I saw some truly horrific footage from Iraq today on the NBC nightly news. I literally stopped what I was doing, and was taken aback by what I saw. They were covering the triple car bombings, that killed 34 children. Back when Bush sent our troops to war, I think that everyone kindof knew that there would come the part after the major fighting, when attacks were made on US troops. I thought that at its worst, it would be 1 or 2 US deaths per day. And so far, that has pretty much come true (I'm not sure what the daily death toll is).
But what I didn't expect, were Iraqi's attacking Iraqi's. Sure, some of the insurgents may be from other countries, but that alone doesn't explain the violence that I saw on my TV today. If you're purposefully killing children in order to promote your agenda -- I don't care what it is, but it isn't right. I don't understand how anyone in Iraq can support these insurgents. And my only hope is that days like today will jar the country away from the violence, on to the path towards peace and stability.
-Andy.
I was listening to a talk show on NPR (link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4055356) where they said that while about 1050 soldiers have died in combat and an additional 7500 have been injured in the line of duty, some 20000 soldiers became so injured or sick (not in the line of duty, so no purple hearts for them) that they had to be evacuated to Europe or America. Interesting spin statistic.
Check this out. Don't know if it helps or not, but there are some good links/stories for you to read/think about. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P1325
This is a strange phenomena but it seems to be part of a wider pattern. They say here that 93 percent of Al Jezerra viewers polled support the kidnapping in Iraq. (http://washingtontimes.com/world/20040924-120647-9243r.htm) Those numbers would probably change if asked about Iraqi on Iraqi violence but this is still a disturbing trend. It seems to indicate that a large part of the Muslim world supports this kind of violence (terrorism) to achieve their goals.
Granted, this isn't any better than someone dismissing the deaths of Iraqis as a "necessary evil to liberate Iraq", but it does provide some insight as to why this insurgency hasn't itself been "insurged" by the 99% of good, decent, Iraqis. There seems to be a pervasive, passive approval of this kind of shit.
I'm currently finishing up a book called "Inside Islam". The insurgency make a lot more sense after reading about some Muslim history.
I just read the article. They bombed a water treatment plant opening while soldiers were giving out candy?!?!?!?!?!?! I know there's a larger context here but how could you have a better case of Good Guys and Bad Guys? A water treatment plant for Christ sake!
This underscores the fact that these insurgents are fighting not for the people of Iraq, but for their own hateful, imperialistic agenda. That's right, imperialistic. A multinational, global Islamic state is one of Al Queda's goals and if that's any more acceptable than the spread of western culture, I'll eat my hat. These motherfuckers make it very difficult to keep an open mind about non-western (by western, I mean technocratic, representative, and secular) culture in general.