2.3.04
A Black Day
I write this as I hear and see what has happened. What a horrific, terrible, and black day. There is a long list of people that I feel are or could be responsible for this insanity. And included in this list are not just radical Sunnis, Baath "loyalists", Saddam loyalists, Al Qaeda, and Ansaar. In short, it's not just the usual suspects or alliance of suspects. This is completely unacceptable behavior and these acts must stop. And while I can complete that list for people, does it matter? does it matter if I tell people what I really think about this?
I urge you to not just accept what the current appointed leaders tell you. These people work off of logic. They logically assume (and explain to people) that this was done by Baathists loyal to Saddam and/or Al Qaeda. People like logic. I like logic. And it could be this logical: these were attacks done by Saddam loyalists. But these are illogical times. Remind yourselves it is convenient for them to say this over and over like robots with no actual care about Iraqis and the consequences of this day and events to come. Keep your ears peeled and thought pattern piqued. Also, read widely and the clues will build up. Iraqis have every right to be suspicious of the events conspiring. Especially when you consider the following things:
(I will complete this post later. Now, I am sad for all Iraqis. Let's be smart about this, or else we risk more violence.)
Can you sign a de facto interim constitution when you are in national mourning? I say, bad start...both literally and symbolically. (i'll explain, more fully, why i ask
this later.)
Until I finish the post, here are some words from Robert Fisk. He asks several important questions. Click here for the below article.
_________________________________________________
March 2, 2004
A Convenient Carnage
All This Talk of Civil War, Now This
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.
Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.
Somehow I don't believe it. No, I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia.
I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.
And I'm afraid I also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military security.
But the bombs in Karbala and Baghdad were clearly co-ordinated. The same brain worked behind them. Was it a Sunni brain? When the occupation authorities' spokesman suggested yesterday that it was the work of al-Qa'ida, he must have known what he was saying: that al-Qa'ida is a Sunni movement, that the victims were Shias.
It's not that I believe al-Qa'ida incapable of such a bloodbath. But I ask myself why the Americans are rubbing this Sunni-Shia thing so hard. Let's turn the glass round the other way. If a violent Sunni movement wished to evict the Americans from Iraq - and there is indeed a resistance movement fighting very cruelly to do just that - why would it want to turn the Shia population of Iraq, 60 per cent of Iraqis, against them? The last thing such a resistance would want is to have the majority of Iraqis against it.
So what about al-Qa'ida? Repeatedly, the Americans have told us that the suicide bombers were "foreigners". And so they may be. But can we have some identities, nationalities? The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has talked of the hundreds of "foreign" fighters crossing Saudi Arabia's "porous" borders.
The US press have dutifully repeated this. The Iraqi police keep announcing that they have found the bombers' passports, so can we have the numbers?
We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.
I urge you to not just accept what the current appointed leaders tell you. These people work off of logic. They logically assume (and explain to people) that this was done by Baathists loyal to Saddam and/or Al Qaeda. People like logic. I like logic. And it could be this logical: these were attacks done by Saddam loyalists. But these are illogical times. Remind yourselves it is convenient for them to say this over and over like robots with no actual care about Iraqis and the consequences of this day and events to come. Keep your ears peeled and thought pattern piqued. Also, read widely and the clues will build up. Iraqis have every right to be suspicious of the events conspiring. Especially when you consider the following things:
(I will complete this post later. Now, I am sad for all Iraqis. Let's be smart about this, or else we risk more violence.)
Can you sign a de facto interim constitution when you are in national mourning? I say, bad start...both literally and symbolically. (i'll explain, more fully, why i ask
this later.)
Until I finish the post, here are some words from Robert Fisk. He asks several important questions. Click here for the below article.
_________________________________________________
March 2, 2004
A Convenient Carnage
All This Talk of Civil War, Now This
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
Odd, isn't it? There never has been a civil war in Iraq. I have never heard a single word of animosity between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq.
Al-Qa'ida has never uttered a threat against Shias - even though al-Qa'ida is a Sunni-only organisation. Yet for weeks, the American occupation authorities have been warning us about civil war, have even produced a letter said to have been written by an al-Qa'ida operative, advocating a Sunni-Shia conflict. Normally sane journalists have enthusiastically taken up this theme. Civil war.
Somehow I don't believe it. No, I don't believe the Americans were behind yesterday's carnage despite the screams of accusation by the Iraqi survivors yesterday. But I do worry about the Iraqi exile groups who think that their own actions might produce what the Americans want: a fear of civil war so intense that Iraqis will go along with any plan the United States produces for Mesopotamia.
I think of the French OAS in Algeria in 1962, setting off bombs among France's Muslim Algerian community. I recall the desperate efforts of the French authorities to set Algerian Muslim against Algerian Muslim which led to half a million dead souls.
And I'm afraid I also think of Ireland and the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974, which, as the years go by, appear to have an ever closer link, via Protestant "loyalist" paramilitaries, to elements of British military security.
But the bombs in Karbala and Baghdad were clearly co-ordinated. The same brain worked behind them. Was it a Sunni brain? When the occupation authorities' spokesman suggested yesterday that it was the work of al-Qa'ida, he must have known what he was saying: that al-Qa'ida is a Sunni movement, that the victims were Shias.
It's not that I believe al-Qa'ida incapable of such a bloodbath. But I ask myself why the Americans are rubbing this Sunni-Shia thing so hard. Let's turn the glass round the other way. If a violent Sunni movement wished to evict the Americans from Iraq - and there is indeed a resistance movement fighting very cruelly to do just that - why would it want to turn the Shia population of Iraq, 60 per cent of Iraqis, against them? The last thing such a resistance would want is to have the majority of Iraqis against it.
So what about al-Qa'ida? Repeatedly, the Americans have told us that the suicide bombers were "foreigners". And so they may be. But can we have some identities, nationalities? The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has talked of the hundreds of "foreign" fighters crossing Saudi Arabia's "porous" borders.
The US press have dutifully repeated this. The Iraqi police keep announcing that they have found the bombers' passports, so can we have the numbers?
We are entering a dark and sinister period of Iraqi history. But an occupation authority which should regard civil war as the last prospect it ever wants to contemplate, keeps shouting "civil war" in our ears and I worry about that. Especially when the bombs make it real.
0 comments:
Post a Comment