Posted by parhad (148.244.221.166) on November 02, 2001 at 13:01:35:
---------- In Reply to --------------------------
Mr. PANCHO: It is very kind of you that you are showing a great concern toward the Iraqi children, but talking and writing about the suffering of the Iraqi people is not enough. The action and deed speak louder.
***You are dead wrong there. Everyone who has done more than visit a country will tell you that to effect change you need to change opinion first, unless you just want to bomb a different set of people. Every revolutionary becomes a reactionary in time...it isnīt enough to take an action on a trip, or vist a place. I said from the beginning that this generation in Iraq, and the next, are lost for good. You can apply band aids if you want to. My task is different...there is something in the American psyche right now that allows America to view the world as a source of raw materials and the people in it as little more than slaves or serfs...that has to change. For real change to come about ideas and attitudes will have to change...not just the look of things. Everything you and Narsai and the AAS and countless others have done for Iraq...and it is much and I have helped where I could...can be undone in 24 hours. We have to begin to make a repeat of this kind of thing unthinkable...and the reaction against Afghanistan and the continuance of that Ass as persident are all steps in the wrong direction..as the Gulf Slaughter was, for it didnīt bring the solution we were promised then...any more than we will get peace, any of us...from this recent action.
After the Gulf War with the solidarity of our Iraqi people I paid two visits to Baghdad, one in l992 and the second one in l997, both visits we took assistance to the Iraqi children. In late l992, Mr. Ramsey Clark, the U.S. former General Attorney was invited to be a guist of honor in Chicago where we raise more than 20 thousand dollars to the Iraqi children. And the Assyrian International Organisation( AIC) was also a sponsor to help the Iraqi children in printing a book " The Children are Dying". It is worth mentioning that I submitted pittitions to President Clinton and U.S. senators to name a few, Senator Jesse Helms, Sam Nunn, Paul Simon and others. In the meantime , I receive responses and the one most encouraging was from the President of Foreign Relation Committee honorable Senator Jesse Hellms.
***You have taken thousands in aid, even hundreds of thousands. This does not compare in the least to how much has been spent in destruction. This is not to put you down...I support Narsai in his work though I know it is futile. Make these efforts by all means...send them a thousand dollars worth of medicines and let the US and Britain send ten million dollars of death in one day...you do the math.
Now, I would like to hear from you what you did toward the Iraqi children ?
***WE are an unknown entity in the world...no one knows we exist..all our meagre resources are spent on Churches, when Christianity is as safe as a thing can be...we have no money for schools, for culture, for lobbyists who could get us far more than we can beg from our own people. The monuments wont keep a single Iraqi kid alive, I know that of course. But we were mangled and torn to shreds everytime because no one knew of our presence, of what we represent. No product will last without advertsising, and as crude as it may sound, the Assyrian Heritage needs advertising. That is something I can do, and I am trying my damndest to do and would have done a lot more of if it were it not for Nimrod, Lewie, Bejan and the Federation. They are adamantly opposed to my work because it makes their own look shabby and ineffectual by comparison. Sargon Lewie was not interested in making us known in Chicago in ways that could open some doors to organizations who donīt buy burritos on The Block...who might have given us some real aid...he was content to beg thirty bucks here and there on the banquet nights so he could hand deliver three thousand dollars and reap the gratitude and other rewards of those poor people.
***We need public awreness and recognition, as the Kurds learned when they came to America seeking aid. We donīt use any of the institutions and organizations and political means available to us and the leaders we have now are frankly incompetant and barely literate on top of being out for their own glory. I wont know if any of this was worth it until more Americans start telling ME about who the Assyrians are.
Finally, my apology to the Assyrian Forum readers, that my purpose is not to show what I did , but to prove to our brother Pancho who is hammering me continuously with no reason
***How can you say with no reason when you admit the children are suffering. Does not American media interview the family members and co workers and teachers of every person who died in those explosions...why do they do it do you suppose...because it is useless...after all they are dead arenīt they...it wont bring them back, will it...why go on and on about it then. You answer that one.
, thinking that he is the only one who carers about the Iraqi children.
***Why do you stoop to absurdity...how can I be the only one.
No doubt that the Iraqi people are suffering due to the most harsh sanction ever imposed in history of the U.N. history, but bear in miond such sanction was not imposed on the religion Christian bases, and everyone knows such brutal sanction on Iraq got some blessing from the rulers of Islam in Meca. Thank you for your pateint.
Ashur
***Now why would the blesings of some rulers from Mecca matter in the least. Are you justifying the sanctions by claiming those lives mean nothing to Mecca so why should we care. Is that a good reason to kill a dog...because its owner doesnīt care if it lives or dies. If it is not the Christian people and leaders of America who impose those sanctions, then why do you say it is the Muslim religion which led those people to bomb the buildings. I am afraid you are just that breed of Christian again...the one who justifies the crimes of those of his religion, even though he calls them hypocrites...hypocrites he hides behind and does not scold for their smearing of the name of the religion he holds dear...while he claims that the acts of madmen and hypocrites of the other side are done in a manner true to their Muslim religion. I caution you...wiser people than you see through this, not just me...and you will find yourself outside the pale of civilized behavior again.