[Dean's World] Dave Price: Friendly Fallujah?

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
Friendly Fallujah?
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1189018537.shtml


   Bill Ardolino [1]reports from Fallujah, where conditions can only be
   described as surprisingly, even amazingly friendly:

     The surreality of the change can be summed up by this afternoon. I
     sat chit-chatting in a downtown precinct with Iraqi cops and
     newly-minted neighborhood watchmen, junior security officials drawn
     from the same labor pool that previously drove the insurgency. As
     was the case last visit, the Iraqis assume that I'm an Arab when
     they first see me, and express amused fascination when they
     discover I'm American. Apparently I look like a member of a tribe
     that lives northwest of the city, whose members sport full beards,
     lighter brown skin and light eyes. I always respond that there are
     plenty of Americans who look just like them, because America
     welcomes all races. Coupled with my prominent camera and status as
     "a journalist," I rate somewhere between a bemusing curiosity and a
     very minor celebrity.

   Apparently no groupies, though. Clearly, Iraq has a long way to go.
   More seriously, Bill says the Fallujan characterization of earlier
   hostility as a "misunderstanding" is charitable, but I wonder if there
   isn't a lot of truth in that statement. Iraqis, especially in Sunni
   areas, have until very recently been subjected to decades of strict
   information control and harsh anti-American propaganda.
   Information is now flowing far more freely than before the war.
   [2]Hundreds of independent TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers
   have sprung up in the wake of Iraq's liberation, and there are now
   [3]ten times as many Iraqi cell phones as there were in 2003. Internet
   access, previously almost unknown, is now widespread. Perhaps a large
   part of the emerging grassroots cooperation with U.S. is the slow
   realization that we really are there to try to make their lives
   better.

References

   1. http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/003097.php
   2. http://www.brookings.edu/iraqindex
   3. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070905/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_by_the_numbers_1;_ylt=Ahu5pwJUE5704gBziavBvY1X6GMA