BAGHDAD: The police said Wednesday that children had been used in a weekend car bombing in which the driver gained permission to park in a busy shopping area after he pointed out that he was leaving his children in the back seat.
The account appeared to confirm one given Tuesday by a U.S. general. He said children had been used in a bombing Sunday in northern Baghdad and labeled it a brutal new tactic by insurgents to battle a five-week security crackdown in the capital.
To my Iraqi readers (if there should be any):This is not America's problem. This is your problem. Whether you personally condemn strapping children to bombs and exploding them in a market or not, apparently some of your fellow Shias think it is a good idea. If you are a Sunni, you know perfectly well that another Sunni somewhere in Baghdad is dreaming about sacrificing his own children in an explosion of revenge.
America didn't bring you to this level, nor did Israel, Thailand, The Philippines, India, The Netherlands, the suburbs of Paris, a magazine in Denmark, or the South of Nigeria, or Croatia, or Ethiopia, or Darfur. Not even other Muslims who don't believe the same way you do could bring you to this level. None of these places, and none of the people who inhabit them are so evil that they could beget the evil being practiced within your ranks of followers.
This evil stems from your people's own indiginous animosity and your people's own set of religious values and cultural beliefs. I'm sure you disagree with me as much as you disagree with the bombers themselves, but you cannot deny that the actions of these barbarians stem from feelings of hatred instilled in them... more by the encouragement and sentiment of their own people than by the actions and injustices committed by others.
The world is full of inequities. How a population handles those inequities is not a measure of the inequities themselves but is instead a window onto the mindset of the population dealing with them. Sacrificing children as a means to lash out against those inequities is the sign of a population whose problems lie primarily internally... not externally. This bombing is the sign of a cultural cancer that only Muslims — not American soldiers — can cure.
America will be leaving Iraq soon, and frankly the American people have pretty much decided to let you commit genocide there against other Muslims. We understand: It is our fault. We took away Saddam Hussein, the death squads, the brutal repression, and chemical Ali, which were the only things keeping you from each others' throats, and for that we are sorry. Some of us thought you were capable of handling freedom. (Some of us, including myself, knew from the very beginning that you weren't capable of handling freedom, and while you'll have to excuse my pessimism, as you can see it wasn't misplaced.) Personally, I'm sure that another brutal dictator will come along eventually and scare you all into submission. Either that, or all of the Sunnis... or all of the Shia... in Iraq will be refugees or dead.
As you can guess... America and I are pretty much to the point of not caring anymore. We've seen what things you value and what things you will throw away in an attempt to harm others, and we've decided that those are not values worth defending with our soldiers' lives.
Good luck to you, and may God bless you and protect your children.
3 comments:
Jil
Whilst I don't agree 100% with your overall sentiment (maybe 95%) this is a well thought out observation and one well worth giving consideration to. My 5% reticence is borne by a conviction (perhaps misguided) that Americans are starting to get a chip on their shoulders (again) due to the criticism levels being levied by an outside world doing b****r all about it themselves.
That "chip" is, quite naturally, leading to a refusal to accept even a modicum of the blame for this terrible situation.
PS - did you add the auto spellchecker for my benefit LOL - its great and hopefully will dramatically improve my typing (my spelling is actually OK believe it or not).
Well, there is what "America" thinks, and what "Jil" thinks. As you can see in the third-to-last paragraph ("America will be leaving Iraq soon"), I specifically blame America for the mess in Iraq. I blame Iraqis more for not being able to take advantage of the situation... but at the same time, anybody who knows anything about Shias and Sunnis know that they relish any opportunity to kill each other. America chose to think that "spreading Democracy" and freedom would somehow overcome Mulsims hatred for one another. In other words, I blame America for believing that Muslims wouldn't eventually wind up being violent killers who would toss their own children into an explosion if it would somehow make the explosion more effective.
(I didn't know the comments had an auto spellchecker. That's cool.)
As much as a black eye Iraq has become; will the USA learn and not repeat the same mistake (korea, vietnam, iraq) again?
The Iraqi 'conflict' had the same stench of the vietnam 'conflict' from day one.
Funny the press didn't pick up on it and no political figures did either...
Yet an average 'Franky' could see it a mile away, late.
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