Iraq the Model is one of my favorite Iraqi blogs, not the least of which is because Omar (the blogger) has a talent for expressing his feelings effectively in English. In a rant today, Omar lays into the nay-sayers who deny that Iraqis are better off without Saddam and after the war. An excerpt:
There are actually a million stories I can tell to make a comparison between pre and post-Saddam Iraq and to show how dramatically life has improved since April 2003 and the list doesn't necessarily start from the security which is much better off now than under Saddam who murdered 3 million Iraqis during his reign; a figure that dwarfs any post-liberation body count or my salary as a dentist which increased by a hundred folds and doesn't end by the huge change in the Iraqi army that changed from a tool of repression for both, the conscripted soldiers and the civilian population to a security preserving tool that young Iraqis volunteer to join.
Technology and communications had their share too; we moved from a country where your e mail needs two weeks to pass through the filters of the Mukhabarat to a country where people like me can publish their thought to the entire world by a click!
And as our author of honor here is British I'd like to add that before April 2003, being caught while listening to the anti-war BBC radio could throw the listener in jail for indefinite time.
Anyway, if I wanted to talk about every single positive change, I should probably write a book about it as a blog post can't hold all that information.
By European and American standards, Iraq could be considered hell on earth and I agree; life is difficult here, really difficult for many Iraqis and it would be almost impossible for a European or an American but the question here is this: is it more difficult now than under Saddam?The answer is NO.
But please read the whole thing!
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