“The Americans are living in a movie”

This is not about Islam in Europe specifically, but I think it’s an interesting article that is worth translating.

Itai Angel, an Israeli reporter, spent two weeks in Iraq and the picture he got was that the Americans are dreaming if they think they're building a new democracy in the Middle East. The Iraquis have learned to despise them, and are just waiting for the moment when they'll finally leave.

Things had changed drastically since the last time he was in Iraq, 2.5 years ago. Then, he could speak freely with the people, walk around without an army escort. Today – westerners are being abducted left and right.

It didn’t take long to realize that the real war was going to be run less by Iraqis, and more by strangers. Jihad.

The idea of Jihad is a holy war of every Muslim that may be against a foreign conqueror. Within a short period of time close to 100,000 warriors streamed into Iraq. It’s very easy to enter Iraq. The borders are open. Thousands of trucks cross the border every day and they don’t pass through a rigorous security check. Anybody can come in. Inside the country there’s enough weapons for everybody. The Jihad fighters come especially from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Chechnya, Pakistan and Yemen, with the aim of killing and destroying anything that is Iraq under American rule.

“America good” is what the Iraqis say when asked anything by a reporter standing around with a marine company. Itai left the unit he was with to interview people, and got a different picture. The Iraqis he talked to were very forthcoming:

“The Americans are a bunch of murderers. They kill women and children without blinking, bomb mosques and piss on Koran books. They’ll get out of Iraq, and until that happens we’ll kill as many as possible.”

He was with the US army when the Hummer they were in drove over a bomb. It was pure luck that only one soldier was lightly injured

Once the Americans get a bomb, they immediately leave their movie and enter a new one. In this movie – everybody is the bad guys. All the men are terrorists. All the women are accomplices to terror. All the boys and girls know what’s happening and lie because that’s their culture.

The Iraq I saw and filmed was hallucinatory.

The most hallucinatory was the training of what’s called “the new Iraqi army”. Accepting the fact that one day they’ll leave, the Americans are now trying to train an Iraqi army that will fill the void. The Americans, again, either due to naivety or to a vision I hadn’t grasped, or in the framework of that movie they’re in, are convinced that all Iraqis whoever they may be will abandon his fanatical aspirations as Shiite, Sunni or Kurd and enlist for one common goal that was drawn up in Washington.

Just by looking at the training once can understand how complicated the business is, not to say groundless.

A marine was teaching a group of 30 Shiites how to shoot a machine gun. For this purpose he was using an Iraqi-Kurdish translator. When the marines weren’t listening, the Shiites told me how much they can’t stand the Americans and want them to get out of Iraq. When the Shiites weren’t listening the Kurdish translator told me he hopes the Shiite soldiers won’t comprehend what he’s teaching them – because if they will, one day they’ll use it against his family and all the Kurds.

Source: Ynet (Hebrew)