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I don't give a damn either. And they are already killing each other, have been for centuries. What kind of arrogance do we have that we think we can change their preferred social structure?? Let's get Bush and Cheney over there, keep them there til THEY figure it out! But get our kids back home to safety, until there is a REAL war to fight. I am ready for isolationism to return, roll up the streets, pull down the shades, get M16s and volunteers on the borders and point the missiles in the right direction.
It's funny how certain people here are quick to point out the building of hospitals/providing medical care to Iraqis as a good thing, then freak out at the idea of the government doing the same with health care in the US. Really, where do you stand on that issue? Are you for socialized medicine, or not? If not, shouldn't all that free health care being provided to Iraqis make you angry? Why don't those Iraqis buy health insurance instead, right?
I don't give a damn either. And they are already killing each other, have been for centuries.
What kind of arrogance do we have that we think we can change their preferred social structure??
Americans with their elitist arrogance at how superior you are to Arabs is mind boggling to me.
It takes one radical Wahabi Muslim to load up a car full of explosives and kill HUNDREDS of Iraqis.
This does not mean Iraq is in a full genocidal sectarian civil war.
They are not.
The majority of Iraqis are for peace, secularism, and a free democracy.
You don't know what the hell you are talking about.
I have established relationships with Iraqis who are Shia
and Sunni.
Iraq has the highest percantage of Sunni/Shia mixed marriages in the Middle East! They have for CENTURIES!!!!!
Also, Iraqis are used to living in a secular society, since Saddam
was a Secular Sunni.
Drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes are forbidden by Islam, but many Iraqis
LOVE to smoke and drink.
Peace loving Secularism is the majority in Iraq.
Sectarianism is a small minority trying to create chaos and they are failing.
Not to American Liberals who only care for Iraq's "failure" with their intellectually dishonesty. And scream wildly and incoherently when a car bomb full of explosives go off in Iraq.
Quote:
Iraqi marriages defy civil war spectre
Arab World
By Ahmed Janabi
Some Iraqis believe that a low-intensity civil war is already on.
Many Iraqis dismiss the possibility of civil war in their country saying the Iraqi tribal, ethnic, religious and sectarian mosaic
is interconnected through blood and marriage.
Despite widespread speculation at home and abroad that Iraq is on the verge of civil war, couples
from different backgrounds have been defying the theory by marriage.
Young men and women – as was the case before the US-led invasion
three years ago - from different ethnic, religious and sectarian backgrounds
still flock to the civil courts every morning for marriage contracts.
Sahira Abd al-Karim, a civil lawyer in Baghdad, confirmed to Aljazeera.net that Iraqis
from different backgrounds are still marrying each other.
"Sectarianism is something shameful among Iraqis, especially the middle class," she said.
"As a lawyer in the civil courts in Baghdad I have seen
Sunni marrying Shia, Arab marrying a Kurd.
"I myself am a Sunni Arab but my brother has been married
to his Shia Arab wife for more than 40 years, and their eldest son married a Turkmen girl.
I really cannot see how these people [Iraqis factions] would fight each other."
A civil judge in Baghdad who preferred not to reveal his identity told Aljazeera.net that
the rate of mixed background marriages has declined slightly, as has marriage in general.
Slight decline
"Definitely the number of mixed marriages has declined recently, but we have to take into
consideration that marriage cases in general have fallen due to deteriorated security
situation and immigration.
People are leaving Iraq looking for safety," he said.
The judge agreed with Sahira that urban Iraqis regard sectarianism as shameful.
"Families of young couples usually get embarrassed when I ask them do they
want the marriage to be finalised according to Sunni or Shia Islamic Sharia?
They do not want to be labelled as sectarians, and you see each
family encourages the other to tell the judge to finalise the marriage according to its sect."
"Sectarianism is something shameful among Iraqis, especially the middle class".
Sahira Ahmad, Iraqi lawyer
Marwan Muhammad, 26, and Zainab Hussein, 25,
were declared husband and wife by the civil judge in al-Karkh Civil Court in Baghdad this month.
Marwan, a Sunni Arab, and Zainab, a Shia Arab, fell in love shortly after
they started their university studies four years ago.
Security fears
"Due to the current situation in Iraq, I and Zainab agreed to live in a room at my parents' house.
My family promised Zainab's family to treat her like a dear daughter," Marwan said.
Despite their happiness, the couple were disappointed not to have been able to had celebrate
their wedding properly because of the security situation.
"Curfew starts at eight in the evening, and that would not allow us to hold a proper wedding party," Marwan said.
Iraqi wedding parties usually kick off early in the evening, with a band singing until dinner time.
Singing and dancing continues after dinner until late at
night and sometimes until dawn, but due to ongoing partial curfew people tend
to end their weddings early evening.
Ban Haddad, 35, a neighbour, said: "We missed the scene of dozens of nicely decorated cars touring
the streets of Baghdad after midnight to celebrate a newly married couple."
Haddad, a Shia Arab, graduated from Baghdad University in 1991 and in 1995 she married a Sunni Arab man.
"Believe it or not the Sunni and Shia thing is mentioned in our house for sake of humour, you know like
I joke with my husband and tell him that Sunni are not good husbands or they are stingy …
Things like that just to laugh, I do not know how they introduced sectarianism to all aspects of life,
the situation is awful now," she said.
Tribal factors
Some Iraqis say the tribal factor is crucial in pushing away the danger of civil war.
All Arab countries are tribal societies which value the blood bond more than sect.
Tribal leaders dismiss the possibility of civil war between ordinary Iraqis, saying they all belong
to tribes that contain Sunni and Shia clans.
Shaikh Muhammad Ahmed al-Mislit, a senior tribal leader, ruled out the possibility
of Iraqi clans fighting each other because of different sectarian belief.
Al-Mislit belongs to the Arab tribe of al-Jobur which numbers about three million Iraqis and contains Sunni and Shia clans.
The security situation has affected the rate of marriages
"Every member in my tribe sees other members as cousins; I cannot see myself or any one of my
tribe fighting his own people and family for political or sectarian beliefs," al-Mislit said.
"My evidence for that is both Shia and Sunni Jubor tribesmen go to the same tribal authority
to judge between them, they do not go to Sunni or Shia clerics."
Low-level civil war?
But some prominent Iraqis believe that the country has already slipped into a low-intensity civil war.
Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, recently told the BBC:
"We are losing each day an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more.
If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is."
Jalal Talabani , Iraq's Kurdish president also said after the Samarra bombing last month
that civil war was a threat, but he has since played this down.
"The Iraqi people cannot accept a civil war,"he said on Sunday.
"We are passing through a difficult period right now, but the attachment of Iraqis to
their country will prevent such a war."
MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - Iraqi marriages defy civil war spectre (http://mwcnews.net/content/view/5582/231/ - broken link)
Their is a small minority of Wahabi and sectarian muslims trying to cause sectarian civil war, but they are failing.
The vast majority of Iraqis are secular and did embrace freedom and democracy.
What you think you know, about Iraq, is freaking slanted without real facts.
The majority of Iraqis are increasingly "secular" and "nationalistic".
Iraqis are peace loving people.
12 million Iraqis braved the threat of death and beheading by al-Qaeda to VOTE for FIRST TIME IN THEIR LIVES!!!!.
Iraqis have embraced Democracy and Freedom. Their hope for a better future is secular Democracy not religious sectarianism and the facts speak for themselves.
Quote:
Aug. 2, 2007
Iraqi attitudes continue to shift toward secular values
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The political values of Iraqis are increasingly secular and nationalistic, according to a series of surveys of nationally representative samples of the population from December 2004-March 2007.
Findings from a July 2007 survey are expected to be released before the end of the summer.
So far, the surveys show a decline in popular support for religious government in Iraq and an increase in support for secular political rule,
said sociologist Mansoor Moaddel, who is affiliated with Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR).
"Iraqis have a strong sense of national identity that transcends religious and political lines," Moaddel said. "The recent out-pouring of national pride at the Asian Cup victory of the Iraqi soccer team showed that this sense of national pride remains strong, despite all the sectarian strife and violence."
In the March 2007 survey, 54 percent of Iraqis surveyed described themselves as "Iraqis, above all," (as opposed to "Muslims, above all" or "Arabs, above all") compared with just 28 percent who described themselves that way in April 2006.
Three-quarters of Iraqis living in Baghdad said they thought of themselves in terms of their national identity, as Iraqis above all.
"This is a much higher proportion than we found in other Middle Eastern capitals," said Moaddel, adding that such high levels of national identity may counteract tendencies to split the nation based on sectarian differences.
Did you ever read Senator Jim Webb's analysis of Vietnam?
Quote:
"The Aftermath of Saigon's Fall Is Rarely Dealt With At All."
An analysis of Vietnam strikingly similar to what we're hearing today, beginning with a discussion of Congress' 1975 decision to cut funding to the South Vietnamese:
Most retrospectives spend little time on what happened after the 1968 Tet offensive, with the implication that the war was lost by then. In reality, the Tet offensive was a massive military and political defeat for the communists, who had wrongly expected the South Vietnamese people to rise up and support the offensive. In addition, President Nixon's "Vietnamization" program that began in late 1969 enjoyed great success. Military critics of the war such as Col. David Hackworth, who had four years on the ground in Vietnam, still maintain that if South Vietnam had survived a few more years, the young leaders who had come of age on the battlefield under American tutelage would have been unbeatable.
While it is correct to say that the American people wearied of an ineffective national strategy as the war dragged on, they never ceased in their support for South Vietnam's war effort. As late as September 1972, a Harris survey indicated overwhelming support for continued bombing of North Vietnam (55% to 32%) and for mining North Vietnamese harbors (64% to 22%). By a margin of 74% to 11%, those polled agreed that "it is important that South Vietnam not fall into the control of the communists."
This Congress was elected in November 1974, only months after Nixon's resignation, and it was dominated by a fresh group of antiwar Democrats. One of the first actions of the new Congress was to vote down a supplemental appropriation for the beleaguered South Vietnamese that would have provided $800 million in military aid, including much-needed ammunition, spare parts and medical supplies.
This vote was a horrendous blow, in both emotional and practical terms, to the country that had trusted American judgment for more than a decade of intense conflict. It was also a clear indication that Washington was abandoning the South Vietnamese even as the North Vietnamese continued to enjoy the support of the Soviet Union, China and other Eastern bloc nations. The vote's impact was hardly lost on North Vietnamese military planners, who began the final offensive only five weeks later, as the South Vietnamese were attempting to adjust their military defenses.
Finally, the aftermath of Saigon's fall is rarely dealt with at all. A gruesome holocaust took place in Cambodia, the likes of which had not been seen since World War II. Two million Vietnamese fled their country — usually by boat — with untold thousands losing their lives in the process. This was the first such diaspora in Vietnam's long and frequently tragic history. Inside Vietnam a million of the South's best young leaders were sent to re-education camps; more than 50,000 perished while imprisoned, and others remained captives for as long as 18 years. An apartheid system was put into place that punished those who had been loyal to the United States, as well as their families, in matters of education, employment and housing. The Soviet Union made Vietnam a client state until its own demise, pumping billions of dollars into the country and keeping extensive naval and air bases at Cam Ranh Bay.
All that being said, the past decade has seen a gradual warming of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, and some might wonder whether those who persist in pointing out such inequities are simply lost in bitterness. But a correct historical context does matter, for three very important reasons:
First, if it didn't matter, then those writing the history of the war from the antiwar perspective would not be ignoring such issues or relegating them to footnotes.
Second, history owes something to those who went to Vietnam, and to the judgment of those who believed the endeavor was worthwhile. We can still debate whether the war was worth its cost, but the evidence of the past 25 years clearly upholds the validity of our intentions.
The article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in April, 2000 and is now available on Democrat James Webb's website:
Wall Street Journal Articles (http://www.jameswebb.com/articles/wallstjrnl/vietvictors.htm - broken link)
Bush Sr And Regan Put Sadaam In Power And Sold Him Wmd. Rumsfeld Went There To Shake His Hand After He Used The Weapons Against Iran. The Pretty Picturesof Us Rebuilding What We Blew Up Is A Real Hoot! We Targeted Their Water Purification Plants, And Dropped Hundreds Of Thousands Of Cluster Bomblets On The Civilians That Continue To Blow Up Children Who Pick Them Up. Wouldn't You Love The Country That Put Them There, If Your Kid Blew Himself Up? We Have Used Tons Of Depleted Uranium Ammo That Will Create Deformed Babies For Decades To Come. Wouldn't You Love The Country That Caused Physical Deformation To Your Child? Oh, Then There's The Billions Of Dollars That Got 'lost' In Iraq. Sadaam's Hold On Power Was Actually Reinforced During The Embargo During The 90's.
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Nice Propaganda - Do You Work For Bush????
