Look, this OP isn’t pointed at any one person… nor at any country or political leader…
It just makes me sad that I went into the Great Debates forum a moment ago to read and learn about my fellow Doper’s thoughts on the terrible, horrible bombings in Baghdad and Karbala about 36 hours ago. Apparently 186 have been killed, and I reckon you could safely assume 4 times as many as that have been permanently maimed for life.
I know, I know… we here on the SDMB have been debating Iraq and the “War on Terror” for so long now, with such fevered intensity, that we’re all a bit sick of it. I understand that.
And yet, when I looked in Great Debates a moment ago there wasn’t one thread anywhere about these recent bombings. Maybe my empathy is misplaced here, but that simply strikes me as being a very sad reflection on the Straight Dope Message Board. In October 2002 when a 198 people died in the Bali Bombings, there were threads galore for weeks and weeks. Not to mention the amazing reverberations of posts and threads after September 11.
But 186 Iraqi’s can die and not one person on the SDMB mentions it anywhere? After 36 hours? I can’t help but feel we should all hang our heads in shame a little bit over that. We here in the Western World are often accused by those less fortunate than us as being profoundly selfish and insular. Perhaps there’s some truth in the accusation after all.
Oh, don’t get me wrong here… I was merely hoping to learn from my fellow Dopers what they thought were the machinations behind it all. When I saw that nothing had been said anywhere, it got me to thinking that obviously the inevitable desensitisation of all things Iraq has obviously crept in by the look of things. Ultimately, that was my point… namely, we all get desensitised through over-saturation at some point regarding the shitfights in this world, and that to continue functioning through life with some degree of normalcy we tend not to talk about such things anymore.
I’m merely observing that it appears we’ve reached that state regarding Iraq - which is kinda dangerous in a way because it could always spin out of control if we don’t pay attention.
I recall hearing Bill Clinton say once that the single greatest regret that he had during his Presidency was that he didn’t act more decisively on Rwanda. Now I’m not saying Iraq is on the verge of Hutu vs Tutsi massacre, but it does look menacing.
As for why I didn’t start a thread in GD? Ummm… well… I didn’t quite know what sort of premise to start in the OP - otherwise I would have, believe me.
Boo Boo Foo, rather than tear you a new asshole, I’ll just direct you to this thread. Just substitute “Boo Boo Foo” for “GoHeels”. Kudos to GoHeels for realizing his mistake and apologizing. If you apologize now, you might be able to stave off the inevitable onslaught.
I wondered about this a bit but to be honest: I didn’t expect anyone to show empathy with the victims. They are not US’ers, not even “Westerners”, they are only Iraqis, formerly known as “collateral damage” in a criminal invasion by the US with the help of a few “allies”.
Thank you for being the most welcome and refreshing exception.
I did expect some people to start a rant about “Muslim terrorists” though. But the ignoring of this ongoing bloodshed in the nation the US invaded and occupies seems to be already that widely spread, that even this level of butchery can’t make people lift a finger anymore. It is in only Iraq, you know… Those brownies there get killed every day. Who cares one bit about that dispensable collateral damage of the US greed.
As far as is I’m informed at the moment nobody, even those closely involved, have a valid claim to point at the origin of those who did this/planned this.
What I do hear/read is that many Iraqis blame the US because
the Iraqi police forces, for as far as they are a bit functioning again, don’t have sufficient or good weapons/ amunition.
the borders are still so leak that anyone can just walk in.
there is suspicion that Israel and the USA are behind all this violence.
there is suspicion that their goal is to start a civil war which would give the US the more “reason” to claim that they “must” stay.
(In this perspective it doesn’t do any good at these suspicions tha so called “plans” to start a civil war “by Al Qaeda-related groups” were claimed to be intercepted by the USA.)
I wrote months ago:
“You ain’t seen nothing yet” and “shock and awe has yet to come”, to use the brave words of the US leadership.
I got the most agressive/rude/accusations/nonsense replies from quite a number of people here. I was a US hater, a Saddam worshipper, whatever …
They where on their high horses telling that everything was OK there and that I didn’t want the Iraqis to beliberated and so on…
I just wonder where all those “brave”, “compassionate”, “Iraqi-loving” screamers are now. My disgust for their holow slogans and empty minds is once again immeasurable.
Salaam. A
It is also Americans who are getting killed there virtually every day. I’m sure you would have thought to mention them, if they were not dispensable collateral damage in your zeal to indict the “USers”.
As far as is I’m informed at the moment nobody, even those closely involved, have a valid claim to point at the origin of those who did this/planned this.
What I do hear/read is that many Iraqis blame the US because
the Iraqi police forces, for as far as they are a bit functioning again, don’t have sufficient or good weapons/ amunition.
the borders are still so leak that anyone can just walk in.
there is suspicion that Israel and the USA are behind all this violence.
there is suspicion that their goal is to start a civil war which would give the US the more “reason” to claim that they “must” stay.
(In this perspective it doesn’t do any good at these suspicions tha so called “plans” to start a civil war “by Al Qaeda-related groups” were claimed to be intercepted by the USA.) A
[/QUOTE]
Leaving aside your last (incoherent) sentence, I think we are primarily being quoted your own paranoid suspicions, hidden behind the rubric of “I hear/read the Iraqis think this”.
More “US’ers” than you could possibly wrap your mind around, assuming you were to pull your head out of your ass for long enough to even try to comprehend the fact that Americans don’t have tails and horns, you narrowminded motherfucker.
If US’ers get killed there, they get killed because they are occupying that nation.
Learn Arabic if you want to know “what is written”. In the common press reports, that is. I doubt you can watch/listen to Arabic media, or have Arabic speaking friends seeking to contact you verbally, but you can always try to make some.
Then you shall have at least a little bit of the information I get on my desk.
If you are too lazy to learn the language, then don’t pretend to be informed about what you can’t even understand if somebody would make the effort to inform you.
Salaam. A
It was a horrid happening.
There’re reasons to suspect a number of entities.
I’ve not enough information to reach a reasonable, let alone meaningful conclusion as to the who, how and wherefores of the perpetrators.
I’ve spoke w/ a number of people about it in real life. All found it shocking.
I don’t see that there’s dissent about that.
With the (tentative and temporary) consent of the vast majority of the Iraqi people though. If the Iraqi people opposed the allied presence there then I think the level of opposition would be far bigger by several orders of magnitude.
Most people (westerners and Iraqis) seem to think the attacks are being carried out by foreign extremists in order to destabilise the country. And from what I’ve read and heard, most Iraqis are becoming more and more determined to not allow the foreigners to destabilise their country - they are pulling together. So the terrorist campaign seems to be back-firing.
Well, this is the Pit…
Okay.
In your importunate and infantile assertions that all Americans are 100% evil, greedy capitalistic imperialists, you have blinded yourself to the fact that “US’ers” are people and have feelings just like yourself. Your complete inability to separate the politics of a country from it’s populace is most irksome. On a board that is predominately American, your persistent, fatuous and stentorian shrieks about the inhumanity of Americans and their activities in the Middle East are disrespectful, impertinent, impolite, uncivil and ungracious. Your falsely stoic anti-nationalism is tiresome. You are the proverbial bull in a China shop. Your closeminded and hateful worldview is just as destructive as those behind the occupation and the terrorist attacks.
In other words, you are a stupid motherfucker.
If Ilsa had left that last word out, I could reply that post of his in order to let him discover that his whole rant makes no sense at all.
I was almost stunned by the self control displayed in his wordings.
It didn’t last until the very end… So sad… But I never loose hope about the possibility of making contact in cyberspace.
There was a huge picture on the front page of the NYT today of a middle aged woman, blood in her hair, blood running down in a line from one eye over her nose to her mouth, holding a man’s hand. He didn’t look too injured–until you noticed his external ear was gone.
Horrible.
How Muslims can do this to each other is something I can’t get. These were unarmed people (except for those symbolic swords), men and women, in a religious procession. Blood and body parts spattered the walls of one the most sacred spots in Islam. As for the Americans, said the Times, they had reached an agreement with Shia leaders that they would NOT intrude upon the shrine at all and that the Iraqis themselves would be able to provide security. I guess our Saudi friend wouldn’t have minded seeing American Marines with their machine guns and humvees all lined up against the walls of the sacred mosques and all, but just maybe the Iraqis themselves would have been miffed. And not an American was harmed at all. These insurgents have no respect for Iraqis, because you don’t free a people by killing them en masse like this. They don’t want the Iraqi people to be free, they want power for themselves, no matter what our gullible Arab friends might think.
In your importunate and infantile assertions that all Americans are 100% evil, greedy capitalistic imperialists, you have blinded yourself to the fact that “US’ers” are people and have feelings just like yourself. Your complete inability to separate the politics of a country from it’s populace is most irksome. On a board that is predominately American, your persistent, fatuous and stentorian shrieks about the inhumanity of Americans and their activities in the Middle East are disrespectful, impertinent, impolite, uncivil and ungracious. Your falsely stoic anti-nationalism is tiresome. You are the proverbial bull in a China shop. Your closeminded and hateful worldview is just as destructive as those behind the occupation and the terrorist attacks.
OK, yes, Blowereo I just finished reading the other thread you linked me to which was written by Goheels.
Indeed, with hindsight, I can see now that my OP in this thread was also ill-conceived - insofar as I didn’t achieve my goal and instead, implied a board-wide insult to my fellow Dopers. And that was uncool. So sorry about that. I’m off to GD now to start the thread I should have started.
Thanks for the heads up Blowero - much appreciated.
I read/hear/watch the BBC. I don’t talk here about the BBC or even about other Western media.
The difference between us is that you don’t read and hear and watch and have contact with the whole region.
I happen to live there and I happen to stay in contact with my home day and night when I am not in my own country.
I think that alone suffices to give us both a rather different perspective and a rather different acces to sources of information.
Nobody has an idea who did this and throwing around “names” and “suspicions” and “links to AQ/other foreigners” is in fashion these days, as everyone with a bit of brain should know without further explanation.
It is as much in fashion as throwing around “They have WMD” etc… some time ago. We have seen where those “WMD” are. They are as much in my basements and hidden caves as they are in Iraq.
