their favourite mosque and were extremely irate.
...
Anyway, they were approaching the US soldiers in a threatening manner. They were unarmed. It could have been very nasty indeed. The US commander told all his soldiers to kneel down. And then they retreated. The only time the US has ever retreated was when faced with unarmed civilians. The way the US soldiers behaved on that day was one of the most beautiful things I have seen in my life and made me cry. The love of life they demonstrated was profound. They had no quarrel with these people, no matter what strange thing was in their brain, and avoided an unnecessary fight. If the world behaved rationally and morally there would have been a Nobel Prize issued for this. Instead, this blog post will have to do. I wish the rest of the world could see the beauty that I see. Far more beautiful than the Grand Canyon, Marilyn Munroe or the Mona Lisa.

The US is not getting a word of thanks for its effort in liberating Iraq. Instead it's having abuse hurled at it. The US continues to do the right thing by not responding to the abuse, not getting angry, and instead just calmly continuing to entrench freedom in Iraq.

Poking around I also found this amusing tidbit on that blog:

Another thing that has had me perpetually surprised is why only the Anglophones ever seem to do anything. Why do we not hear of the Norwegians doing something in the world? Do they not have an opinion, or too busy yodelling or do the English-speaking media not know how to translate from Norwegian or what? I once asked a Finn this question, and he said the reason that the Anglophones ran the world was because England won the colonial wars against France, and the US won the Spanish-American war. Interesting answer!

Anyway, without further ado, the story...

This is a story about a right proper lady who had 4 bastard sons. They were rough and tumble chaps except for one who was queer. It wasn't his fault though since he is half French. Anyway the 2 older sons went north and the two younger sons went south.

During their teenage years, the boys were extremely rebelious and asked mom to move out and go home to her own house. This hurt their mother terribly but she didn't realize how much her sons really loved her deep down.

One day, a madman got into an argument with their mother and her neighbors. She was in dire straights and was in danger of having her home taken away. Her sons came to her aid as they had grown and were quite stout fellows.

They showed their mother their loyalty to her by defending her honor twice against the same bully in her neighborhood. Now that they have grown, their rebelious nature was toned down and their mother realized they needed to be their own men.

Today the oldest son is the richest most powerful man in the world. His queer brother living upstairs has done well enough for himself but still needs his big brother around to make sure the other kids don't pick on him. The younger boys have also made out quite well for themselves. They live down south and also well to do and are the toughest kids in their neighborhood.

Today the blueblood snobs in mom's neighborhood are green with envy that those bastard boys are now richer and stronger than all her neighbors combined.

That's funny right there!