Makiya

A student in the US who does not want to be identified sent me this: "I saw your post today about Kanan Makiya and wanted to write you. One of my professors, for a class about Iran, had Makiya come in to lecture a few weeks ago because the former professor would be out of town Makiya was not this professor's first choice, but I think the prof just wanted to have somebody, ANYBODY, come in. Makiya was speaking in exactly the same way as Havel. "I couldn't have written my book if I had been a victim of the Iraqi regime. These people [i.e., Iraqis] have known nothing but war! Iraq was like a concentration camp, and the Americans came in and knocked down the concentration camp's walls. Aren't you Americans proud of that shining moment? There will come a time when the Iraqis thank the U.S., but it's like taking people who were abused as children and trying to make them part of normal society." But, he also admitted, "I can't look at a mother from Iowa who lost her son in Iraq and tell her that his death was justified."