I was there..

Sorry my friends, I haven’t posted any thing for a long time because I was in the US; it was the first visit since 1981, I was just like seeing an old friend that I haven’t seen for a long time; I lived in the US for six years at the late 70’s and when the plane was taking off at that time from Tulsa International Airport I was looking through the airplane window and asking my self if I will be able to see this country again, and it happened, so you can imagine the feelings.

The US is still as beautiful as it was before but I became older now, I found out that many of the things that I loved are not as they were before, the discos that I spent 80% of my life at when I was there are called now dancing clubs, but the Hard Rock Cafés still as great as they were before, even the girls who are working there with their short skirts still as beautiful as they were before; New York was great, I loved it, but I became so sad when I went to the place where the World Trade Center towers were and remembered all those innocent people who get killed there and remembered all the Iraqis who get killed in Iraq by the same people.

The people there still the same like they were before; they still do not know a lot of things about Iraq; they are still asking if it was a mistake to invade Iraq and if the military is part of the problem or part of the solution, they were asking me these questions every where I went and in all the interviews and the speeches I gave or I did at the radio stations or at the universities, they do not know that the Iraqis asked those questions right after the invasion but not now; three years were passed and the Americans still asking those questions; Hey people, you are there now and the Iraqis still waiting; ‘What to do to those people?’ This should be the question now; ‘We destroyed the system there and we have not establish the right system for them yet, when are we going to do that?’, this could be another question.

They couldn’t establish a system for Iraqis yet because they didn’t know their culture before and still after three years know nothing about their culture; they do not know the people and how could they make difference between them, they still can not make difference between Shiite or Sunnis by their names or by looking at them or between Kurd and Arab, Muslims and Christians and if they can not make these differences they will never be able to ask the right person for the right advice and this is why it is so easy to mislead them; the reason for that is because they are still isolating their selves inside the Green Zone surrounded by those people that they brought with them from outside which most of them are looking for self benefits, and this is why they were infiltrated easily; they needed those people to enter Iraq, that was stage one, but now they are in Iraq and they need to look for the good people who can help them and help the Iraqis, this kind of Iraqis will never come to them, they need to go out and look for those people; the kind of people who came to them are the people looking for some benefits or the people which the insurgents are sending to be in the Green Zone.

This is exactly what the insurgents want; they do not want the Americans to go out, they want them to do more mistakes, they are using these mistakes to make the Iraqis hate the Americans which will help them recruit more Insurgents and gain safe places which they use to hide before any operation against the Americans.

The Insurgents are fighting the Americans in two ways, in the field and in the Medias; The American Forces are doing a great job in the field but the Military Public Affairs are not as good as the soldiers in the field; the insurgents now have websites that10 minutes after every operation they put full details with films or pictures but if you contact the Military Public Affairs you should wait for hours before they release something about it, they should have some people watching those websites and release some thing about it the minute the insurgents release some thing; both sides, the military and the insurgents, are looking for the front page story and this is why the insurgents are putting their story at their website before the military releases any thing, it is a challenge and the Military Public Affairs are not that fast in this.

The Military always are saying that the reporters are writing negative stories, in fact this is what the insurgents want, they do not give the Americans a chance to do any thing positive so they will never have a positive story, even when they gave contracts to some contractors to fix some schools one day and sent for us to go there to write about them all what we saw was corruption and the story was about corruption not about how the Americans are rebuilding schools for the students, and just because it is not safe to go out there to see what did those contractors do, they will believe them and accept what they would say, but if we will not write about it they will never know what is really going on there but the American leaders will not like that and they will call it a negative story.

I noticed that when the Americans were doing some thing good to the people, the next day, the insurgents will attack the Americans so the US army will withdrew and the Marines will get in and because they will be angry they will turn the whole area into hell and this is exactly what the insurgents want so they will say that the Americans are doing nothing and they are only good in killing the people, so even when the military is winning in the field the insurgents will use there medias to show them as killers so they will win in the medias even though that they are loosing in the field.

I noticed that when the US army are somewhere in Iraq the situation will be calm and the Iraqis will be happy and they will say that the Americans are helping the Iraqis but when the Marines go somewhere the Iraqis will say that the Americans are not doing any thing for the Iraqis and they are only killing the people and this is simply because the US army has some units that can build things for the Iraqis and helping them because they have engineers and specialists for that but the Marines do not have engineers that can help the people because this is not their job, and this is why the Iraqis like the National Guards because they are older in age and they are all engineers and lawyers which they can help the Iraqis; this is what I saw in Fallujah for example before the insurgents and the Marines entered the city, but the problem is that the Iraqis does not know that and they think that they are all the same and they are all US military and they think that it is just because that some of the units have good people and some others have people which they are so mean just because they are not helping them in rebuilding their cities.

The Insurgents become stronger now because they are supported by governments of some countries which they do not want their people to say that America did a great things for Iraqis, and they are having a great life in a democratic country because of the Americans, they are afraid that the next day their people will ask them for the same things or they might ask the US to come to their country to help them, so America become a big threat for those governments and this is why they supported the insurgents to destroy every thing the Americans will try to do and never give them the chance to do any thing good, to show their people that when the Americans go some where they just destroy that country and can never fix it, even the American people start believe in this now and when any one mention Iran or any other country every one will say “Oh no, we saw what you have done in Iraq, so don’t do it again”.

The American leaders are also making a lot of mistakes and both the Iraqis and the Americans are suffering because of those mistakes, and they are not fixing it or they are to slow in fixing it; for example, they know by now that Iraqis do not trust the people that the US brought with them from outside and made them political leaders, which they are fighting each other now on the subject of ‘who will be the prime minister?’, they could not even form a government and they do not care if dozens of Iraqis or Americans are dieing every day; they do not care for the Iraqis who are waiting for hours in the gas lines at the gas stations, or the people who do not feel safe even when they are inside their houses which have no electricity or water; they do not care for the people, which they do not feel safe when they go out in roads, that were destroyed by the American tanks and no one paved them or fixed them, because a car bomb or a roadside bomb might explode and kill them or kill their families; those new Iraqi political leaders do not care because if worse come to worse they can simply run away and go back to the countries that they came from and leave the Americans and the Iraqis stuck with the problems they created.

Iraqis are wondering now, what kind of democracy the Americans are giving them if the president must be Kurd, it has to be Talabani, and the prim minister must be Shiite, it must be Jaffari or one of his colleagues…etc.; it is the same faces for the people that the Americans brought from outside and gave them all the power and the influence and let them have militias which even the Americans now can not dissolve and all of them are supported by countries that hate America; Iraqis can not chose any other leader but those; this is the kind of democracy they brought to Iraq; they still after all that asking them selves why the violence is increasing in Iraq; they are creating more enemies every day, and they are good in that, they do not go out of the Green Zone and ask the Iraqis, “What do you want and who do you want?”; some Iraqis believe that Iran may be the only winner out of this war, they are every where in Iraq, in Lebanon and Palestine through Hamas, and while the Americans are putting a lot of pressure on Iran, but in Iraq, they are giving them all the power and the influence, and this is another mistake.

Let me tell you another one and they are many; when the Americans came to Iraq they needed all those big troops with all those fighter planes and tanks and, and, etc. to enter Iraq but now why do they need all those big very expensive equipments in Iraq; why do they need all those fighter planes and tanks?; the kind of war they are having now in Iraq is not the one they had when they first entered; it is a war with the terrorism and you do not fight terrorism with these weapons, it is just like when you are in a small room surrounded by thieves outside your room and they are all have AK47’s and you have RPG, your weapon is more effective than them and more expensive but you can not use it because if you will use it inside the room you will kill yourself so they will get you and kill you.

The kind of war they have now with the terrorists is a new type of war, they called it ‘The Fifth Generation Warfare’, and it is when you fight an enemy that you can not see; they bypassed all the security forces and the army when they attacked the trains in Madrid, Spain; the American tanks are patrolling the streets in Iraq to look for them but those terrorists are always hiding in safe houses and they do not go out only when they want to do an operation, they are not carrying any weapons that the soldiers can see to stop them, they will be either wearing an explosive belts or in a car bombs, so why do you do patrols, they will give them more chance to kill more soldiers by putting the roadside bombs in their way.

It is a different war and you do not fight them like this; you do not need all those troops and all those equipments like the F18’s and F16’s, it is so expensive and you are spending a lot of the American people’s money on this; what you need in a war like this is a small but very effective special forces and spies, just like in the cold war; what happened to all those spies they use to have; I think that the Intelligent machine is broken, they need to work harder and infiltrate those terrorists; it is not the military’s fault, in fact, the military are doing a great job in there but they need more intelligent information; they need the special equipments to find the explosives and the roadside bombs so they do not lose more soldiers, some thing similar to what they have at the airports, they can make such a things and they have them; this is how you fight them, and you do not have to send out your troops only when they have enough information so when they will go out they will be more effective and will lose less number of soldiers.

They can never infiltrate those insurgents in Iraq if they do not know the culture this is why it is so important to study the culture to help the Iraqis and the Americans in Iraq and in the US.

I am saying all this in case that the American leaders want to help the Iraqis but if they want the Iraqi land to be the battle field of fighting all the terrorists of the world, then what they are doing is the right thing and forget about the Iraqis and this is what the people in Iraq start believe in; they are saying now, “Who cares about Iraqis, fighting the terrorists is the main goal for the Americans, and removing Saddam was just an excuse”.

I know all this because,

I was there..

whowasthere@gmail.com