While I fear my opinion may be lost in a thread I have not read fully, and it will be a shame as it is something I have not put into words yet..
I went on the London March back in 2003 against the war in Iraq. I will freely admit I didn't know what the hell I was protesting against, just had the same 16 year old thought about little children dying and Bush stealing oil. I'm afraid that apart from the speakers, it was simply a place for people to smoke weed and feel important.
I began to change my mind slightly when Baghdad started to fall, and I saw the images of the Iraqi's cheering and being free, and started to go 'well, ykno...maybe...'.
I know fully well that the media only reports on the bad aspects of Iraq, but now, seeing the current endless bloodshed, I just feel that it doesn't seem to be worth it. People's families killed, shops destroyed, festivals blown up, and now Al-Qeada stepping in and stirring up this bloodbath.
I dont think anyone would contest that Hussein was a nice guy, but my bottom viewpoint that a country being told to disarm or another country will use their big, massive 'shock and awe' weapons to stop them, killing a large number of civilians who have, nor want anything to do with their pr*ck leader, is a staggering hypocrisy that creates a world that I simply do not want to live in. The message of bringing 'freedom' through military action to the people is not only wierd, it's downright patronising.
Also, the Iraq war has caused holier-than-thou arseholes like Sean Penn and Rage Against the Machine to call America an evil, evil place and Bush someone who loves the smell of arab oil and who would infect young women with cancer if given the chance. People who have always hated America latch onto these spoilt pr*cks, and use it to prove terrorists are a bit, if not purely
justified in carrying out their cowardly acts on civilians not the governments they despise. With instances like Abu Ghraib, America comes across as 'they're just as bad as the terrorists' in the eyes of a vast majority of the west and a vast majority of us in Europe. I think you guys really have to come over here to London and see how much America, and Americans in general are mocked and
hated.
Surely this is a hippy liberal pipe dream, but presumably the only way to defeat the morons who carried out september 11th is to show a humanitarian angle of society that rallies round all of the western world and stops irrational idiots from saying "All Americans are stupid and they cause all the violence in the world". After September 11th, the whole world was united in sympathy for the US citizens, and Iran held that massive demonstration that denounced those who carried it out. 6 years later, I doubt the same number would turn out.
If nobody replies to my 'amazing' speel I will severly p*ssed
.
