You Subhuman Savages (Iraq Rant Ahead)

The BBQ Pit
1

This evening, we were treated to horrific images on the evening news. Three Japanese nationals, aid workers, kidnapped by Iraqi “insurgents” and terrorized during the filming of a propagandist “ransom” video.

These people have not gone to Iraq for any purpose that can bring harm to Iraqi people. They are not working with, for or in contract with the Bremer-led “administration.” there. They are not military, military contractors, or paramilitary civilians in counry for the purpose of providing military support and security services.

The young woman (only 19 years old) reportedly went to Iraq to help establish assistance for children who have been traumatized by the war.

These people have gone into an unspeakably dangerous place in order to help. They didn’t have to be there. They came out of compassion and a strong conviction that in the midst of strife and death, they could bring a little peace and kindness. Their only “wrongdoing” was being non-Iraqis and presumably, non-Muslims.

For this “crime” they have been abducted at gunpoint, beaten, have had knives held to their throats and have been threatened that they will be burned alive if the impossible demands of their captors are not met. It seems unlikely that they will live; even if the location where they are held is found, a rescue attempt seems likely to be bloody and hard to manage successfully.

To the “Mujahedeen Squadrons” who have perpetrated this craven, horrific act, I say this: you are subhuman, savage idiots. You are the scum of the earth. These people have done nothing to harm you, your nation or your supposedly precious religion. They were there to help you and you’d rather kill them than accept that your country is in chaos – due in large part to you and your ilk – and needs all the help it can get. (Help you’re surely not offering.)

You’re so hot on getting all foreign mlitary and nationals out of Iraq? I’ve supported our efforts to bring modernization and democracy to your ungrateful nation up to now, but I’m starting to think that you have a point. We should leave. We should all pack up and go away. In fact, the entire rest of the planet needs to start acting as if that anarchic little corner in which you reside simply does not exist.

Let’s see how long you and yours can get by without anybody’s help, as your selfish, brutal, tribal, feudal ways accelerate the seemingly inevitable civil war and the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds and whoever else wants to put a dog in the fight decimate one another over and over until nothing is left.

You don’t deserve anyone’s help, not when you do things like this. You deserve whatever hellish nightmare you make of your barren little sandpit.

2

And they were boyscouts up to this incident?

I hope those guys (and gal) make it through this somehow.

3

Well said. Excellent tightrope walk at not indicting Iraqis in general. I get frustration, xenophobia, even righteous fury. But mean people suck.

4

Wow. Just Wow. Not the kidnappings, either-the OP.

Lord this is getting tiring-Go back and look at Iraq and what we’ve done to their country in the last 10 years. Examine the dead. View the government that we are trying to cram down their throats, and how it cannot but fail. Imagine how you’d feel if the president of another country invaded your country just to win a re-election bid.

Then come back and tell me how you’d feel.

“They” don’t want us there. “They” are hurt. “They” have no real leadership and an imperialistic force playing security guard in their country. “They” are unhappy, even though US media likes to portray the “insurgents” as being a minority.

“They” are not a minority anymore.

Sam

5

Although I worry for all the noncombatants out there doing the “peace” work, I can’t muster hatred against the Iraqis. They didn’t ask for us to be there. They have more reason to hate us than we do them.

6

No argument there. But this is very naughty behavior.

7

Can we at least agree on a really really REALLY basic concept here, folks? It’s quite simple:

It is NEVER OK to delibrately burn people alive.

Got that? I don’t care what fucking provication you think some one has committed, or suffered. It is NEVER, EVER acceptable to do that.

Now, I do believe most Iraqis want the Americans to leave - like yesterday, if not sooner. Yes, a lot of bad shit has happened in Iraq over the past couple decades (from Saddam, from the Bushies, there was that war with their neighbor Iran…) You know something? None of it justifies kidnapping people and burning them alive. It just doesn’t. Even if they were bona fide US Marines who had come to kick ass, kill a bunch o’ people, and ran out of ammo at a bad time. It’s still not OK to burn people alive.

Now - no one’s been burned - yet (And don’t trot out battlefield casualties or collateral damage in bombing raids - there IS a difference between combat where you happen to die burning vs. being tied hand and foot and lit up) But c’mon - you can’t lay every bad shit thing the foaming-mouth yahoos do at the doorstep of the US. The US did *not * bomb Bali. The US did *not * bomb Madrid. The US is *not * planting bombs under the railways of France. The US did *not * slice the head off Daniel Pearl. And if these prisoners die, it will not be the US who set them on fire. The hands that hold the torch are the hands that are guilty in this instance. They choose to react in this way, to torture and terrorize. If was just a matter of killing the foreigners then they could just put a bullet in their heads and leave the bodies in an alley to rot, but no, that’s not awful enough.

8

Pffft. And what do you propose we do with witches and heretics?

9

As far as I can tell, the Iraqis didn’t do any of those things either. But I’m sure they deserved to be punished all the same.

10

Just for some added info on the hostages:

From Japan Today:

According to what I heard on the news last night, Imai was writing a book about the work Takato and the others were doing, and went there to interview the aid workers and local Iraqis.

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"I’ve supported our efforts to bring modernization and democracy to your ungrateful nation up to now, but I’m starting to think that you have a point. We should leave. We should all pack up and go away. "

Ah, you and the kidnappers have something in common (The part about packing up and leaving).

Did you share your outrage as 10,000+ Iraqi civilians were killed?

Personally I would certainly like to see these people freed. I hope they do make it thru this ordeal. I sympathize with their plight. As I do for so many caught up in this “situation.”

12

Sadly, the human species is not yet a club to which we can revoke membership. These people are as human as anyone else, with desires, fears, and motivations like the rest of us. In different circumstances, they would have probably have done just fine as normal members of a normal society. Living, working, having a family.

Honestly, I think that’s a lot scarier.

13

Exactly. There’s a reason we’re so eager to label the insurgents as “animals” and “subhuman”. We don’t want to face the fact that they’re as human as we are, and conversely, that we’re as capable of acts like this as they are in the same circumstances.

The veneer of civilization is very, VERY thin, in EVERY civilization.

14

Where on earth did you get your ethics from?

15

Can we say the same for the criminals , pedophiles and murderers that we read about in the local papers?

16

Quiet, you, if you still want visitation rights with the grand-houseplants. :slight_smile:

That they’re human? I certainly think so. That they would have been productive members of society under different circumstances? Perhaps. I’m sure some would and I’m equally sure that some wouldn’t no matter what had or hadn’t happened to them. 's why I said “probably” regarding these particular unfortunately-human bastards.

17

Well, yeah, burning people alive = bad, we can agree there.
However the OP used a very large brush to smear the subhuman label on all Iraqis; not to speak of the rather idiotic remarks that went something like:
“You bastards!, we bombed your country, invaded it, killed a whole lot of people and you ungrateful scum dare to hit us back!” :rolleyes:

18

Well, is there a class of person from whom we can legitimately revoke their human status?

I deal with convicted pedophile offenders, rapists and murderers in the course of my daily work. Frankly, they generally epitomize the dark side of what it means to be human. Fear, shame, anger, denial, revenge, control, remorse.

People talk about humanity like it’s always a good thing.

19

Jeeze, give us a grand-cat or dog, at least! But not yet! Not until you’re married! Or rich. Or something.

20

This is so true. Go to Germany, Spain, Japan today and you will meet the nicest people and see civilizations which among the most developed. And yet just a few generations ago these same peoples did the most horrendous things you can imagine. And some of them are still alive, it is not distant history.

Put a man in certain circumstances and he will become an outstanding and exemplary person but under different circumstances he can become a monster.

When I see so often people here demanding torture for crimes I have no doubt that many of the people here would be doing the same things many Iraqis are doing if the were put in the same circumstances. No doubt.

As a people we are no better and no worse, just were lucky to have better circumstances. there are as many monsters and sadists in Iraq as in America or anywhere else. It’s just that the circumstances bring out the worst in people. I do not think the Iraqis are any worse than anyone else.