…you’re now free to do so, and we’ve been free for the longest time to hate you for it too.

When I found from Jeff Jarvis that Baghdad blogger Salam Pax was attending the London protests against Bush, I had to agree that it was irony beyond words. Now, he is enjoying the freedoms that he has been given by the liberation of Iraq from a tyrant that would have stayed in place if we weren’t there. From his open letter to Bush (gotta scroll down, it’s down there somewhere), in The UK’s Guardian:

Listen, habibi, it is not over yet. Let me explain this in simple terms. You have spilled a glass full of tomato juice on an already dirty carpet and now you have to clean up the whole room. Not all of the mess is your fault but you volunteered to clean it up. I bet if someone had explained it to you like that you would have been less hasty going on our Rambo-in-Baghdad trip.

Wasn’t this series of letters been published earlier this week? Anyhow. I’d suppose that we wouldn’t be that much up in arms if masterful wordsmith James Lileks didn’t gather the Big Brass Balls™ to go ahead and snipe at him for the ingrate that he is:

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

[...]Let me explain this in simple terms, habibi. You would have spent the rest of your life under Ba’athist rule. … People who would rather have lived their life in low-level fear than change your situation. I understand; I would have done the same. I’m not brave enough to start a revolution. I wouldn’t have grabbed a gun and charged a palace. I would lived like you. Head down, eyes wary.

Before any of Yggy’s commenters tell Misshter Liileeecchs to shut up, let’s take note that James isn’t telling Salam to shut up here. The kind of shit that is flowing Salam’s fingers would have cost him his life under Saddam, if he even had the cojones to mutter it, but I doubt that he’ll be assassinated for what he’s said (today). Mister Baghdad Blogger may be enjoying the freedom of speech to say what he thinks he is, but we’re all pretty much free to opine that he is an ingrate. If he kvetches that he isn’t exactly the darling that people thought he was, well, tough. If Saddam were in power now he’d be the only darling he’d know.

It is understood, that we — all of us living in this nation — freed him and his ilk from Saddam, but we do not demand praise, adulation, nor a hive mind from Iraqis. We do not demand that they speak of us nicely, that they treat us like the liberators that we are by kissing out feet. We do not demand that their opinions reflect nothing but good, but we do demand a little bit of patience. In as much as I didn’t go there and pick up a gun to save these people, we as a nation did. Maybe we as a nation can ask for a little bit of class, certainly a bit more than what Salam Pax has shown so far.

James Joyner says it best: Can people, even Iraqis, believe that the US should not have gone to war to overthrow Saddam? Sure. But it’s rather unseemly to whine about the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, do nothing to help secure your liberty, and then bitch about how your liberators aren’t moving fast enough. He then proceeds to quote a beautiful line from A Few Good Men, go there to find what it is.

UPDATE: Matthew J. Stinson agrees with me in Salam’s all-around crass, but also believes that Mishter Lilechs has found the most opportune whipping-boy to revive a week’s worth of boring bleats. I do not read Lileks on a regular basis; but I’ll give Matt the benefit of the doubt: I’m more prone to believe Matt than Lileks himself.