Dispatch from the Razor's Edge, the Blog of Michael Stephen Fuchs
2006.04.09 : Liberation Day
"I still acutely remember the suffering and misery brought about by war. It would certainly be a better world if war were not necessary. Yet I also remember the desperation and anger I felt when the rest of the world chose to ignore the tragedy that was drowning my people. We begged a foreign power to free us from oppression, by force if necessary . . . If the antiwar movement dissuades the United States and its allies from going to war with Iraq, it will have contributed to the peace of the dead."
- José Ramos-Horta, East Timor's minister of foreign affairs and cooperation, and co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize

Happy Liberation Day to the brave and long-suffering Iraqi people. We stand with you.

And, by the way, to those who think some people just aren't cut out for democracy, I have two words: Seventy per cent voter turnout. And that was in the face of the head-hackers and exploding jihadis; Americans can't muster fifty per cent, and all we have to do is go down to the schoolhouse and stand in line for a bit.

And to those who think a beachhead of civil, consensual, tolerant, pluralistic, society in the Middle East isn't important, or isn't making a huge difference, or that western support of it isn't helpful, I have two more words: Eastern Europe. Until relatively very recently, those hundreds of millions of people lived under wretched tyranny – and now they are all free. Yay.

Anyway, God bless the Iraqis, seriously. May they have peace to go with their hard-won freedom (and growing prosperity) very, very soon.


  freedom     middle east     the long war     iraq  
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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

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Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very  long  walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

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