A little Arab solidarity at the Olympics

[Dancing_Dave]

The surprisingly good Iraqi soccer team won a few upset games and found themself in a position where they could win in their preliminary group even if they lost against Morroco. Morroco is also an Arab country, and their soccer team is not especially good. The Iraqi team played a very laid-back game and let Morroco win by one point.

Several times I saw that when a foul happened, the guys from the Iraq and Morroco teams involved would pat each other on the shoulder and smile to make sure there were no hard feelings.

It made me realize that maybe why Iraq came out playing so hard in the first few games, had to do with needing to assert some Arab pride at a time when many Arabs feel overwhelmed by U.S. and Israeli Imperialism. As soon as they were playing another Arab team, all the pressure was off.

I bet in the finals we'll seem them go back to playing very hard and tightly co-operative soccer, trying to go further than any Arab soccer team has gone before.