Reading Majid

Majid Jarrar is 17 years old. He's full of teenage angst. He's clearly a pretty smart kid, and is one of the administrators of the Al-Muajaha website which as he pointed out recently in the Comments section of Jeffery's blog, does provide a method for Commenting.

His posts have been very black lately, and I hope he's doing alright...teenagers can over dramatize there feelings, and teenage boys get a kick out of "playing" angry. But, who can say? It probably doesn't help that all the Jarrars seem to wear self-pity as a badge of honor. As Rose pointed out in the comments section here recently, being negative is a very bad habit, and it can be worse if one is a teenager and even worse if it is easy to find things to be negative about (as it surely is in Iraq).

So picking at Majid's posts is a little like swatting a kitten for unwinding a ball of yarn. How else is he supposed to behave? I could pick at the outrageous absurdity in statements like those in his May 2 post:

Now, it’s year 2004, and we live in a country that has been “liberated”, but surprisingly, it’s still missing its freedom of expression, freedom of publish, freedom of criticism… we live in a country that has a ministry for human right, but no rights for humans.

But, I don't want to waste space with that. I want to consider what he wrote in the Comments of Jeffery's blog and something else that's very pertinent in that May 2nd post.

In the Comments he writes:

You can always wish that the f***ers you like are the majority of Iraq. But you know what; the JARRARs are the majority... SAD BUT TRUE
NYAHAHAHA.

At first glance, this is a good sign since it appears Majid might be coming out of his depression a little bit after the death of a young American friend in Chicago. But I want to consider the substance of what he says. The f**ckers like you means those who think getting rid of Saddam was an improvement. The JARRARSs are those who miss the days under Saddam when Majid believed his family would be able to afford to send him to MIT. If Majid is right, then he's using the wrong laugh. "Nyahahaha" is the laugh of a boy who has pushed a smaller boy in the mud. Majid should be using "Bwahahahaha". That's the laugh of a mastermind who has knowingly sold himself to evil. That's probably the way Chalabi laughs when, alone in his office, he gets a directive from Iran.

In the May 2nd post Majid writes:

Ammar, a person who I met after the war, said “those Americans will not succeed unless they ruled like Saddam, we Iraqis are easily inflamed and nothing can rule us except fire”. Now actually there is no Ammar, but there are hundreds of “Ammars” I meet all the time; taxi drivers, grocers, neighborhood guards, unemployed people… whether they liked or not, and whether you liked or not, they know that one fact is life under Saddam was much easier, period.

Compare this with the article by G.A. Ahad in the Guardian (G.A. used to post the G. In Baghdad blog):

Do I regret the war, especially now that things seem to be moving towards chaos here? Not at all. I still think we are much better off than under Saddam. At least now we are free to dream.

There are other Iraqi witnesses (see the sidebar to the right for some) who, despite the fact that the Bush Administration has not shown god-like competence and foresight, despite the mundane mistakes of military operations that result in major human agony and death, despite the despicable and criminal behavior of some Coalition soldiers, despite the fact many Iraqis have used their new freedoms to engage in the very human, very universal tendencies of racism, bigotry, criminal opportunism, and herd mentality, or have ideologically taken the side of those who mean deliberate harm to their country, nevertheless still recognize the unmitigated value of freedom.

So which thinking will shape Iraq's future? That depends on the mindset the majority of the Iraqis take to the polls early next year.