The blogs of freedom

Our family's menorah rests on the mantle next to a beautiful noble fir draped with Christmas ornaments. The big holiday dinner will include the Hanukkah staple of potato latkes with sour cream, and a succulent ham from Hempler's of Bellingham. I know — not kosher. My late fraternal grandfather Jacob would not approve.

Grandpa fled to Brooklyn from Ukraine in the early 1900s to escape the periodic pogroms against Jews, under Russian czarist rule. He worked his way up from house painter and wallpaper hanger to a building contractor, earning for his two sons access to higher education and a different kind of success. And somehow he managed to get over one of his grandsons marrying a shikse (non-Jewish woman).

That's why the co-mingled smells of latkes and baked ham will remind me of my family's flight to freedom in a place where religious, ethnic and political diversity are cause for celebration, not persecution. With the capture of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein last weekend, Iraqis may now be likely to enjoy such liberties sooner, rather than later.

Something more powerful than terrorist attacks and resistance was under way there even before Saddam's dramatic capture. It is reflected partly by a growing cadre of passionate, pro-democracy Iraqis providing firsthand reporting, commentary and pointed media criticism on their own Internet "Web log" sites, or "blogs."

The few reports from old media outlets on a rally of 5,000 to 10,000 Iraqis in Baghdad last week — just days before Saddam was taken — portrayed it largely as an "anti-terrorism" event. It was much more, according to an increasingly cited Iraqi blogger named Zeyad (healingiraq.blogspot.com) who roamed the crowds snapping photos with a new digital camera provided by American Jeff Jarvis, the president and creative director of Ad-vance.net.

Zeyad stressed, "It wasn't just against terrorism. It was against Arab media, against the interference of neighbouring countries, against dictatorships, against Wahhabism, against oppression, and of course against the Ba'ath and Saddam. ... At one point it struck me that our many differences as an Iraqi people meant nothing. Here we were all together shouting in different languages the same slogans, "NO NO to terrorism, YES YES for peace."

Zeyad is a 24-year-old Baghdad postgraduate dental student who learned English living in London as a child. He started his blog this fall after tracking down Internet executive Jarvis for advice. Jarvis is a leading pro-war U.S. blogger whose long print media résumé includes stints as Sunday news editor for the San Francisco Chronicle; TV critic for TV Guide and People; and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly. As Zeyad prepared for his foray into the blogo-sphere, he e-mailed Jarvis, "I don't expect America alone to do everything for us. ... I want to be part of it."

Another prominent Iraqi blogger, Alaa (messopotamian.blogspot.com), writes, "The U.S. and her allies, have decided to eradicate the roots of evil. And the roots of evil are precisely this misery and squalor. It is not a war against a race or a religion; it is a war on backwardness and stagnation; a war to bring prosperity, freedom and progress."

Along with law professor and technology writer Glenn Reynolds' noted instapundit.com, Jarvis' blog (buzzmachine.com) is among the focal points for links to the real story in Iraq; and for no-holds-barred "fisking," or taking apart, of biased U.S. and European media coverage.

All told, there's an impressive network of U.S. bloggers rooting on their Iraqi colleagues, spreading their message, and even providing software and other technical assistance. To get a sense of the building buzz, scour some of the 1,360 Web pages (as of last week), accessed via Google, that contain the phrase "Iraqi blogs."

The importance of blogging to cultural and political liberalization (note the word, please) is evident elsewhere in the Persian Gulf. The BBC reported last week Iranian bloggers and their supporters have taken online their grievances with the government's Internet censorship, posting hundreds of comments on a site of the United Nations' digital summit.

Blogging from and about emerging democracies is more than Internet news from the front. The high-touch feel and inter-connectivity of blogs allow participants to confront and outflank old media in force, while building transnational political communities.

Like Saddam's capture, the message from wired Iraqi sentinels underscores that U.S. intervention has been right and just. Now, the prospect of Iraq's independence is more tangible. But potential chaos and mighty challenges may remain in the near term. It is not time for the U.S. to leave yet.

Now more than ever, the fresh voices of Iraqi bloggers will be an invaluable counterweight to traditional media coverage. In the weeks and months to come, turn to them for crucial, first-person insights on this unfolding, and uplifting, birth of a democracy.

Matt Rosenberg is a Seattle writer and regular contributor to The Times' editorial pages. E-mail him at oudist@nwlink.com