Life, war, bombs, despair

Read Riverbend’s Monday post from her family’s neighborhood in Baghdad.
I lived through six years of just such horror during the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s. Including the fiendish kinds of car-bombs (set by “Christian” militias) in which one goes off, people gather to help the wounded, and then ten minutes later another goes off…
They have those in Iraq, too, these days.
I could still describe to you the arrangement of body parts I saw in the street by the time I arrived, reporter’s notebook in hand.
I can still feel the same knot I’d get in my gut if a bomb went off and I thought it was somewhere near where my kids were.
Read Faiza’s latest post in English, too. Faiza is still in Jordan, but it seems to me she has a very clear eye for what’s going on in her homeland, Iraq:

    [Excerpt from Faiza’s post:]
    Now I began to understand why some Iraqis objected to the elections, considering it illegal, with the presence of an occupying force… I used to see them as silly extremists, while I supported the theory of “try, work, and push towards achieving your national goals”, and by your intelligence, you could achieve the demands of your people, bringing honest, nationalist men to rule, men who want to achieve much for the welfare of Iraqis, and push the occupation outside Iraq…
    But I discovered that these were na

25 thoughts on “Life, war, bombs, despair”

  1. A couple of weeks ago the per country terrorism statics were published for the year, and sadly Iraq overtook Israel to claim #1 in absolute number of attacks/year. Israel remains in #2 way ahead of the rest of the pack.
    The victims are seemingly very different, but the methods and the perpetrators in these two cases are materially similar. Helena’s newfound sympathies for #1 are another distinction between #1 and #2.
    David

  2. Thanks for introducing me to Faiza, Helena. Like some medicine she can be a little painful to take, but good for us.

  3. Yes, Faiza’s great, for the reason you give and also because of her strong commitment to humanitarian principles and her willingness to share her mental/moral struggling with the rest of us.
    David, I’m not sure what your point is? This post is mainly about Iraq. You say nothing about that, but as you nearly always seem to do you want to turn this into a totally Israelo-centric discussion. I have written plenty of places about my experiences sitting in cafes in Israel, traveling on trains, sharing the fears of Israelis about being bombed. But I didn’t here. Why do you want everything to revolve around your own particular concern with the situation of a single tiny (but also, let’s face it, militarily dominant and nuclear-armed) country in the region?
    Do you extend to the people of Iraq, whose current tragic plight is the direct result of the actions of my government and also I’m guessing yours, some of your concern? So what do you think about their situation?

  4. Helena,
    My point is that I am torn between my human compassion for the suffering and chaos taking place in Iraq and the relief of seeing that the mindless violence has blown back from its Arab source onto Arab victims. Personally I have never read you posting anything compassionate on the American or Israeli victims, and just like me, in your case everything revolves around the formative years you spent in Lebanon.
    The situation in Iraq is the result of actions of your two governments (US and UK), not of Israel. What I think is that it is the byproduct of 9/11, and another clear instance of blowback. I further think that your democracy denied counter should have started when England invaded Iraq, not now. Your counter can find a radical new application, namely to measure the time it takes to establish the first Arab democracy, and indeed in spite of the effort in blood and dollars applied, there isn’t much to show. Seven seats awaiting the Sunnis just to say yes, but somehow killing your compatriots comes more naturally to Iraq than democracy.
    That is my opinion, and I hope that although different than your, you’ll welcome it.
    David

  5. The folks at War Times/Tiempo de Guerras used to publish a free bilingual tabloid newspaper about US wars. Now they have two new flyers designed to answer questions among people in the US who don’t read blogs or think about faraway wars all the time. The one called “Iraq: Stay the Course or Get Out Now?” speaks directly to what you are arguing here.

  6. “I am torn between my human compassion for the suffering and chaos taking place in Iraq and the relief of seeing that the mindless violence has blown back from its Arab source onto Arab victims.i>”
    Does your human compassion extend to the suffering and chaos caused to Arabs by mindless American and Israeli violence?

  7. Shirin,
    The daily explosions killing tens of people a day in Iraq are acts of the Sunni insurgents along with the foreign Arab jiahdis, or do I have my facts wrong?
    The targetting of their own innocent people is incomprehensible to an outsider. In order to save them from the humiliation of occupation they kill them. Not very Salomonic, do they read a different Old Testament?
    I regret the suffering at the emotional level. At the rational level I conclude that the US and the open minded critics at large may realize the
    impossibility to defend against such methods within conventional law enforcement parameters. Maybe fences are justified then, unless until tranquility returns.
    I rebel against the reflexive condemnation agenda exhibited in this area by Helena, and try as I may, I can never get her to consider it. Any topic is a good a propos, take the discussion about founding myths in New Zealand; she had to lump in the zionist foundational myth. What the heck, Zionism came out of her Europe’s holocaust, is she saying that was myth? Centuries of persecution are a freaking myth in her mind? How biased can you be? Israeli peace camp writer Amos Oz indicates that more Jews were killed in his parents town in Ukraine in one day than in the entire Arab-Israeli conflict until this day. Is that a freaking myth? But she would not mention that Arafat’s Palestine was in search of a foundational myth. Camp David wouldn’t do, a birth in fire and blood is more memorable than a peaceful transaction.
    As I said, I am saddened by the violence, I hope that this blowback would have a positive effect overall to remind the perpetrators that the explosive cars, belts, and socks they are conceiving today may haunt them or their allies tomorrow.
    David

  8. David, I asked you a very simple, straighforward yes or no question, and you have failed completely to address it in any way. Please answer the question, David.
    Does your human compassion extend to the suffering and chaos caused to Arabs by mindless American and Israeli violence, or is it reserved only for the suffering and chaos caused by Arab violence?

  9. David
    “The daily explosions killing tens of people a day in Iraq are acts of the Sunni insurgents along with the foreign Arab jiahdis, or do I have my facts wrong?”
    Simply you are wrong, there are more that 23 intelligent agents working in Iraq? What the doing there yah very nice job David! Isn

  10. The daily explosions killing tens of people a day in Iraq are acts of the Sunni insurgents along with the foreign Arab jiahdis, or do I have my facts wrong? -David
    I think it would be safe to say that some of it is Sunni insurgents and some of it is from other sources. I read a piece recently on Sammara, about brother turning against brother because of their positions on working with the US occupation forces. (Much like our own US civil war.) Some of it may very well come from American instigation- Allawi, for example, worked with the CIA in the 1990’s to try to get Saddam out of power. That included bombs going off in Baghdad.
    And, we all know about the “contra wars” and even how the US/CIA helped our buddy, Osama bin Laden, back in the 1990’s in Afghanistan.
    In short, the US forces/intelligence feel it is okay to do anything at all if they think it is called for to protect US “interests”. And even in the face of the blowback of 9/11, they still think that.

  11. Israeli peace camp writer Amos Oz indicates that more Jews were killed in his parents town in Ukraine in one day than in the entire Arab-Israeli conflict until this day. -David
    The Palestians had nothing to do with the killings in the Ukraine. I think you are spouting nonsense.
    I suffered from moderate to severe child abuse when I was young. Does that mean if I only “mildly” abuse a child, it is okay?
    “But she would not mention that Arafat’s Palestine was in search of a foundational myth. Camp David wouldn’t do, a birth in fire and blood is more memorable than a peaceful transaction.”-David
    and maybe they didn’t accept it because it was not a good deal for them, and they felt they could not preserve their statehood with that little land.
    Just think – there may be another side to the story.

  12. Susan,
    Please read twice before attacking me. My statement was to debunk Helena’s thesis of a Zionist foundational myth. The holocaust was no myth.
    I have read a lot about Camp David and am aware that a large fraction of the Palestinians want more than offered there, in fact they want everything, and have been using fire and blood since their 1947 partition rejection. That wasn’t a good deal either, right Susan?
    What would be your strategy in the face of an opponent that wants more than you can offer and believes that time and attrition play in their favor? If you want peace soon you may have to find a way of convincing them that time does not play in their favor, and probably the only way Israel can do that is by settling the land. Settlements are the rational response of any player that knows anything about game theory.
    David

  13. Shirin,
    Save your yes or no questions for trials.
    My compassion extends to all. From the world I see around me, my concern is particularly focused on the Arab and radical Islam as the most untractable source.
    Hope I clarified it for you.
    David

  14. Salah,
    What are you talking about? Are you saying that the Iraqi bombs are the act of 23 foreign intelligence agencies? For example, the Italian agent killed on the way to the airport, was he there to kill Iraqis?
    Are you saying that the US is encouranging the carnage?
    David

  15. David, you write:
    I am torn between my human compassion for the suffering and chaos taking place in Iraq and the relief of seeing that the mindless violence has blown back from its Arab source onto Arab victims.
    I find this argument quite obscene. Are you really saying that if ethnic Arabs are victims of terrorist acts then somehow the fact that that terrorism can be described (by you) as “blowback” from earlier acts undertaken by other people who also happen to be ethnically Arab then that would lessen your compassion for the victims in some way, or even possibly cause you to feel “relief”??
    By this same token, one might argue that Palestinian terrorist acts against Israel are “blowback” to Israelis for 57 years of the dispossession, ethnic cleansing, and killings of Palestinians at the hand of the Israelis; so one’s compassion for the victims of these terror acts, too, might thereby be lessened (or one might even feel “relief” at learning of these acts)…
    David! Both arguments are of the same order: deeply flawed (by virtue of being based on some quite fuzzy and indiscriminate notion of “collective punishment”), and extremely anti-humane.
    And then, when you complained on this thread about the reference I made earlier to the “liberationist component of Zionism” as being a strong part of the “founding myth” of the state/nation of Israel, you took it out of context to suggest I was denying the Holocaust…
    First of all, I didn’t even mention the Holocaust there. Second, if something is a “myth” in social or political science, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t true (or, indeed, that it was true.) The founding myth for a nation is simply the story its ideological leaders tell about how and why it was founded. If you actually READ my comment there, David, you will see that all the other examples of “liberationist” founding myths I gave in that same paragraph were also references to historical events that had actually happened. So I truly fail to see why you’re acting so defensive about that issue?
    Unless, as it seems, you just want to take any opportunity at all to criticise me.

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