Posted by Sadie from ? (160.129.27.22) on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 at 3:24PM :
In Reply to: Re: U.S. must avoid appearing colonialist in Iraq posted by farid from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Tuesday, July 08, 2003 at 1:20PM :
How do we know who is really behind the attacks on Iraqis doing the bidding of the U.S. government? It could be the CIA. How do we know? The U.S. government has already shown flagrant disregard for the lives, much less the human rights, of Iraqis, in general - e.g. the sanctions, the wars, the lack of appropriate responses to the suffering after the wars. It would not surprise me one bit if the CIA was conducting operations such that Iraqis would look like they are killing their own.
But, anyway, I think the point of this all, & even the way the U.S. government is shaping the Palestinian situation, is to get a nation to turn in on itself - divide them into more factions, so that these people are supressed by their own fruitless endeavours to "win" in clashes, etc. I've mentioned this before, but it seems to be happening so obviously in Iraq - the Pentagon strategists know very well that the worst thing for the people of Iraq is for them to be manipulated, YET AGAIN, & that the occupation, very obvious manipulation, is going to cause unrest. So, they station U.S. troops in Iraq for a long time - as long as it takes to get a strong movement going against local authorities of any kind - hell, maybe the U.S. government will fund something like the School of Americas project for Iraq & the Mid East in general. Anyway, they get these people to fight their own neighbors until so much blood is lost between sides that the sides get so caught up in cycles of vengeance & the U.S. government doesn't need to raise hell to keep everything from progressing. It's the same for Palestine - put all the blame on one Palestinian side or the other Palestinian side or even the other Palestinian sides, turn them on themselves, & then Israel doesn't HAVE to keep killing people to keep Palestinians supressed. They will do it on their own.
Here's a tangent. Now, I'm not saying that unity is the ONLY way - what a trite & somewhat untrue statement - that whole societies have to be in complete agreement within themselves for there to be a positive end result such as the establishment of a democracy. No. This is obvious: what is good is to have debate & to promote the concept of intellectual HARMONY - that people can have many different ideas of how things should be run & live in peace with their neighbors & themselves - alongside unity of action, more-or-less. What I am trying to get at is that intellectual discourse is what is most often targetted by those buffoons who propose "unity" (& I'm NOT referring to the pan-Arab unity post I put up earlier today - I like the ideas in that post) as a way to make things work. Why not a little intellectual dissonance every once in a while? It's good for our collective health! : ) & why not a little anarchy thrown into the developmental processes of nation-building? No one is perfect, & demanding perfection from a society that is disorganized so much that civil institutions are not functioning properly is too much. It's like demanding a sick person to never sneeze & then taking that to mean that the sick person is getting better. So, unity, in a movement, should be thought of as a sort of general unity - no absolute requirements should be made, esp. in situations where a state is barely held together by any law. I'm advocating a more biological perspective here, I suppose: that developmental processes are not always so exact, that nothing is perfect, & that to go into a situation demanding perfection is to have too unrealistic expectations, the more a society is in shambles. However, for the U.S. or for Israel, it's different - these are wealthy nations with strong governmental inner cohesiveness, & therefore, should be held to different standards. & I'm NOT implying that the U.S. or Israel are morally better than Iraq or Palestine.
-- Sadie
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