Iraqi blogger Raed Jarrar of Raed in the Middle is now in San Francisco, apparently for an extended stay:
I faced a number of unexpected things in the bay area in the last couple of weeks, but the most unexpected thing for me is that it feels like “homeâ€. I didn’t particularly like the car jams and the very slow and expensive BART. But I liked many other things; many of them were already a part of my life in the “globalized†layer of the Middle East.
[…]
It’s funny to see how some things that are actually my life are nothing more than yet another pin or drum for others, but it’s really good and happy to see all the momentum many people in the bay area have towards Iraq and Palestine.
I just came some weeks ago, but it feels like I was living in the bay area for years!
Yes, I’m sure he’s quite at home in San Francisco.
Raed has been very opposed to the U. S. presence in Iraq, the “Occupation”. The irony of this is not lost on Jeffrey of Iraqi Bloggers Central:
But now Raed Jarrar has arrived on the shores of this country, a country whose people he has repeatedly SPIT ON for the last two and a half years. This is a guy who has gone out of his way to glory in the death of American soldiers and who has supported the insurgents/resistance/terrorists who have killed Coalition soldiers from several countries, thousands of Iraqi men, women, and children, and many journalists.
Let’s be clear about this. RAED JARRAR SUPPORTS PEOPLE WHO KILL AMERICANS.
And where is he today?
He’s in San Francisco waiting for his GREENCARD INTERVIEW.
Let me repeat. Raed Jarrar, for whom Saddam Hussein was a NATIONAL LEADER, is now sitting in an apartment somewhere in the Bay Area, waiting to acquire a GREENCARD.
Is it just me, or do YOU too find something terribly wrong about this situation?
I don’t know about you, but I am going to contact Homeland Security and let them know that I would prefer NOT to have a Ba’athist and Saddam apologist in our country. Let him visit the military families who have lost family members and let him read to them from his blog about how much comfort he received from each of those deaths.
Even though Raed Jarrar, through his marriage to Niki Akhavan, is in line to get a greencard, it is still possible to block his case.
Niki Akhavan blogs at No War on Iran!.
I’ll continue to follow his blog but, since it’s my practice not to link to the blogs of ex-patriates in the Carnival of the Liberated except under particular circumstances e.g. they’re passing along information from Iraq, he probably won’t be appearing there as long as he’s here.
I haven’t been able to nail down any good estimates of the Ba’athist emigration from Iraq since the fall of Saddam but I’ve read lots of reports of substantial flight, mostly to Jordan and Syria. Now that democracy may be rearing its ugly head at long last in Syria (with the exit of the Syrians from Lebanon there are dissidents in that country wondering “Why not here?”) where’s a good Pan-Arabist to hang his hat? The United States, apparently.
I wonder if this is one of the unforeseen effects of the invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam. How will the new arrivals affect countries like Syria, Jordan, or the United States?
I read some of his blog. How in the world did this guy even get IN the country. I don’t care if he’s married to Jenna Bush, this guy should have been on the next plane to….Syria. Yes, Syria, a MUCH better place for Ba’athists.
I see your political maturity is as advanced as ever.
Leaving aside the chidish and petulent whinging on, the fellow was unhappy with the bollixed up fiasco of an occupation. Nothing surprising there. Insofar as Right Bolshevism has not quite yet imposed itself in the United States, I would expect that despite the childish axe grinding, Raed will go ahead as a private citizen.
As for the screeching, the American right reminds me ever more of the Bolsheviks as time goes by.
Collounbury, I don’t see how you reach the conclusions about me that you do from what I actually write. Re-read. Where do you see criticism of Raed’s decision or anything much different from what you apparently believe?
As for “whinging”, “Right Bolshevism”, “childish axe grinding”, if you’re referring to the quote from Iraqi Blogger Central, I agree that they’re somewhat extreme but, unfortunately, no one else (at least no one on my normal rounds) has seen fit to comment.
If you’re referring to me with the above, it’s completely misplaced. Check what I actually write. I opposed Gulf War I, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the invasion of Iraq. If that makes me a right-winger, your political compass needs calibration.
And you’ve completely missed the point of the post. I was using Raed’s emigration as a jumping-off point for further musing on the lasting impact of the re-settling of those with his views on the surrounding countries (and on the United States, for that matter).
I reach conclusions based on an ordinary level of ability to read joined up sentences, patterns that persons who are not sub morons should be able to identify and the bloody fact you quote without further commentary idiocies.
As for the point that you advance, it is risible, but I shall return to that later.
Now, as for Iraqi Blogger Central, they are not merely somewhat extreme, they are the very picture of ideological whinging bootlicking scum commentary and the same slimey group think rubbish that produced Leninism and other abhorent group think Left nasty scum.
That these scum are on the Right end of the spectrum impresses me not the least, I recognize this slimey ideoscum group think inquisitional thinking.
One merely need ask oneself if the same rubbish were written from a Cuban Castro-ist perspective what would be there response – of course it would be about the evils of the totalitarian Commie scum etc. And they would be right.
Well, they bloody well should look in the bloody mirror, not that I expect hypocritically idiologue Right Bolshies to be so capable.
As for you, well, you might grow a spine and comment critically on the pandering idiocies that the cabal quotes, including that risible set of Bolshie “watcher’s council”
Else, one judges what one sees.
i agree with whoever was writing about raed jarrar. wow. i just found out about all this about a few weeks ago, and i was shocked down to the core
i didn’t think people could be so deceptive in collecting money from people, and it’s used for the exact opposite reason, and we never caught on.
the general newsmedia should have done more reportage on this, so naive people wouldn’t get sucked into thinking they were helping, and allow people to choose between being communist sympathizers or being in a different organization dedicated to the same cause, except it’s real, people have been fooled for too long.
there are all kinds of communists floating around the bay area, sucking people in, and the press does nothing to adress what these people are really saying. they are just printing up that this group had a rally, and that group had a rally.
if they had reported raed, and global exchange from the start, maybe the insurgents wouldn’t have been so spectacularly funded. i am kicking myself. i didn’t know.
now that i know. i want this guy so gone from my country.
titania jones
bubbamail@operamail.com