I wrote the following up in response to my buddy foz‘s questions about the opinions around the world about the war. I posted it as a comment to his BLOG but felt it was a decent bit of writing about how I feel about it so I thought I’d include it below. It basically boils down to the fact that based on what I’ve heard, people aren’t so much supporting Saddam as supporting the people of Iraq, and it’s because the US is acting like a big bully. Read more for the fully reply I posted here.
Yes, it seems a bit strange that from sept 12/2001 and on, for a fair while, the world was full of supporters of the US. I remember almost crying going through a thread on some image of the day site (might have been cellar.org/i) which showed people all over the world supporting the us in mourning.
Somehow in the last few months that’s changed. IMHO I think it’s because GWB is showing himself to be the bully that the US can be (being the only superpower). Now don’t get me wrong, saddam is a bad bad man and should go ASAP. But for GWB to basically give a big FU to the UN, say in what I think is a “typical US attitude” (if only in a complete overgeneralization of the stereotype of the US) what boils down to “you guys are a bunch of wimps, we’re going in to sort this mess up and clean things up by ourselves, cause we’re the only ones who can do it/have the balls to do it”.
Part of the problem is that there are two camps, pro, and anti. Neither side knows the full story (I’m assuming there is info that the US has about the WMD that hasn’t been given out, or I hope there is, for the sake of W), neither side is willing to give concessions, and both sides are full of “facts” and “statistics” spouted from either gossip or such reliable sources as CNN.
The closest concessions have been the people saying “I don’t support the war, but I will support our troops”, which is still a line of BS to me.
Anyway, with GWB acting like a big bully the people of the world, and particularily the middle east, seem to be still rallying against the US with their demonstrations, not supporting saddam, but supporting the people of Iraq (and anyone saying that the bombing is so precise that no civilians are going to be hurt/displaced is fooling themselves IMHO.
I think the main thing comes down to the fact that people are simply not educated with all the facts, and each side (pro and anti) go off and masturbate each other with additional “facts” they hear… “whereever”, and simply increase their resolve for their side of the argument.