The child of your enemy is the enemy of your child

[SoCalDem]

Iraq is a "young" country, as are many in the middle east. We may be able to "bully" them into submission, and we may be able to overpower the "insurgents", but remember this: Children learn what they LIVE.

The Palestinian "issue" should have been an early-warning sign to the "leaders" of our country, but apparently they have had their fingers in their ears, their eyes blindfolded, and their brains in the "off" position for about 35 years.

When there is no hope, there can be no peace. Iraq did not have peace with Saddam in power, BUT they DID have hope.. They hoped he would die...They hoped he would be overthrown..They hoped the sanctions would be lifted..They hoped the next leader would see to their needs.

We had it in our power to deliver on the promises we made to them, but we gave them more death.. They expected death at the hands of Saddam, but they thought we were better.. We have betrayed them TWICE (at least).. Poppy Bush promised them that he would help them if they rose up after GW1...and they did....but we didn't.. The "mass graves" are testament to the fact that our promises are little more than sand through a sieve.

The Iraqi people knew we were coming back, and the "ordinary" people would have welcomed us, if we had done it right..

The ones fighting us today, saw their fathers and grandfathers put in those mass graves in 1992, and THEIR children are watching the carnage today..

Children as young as 5 or 6 are taking up arms and learning to shoot...so they can "kill Americans".. What a legacy we are leaving to our own children..

Youngsters in America are blithely going about their daily life here in the US.. They are playing baseball, soccer,taking piano & gymnastics lessons, they are riding the school bus to school, they are playing their video games, and watching TV.. Do they know that in about 10 to 15 years, THEY may be needed to go to the middle east to fight the children of people their parents' generation killed?

The children of the middle east are "in training" now, and they have a built-in need for revenge.. They live with the images burned into their brains. They will be ready..

Our children will not..

[sweetheart]

1. However, "our children" have nuclear weapons

And no living knowledge about the dangers inherent in using them.

I predict 2 nuclear wars in the middle east within the next 50 years.
The first one will fuel the second, and our children will only be
touched if they are in that area, or if the west coast gets
vaporized.

What a lovely legacy we leave the next generation.

[lottie244]

3. This is our problem. We think more highly of ourselves than we ought.

We worship our technology and our weapons and never give due respect to the human spirit and the order of the universe. We are just one or two major earthquakes and climate or technological castastrophies away of being a nation totally paralyzed. And won't it be great when we nuke all the ME oil fields and our possessions become meaningless?

We just never learn from history.

[SoCalDem]

4. Real history is not taught much anymore

Memorization of some long ago dates, and some xenophobic "stories" about how great the US is, is about all kids get anymore..

It's no wonder they don't know much about the world around them..

[sweetheart]

7. IT is what worries me about our MAD deterrent

Imagine after the last person dies with living memory of WWII, and
soon a generation will come to think that the nukes are some
wonderful safety net so that soldiers do not have to fight.
Geez, i remember the impression the nuclear armaments education
left on me, and i only grew wiser by meeting people who were
personally involved with those foul things.

With future technological advances, and this preemptive thinking of
the neocons, i'm sure a whole new generation of strategists will
be born thinking that we can win a preemptive nuclear war.

It is incumbent upon OUR generation to bury those bombs forever
and warn off all future generations that no security is to be
found in gross mass murder.

[SoCalDem]

8. I am old enough to remember the stupid "bomb drills"

covering your knees with your dress, sitting under the desk or along a wall, with your hands over your head...yep..THAT would help you "survive" a nuke..


As long as a coporation can make money by buildiing the bombs, our desires are meaningless :cry:

[Dulcinea]

18. don't be silly!

School isn't there to teach kids, it's supposed to turn them into good little consumers & corporate drones in Bushworld!

<dripping w/ sarcasm>

[SoCalDem]

19. You mean the ones who go to North Pepsi High??

and play football in Mountain Dew Stadium??

Disgusting, isn't it???

It's frightening how "unaware" some kids are when they graduate. It's not a joke, that lots of them cannot even find Canada on a world map..:(

I don't believe in scaring kids to death, but sooner or later, schools NEED to start teaching these kids about the real worls they live in..They should not have to find it out the hard way...when someone says "go kill "those" people"..:(

[sattahipdeep]

5. People and organizations involved: Schlesinger, Kissinger

September 19, 2001-September 20, 2001 Complete Iraq timeline

Adm. David E. Jeremiah, Dan Quayle, James R. Schlesinger, James Woolsey,
Henry A. Kissinger, Newt Gingrich, Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Policy Board,
A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Harold
Brown, Ahmed Chalabi, Donald Rumsfeld, Bernard Lewis

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=james_r._schlesinger






http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=2&u=/ap/20040825/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_prisoner_abuse

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.

This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio. :shrug:

[mandyky]

2. We STILL have no clue about their culture

On AAR yesterday ( I think that's where I heard it ) In Iraq a thumbs up gesture is like flipping the bird to someone. Our soldiers think it is them being given a good job gesture. Yeesh, 17 months and we have taken no time to try to understand the people!

[SoCalDem]

6. Yep.. it baffles me too.. If this is a serious threat

(like they say it is), why is there not a push to educate the populace ?? It's ho-hum..orange alert...go shopping...warning warning..shop shop..travel...

There should be a mandatory education plan to help catch us up on the things we never learned about the world...old and young..

[Kanary]

9. What's really ominous to me

is this now constant talk about if only we had "done it right".

We're obviously locking ourselves into more war, and more war, and more war...... just remember to "do it right".

Disgusting.

Kanary

[SoCalDem]

10. You only have ONE chance to get it "right", and Bush did it WRONG

There are no "do-overs" in war..

[Kanary]

14. so, from now on, vote for the one who will do war right...

:crazy:

over and over and over and over

:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

[eridani]

11. Point of information

We didn't need to do jackshit in 1991 during the Shi'ite rebellion except stay out of their way. We intervened directly against them and for Saddam, for the sake of 'stability.' We didn't want a majority Shi'ite government then, any more than we want one now. "Stupid towelheads!! We meant a palace coup, not a popular uprising!!"

[SoCalDem]

12. That's true.. By leaving Saddam with helicopters, and then butting out

we gave him permission to slaughter people.. I can still remember watching it on tv ...horrified at what we "let" him do to the Shi'ites and the Kurds....

He would have never done it if we had not let him..:(

[eridani]

13. Worse than that, even--

They actively disarmed Shia fighters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,928121,00.html

"After he returned to Nasiriya, Iraqi Republican Guard and security forces soon launched a massive counter-attack. Assuming Baghdad's air force was grounded by the US-led coalition, the rebelling Shias were stunned when they saw Saddam's helicopter gunships flying towards them.

"We managed to shoot one down but we were outgunned. Those helicopters were too much for us because we only had rifles and rocket-propelled grenades," said one veteran of the Badr Corps who fought north of Basra. "We weren't expecting help from the Americans but they helped Saddam's regime by letting him use his helicopters."

About three miles outside of Nassiriya, US and allied forces had seized control of a military airport. "That air strip was in the Americans' hands but they just watched what was happening and didn't do anything," said Abu Ahmad Sharifi, who joined the uprising in Nassiriya.

Iraqi army T-72 tanks and helicopters blasted Basra and Nassiriya and other cities, forcing the collapse of the improvised militia that had briefly seized 14 of 18 provinces. "With such heavy shelling from the Iraqi army, we couldn't hold the city any longer," Mr Sharifi said.

Thousands of men from Nassiriya fled in the direction of the air strip held by US troops. "The Americans had blocked the road with a checkpoint and thousands of us were disarmed. They made us hand over our rifles. We tried to tell them what was happening.

"We cannot forget what the Americans did, they took away our weapons and left us to be slaughtered like lambs."

[Djinn]

15. yeah eridani

I often see here that we "stopped supporting" the Shiite's when what actually happen was a MUCH bigger betrayal and understanding WHY helps to see that there aint no way in hell the US is going to allow free and fair elections in Shiite dominated Iraq any time soon.

[catzies]

16. That's a very powerful line, SoCalDem. Goosebumps.

:scared:

It bears repeating: The child of your enemy is the enemy of your child.

[SoCalDem]

17. Sad, though, because it's true.. We always plant the seeds in one war,

for the next one..And they seem to get uglier every time:(