Baghdad Burning
Baghdad Burning: "Tuesday, July 11, 2006
This is a very moving blog posting. I have never experienced war, although I served in the US military. I was born during the Korean War, in an Asian country, where the populace made vases out of left over mortar shells, and my sister found the body of a downed US pilot. But, I know nothing of those things. I was too young. My knowledge of a conflict like this comes from a friend, a new US citizen, originally from Bosnia. Her stories of the war and genocide are innumberable and tragic, a picture of hatred and man's inhumanity to man. I found it interesting that in the former Yugolavia, as in Iraq, people can identify each other's ethnic origin by their names. I did not grow up learning that, although you knew some names signified a certain country of origin, it was not of great importance. Some kids were from Italy, some from Russia, some from other places, but all I knew is that their mothers made great food and were just like my Mom. However, as my friend told me, in Bosnia, if you had a Muslim name, you were a target to the Serbs. She speaks of seeing trucks go by that we full of dead bodies, covered in tarps to hide the evidence, but an arm or a leg might be sticking out. She fled at one point to the woods where they had nothing to eat, and no shelter, and of her fear. Eventually she made it to a refugee camp, pregnant, and starving. From that camp, she came to this country and became an proud US citizen and a Democrat. She believes in the values that many of our citizens have forgotten in their quest for money and greed. That all of us are created equal, that we can all suceed, and that we do not discriminate.
So, aren't these the values our President speaks so highly of? If so, why is it that we invaded a country for no reason, and subjected their people to continuous strife and hardship? Why haven't we fixed the electricity? Why do we allow this sectarian violence to continue? We stopped the genocide in Bosnia, but in Iraq we ignore the violence of one group upon another. This will bring democracy? I don't think so.
Why can't we all learn to celebrate our differences? Well, I believe corporate greed and oil have a lot to do with that. Such a sad state of affairs. May Allah bless Riverbend and her family, and some day grant them peace. The sooner the better.
Atrocities...
It promises to be a long summer. We're almost at the mid-way point, but it feels like the days are just crawling by. It's a combination of the heat, the flies, the hours upon hours of no electricity and the corpses which keep appearing everywhere.
The day before yesterday was catastrophic. The day began with news of the killings in Jihad Quarter. According to people who live there, black-clad militiamen drove in mid-morning and opened fire on people in the streets and even in houses. They began pulling people off the street and checking their ID cards to see if they had Sunni names or Shia names and then the Sunnis were driven away and killed. Some were executed right there in the area. The media is playing it down and claiming 37 dead but the people in the area say the number is nearer 60."
This is a very moving blog posting. I have never experienced war, although I served in the US military. I was born during the Korean War, in an Asian country, where the populace made vases out of left over mortar shells, and my sister found the body of a downed US pilot. But, I know nothing of those things. I was too young. My knowledge of a conflict like this comes from a friend, a new US citizen, originally from Bosnia. Her stories of the war and genocide are innumberable and tragic, a picture of hatred and man's inhumanity to man. I found it interesting that in the former Yugolavia, as in Iraq, people can identify each other's ethnic origin by their names. I did not grow up learning that, although you knew some names signified a certain country of origin, it was not of great importance. Some kids were from Italy, some from Russia, some from other places, but all I knew is that their mothers made great food and were just like my Mom. However, as my friend told me, in Bosnia, if you had a Muslim name, you were a target to the Serbs. She speaks of seeing trucks go by that we full of dead bodies, covered in tarps to hide the evidence, but an arm or a leg might be sticking out. She fled at one point to the woods where they had nothing to eat, and no shelter, and of her fear. Eventually she made it to a refugee camp, pregnant, and starving. From that camp, she came to this country and became an proud US citizen and a Democrat. She believes in the values that many of our citizens have forgotten in their quest for money and greed. That all of us are created equal, that we can all suceed, and that we do not discriminate.
So, aren't these the values our President speaks so highly of? If so, why is it that we invaded a country for no reason, and subjected their people to continuous strife and hardship? Why haven't we fixed the electricity? Why do we allow this sectarian violence to continue? We stopped the genocide in Bosnia, but in Iraq we ignore the violence of one group upon another. This will bring democracy? I don't think so.
Why can't we all learn to celebrate our differences? Well, I believe corporate greed and oil have a lot to do with that. Such a sad state of affairs. May Allah bless Riverbend and her family, and some day grant them peace. The sooner the better.
posted by progressivegrannie at 11:09 PM
5 Comments:
Love Me Some Libs:
Are you hear to tell us how well things are going in Iraq? Pray tell us how well it's going...how Sunni's getting along with Shiite. Can you elaborate on availability of electricity? How about job creation? Do Iraqis feel more safe than they did before we got there? Do the prospects for an American-style democracy look good?
If you have something of substance to say, by all means lay it out.
But if you've come here to make drive-by postings wherein you shake the dust off tired old anti-liberal statements, then disappear...why bother? You just look foolish with every post.
FREE Iraq? Do you mean the citizens are free to be killed by any number of sects?
You folks toss around words like FREE as if they really mean FREE. There's next to NOTHING about Iraq that's FREE like you're FREE here here in the USA. You damned well know that, despite your claims.
Electricity: are they FREE, or are they at war? In one paragraph they're attaining fabulous FREE-ness, in the next Iraq's a war zone. Methinks you've gotten yourself confused here. Fact is, we haven't returned electricity production to pre-war levels...after 3+ years to do so.
Robust Economy: you cite that it's doing well, but you forgot one thing: the actual numbers. You got a URL we can inspect, or is this just empty talk?
Iraqis Feeling Safer: which studies are you citing here? Be specific please.
Reasoning: you laid out NO reasoning. In a reasonable tone you laid out empty platitudes. You cited no facts, no studies, nothing which a reasonable person would actually have. Simply empty talking points.
Try again if you'd like.
Hey love me some libs...if you aren't too old, and you think the war in Iraq is going so well, why don't you sign up for the US Army and go over there?
Why don't you shut off your electricity for about a week right now...and just see how happy you would be.
Then, make sure to stop going to work, after all you don't need that paycheck. Oh, snap! You don't believe that you might get blown up by Shia or Sunni on the way to work because you are America's good old boy.
Then speak in facts. Yep, we liberals are FACT BASED. We do not buy nebulous, pie in the sky crap, we believe in facts, provable, indisputable facts.
So provide a few, preferably from multiple resources.
Thanks vtexan for your posts.
Love me some libs: what's your preference of Kool-Aid, because you've obviously been drinking it by the gallon?
Your 1st url goes to a dead site. Nothing there. Your 2nd url has nothing whatsoever to do with the Iraqi economy, which was the subject I broached. Your 3rd url cites the OPINION (not fact)of the Wall Street Journal--one of the country's most conservative--and its author is none other than Donald Rumsfeld.
So the guy whose plan it was to go to Iraq in the first place, the guy whose very name hangs on this war only slightly less than does the president's...and you're thinking that an objective evaluation of how the war's going can be had by asking him?
This kind of small change logic will also net you some very favorable responses when you go to death row and ask: "Is anyone here innocent?"
This kind of foolishness doesn't belong on an interchange such as this. Shame on you for lobbing such an utterly stupid softball.
And finally, to get a handle on how things really are in Iraq, where the progress has been made, you trust the White House spin machine to tell you the unvarnished truth?
You're either an incalculably underexposed rube, a party flack, or a plain and simple fool. I hope this doesn't come as a shock, but YOUR GOVERNMENT IS LYING TO YOU.
They lied when they said they knew where the wmd were. They lied when they said no one could have predicted they'd fly airplanes into buildings. They lied when they said no one could have predicted what would happen with Hurricane Katrina. This government whose words you rush forth to post is either the most incompetent ever formed, or the largest assemblage of liars this side of anywhere.
I find it so odd that they still find people like you who ignore the staggering quantity of fact in front of them to embrace that which still makes them feel hope. Still makes them feel like they've not invested their vote, their trust in a series of buffoons and megalomaniacs. Alas...you have. And that's all there is to it.
For compendium of FACTual, unbiased information, go here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/post_saddam_iraq/html/1.stm
There are FACTS which are under different deliniations such as
Security, Reconstruction, people, oil, education, Health, cost of living.
Surely I don't have to dig up URLs to show Dick Cheney saying 2 summers ago that the insurgency was in its last throes, or another Bush administration guy saying the whole war would cost taxpayers no more than 2 Billion...and yet another one who said that oil would pay for all our expenses...or Cheney's that we would be greeted like liberators. Do you want me to dig some of those up for your perusal? Most of them were on Meet the Press.
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