americanflag.jpgI figure a lot of people missed this terrific discussion from Sunday night, where an Iraqi medical relief worker, Dr. Maryam, who cares for war orphans, told us bluntly:

Stop telling lies to yourself American. We know that your racist brutal murdering war criminal troops came from your society and reflect its values. we know that because we see how they behave and have to bury their victims. If you are stupid enough to think we feel anything but hatred and contempt for your soldiers and the country that sent them to make war on my people then you are a fool.

As to Saddam bad though he was your country is far worse.

And then this:

Irak is a better transliteration. The quote you are referring to is this:

“The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it.”

And is from a senior American officer. It is a perfect example of how your troops regard us. Which is why we highlight it.

As digby points out, our immoral, imperialistic policy of mass murders corrupts the good men and women we send there:

Our military is occupying a country in the middle of a violent civil war. The soldiers in this occupation are being deployed over and over again to try to "win" something that isn't even defined. To my way of thinking it's a miracle that so many of them are able to keep it together at all. Of course, there are some crazed psychos among them and probably some serious psychological damage among a fair number of others. And because of the macho, group pressure and people like Bush and this author egging them on instead of showing mature leadership, there is little to curb this behavior other than some rather quaint appeals to honor and duty, which must be sounding rather hollow to a lot of them at this point.

Iraq is creating monsters everywhere, from terrorists, to extremists to damaged American soldiers who are so tired from repeated deployments that they are losing track of what is normal.

Yup.

We need to get out of Iraq for a host of moral and national security reasons. We need to get out of Iraq because our criminal imperialistic enterprise is destroying the fragile constitutional balance that has been responsible for keeping us (often unsuccessfully, it's true) from some of the worst impulses power plus human nature can jointly contrive.

And then, we have to eradicate from even the Democratic Party the belief that we have any place using force to tell people in the world what to do with their lives. . . all in the name of "liberty."