Author Topic: Another argument for staying in Iraq  (Read 4194 times)

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MissusDe

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Another argument for staying in Iraq
« on: August 01, 2008, 10:13:51 PM »
I was listening to an interview with one of the directors of The Boys from Baghdad High, a documentary that follows the lives of four boys during their last year of high school in Baghdad.  The boys were given digital cameras and they recorded their day-to-day activities at school, at home, and with their friends.  Aside from the similarities with teens everywhere - resisting their parents' control, hating homework and teachers, loving music, sports, and just hanging out - there were, of course, obvious differences.  When one boy complains that he can't reach his girlfriend on his cell phone, you realize that he's not just wondering why she's not calling him back and if maybe she doesn't like him anymore.  He's worried that she may have been one of the 2700 casualties in the city that month.  The suicide bombers had been very busy.

The project was dangerous, to say the least.  The boys and their families took a great risk in carrying the cameras and filming themselves and their surroundings.  That risk came from the bad guys, who have taken to giving cameras to children (some as young as 5) and ordering them to film market areas and neighborhoods; that way they can determine the best target for their next attack.

The director was asked the obvious question: Do the Iraqis want us out?  And her answer was very interesting.  She said that there were two paradigms to consider.  Under Saddam Hussein, they didn't have to deal with the possibility of being killed while shopping for dinner.  On the other hand, now they don't worry about being turned in by their neighbors, which is what happened to one man after he brought home a banned DVD.  Following a knock on his door, he was arrested and was 'disappeared'; his family was never told what happened to him.

The bottom line, she said, was this:

They want us to stay.  Their biggest fear is that we will leave and that the fanatics will begin a chaotic era of retribution where no one will know who to trust and what is safe to say or do...or think. 

She also mentioned that the Christians are being imprisoned, tortured, and killed in great numbers, and that she has been trying for some time to get backing in order to tell their story.  Unfortunately, no one seems to be interested.  The Christians are fleeing the city and moving north, where they are safe among the Kurds.

This movie is being shown on HBO starting Monday, August 4th.  I don't have HBO, so I'm hoping it will end up in my On Demand menu at some point. 

The Boys from Baghdad High:
http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/16735986.html

Michael Tee

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2008, 12:02:35 AM »
<<Under Saddam Hussein, they didn't have to deal with the possibility of being killed while shopping for dinner.  On the other hand, now they don't worry about being turned in by their neighbors, which is what happened to one man after he brought home a banned DVD.  Following a knock on his door, he was arrested and was 'disappeared'; his family was never told what happened to him.>>

It would probably help if we knew how many people are worried about getting killed while shopping for dinner and how many people used to be worried about being turned in by their neighbours.

I know quite a few Iraqis as it happens, and it's not uncommon to hear stories like the guy who disappeared because of a DVD.  I know for example of a high school teacher who disappeared after one previous warning to show more enthusiasm for the regime when he didn't take a day off with the rest of the teaching staff to attend as a "volunteer" at some bullshit celebration that Saddam had organized.  Some agents in plainclothes showed up at the school a few days later and asked him to come in with them for questioning.  These are truly horrible stories and what happened to the guy was probably much more horrible than anyone can imagine.  Another fellow I know had his back ripped open by dogs in his own front yard because he had pissed off Uday Hussein in a nightclub.  I saw the scars.

The unfortunate fact of the matter, however, is that things aren't much different now.  Iraq is full of torture chambers operated by various militias belonging to various political parties.  The "President" of Iraq belongs to one party with its own party militia, which enjoys the dubious distinction of operating its own torture chambers as well as the "Iraqi government's."  The Americans, I am sure, operate their torture chambers, only this time with no cameras allowed, Muqtada al Sadr has his, the "Anbar Awakening" or what's left of it operates theirs and the al Qaeda remnants operate theirs.  I left out a few of the smaller groupings, but they too have their death squads, militias and torture chambers as well.  So people still live in fear in Iraq, but the killing is down, mainly because the various communities and factions are now separated from each other, often by walls - - which somehow was never necessary in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. 

Most of the Iraqis I know were not going to piss off the regime.  They supported its "celebrations," and they praised its leader unreservedly.  It was a small price to pay for not having their fingernails and toenails torn out one by one as a preliminary to more unpleasant tortures to follow.  Even if they were falsely informed on out of malice, there were always people to contact who, for a fee, could "fix" the problem.  The only problems that could not be "fixed" were if the guy had really done something that crossed the line, like not showing up with the rest of the staff at a public "celebration" or as in your example, bringing home a banned DVD.

The bottom line is that the situation for most Iraqis is much worse now than it ever was under Saddam.  Very few people were stupid enough to provoke the regime and so its excesses were not all that disturbing to the average Iraqi.  Materially they were much better off then than now.  The current state of violent anarchy and repression is something that affects almost every Iraqi, as does the lack of employment and the cost of gasoline and necessities.  Polls today - - http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/GoodMorningAmerica/Iraq_anniversary_poll_040314.html - -  seem to indicate about 10% more Iraqis say they're better off now than they were before the invasion, but a closer examination of the figures shows that the results were heavily weighted by the Kurds in the representative sample polled.  Kurds are about 20% of the Iraqi population and favour the American invasion by a ratio of about 85:15 over the Arab Iraqis.  If Iraqi Kurds (who are largely in favour of seceding from Iraq anyway) were eliminated from the poll, the results would probably show that Iraqi Arabs are mostly worse off after the invasion than they were before.

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2008, 01:57:22 AM »
Of course the Kurds skew the curve , they get this attitude from avoiding extinction.

Michael Tee

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2008, 02:17:05 AM »
<<Of course the Kurds skew the curve , they get this attitude from avoiding extinction.>>

So what, they don't plan on being part of Iraq much longer and that just leaves the Arab Iraqis, who even from that poll most likely feel they were better off BEFORE the invasion.  That's certainly the opinion of the Christian and Sunni Arabs I've spoken with here and every single one of them fled from Saddam Hussein.  And it makes a lot of sense too. 

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2008, 02:18:56 AM »
<< avoiding extinction.>>

So what, ... 


Huh?

Michael Tee

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2008, 02:32:59 AM »
What's the "huh" for?  They're not really a willing part of the Iraqi nation and their "joy" at the invasion isn't really Iraqi joy.  They won't always be a part of Iraq, but the Arab Iraqis will.

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2008, 02:34:04 AM »
What's the "huh" for?  They're not really a willing part of the Iraqi nation and their "joy" at the invasion isn't really Iraqi joy.  They won't always be a part of Iraq, but the Arab Iraqis will.

And their avoiding extinction isn't true reason for joy?

Michael Tee

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2008, 02:47:04 AM »
They're not "avoiding extinction" since nobody is trying to make them extinct.  They are just expected to be good citizens of the lands they find themselves living in.  If I tried to set up a Jewish state in the centre of Ontario and met with some armed resistance from the Canadian government, I might claim they were trying to deny me my "rights" to an independent state of my own, but I would never claim I was facing "extinction."

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #8 on: August 02, 2008, 03:32:06 AM »
They're not "avoiding extinction" since nobody is trying to make them extinct.  They are just expected to be good citizens of the lands they find themselves living in.  If I tried to set up a Jewish state in the centre of Ontario and met with some armed resistance from the Canadian government, I might claim they were trying to deny me my "rights" to an independent state of my own, but I would never claim I was facing "extinction."

It is as though you don't know any of the facts.

They think with good reason that Saddam was driveing them from their ancestral lands and shooting them often.

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #9 on: August 02, 2008, 05:48:10 PM »
Saddam was guilty of moving the Kurds around a bit, when they got in the way.

SAaddam moved lots of people around: the "Marsh Arabs" of the Shat Al Arab were trucked off andf their lands were ruined.
He did not come close to exterminating them. The Kurds did not accuse him of this.

The ones that were gassed were suspected of siding with Iran.

At the moment the Iraqis most likely to be exterminated would be the Christians.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #10 on: August 02, 2008, 06:05:11 PM »

He did not come close to exterminating them. The Kurds did not accuse him of this.




http://www.infoplease.com/spot/kurds3.html

Quote
2. The past two decades have been characterised by the Anfal campaign against Kurds (Kurdish genocide) which have been carried out by the Iraqi nationalist state against the Kurdish people with almost 182,000 killed. Such operations have been carried out by corrupt people in Iraq and by the Iraqi state which has used traitors to carry out the destroying, killing and massacring of Kurdish villages and civilians of these villages, including children, regardless of their sex, age, etc.


To date, the Kurdish people in the south of Kurdistan hold the authorities and the former regimes responsible for these atrocities, not the Arab people who have been living side by side with them for centuries in this region.
http://www.kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=14929

Xavier_Onassis

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #11 on: August 02, 2008, 10:17:22 PM »
The Kurds are not being exterminated. There are a lot more of them now than there were then.
You can't really claim there is a genocide taking place when every day therte are more of you. It's like you can't say you are on a diet when every day, you are getting fatter.

Plus, it is not really true that there is a Kurdish nationality. They speak several mutually unintelligible languages and have extremely differing political views. What they have in common is basically a mistrust of the Arabs, Turks and Persians, all of whom have more sophisticated cultures than they do and all of whom have sought to dominate them as inferior and have pretty much succeeded. The Kurds in Iraq today never had it so good. The other unifying factor seems to be a taste for gaudy clothes.

What is a Kurd is defined by their enemies.

"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana."

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #12 on: August 03, 2008, 01:48:13 AM »
The Kurds are not being exterminated. There are a lot more of them now than there were then.
You can't really claim there is a genocide taking place when every day therte are more of you. It's like you can't say you are on a diet when every day, you are getting fatter.

Plus, it is not really true that there is a Kurdish nationality. They speak several mutually unintelligible languages and have extremely differing political views. What they have in common is basically a mistrust of the Arabs, Turks and Persians, all of whom have more sophisticated cultures than they do and all of whom have sought to dominate them as inferior and have pretty much succeeded. The Kurds in Iraq today never had it so good. The other unifying factor seems to be a taste for gaudy clothes.

What is a Kurd is defined by their enemies.



No , there are Kurds and they have an national identity , they just don't have a recognised government , we stopped Saddam from killing off the Kurd and the Swamp Arabs elese he wouold still be killing them now and there would be fewer of them instead of more of them.

Please open the Wicci on them , I don't need to contradict you if you know something.

Cynthia

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #13 on: August 03, 2008, 03:13:51 AM »
My god, the bottom line here, and it seems like a common sense view....

The Middle East is and will always be a primitive and backward part of the world- the globe as we know it--- prone to dysfunction....no matter what we say here. ...

And,  no matter what we want as an outcome from this "war" --a war against the very creator of evil-----Saddam, Osama and the Taliban----we are fighting a dirty bomb. We are fighting a hatred against the west the likes of which we will never see again. The likes of which we have not seen before.

Dirty fighting.. .not like the past wars at all. This war is underground and on the net. This war is going to have to be fought head on.
Bush failed to fight it that way.
 
This war will never be one battle at time-- like it  was on the stage of battles  in  WW2.


Logically there will probably always be war in middle eastern arena for years to come. There will also more than likely  be strife and dysfunction in that area for centuries to come ...............why

Look at the past. Look at the centuries of wars huddled in packs like rats or players of some sort of blood thirsty  game...

all due to the lack of cultural sophistication, civility and a willingness to invent.
« Last Edit: August 03, 2008, 03:16:29 AM by Cindy »

Plane

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Re: Another argument for staying in Iraq
« Reply #14 on: August 03, 2008, 03:27:22 AM »
My god, the bottom line here, and it seems like a common sense view....



I don't think that Humans in the USA are a diffrent sort of creature , we are involved in a diffrent sort of dynamic.

Our history includes no less ignorance and violence , how did we escape the dark ages?