The Other Kennedy - Minnesota

The Other Kennedy - Minnesota Sixth District Representative Mark Kennedy recently visited Iraq, and writes about it in the PiPress.

Kennedy has lots of interesting observations - on the morale of the troops (not high, but workaday matter-of-fact, as is to be expected), the popularity of the UN among Iraqis (not very) and the meaning of it all:

"The most striking comment I heard was from the vice mayor of Mosul. He said that, for America, success in Iraq is a foreign policy issue, but for the radical Islamic fundamentalists, it is life and death. If we succeed, their worldview, like the Taliban's in Afghanistan, will be extinguished. They fear, and we hope, that democracy in Iraq will spread to its neighbors – Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and beyond.

The attacks against aid workers at the U.N. and the Shiite cleric will hopefully reinforce to Iraqis that Iraq and America have a common enemy — those elements in society that do not want Iraq to continue its progress toward a prosperous and democratic future."

Read it all - it's not very long.

Posted by Mitch at September 18, 2003 07:14 AM