Mohammed responds to Mrs. Sheehan

Earlier today, I pointed to Varifrank’s big-hearted and sympathetic message to Mrs. Sheehan, keeping her vigil in Crawford, Texas.

Now, I direct you to Mohammed’s response at Iraq the Model. Searing, heartbreaking, completely sympathetic to Mrs. Sheehan’s feelings, but…

We cried out of joy the day your son and his comrades freed us from the hands of the devil and we went to the streets not believing that the nightmare is over.
We practiced our freedom first by kicking and burning the statues and portraits of the hateful idol who stole 35 years from the life of a nation.
For the first time air smelled that beautiful, that was the smell of freedom.

The mothers went to break the bars of cells looking for the ones they lost 5, 12 or 20 years ago and other women went to dig the land with their bare hand searching for a few bones they can hold in their arms after they couldn’t hold them when they belonged to a living person.

I recall seeing a woman on TV two years ago, she was digging through the dirt with her hands. There was no definite grave in there as the whole place was one large grave but she seemed willing to dig the whole place looking for her two brothers who disappeared from earth 24 years ago when they were dragged from their colleges to a chamber of hell.

Her tears mixed with the dirt of the grave and there were journalists asking her about what her brothers did wrong and she was screaming “I don’t know, I don’t know. They were only college students. They didn’t murder anyone, they didn’t steal, and they didn’t hurt anyone in their lives. All I want to know is the place of their grave”.

Why was this woman chosen to lose her dear ones? Why you? Why did a million women have to go through the same pain?

We did not choose war for the sake of war itself and we didn’t sacrifice a million lives for fun! We could’ve accepted our jailor and kept living in our chains for the rest of our lives but it’s freedom ma’am.
Freedom is not an American thing and it’s not an Iraqi thing, it’s what unites us as human beings. We refuse all kinds of restrictions and that’s why we fought and still fighting everyday in spite of the swords in the hands of the cavemen who want us dead or slaves for their evil masters.

You are free to go and leave us alone but what am I going to tell your million sisters in Iraq? Should I ask them to leave Iraq too? Should I leave too? And what about the eight millions who walked through bombs to practice their freedom and vote? Should they leave this land too?
Is it a cursed land that no one should live in? Why is it that we were chosen to live in all this pain, why me, why my people, why you?

Mrs. Sheehan, we see your pain. We hurt for your loss. We wish no one ever had to lose a child, not in war, not in terror, not in carelessness.

Your son Casey died a nobleman, and a hero. I know the people you are now hanging out with do not call him a nobleman – they call him a fool, but he was, in fact, a noble man. Please, let the job be finished, so that the sacrifice of all of his fallen comrades does not become meaningless, as their deaths surely will, if America simply “leaves” these Iraqi people to the next “strong horse” who can overwhelm them, and thus dash the dreams of democracy we see budding throughout the Middle East, the dreams which are our best chance to defeat terrorism as a means to movement.