Forget ISIS: Humanity is at Stake

[polly7]

by Ramzy Baroud / November 25th, 2015

....... But then, a far more unjust invasion and war followed in 2003, following a decade-long siege that cost Iraq a million of its children and its entire economy.

Their entertainers, media experts, intellectuals and philosophers made careers from dissecting us, dehumanizing us, belittling everything we hold dear; they did not spare a symbol, a prophet, a tradition, values or set of morals. When we reacted and protested out of despair, they further censured us for being intolerant to view the humor in our demise; they used our angry shouts to further highlight their sense of superiority and our imposed lowliness.

They claimed that we initiated it all. But they lied. It was their unqualified, inflated sense of importance that made them assign September 11, 2001 as the inauguration of history. All that they did to us, all the colonial experiences and the open-ended butchery of the brown man, the black man, any man or woman who did not look like them or uphold their values, was inconsequential.

Furthermore, they carried out massive social and demographic experiments in Iraq which have been unleashed throughout the Middle East, since. They pitted their victims against one another: the Shia against the Sunni, the Sunni against the Sunni, the Arabs against the Kurds, and the Kurds against the Turks. They called it a strategy, and congratulated themselves on a job well done as they purportedly withdrew from Iraq. They disregarded the consequences of tampering with civilizations that have evolved over the course of millennia.

Many of us are still honorably fighting for our communities; others despaired: they carried arms and went to war, fighting whoever they perceive to be an enemy, who were many. Others went mad, lost every sense of humanity; exacted revenge, tragically believing that justice can be achieved by doing unto others what they have done unto you. They were joined by others who headed to the West, some of whom had escaped the miseries of their homelands, but found that their utopia was marred with alienation, racism and neglect, saturated with a smug sense of superiority afflicted upon them by their old masters.

It became a vicious cycle, and few seem interested now in revisiting General Schwarzkopf’s conquests in Iraq and Vietnam – with his smug attitude and the amusement of western journalists – to know what actually went wrong. They still refuse to acknowledge history, the bleeding Palestinian wound, the heartbroken Egyptian revolutionaries and the destroyed sense of Iraqi nationhood, the hemorrhaging streets of Libya and the horrifying outcomes of all the western terrorist wars, with blind, oil-hungry dominating foreign policies that have shattered the Cradle of Civilization, like never before.

Full article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/forget-isis-humanity-is-at-stake/

[DetlefK]

1. What kind of flaming bullshit is that???

It's the West's fault that Sunni and Shia have been at war for 1400 years?

It's the West's fault that Turkey backstabbed the Allies after WWI and refused to give the Kurds an official status as an ethnic minority back in 1923?

[polly7]

2. Whoa ....... you're angry today.

Divide and conquer has worked very well many times all over the world. Shia and Sunni lived among each other as neighbours in Iraq - married, worked together, .. Iraq was secular. As was Libya, as is Syria. Christians and minorities had more protections in these countries than any of our bestest allies, including SA. He's right, we destroyed much of that co-operation and turned it into a hatred that's helped us prop up one dictator, tear down another, turn peaceful protests into bloodbaths. Seriously, trying to eliminate the West's role in all this is the flaming bullshit.

Spin, twist and obfuscate ..... you're on a roll today.

[DetlefK]

3. And what exactly does that have to do with the Shia-Sunni-conflict BEFORE the Iraq-war?

Oh, the evil West. Oh, the evil West. If not for the evil West, everything would be great.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectarian_violence_among_Muslims



Oh, the evil West. Oh, the evil West. If not for the evil West, Al-Maliki wouldn't have brought down post-war Iraq with the anti-sunni domestic policy of kicking every Sunni out of positions of power as soon as the US had left.

[polly7]

4. ISIS wasn't able to kidnap, rape, torture, behead, disembowel, etc. etc. etc.

all of those people in the nations we've destroyed and caused the mass migration attempts away from the horror. What exactly was any shia-sunni conflict doing in comparison prior to the 'invasion' of Iraq?

'Oh, the evil West' - nah....... grow up. 'Oh, the actions of gov'ts who, as the author of the piece described perfectly, do not give a single fuck about brown or black people living in areas of the world where we have 'interests'.



You sound exactly like those who say 'what about black on black crime!' when issues of racial profiling are brought up.

[DetlefK]

5. Easy answer.

There was no Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq during the era of Saddam Hussein because
1. he killed all troublemakers
2. Iraq had a stronger sense of nationality, as can be seen from the Iran-Iraq-war. The shia Iraqis didn't join the shia Iranians.

And after the US-invasion?
All of a sudden Muqtada Al-Sadr took up contacts with Iran and Al-Maliki couldn't wait to destroy the fragile Sunni-Shia balance the US had set up in the iraqi administration.

[polly7]

6. That was no answer at all.