Thank you, Venezuelans! Oh, and Mona for another well-written piece!

Well I think it’s time to redefine political affiliations everywhere. Why do we define ourselves politically using a dichotomy based on the seating arrangement of 18th century French legislative bodies? The world does not centre around Europe or America and their materialist political theories. At least not anymore.

Cool. I didn’t know you started a blog.

Ma’salaama,
-MR

“The world does not centre around Europe or America and their materialist political theories. At least not anymore.”

Actually, it never did, though the “materialist political theories” referenced above have long since passed from the realm of experimental politics and into real-world applications. Funny, though, how when housecleaning is needed, the Americans and sometimes the Europeans are always called upon to do the dirty work and bleed on the streets of foreign countries. Then, too, the materialism so abhorred is what seems to provide food and shelter to refugees the world over. Perhaps we should stay home and let Wassim take care of these kinds of problems. I would be more than happy to let Saudi soldiers die in Middle Eastern wars instead of packing up my life and going to someplace I never wanted to visit in the first place and hope never to see again.

Frank,

I understand your rejection of Wassim’s seemingly one-sided blame. But the past few years … the small country, Syria, took much more refugees than the Untied Sates did. There was not much goodness in American policy for the past few years. I am looking forward to seeing another Jimmy Carter type of president.

Please read this article from last February. Rime Allaf is a London-based analyst (Chatham House)

Beggars on Iraq, choosers with Syria
Monday, February 12, 2007, 18:42

When the invasion of Iraq was being spin doctored in American and British media (remember WMDs?) and some commentators warned of a humanitarian and refugee catastrophe, they were ridiculed by the warmongers already on a high from the adrenalin of the imminent attack, labeling any sane person pointing to the folly of the enterprise “Saddam supporter.” Why were these anti-war kill-joys preventing Iraqis from liberation, wondered the neocon clan (which came to include the British Labour Party, to the frustration of the Tories who were robbed of the extreme right-wing position by Blair and who couldn’t possibly turn the opposite way)? The whole doom domino concept (war-chaos-refugees-etc.) was nonsense, we were told; Iraq would be liberated, WMDs would be found, democracy would be installed, and the only domino theory would be the one spreading happiness and justice for all. That was before the “birth pangs” theory of course.

Fast forward four years; the refugee catastrophe has exploded, and the exodus of some 2 million people (according to the UN) was most certainly not an “unforeseen” by-product of the invasion, as some media agencies with short memories would have us think. After the US and Britain embarked on this illegal, immoral and inhumane war against the country and the people of Iraq, the hope remaining in Pandora’s box has not been sufficient for many Iraqis who have fled in despair to neighboring countries.

There are around 1 million such refugees alone in Syria, facing the inevitable hardship of all refugees and a difficult period of readjustment. Unintentionally, they are simultaneously making life difficult for a good number of Syrians as well, who have suddenly seen property prices sky rocket (for rentals and sales), general inflation increase rapidly, and a new height of overcrowding in the big cities. Jaramana alone, a suburb of Damascus, has practically become an Iraqi quarter where house prices are similar to those in Damascus. According to most accounts, Syrian authorities have behaved in an exemplary manner with the refugees, treating them with compassion and affording them the same social services (including health and education) to which Syrians have access.

By way of example, “moderate” and major US ally Saudi Arabia, in contrast, is building a fence to keep out undesirable Iraqis, and other “moderate” and major US ally Jordan has been treating Iraqi refugees quite badly, denying them healthcare and education, and letting live the exploited life of illegal aliens. With its generosity applauded by the head of UNHCR, Syria finds itself in the other, the “right” extreme here. But after a long period of laissez-faire, continuing to treat all Arab nationals equally, and not as foreigners needing visas, Syrian authorities have begun to apply visa restrictions to try to manage a situation that is spiralling out of control. Authorities have seemingly promised that Iraqis would not be deported or turned back, as they are in Jordan, but clearly the open-arms, no questions asked treatment is going to be regulated.

There is no doubt that the blame for this catastrophe lays squarely at the feet of the US and Britain, which is why it has actually become funny (even for regime critics) to hear officials from these two countries describe Syria as a negative force in the region, given that anything the Syrian regime actually does – or even anything it is allegedly doing – really can’t compare with the unprecedented devastation brought to us courtesy of the Anglo-American enterprise. Really, look who’s talking.

Be that as it may, whether Syria is negative, positive or neutral, the Bush administration nevertheless seems to have no choice but to liaise with this force, apparently, for lo and behold, the American Secretary of State has now declared that she has authorized talks with Syria about the refugee crisis. Authorized. In other words, Syria is allowed to help America solve its mess, and permitted to talk to its chargé d’affaires in Damascus towards that end. What an honor. Let the appreciation ceremony begin.

Washington’s infuriatingly condescending attitude is doing nothing to endear it to Syrians, and should technically endear it equally little to the Syrian regime being approached for help. Unfortunately, the likelihood of the latter hurriedly grabbing the opportunity to make proper contact on an official level is high, regardless of the official rhetoric. However, even while recognizing the reality of a unipolar world where most issues are dictated by the agenda of the superpower (who, in addition, currently happens to be our next-door neighbor), it is intolerable to imagine that Syrian citizens who have been affected directly by the war on Iraq should be grateful to America for granting them the privilege of simply talking – talking to help that same America try to manoeuver out of the refugee problem it has created.

It should be made absolutely clear, officially that is, that Syria is helping Iraqi refugees regardless of – and not because of – America’s “authorization,” and that the US had better start taking responsibility for its actions, which are having a huge impact on the life of Syrians (let alone Iraqis). Like it or not, Faruq Shara’a was right when he claimed that the influx of refugees had “imposed heavy economic, social and security burdens on Syria.” The financial costs for the refugee crisis must be borne by the invaders and the occupiers alone, as they have caused this mess in the first place.

Regrettably, even when saying some of the right things, some media (this one being just an example) can’t help but being patronizing about Syria even as they praise its actions with refugees. I don’t know about my fellow Syrians, but frankly, I find this is all getting a bit tiring, this old record of pro-terrorism, radical, negative, etc. Especially when it comes from those who used to sing the praises of the regime (yes, it’s a digression, but I mean the Lebanese political leaders, who treat their own refugees like dirt) while Syrian civil society activists were being harassed. Unlike others, Syrians didn’t wait for involvement or influence from anyone outside Syria to speak whenever they could, at their own risk. So when Syrians (yes, even the regime) do something good, like the regime has actually proved with the Iraqi refugees, to whom it even allowed the luxury of voting freely and choosing from dozens of candidates (I leave you to absord the irony which we’ve already covered in this blog), or when the Syrian people fling open their homes, their wallets and their hearts to the tens of thousands of Lebanese refugees escaping the Israeli war machine, let’s give credit where credit is due without the “but” part. It wouldn’t hurt to be treated like the other problem makers in the area – even the “moderate” ones – every now and then.

Well, if anything, this article is even more one-sided than Wassim’s commentary. Yes, Syria took in more refugees than did the United States… unless you count the millions of illegal “refugees” that come in across the US-Mexican boarder in a steady stream. But even discounting them entirely, and not all of them are Mexicans by the way, some are Arabs, why should Syria not take in more refugees than we do? The refugees are, for the most part, Palestinians, and Kurds and Arabs formerly living in Iraq, unless I am not up to date. Why shouldn’t they do so? It is their part of the world.

If some catastrophe happened in the US, a nuclear war, for example, if I were stupid enough to leave my home, where would I go? Not to the Middle East, to be sure. Canada or Mexico, maybe. Its not a question of who has the most humanitarian political policies, but rather the much simpler question of geography. Refugees on foot, leading pack animals, riding in farm wagons pulled by tractors, even driving Land Rovers, do not have the ability to travel long distances.

On the subject of refugees in general, the doctrine of US military civil affairs has long been to encourage them to stay at home if at all possible. Now, obviously, if their homes are destroyed, that may not be possible. Refugees fleeing the battle, which, by the way, is pretty much over with in Iraq, cause all kinds of logistical problems. It is much easier to repair a damaged infrastructure than it is to start from scratch to build a new one to serve refugees living in tents out in the desert or in the mountains where there is nothing but a wheat field, if they are lucky.

The Iraqi refugees would be better off in Iraq than in Syria, Saudi Arabia, or anywhere else.

Was the problem caused by the US actions in Iraq? I wonder about that sometimes. Certainly we stirred the pot a bit, but long before then, there was a steady flow of people across the borders in Middle Eastern countries. An Arab I once soldiered with told me that there would be no peace in the world until everyone in the Middle East had been killed. Personally, I think you’d have to expand that concept to the entire world to really have peace. Humans, as a species, are too warlike to ever get along in anything approaching a large group.

Was our action justified? This is not so simple a question as at first it seems. We were attacked from abroad. Look at the old newsreels… our citizens… and the citizens of several other countries by the way, were killed in a fiery blast caused by Muslims and Arabs. More people died in that conflagration than were killed at Pearl Harbor. Now, back then, our reaction resulted in countless numbers of Japanese soldiers and citizens being maimed and killed horribly.

Today we have thicker skin than that, we did not nuke Mecca and Medina, or even Baghdad. We sent in ground troops and air assets with, for the most part, precision munitions. Were innocents killed? Certainly. What war doesn’t kill innocents? How is it even possible to identify an innocent when twelve-year-old boys might be carrying a bomb strapped to their bodies.

In the end, we toppled two regimes that were almost universally regarded as being evil dictatorships that very definitely needed to be taken out of the picture. The Taliban certainly bore some responsibility for the attack against us, so I don’t feel a need to justify our actions there. They allowed their territory to be used to train terrorists in the attacks. They got what they deserved. I hope the ones in Cuba rot there forever. I have no sympathy for them. Any one of them would as likely as not kill my disabled son without any qualms just for the fun of it.

The question of our actions in Iraq are perhaps not so simple to justify. WMD? Certainly there were some at one time. Where did they go? Probably turned to goo in the passage of time since the first Persian Gulf War. Who the HE double hockey sticks cares? Saddam’s regime destabilized the entire region, it needed to go if peace was to reign. Its gone now and the Iraqis have a chance to build something better. We’ll be gone soon to let them try.

Why did we do it? Who else could have done it? Syria? Saudi Arabia? Perhaps you Arabs would have been happier if the Israelis did it? The truth that nobody wants to look at is that there was no local power that could have stood against the Iraqi military, not in the first Persian Gulf War, not in the second. It had to be us because the other Middle Eastern countries either lacked the moral courage, the military might, or both.

I would put a final question(s) to you Arabs and/or Muslims out there before I end this rant. Why must the United States be the world’s policeman? Why do I have to keep up my skills with a rifle, even at my age? Why does a mother I know with a husband and three children have to get deployed to the meat grinder of war for the third time now… and counting? CAN YOU PEOPLE NOT SOLVE YOUR OWN PROBLEMS AND CONTAIN YOUR OWN MALCONTENTS?!

If you can indeed do so, it will cost you blood and tears. If you are not willing to die and cry for freedom and justice, then you do not deserve either. If you cannot, then perhaps others will do both the dying and the crying, others who have nothing to gain but the satisfaction of doing something unpopular that has to be done.

Frank the American Warmonger

[...] sociopolitical issues. Much of my views share a very close affinity to hers. Hell, she sees cute Chavez for what he really is and even has the guts to visit [...]

Dear Frank,

First, I am not an America hater. I love the Untied States.

But even the wonderful United States makes mistakes. And the one in Iraq was a bad one … a terrible one.

You need to start by being consistent. You can not complain:
“CAN YOU PEOPLE NOT SOLVE YOUR OWN PROBLEMS AND CONTAIN YOUR OWN MALCONTENTS”

Then say that you had to do Iraq becasue you were attacked on 9/11

Either you destroyed Iraq to revenge 9/11 (and you should have gone after Saudi Arabia in that case) or you went to “solve” our own problems.

If you came to solve our problems … did we ask you to come solve that problem? … did the Iraqi people receive your soldiers with flowers and roses? … no.

And did you make things better for Iraqis? … did you solve their problems? … Saddam killed tens of thousands of Iraqis … your sanctions followed by war killed a total of 2 million innocent Iraqis … 8 percent of the whole country … in America that would be like a 9/11 that killed 25 million Americans … not 3000

The numbers are not a detail you can ignore by saying “Were innocents killed? Certainly. What war doesn’t kill innocents?”

The mistakes of the Iraq war are beyond any mistake made by any leader on earth since world war II.

No one is evil … not the Arabs and not the Americans … but we need to learn lessons from what happened… extremism, and extreme reactions to extremism are both wrong.

Gandhi gave India its independence without using force.

Goodness works.

Finally .. going back to Syria’s example … other than taking almost two million Iraqi refugees (today’s numbers) Syria also successfully solved a real problem … the Lebanese civil war in the 70’s and 80’s .. Syria lost 13,000 soldiers but successfully ended the Lebanese civil war … did not ask the United States to help. Lebanese people lived in peace with each other from 1989 to 2005 when Syria withdrew and America came in (politically).

America in comparison … started an Iraqi civil war.

OK, I will state first that this will be my last comment on this thread, so if anybody wants the last word… go for it.

Yes, I agree, the US does make mistakes. Our first mistake was not continuing on into Baghdad during the first Persian Gulf War, occupying the country and setting up a free society with a Western styled democracy. If we’d done that, we’d have another ally in the Middle East by now and be further along in the process of freeing the minds of people who have been locked into a narrow world view defined primarily by corrupt imams who are more concerned with maintaining their status of power than with teaching the tenets of their own religion.

9/11 is our justification, though not in the way that you mean. We were not attacked by a nation, but by an organization. When I said “YOU PEOPLE”, I meant, “you Muslims”, or more precisely, “you radical Muslims who promote hatred and killing of innocents in the name of Allah”, not “you Iraqis” or fill in a nationality or ethnic group of your choice.

For the first time in history, my nation was attacked by a multi-national religious organization. How should we have proceeded? I suppose that we could have burned all the mosques in America and killed all the Muslims, nuked Mecca and Medina and sent precision munitions into every mosque in the Middle East. That would have been just silly.

We did not destroy Iraq. It is still there. We destroyed its military and some of its infrastructure. There is a vast difference. Have you ever seen a destroyed nation, or even a destroyed convoy of Iraqi soldiers? Very few people have. It isn’t pretty and the bodies do not smell very good after being left out in the sun for a few days.

No, you (if you are a Muslim) did not ask us to solve your problems. You attacked us and made it our problem. Is that “asking for it”? Some would say so.

Now as to us making things better for the Iraqis. The process is not complete as of yet. It would have been better if they had overthrown the dictator themselves, but they either could not or would not. Now Saddam is gone. Ask in thirty years… the time it took for Japan and Germany to get back on their feet. Political change is seldom quick and perfect.

I myself view both wars as something we got roped into by an ineffective UN and primarily Arab governments who were too cowardly to handle Saddam the first time and too ineffective to reign in the Taliban before they stuck their stick into a hornets’ nest for the second war. Saddam himself deserves at least a portion of the blame, nicht wahr?

No one is evil?! Did you really type that? I just checked and yes, you did. Everyone is evil, sir, everyone. You, me, Mona, we are all evil. That is a basic tenet of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, among other religions. I hold it as a self-evident absolute.

Was our response extreme? Its a matter of degree. It is well within the capability of the US military to reduce the entire Middle East to a radioactive sheet of glass. That would have been extreme. Taking out two disruptive governments is not extreme. Killing lots of people? Well, I don’t know where you got your figures, but even assuming them correct, people do die in wars.

Freedom demands blood sacrifice. Even your revered Ghandi knew that. Do you think that his actions did not cause any deaths? Think again. He might have been non-violent, but his activities can certainly be blamed for much disruption and violence.

Now, I am not especially concerned about what one liberal thinks of me or my government’s actions. Liberalism is not about facts, logic, or intellectual discussion, it is about feelings. The use of military force is abhorrent to liberals as it should be to everyone… not least of whom are the soldiers who end up going up against bullets and nerve gas. The difference is that liberals do not believe in the use of force or fighting or dying for any cause. The soldier knows that it is sometimes necessary, and he or she is willing to put it all on the line.

I personally knew soldiers who are now KIA, others who are maimed, and yet others who’s minds are not working quite like they should. Not all wounds show on the surface… mine certainly don’t.

In the end, time will show us all of our errors so we can all play “Monday morning quarterback” (for those not familiar with this American idiom, it is similar to saying that hindsight is 20/20). Until then, we make decisions based upon what we know at the time we make them. This, by its nature is bound to result in mistakes.

Had Bin Laden not made his mistake, if it was a mistake, some of my friends would still be alive, others would have fewer scars, and I would do something more pleasant than argue with people I have never met.

Frank,

Everything happens for a reason. America’s involvement in Iraq, a mistake (I insist), will still (eventually, in 30 years perhaps, as you said) end up being positive.

I am Christian… a secular christian. My family members are American, Canadian, Syrian, Greek, Turkish …

This is why I do not find it logical that human beings living in a part of the world called the United States need to kill hundreds of thousands in another part (called Iraq) in order to revenge the killing of three thousand …

You, personally did not do anything wrong. you are a good person I am sure (not “evil”). You are a courageous soldier diffending your country… I would not have the courage to fight, you are right.

But your leaders, or any leaders, who get drawn into a massive confrontation have automatically failed … they failed to find a smarter way of dealing with a challenge or a threat… let it take 30 years to finish Al-Qaeda … you said that 30 years is reasonable.

AlQaeda was born in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanisan … many young Muslim men were trained to be angry enought ot fight a super power … the Soviet Union.

After they defeated the Soviet Union … they went through conflicts in their minds … many of them went back to their countries, satisfied that they did what they had to do.

Others stayed in Afghanistan to fight other “enemies of Islam” …

Getting rid of religious fanatism takes 30 years … it is a delicate process … but it can be done.

You did not fight for nothing … as for the casualties of the war in Iraq … they were a very valuable lesson … so that next time our leaders will think a bit harder before they try to solve a problem with force.

Frank,
Alex has been nice to you but you can expect no such niceties from myself. I read your long winded replies to all the different posts and rants they are indeed. The problem with your posts is you still believe that you come from a country which can do something in the world. You’re country cannot, it is weak and you’re nuclear weapons are a sign of weakness, not strength. You are in no position to talk about any American intervention in Iraq as an attempt to sort out OUR problems. You’re country is our problem. Nuke all you want, Mecca or Medina, real Muslims don’t worship buildings, they worship something else. You can’t comprehend these things in the moral and intellectual bankruptcy which you perceive things within. You still believe the lies fed to you that you are a super power. You are not and if you expect me to humour you because you drop in the claim that your son is disabled somewhere – I’m sorry, that won’t happen- This has nothing to do with it. Don’t dictate squat to me, you can’t leave Iraq and you can’t stay and your country has never won a war on it’s own in the last one hundred years- unless you count banana republics in Latin America. America’s might is useless even if it uses nuclear weapons, you know it…

Mona,

Leftism by any other name will still stink. The problem with leftism is that centralization of power always favors tyranny. When you concentrate power in one executive, the worst men will do the worst things to gain that power. Ergo, devotion to leftism will always lead you to praising tyrants like Chavez. Leftism is irreparably flawed at its very core in this way.

That aside, congratulations on your nice, new, crisp, clean, bright little blog.

Nj Car Insurance Rate Mortgage
http://cool-search.biz/vip/car-insurance/index1.html Nj Car Insurance Rate Mortgage