There is a great post over at Chrenkoff containing the transcript of an interview between your average dopey reporter and Marek Edelman. Marek Edelman is one of the last surviving military leaders from Poland at the time of the Warsaw uprising. Mr. Edelman is a true hero in ever sense of the word and his perspective on Iraq is quite fascinating. Below is a snippet of the interview:
Interviewer: … What to say to Polish people after the death of several more of our soldiers?Edelman: : But they died fighting for their freedom. How many thousands of people died in the Warsaw Uprising [in 1944]?
Interviewer: But those people then were fighting for their country.
Edelman: They were fighting for their world. Free and democratic. Just like those who died during the martial law [in Poland in 1981-3]. Did they die only for Poland? No. They died for the freedom of the whole Europe, for the freedom of all those enslaved behind the Iron Curtain.
Interviewer: But the Spanish withdrew their troops from Iraq after the terrorist attack in Madrid.
Edelman: Please don't tell me what the Spanish did. So what? Do you seriously think that it will save them from further attacks? No. The weak just get punched in the head. Pacifism lost a long time ago.
Interviewer: There are more and more voices saying that Poland shouldn't work so close with the Americans and that instead we should get closer to France and Germany.
Edelman: France used to be a great power, culturally and intellectually. And what happened to them? They didn't want to fight for their own democracy, they thought it wasn't really their war [in 1939]. And they lost everything, because when you bend over and take it - even once - then you're finished. And what's that whole talk about the difference between American politics and European politics? There is no other politics but international democratic politics. If we withdraw from Iraq now, what do we have left? Cosying up to Iran and Saudi Arabia? ...
Interviewer: Is it possible to introduce democracy by force?
Edelman: Yugoslavia showed that it's possible...
Read it all.