Whoever said that people don’t care about Iraqis was wrong? They do.
screen-shot of news.yahoo.com – story
Back to Main
February 22, 2008
People Care About Iraqis
Comments
truth is most merican feel for their pain. we are a loving people and we know the all are not extremist or as we like to say down here HATTERS
Posted by: rawdawgbuffalo | Feb 22 2008 20:37 utc | 1
Side bar: wha would we do if the shite and sunnis joined the Kurds and declared war on Turkey ?
Posted by: rawdawgbuffalo | Feb 22 2008 20:37 utc | 2
sadly, rawdawgbuffalo, i do not believe that to be true
an immense majority of americans, of europeans, of the ‘civilised’ world do not give a fuck about the pain of the people of iraq
they care only for their own pain – never that of the other – than in acts of pure sentimentality which mask the brutality of their project
when the u s after murdering over 3 million vietnamese, cambodians & laotians – thought only of themselves & ‘their’ loss. not for one moment, not for one second was any real thought extended to the people of indo china
& it is true in iraq – the vast majority do not even comprehend the scale od the crime nor its consequences
that vast majority has pissed deeply into the cradle of civilisation leaving it caked in piss & blood
until that majority expresses its empathy in active ways – it is in essence not different at all from the good germans that benefited from the bestial crimes of their leaders until the consequences were visited upon them
the truth is that vast majority are more concerned with the oil that passes though the veins of their economies than the blood that leaves the veins of the heroic people of iraq
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 22 2008 21:07 utc | 3
Feeling a bit melancholy tonight and this thread just adds to that feeling …
There are many common sayings about growing older. It is definitely true that time passes faster the older I get. No one past middle age has told me anything different so it is probably universal. And I am definitely more forgetful. Although I hope to be getting wiser, that is difficult to ascertain. As for my opinion of others who are growing older, I doubt that many are getting wiser. So many people dig themselves into a deeper and deeper rut as they grow older – and in every possible way – mentally, physically and emotionally. There is an old joke that goes something like this:
What is the difference between being in a rut and being dead?
The answer: 6 ft.
Of course, closed minds are not unique to the old, but it is perhaps more depressing to find this trait with older, ‘educated’ adults. I remember asking an elder friend of mind if he has grown more and more disappointed with his fellow humans as he grew older. Without needing to ponder the question, he quickly answered that he has. I too feel this same disappointment. Is this because people are getting more callous or is it just my perception of people? I assume probably both. The naiveté of my youth, along with growing up with a caring family, influenced my belief that most people really cared deeply about one another. I no longer feel that way. Perhaps I need a more positive outlook, but I can relate to every word of what ‘rememberinggiap’ has said above. Of course I meet good, caring people on an almost daily basis, but I know so many more who could care less about a dead Iraqi. Not even a million dead Iraqis seem to bother them. In fact, I doubt if many even care for their fellow Americans who have died or have been wounded in this Iraq war – oh, they might have a yellow ribbon on their car, but do they really care? One would think if they did care, they would at least want to examine more deeply the reasons as to why their government is waging war. But no, that would take some effort. Why bother? After all, it is always somebody else’s problem.
All this reminds me again of an old blues song by Jr. Kimbraugh, “I done got old”. Though I’m having trouble finding a video of that on ‘you tube’, this song fits my mood tonight well enough.
Posted by: Rick | Feb 23 2008 2:40 utc | 4
rick
you are perfectly correct – if more people actually listened to the wisdom of a jr kimbraugh – this whole wide world would be better
if this gying old world had listen to the spirit & scholarship of a jelly roll morton, a robert johnson, a blind willy mctell, a sonny boy williamson, a big mama thornton a blind lemon jefferson – then perhaps we would be in a better place
& not without paradow this deeply personal music makes us not dwell on our own sorrow but the sorrow of this sad sad world
Posted by: Anonymous | Feb 23 2008 2:49 utc | 5
A B-2 went down at Andersen. “B-2” because it cost US $2B that we’ll never see again.
There was no announcement why B-2’s are loitering offshore Phillipines. Maybe they
were flying dry runs, preparing for the upcoming strike on Iran from Diego Garcia,
since Guam and Diego Garcia are the main OCONUS strategic airlift command centers.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1606/MR1606.pdf
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1606/MR1606.appa.pdf
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1606/MR1606.appb.pdf
Of course, President McCain is correct, “A hundred years, yeah, that seems about
right (for US occupation of Iraq).” Now that we’re 60:40 co-owners of Iraqi oil, or
at least we’re bribing $100B’s towards becoming co-owners with the Iraqi Oil Vichy,
Iraq is very much on DoD’s pre-emptive strategic airlift weekly and monthly planner.
“Mighty McCain” they’ll rename a newly refitted Iowa-class battleship, as it steams
through Bab el Mandeb on it’s way to Cheney’s mansion, to engage in “peacekeeping”.
And as the Marines swarm ashore to secure the last Saudi oilfields, they’ll fly the
red and black insignia of the 8.4L V-10 Dodge Viper, with B-2 pterodactyl rampant.
Posted by: Delbert Keys | Feb 23 2008 6:35 utc | 8
ahh, so much of what you both say is true of course.
Is this because people are getting more callous or is it just my perception of people?
no it isn’t your perdeption. people divorfe themselves from pain for their own equilibrium.
not for one moment, not for one second was any real thought extended to the people of indo china
well, i don’t believe this. for some people war eats them up inside. i remember when this guy laid down in front of the railroad tracks during a demonstration and had his legs chopped off in protest against that war. i didn’t get it at the time. i think there really were people very upset, many of the soldiers even. it is hard to imagine what goes thru the minds of every individual in an entire culture. we are being programed not to feel. personally, i feel much more connected to iraqis than i did for the Vietnamese. maybe because i am older. the war, it really bothers me on a daily, hourly, momentarily basis.
Posted by: annie | Feb 23 2008 6:58 utc | 9
r’giap #3–
SENTIMENTALITY: That is the word, exactly. An article about saving a goddamn DOG. Well, why not save a dog? I have nothing against dogs. But save the dog while letting (helping to cause) people to die!
The context is pathetic.
What you said.
Posted by: Gaianne | Feb 23 2008 9:32 utc | 11
Chances are that to this day, the fifth year of being at war with Iraq, many many US Americans still don’t have a clue where the country actually is, assuming that it must be some poxy lil scrap of land somewhere on the other side of the world, right next to Somalia or Malaysia.
As rgiap wrote, the vast majority didn’t give a flying fu.k about the Vietnamese and Koreans, and they certainly don’t feel a pittance of guilt for what is done in their name to Iraqis or any other country and its people.
Other People are felt for when Dr. Phil tells them to, or maybe the issue has something to with switching off a brain dead person’s life support, or, as in this case, an Iraqi dog running affectionately after their Humvee, but it had to be white and have at least some German shepherd in it.
There are pockets of resistance in the US to this indoctrinated blindness to the suffering dished out by their military, this is clearly shown in blogs like the MoA. The stark truth however is that their outrage and screams for an end to the murdering are hardly visible in the great hall of US Self-righteousness, the walls of which seem to only echo the “we can do no wrong” mantra put out by the usual suspects.
Posted by: Juan Moment | Feb 23 2008 9:51 utc | 12
@12 – change US American to Canukistani and it still woiks
Posted by: jcairo | Feb 23 2008 12:56 utc | 13
We’ve found each other. Go out in the streets and find more. There are more of us than them I believe. Talk to neighbors; talk to strangers. Make an effort every day. Just make some contact and smile instead of passing by.
I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know what else to do.
Thanks Rick.
Posted by: beq | Feb 23 2008 14:39 utc | 14
Hi friends.
I don’t know if it just Tucson or maybe it is Tucson is only a million people compared to big cities, but there is a very active progressive community here. It seems easy to make connections if you want to. Groups are pretty visible.
Went to see Dr. David Ray Griffin talk Thursday night. (What a giant of a Man!)
We have weekly talks and films about Venezuela, Iraq, and Palestine. Usually 50 to 150 people show up. It isn’t always the same folks, either.
The protest marches in Tucson usually attract one or two thousand, or more, of the public.
We demonstrate in front of the gates of Fort Huachuca (where they train the interrogators).
Local and national figures come here to be arrested, tried and imprisoned.
We push back against the Border Patrol, Wackenhut, Pinkertons, ICE and Homeland Defense at the Arizona border.
We don’t seem to be getting anywhere. But, as Dr. Griffin said, “…keep pushing.” When the time is right for the lily-livered (my description) politicians to make a change, they will have the ammunition they need.
I’m still searching for the Secret Camps! And yes, the diet will be better INside than Outside, probably. Makes me wonder where I want to be. heh (Uncle Scam?) Come visit, all of you!
Blessings, all of us.
Posted by: Jake | Feb 23 2008 15:02 utc | 15
Not feeling for others begins with not feeling oneself.
I’ve had the revolting experience of starting to get back in touch with my feelings – and I could hardly stop retching for a while. It takes discipline to welcome that feeling. Okay, not discipline, focus on health, desire and space to relax and to feel.
No wonder most people don’t want to care. Once we’ve invested so much in not feeling, we get in such a crappy state that it is too scary too feel. We’ll have to die to this way of half-living, and only then will we be capable of retching for long enough to feel someone else’s pain.
Posted by: citizen | Feb 23 2008 15:09 utc | 16
jcairo, you are right when you write
change US American to Canukistani and it still woiks
The thing is though, Canukistanis did not invade Afghanistan, are not at war with Iraqis and didn’t kill millions of SE Asians. Canukistanis don’t have a military which spends as much as the rest of the world combined and elect time and time again a president who bombs some helpless country coz he can.
Don’t get me wrong, many people across the world are caught up in their ego trips, no doubt, me in some ways being no exception, but being self absorbed is one thing, to leave a government in place which blatantly tortures and wages aggressive wars, is something else.
Posted by: Juan Moment | Feb 23 2008 16:24 utc | 17
Nir Rosen in RollingStone: The Myth of the Surge
In districts like Dora, the strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight. All told, the U.S. is now backing more than 600,000 Iraqi men in the security sector — more than half the number Saddam had at the height of his power. With the ISVs in place, the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. “Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems,” as U.S. strategists like to say. David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calls it “balancing competing armed interest groups.”
…
There they find a group of young men stringing electrical cables across the street. Some of the men manage to run off, but the eleven who remain are forced into a courtyard and made to squat facing the walls. They all wear flip-flops. Soldiers from the unit take their pictures one by one. The grunts are frustrated: For most of them, this is as close to combat as they have gotten, and they’re eager for action.
“Somebody move!” shouts one soldier. “I’m in the mood to hit somebody!”
Another soldier pushes a suspect against the wall. “You know Abu Ghraib?” he taunts.
The Iraqis do not resist — they are accustomed to such treatment.
…
“The situation won’t get better,” he says softly. An officer of the Iraqi National Police, a man charged with bringing peace to his country, he has been reduced to hiding in his van, unable to speak openly in the very neighborhood he patrols. Thanks to the surge, both the Shiites and the Sunnis now have weapons and legitimacy. And what can come of that, Arkan asks, except more fighting?
Anthony Cordesman argues for a Two Winnable Wars
Meaningful victory can come only if tactical military victories end in ideological and political victories and in successful governance and development. Dollars are as important as bullets, and so are political accommodation, effective government services and clear demonstrations that there is a future that does not need to be built on Islamist extremism.
…
What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don’t end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.
If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose.
Well Mr. Cordesman, Nobel laureat Stiglitz just upped his cost estimate for the wars to $3 Trillion.
The economic bill is coming in now. Do you really believe the taxpayers will go along with long wars when they have to pay for them?
The Nation (long): Is Iran Winning the Iraq War? some insight into the shia-shia dynamic
—
WaPo on Mosul In Mosul, a Hopeful Partnership – U.S. uses Iraqi troops to “clean up” Mosul, but it turns out that these troops are Kurdish peschmerga, not Arabs and as despises as the U.S. troops themselves
The eight casualties the Iraqi battalion has suffered in its first 50 days in Mosul are more than it suffered in the whole of a seven-month tour in southwestern Baghdad last year. During that time, the soldiers, most of whom are Kurds, felt like impartial arbiters in the war between Sunnis and Shiites. In Baghdad last October, Dosky helped negotiate a pioneering neighborhood reconciliation pact between rival factions. His unit’s welcome in Mosul has been much colder.
“Now they hate us more than the Americans,” Dosky said. “They think we are American agents . . . that we are not officially army, that we are not serving our country, just Kurdistan.”
…
Many of the Kurdish soldiers don’t speak Arabic, and some denigrate the Sunni Arab population in the city for supporting insurgents. “Kurd good. Arab no good,” Sgt. Tayeeb Abdul Rahaman, an Iraqi soldier, said repeatedly in his limited English. “Anybody who doesn’t like the army are terrorists,” added Sgt. Major Mohammed Sharif.
For the people in Mosul, these are occupieres just like the U.S.
“The thing is though, Canukistanis did not invade Afghanistan, are not at war with Iraqis and didn’t kill millions of SE Asians. Canukistanis don’t have a military which spends as much as the rest of the world combined and elect time and time again a president who bombs some helpless country coz he can.”
While that may be, Canukistan is quite happy to arm/profit/participate in military actions with, and be a vassal state to, the place of which you speak – and most citizens are blissfully unaware of our complicity because they haven’t heard Dr. Phil tell them about NAFTA
While it may have appeared that Jean Cretin just said no to the war, our navy (LOL) was in the Gulf in ’03 and the (LOL) peacekeepers easily went into Afghanistan in support of the planned invasion of Iraq – and our top peacekeeper now emits soundbites just like the Soviets during their failed attempt
Meanwhile, in Haiti…
Posted by: jcairo | Feb 24 2008 13:02 utc | 21