Why Aren’t The Iraqis Still In The Streets Welcoming Our Military?

13 Apr, 2004 by John Hawkins

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Since violence has flared up in Iraq, John Kerry — among others — has been peddling this line,

“Where are the people with the flowers, throwing them in the streets, welcoming the American liberators the way Dick Cheney said they would be?”

Well, the Iraqis did welcome their American liberators — when we liberated them. For example, here are some quotes from a RWN post from March 3rd of last year…

“In Zubayr…

“A crowd of about 500 Iraqis cheered on Wednesday after Britain’s Desert Rats unit demolished a five-metre high, five-ton bronze statue of President Saddam Hussein.

Lance Corporal Graeme Church said the British forces were shocked by the response they received when they began to knock down the statue.

“As soon as the locals saw what we were doing, they started coming out to watch,” said the 27-year-old from the north-eastern English city of Middlesborough.

“It was as though over the years the statue had helped to put a stranglehold on the whole town and by its destruction the people had been emancipated.”

In Safwan…

“Corporal Sharon Astor joined one of the first British patrols to take off their helmets in the town of Safwan.

And her stunning looks and sunny smile won her an army of admirers.

Sharon, 25, from the Wirral, Cheshire, said: “I can’t believe the reception I’ve had – it must be my long blonde hair.

“The kids and some of their dads have been queuing up to give me a kiss – it’s totally unexpected.”

She was the centre of attention as she handed out water, sweets and biscuits to children in the rundown town near the Kuwaiti border.

She even allowed the smiling kids to try on her camouflaged desert helmet in return for a peck on the cheek.”

In Umm Qasr,

“I hope they continue doing what they are coming for and they get Saddam,” Haider Abduljabar Mrayir, 20, a former student who was hoping to get hired at the port, said of the U.S. and British forces.

…“The British army is here, we are safe,” said Yasser Hassan Ghanim, 22, who has been unemployed since running away from the Iraqi army in 2001. “But we are afraid the armies will go back just like in 1991.”

…Still, many Iraqis said they were happy coalition troops were patrolling the streets.

“We don’t want Saddam Hussein. He doesn’t pay attention to our suffering,” said Ferras Mohammed, 30, who was walking through town with water jugs perched on the back of a battered bicycle. “We have been waiting for you to come. We feel good to have soldiers here.”

In NAJAF…

As American troops moved through this holy city Wednesday, thousands of Iraqis lined the streets and greeted them with smiles, chants and advice about the whereabouts of Iraqi forces.

…”It was like the liberation of Paris,” said Army Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, 42, of Red Oak, Iowa, after returning from a meeting with representatives of the city’s leading Islamic cleric. “It was incredible.”

So let’s make it clear — we got a fantastic reception when we liberated Iraq. But gratitude is not forever, it’s fleeting. So, if you’re someone who still expects the Iraqi people to be just grateful to us today as the day we freed them from Saddam, then I’d suggest you don’t have much of an understanding of human nature….