Criticism
Among the criticisms of the first Conference was that it was building solidarity not with ordinary Iraqis, but rather with the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. This perception was fuelled by the reported presence of a number of Iraqi officials at the conference. According to Al-Ahram Weekly, German journalist and author Harald Schuman attracted the ire of Nabil Negm, the chief political adviser to the Iraqi president, after comments he made insisting that claims that all the problems of the Arab world could be laid at the door of the US were only half-true and that the conference was not meant to "defend the Iraqi regime and Saddam Hussein in any shape or form". "I am here," he said, "to defend the Iraqi people."
Read more about this topic: Cairo Anti-war Conference
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)