After a disturbingly long absence from the blogosphere, here she is again. Still with the wisdom of someone of far beyond her years.
Including this:
- 2006 has been, decidedly, the worst year yet. No- really. The magnitude of this war and occupation is only now hitting the country full force. It’s like having a big piece of hard, dry earth you are determined to break apart. You drive in the first stake in the form of an infrastructure damaged with missiles and the newest in arms technology, the first cracks begin to form. Several smaller stakes come in the form of politicians like Chalabi, Al Hakim, Talbani, Pachachi, Allawi and Maliki. The cracks slowly begin to multiply and stretch across the once solid piece of earth, reaching out towards its edges like so many skeletal hands. And you apply pressure. You surround it from all sides and push and pull. Slowly, but surely, it begins coming apart- a chip here, a chunk there.
That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The ‘mistakes’ were too catastrophic….
And this:
- I can’t help but ask myself why this was all done? What was the point of breaking Iraq so that it was beyond repair? Iran seems to be the only gainer. Their presence in Iraq is so well-established, publicly criticizing a cleric or ayatollah verges on suicide. Has the situation gone so beyond America that it is now irretrievable? Or was this a part of the plan all along? My head aches just posing the questions.
What has me most puzzled right now is: why add fuel to the fire? Sunnis and moderate Shia are being chased out of the larger cities in the south and the capital. Baghdad is being torn apart with Shia leaving Sunni areas and Sunnis leaving Shia areas- some under threat and some in fear of attacks. People are being openly shot at check points or in drive by killings… Many colleges have stopped classes. Thousands of Iraqis no longer send their children to school- it’s just not safe.
Why make things worse by insisting on Saddam’s execution now? Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else? There is a real fear that this execution will be the final blow that will shatter Iraq. Some Sunni and Shia tribes have threatened to arm their members against the Americans if Saddam is executed. Iraqis in general are watching closely to see what happens next, and quietly preparing for the worst.
This is because now, Saddam no longer represents himself or his regime. Through the constant insistence of American war propaganda, Saddam is now representative of all Sunni Arabs (never mind most of his government were Shia). The Americans, through their speeches and news articles and Iraqi Puppets, have made it very clear that they consider him to personify Sunni Arab resistance to the occupation. Basically, with this execution, what the Americans are saying is “Look- Sunni Arabs- this is your man, we all know this. We’re hanging him- he symbolizes you.” And make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood (though low-budget, if you ask me).
And this:
- My only conclusion is that the Americans want to withdraw from Iraq, but would like to leave behind a full-fledged civil war because it wouldn’t look good if they withdraw and things actually begin to improve, would it?
Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We’ve all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.
Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn’t believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That’s the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.
Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he’s wanted to marry for the last six years? I don’t think so.
Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn’t make them more significant, does it?
No, dear Riverbend, it doesn’t. And though I feel great empathy for the families of all US service members who have been killed in this grotesque and terrible war, it still remains the case that all those soldiers and Marines volunteered to put their lives on the line, when they joined the military services.
From that perspective, the death of each civilian is of a morally graver order than the death of a vounteer soldier.
From that perspective, the death of each civilian is of a morally graver order than the death of a soldier.
Well put Helena, God save all…Amin
ايران تقدم قرض بمقدار مليار دولار الى العراق
-طهران (اصوات) اعلن وزير المالية باقرالزبيدي ان ايران قدمت قرضا بمقدار مليار دولار لتنفيذ عدد من المشاريع في مجال بناء المستشفيات والمدارس والطرق والسكك الحديدية ومد انابيب النفط ونقل الطاقة الكهربائية الى داخل الاراضي العراقية
http://www.aswathura.com/aswat1/main.asp
Translation:
Iran Give One Billon Dollar Loan to Iraq….
المالكي يؤكد ان احترامنا لحقوق الانسان يوجب انزال عقوبة الاعدام بصدام واعوانه
http://www.aswathura.com/aswat1/details.asp?id=8492
Translation:
Maliki Said, Our respect for human rights give us and orders us to executed Saddam with death penalty and his regime members…
Oh yah well done and well respecting human rights there in Iraq, He thinks so, ok prepare yourself after him Maliki Iraq history has a lot to learn how many president and PM killed in its past…
Helena,
I was a Riverbend reader from her earliest days in the summer of 2003. I find her prose fluid, and her sentiments real. In the realm of descriptions of human suffering and the chronicling of the unbelievably terrible state of events, she is great. But when it comes to the big-picture geo-political take on things, I have to say she is not any better than you would expect from her exposure, her social perspective and her years. She has strong biases, and has her very obvious hatreds and blind spots that make her political conclusions quite wobbly and uninformed (I stress the word political; I find her humane conclusions convincing, such as the one you have highlighted, regarding the moral gravity of each one civilian life shattered).
Take this line for instance: “Who gains if they hang Saddam? Iran, naturally, but who else?” IMHO, the only people who want Saddam dead now, and I am stressing the word “now”, are the ones that are afraid that the fat lady may sing. If he starts to talk the talk, oh boy then they will really have to shut him up pronto. If he starts to tell some sweet bed time stories about the people in the Reagan and Bush Sr. governments who were his daily contact points, his regular consultations with the US charge d’affaires in Baghdad from 1980-91, the folks in the German-French-British [Kohl-Mitterand-Thatcher] troika who sent him his arsenal (of chemical weapons, Exocet missiles, Anglo-French fighter jets, …), and perhaps more interesting than all the above, who supplied him with those innocent satellite pictures of Kurdish areas, Iranian marsh Arabs in the south (remember the massacres at Talayeh, Shlamjah, Majnoon, …) and Iranian troop formations, all of which he subsequently bombed with chemical gas. Remember those AWACS printouts that were recovered from many of the Iraqi bunkers that were over-run by Khomeini’s Basijis in the Fao and Khoramshahr operations? I wonder if he will tell us how often those envelopes would be sent from his friends in the US embassy, and if the perfumed envelopes had kiss marks and twinkle dust on them !! You see my point. I am not a lawyer, but apparently there is some international law that states you cannot execute someone while there are still so many indictments pending against him. It was reported in October that Iran has taken a petition to the ICC in Rome and also the CIJ in The Hague to prevent his execution until their long list of indictments are heard. The bottom line is, the only people who want him dead ASAP are his former friends in the GCC and the West who are afraid he may start to wake up from the daze he seems to be in and talk up the real stuff, not the nonsense he has been saying so far.
This was just one example. Her blogs are peppered with these subtle insinuations that stem from her takes and biases, which are quite often simply not true. I tried to find it to post the link but unfortunately I couldn’t; she once had said that the majority of Iraqi Shi’ites hate “the Iranian” (i.e. Siatani). Now that’s quite novel! And she doesn’t seem to grasp a basic point that Sistani is as far as can be from the “Velayateh Faqeeh” crowd in Qom and Tehran and is considered an archenemy by Khamanei and his gang of mullahs. I can go on, but I think you see my point. She is a great storyteller, and her humane touch is astute. But as an analyst of events, I look elsewhere.
“Here are a few questions that are not heard today, but should be crucial in discussing Iraq:“
“* Why don’t we hear praise from Arab countries for Iraq having lost so many soldiers in the Iran-Iraq War, all for the defense of these countries who were scared about Iran exporting its religious fundamentalism to their shores?”
I wonder if anyone really believes this.
عين الأمن الكويتي … لم تنم
كتب عبدالعزيز اليحيوح: أكد مصدر أمني رفيع المستوى لـ «الراي» ان السلطات الأمنية الكويية اتخذت جميع الاحتياطات، في مواجهة تهديد فلول حزب البعث العراقي بضرب المصالح الأميركية في الخليج، اذا تم تنفيذ حكم الإعدام في الرئيس المخلوع.
وأضاف المصدر الأمني ان جهاز أمن الدولة عزز بالعناصر البشرية الأماكن المهمة، مثل المنشآت النفطية وبعض السفارات، لافتاً إلى ان هذه الإجراءات يتم اتخاذها ضمن خطة أمنية توضع للضرورة لبث الأمن والأمان في قلوب المواطنين والمقيمين.
وأشار المصدر إلى ان الاجراءات شملت ايضاً تكثيف الحراسة على الأماكن التابعة لمعسكرات الجيش الأميركي، كما تم رفع درجة الحجز في بعض القطاعات، وتعزيز الدوريات على الطرق الرئيسية، وفي الأسواق وأماكن التجمعات العامة.
وقال المصدر الأمني إن ادارة أمن الحدود رفعت درجة جاهزيتها لمواجهة أي عمل عدواني يأتي من الحدود العراقية، كما عززت ادارة خفر السواحل دورياتها داخل المياه الاقليمية الكويتية لحمايتها من أي تسلل او تهديد بضرب المصالح الأميركية داخل الخليج.
More Good news:
B’Tselem: Israeli Killings of Palestinians Triple in 2006
In Israel and the Occupied Territories, new figures released by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem show Israeli forces killed six-hundred and sixty Palestinians this year. B’Tselem says that’s three times more than in 2005. The figure includes one hundred and forty-one children. Nearly half of the total dead were not involved in hostile acts.
B’Tselem publishes its 2006 annual statistics. This past year, we witnessed a deterioration in the human rights situation in the Occupied Territories , particularly in the increase in civilians killed and the destruction of houses and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, there was an improvement regarding violations of the right to life of Israeli civilians.
Casualties (figures in parenthesis indicate the total figure since the beginning of the intifada)
According to B’Tselem’s research, from January to December 27, 2006, Israeli security forces killed 660 (4005) Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel . This includes 141 (811) minors. At least 322 (1920) of those killed did not take part in the hostilities at the time they were killed. Another 22 (210) were targets of assassinations. In the Gaza Strip alone, since the capture of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Israeli forces killed 405 Palestinians, including 88 minors. Of these, 205 did not participate in the fighting when killed.
Palestinians killed 17 (701) Israeli civilians in 2006, both in the West Bank and inside Israel . This includes 1 (119) minor. In addition, Palestinians killed 6 (316) members of the Israeli security forces.
House Demolitions
Israel demolished 292 houses military operations in the Occupied Territories , 279 of them in the Gaza Strip. These were home to 1,769 people. Some 80 of these demolitions were conducted after the home-owners received advance warning to the demolition. In addition, Israel demolished 42 homes in East Jerusalem that were built without a permit. These were home to about 80 people.
Checkpoints and restrictions on movement
Deep within the West Bank, Israel currently maintains 54 permanent checkpoints, staffed most of the time. 12 other checkpoints are within the city of Hebron . In addition, according to UN OCHA, there are on average some 160 flying checkpoints throughout the West Bank every week. In addition to the checkpoints, the Israeli military has erected hundreds of physical obstacles such as concrete blocks, dirt piles and trenches to restrict access to Palestinian communities. Palestinians have restricted access to some 41 roadways in the West Bank . Israelis have unlimited access to these roadways.
Prisoners and Detainees
As of November, Israel held 9,075 Palestinians in custody, including 345 minors. Of these, 738 (22 minors) were held in administrative detention, without trial and without knowing the charges against them.
http://www.btselem.org/english/Press_Releases/20061228.asp
BTW, US/Iraqi released the two Iranians those caught last week or so this bit of new released during the Saddam big story yesterday.
خامنئي «يخون» الذين يتحدثون عن «هلال شيعي»
لندن: «الشرق الاوسط»
ندد المرشد الاعلى للجمهورية الايرانية علي خامنئي امس بمن قال انهم «مرتزقة» للاميركيين ممن يتحدثون عن تهديد يمثله ما يسمى «الهلال الشيعي» في هجوم مبطن على بعض الدول العربية. وانتقد اية الله خامنئي خصوصا «الذين يصفون افتراء بعض مجموعات المسلمين بالكفر ويتحدثون عن هلال شيعي يشكل مصدر خطر لنيل رضاء الولايات المتحدة والصهاينة، ويقتلون الناس لزعزعة الحكومة العراقية» وذلك في رسالة سنوية بمناسبة موسم الحج نشرتها وسائل الاعلام الايرانية. كما انتقد المرشد الاعلى «الغرب، الذي تقوده الولايات المتحدة بتصرفاتها الترهيبية والمتعجرفة، والذي اصبح في وضع مخز في نظر العالم الاسلامي». وقال «ان سلوكهم تجاه الشعب الفلسطيني والنظام الصهيوني المتعطش للدماء ووقوفهم وراء النظام الصهيوني الذي يعلن امتلاكه السلاح النووي وضد البرنامج الايراني النووي السلمي ودعمهم للذين يسيئون الى الاسلام، بمن فيهم البابا، في حين يرون جريمة في المؤتمر البحثي العلمي حول المحرقة، سلوكا لا منطقي وانتقامي».
http://www.asharqalawsat.com/details.asp?section=3&article=399289&issue=10259
Desolate Dubya
hawks postcards of the hanging
to a cheerless world.
(with apologies to Bob Dylan)
Well, David, she got one thing right – Sistani IS an Iranian. (He is also rather a fundamentalist.) :o)
Shirin,
You may have misunderstood me. She uses the word “the Iranian” in referring to him to imply that he is an agent of the Iranian religious government. That he is not; he is completely at odds with the Iranian religious and government hierarchy, and the Iranian papers openly slander him.
About his being a fundamentalist, well that is beyond me; not being a religious person myself, it’s a tough call to make. But as far as I know, he is one of the Shi’i marja’iah who believes in the separation of religion and state, the ones that are labeled “Sameteh Hawza” by those who advocate active participation of clergy in politics, those who call themselves “Natiqah Hawza”, such as the Sadriyyun. I think with that metric, in my eyes at least, that would make him less fudamentalist. But again, in matters of religion, I forfeit my right to an opinion!
Yes, David, you are right that Sistani is not an ally of the Iranian regime, and that his stand is that religious officials (for want of a better term, and because I dislike the term cleric) should not be part of the political system.
In referring to him as a fundamentalist, I was referring to some of his religious positions, which strike me as rather extreme and – well, downright silly. I don’t know of anyone who takes those things seriously, including those who have chosen him as their marja’ia. I DO come from a very individualistic tradition when it comes to religion, and am not a Shi`a, pluse I have not discussed Sistani’s degree of fundamentalism or non-fundamentalism with any of the very religious “moderate” Shi`a friends whose knowledge I respect, so perhaps I am not in a good position to judge. I do know a few Shi`as, some of whom are actually staunchly secular, who find him ridiculous. (As’ad Abu Khalil of angryarab.blogspot.com is one, but he is so strongly secular that even I disagree with him at times, so maybe he is not a good source.)
Alas, my best source of information on all matters Shi`i was a dear friend who is a very devout Shi`a and an Islamic scholar, but he has moved away from the area and we are only occasionally in touch now. (He actually fought in the 1991 rebellion, and is an invaluable source of information about “what really happened” during that time as well.)
all those soldiers and Marines volunteered to put their lives on the line when they joined the military services.
That is one very important point that is all too often ignored by many, if not most. Yes, I do feel for them, but people do not remember that others are hurting as well.
My sympathies have always been with the civilians who are innocent of violence.
It seems to me that when you pick up a weapon and go and hunt down your fellow human beings you can expect for them to shoot back. Maybe that adds to the excitement, I don’t know, but I sure can’t get excited about the reasonable outcomes of a freely made choice.
I used to do whitewater kayaking, and people often die doing that. I had several friends who died, and it was sad, but never struck me as something to get upset or excited about – or to go and campaign for “safer” whitewater kayaking. It’s dangerous, and sometimes deadly. And if someone cannot accept that, then they should not go whitewater kayaking.
There is a ‘poverty draft’ in this country. Many join the US military for ‘the college money’, gambling they will be alive and intact to take advantage of the GI Bill. Many others sign up because of the diminishing vocational opportunities in this country. Our industrial base is now overseas. There’s quite a difference between a good job in a Ford factory and flipping burgers at McDonalds. Americans fortunate enough to have other options could maybe think about these things before passing judgement. Also, many of the soldiers in Iraq are National Guard. Heaven help us if their services are required here. Come to think of it … their services were required here, in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately the Louisiana National Guard was overseas then. Well, heaven help us all, American and Iraqi. New Year’s Greetings to all.