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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:41 PM
Mon - June 28, 2004
Free At Last, Free At Last
To honor their struggle for self-determination, to protest the brutal murders conducted by foreign terrorists, and to support the eventual safe return of all Coalition troops, this blog will proudly fly the flag of Iraq throughout the month of July. I encourage like-minded bloggers to raise the flag on their own sites.
Updates:
On the Internet, few blunders go unnoticed—and the likelihood of a mistake's being found is directly proportional to its potential for public embarrassment.
On Monday, I announced that this blog would fly throughout July the flag identified in this April 26th Al Jazeera article as the new national standard of Iraq. That flag was designed by Rifat al-Jadirji, selected from more than 30 proposals, and adopted by the Iraq Governing Council. It consists of a pale blue crescent on a white background with a yellow strip between two lines of blue at the bottom. The white stands for peace and a new start for Iraq, while the crescent represents Islam. The blue strips represent Iraq's main rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. The yellow symbolizes its Kurdish population.
Compared to the old Iraqi standard—a red, white, and black flag with three green stars representing pan-Arab nationalism—the new flag seemed like a worthier symbol of political unity for a nation seeking a fresh start.
But as demonstrated by Monday's early transfer of political authority, events in Iraq change quickly. Dictators in power for decades are ousted in less than a month. Iraqi brigades are deployed to great fanfare in Fallujah, then criticized weeks later by leaders who publicly supported local military policing.
And yes, flags approved in April are discarded in June.
Today, the Associated Press reports that "the proposed new flag, approved by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, sank in public esteem faster than a stone in the Tigris river after a firestorm of criticism that the new banner ignored the country's Islamic and Arab character — and looked too much like the Israeli flag."
The interim government now flies the old Iraqi flag, which looks nothing at all like the emblem of You Know Who.
That may not strike me as the most commendable reason to revert, but the point is, the Iraqis get to choose. Their decision should be respected—and my embarrassing mistake confessed and corrected.
Done. Done. And done.
Oh, and one more thing. Credit for discovering the error must be given to this anonymous post on FuckedCompany.com which bears the charming title, "Should I bother correcting a pompous idiot Jew lawyer blogger?"
Jew or not, the flag of a pan-Arab nationalist state will remain in this site's banner for the month of July.
And who the hell are you calling a "blogger"?