Posted by pancho from pool0675.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.212.165) on Wednesday, December 11, 2002 at 12:19PM :
I've always heard the Levies spoken of with great pride. That Assyrians showed their "real stuff" when they donned uniforms provided by the Brits and took weapons and instructions from them...and allowed themselves to be used against the native Iraqi population that had every good reason to hate the Brits.
Not too surprisingly Assyrians became suspect after that...and the Brits went home....leaving us there.
We were chased out of Turkey and Iran in 1915 and '17 and '18. Turkey was facing dismemberment and the European Christians were making no secrets of their longing for the same oil we're still killing them for over there. Iran was hosting the Czar's Christian armies and that couldn't have been kindly received my the Muslims either. It was no secret that we enjoyed Christian more than Muslim company...we'd had it drummed into us that Islam was a dirty religion and ours far more clean and better in every way.
Where European Christians were taught to hate Jews...we were taught to hate Muslims...and the feelings were mutual...what would you expect?
So some of us ran to Russia, which was Christian...only to be chased out later...or worse. Some came to America eventually...and a whole bunch went to Iraq...another Muslim country, only this one welcomed us. The King then, Feisal, Lawrence's ally from the Arabian campaign...told the Assyrians they were welcome...that we were brothers and should feel at home...work together for the advancement of the country etc. You know how that must have rankled in the breast of every ass driving Assrin back then.
Remember too that the Brits had failed us during Agha Petrous' battles with the Turks and again at Versailles. It didn't help us any that true to form, we were dickering among each other even then...stabbing each other in the back and what not. The spectre of a religious war between Christians was the last thing the Brits wanted to see...better allow the Muslims to rule...far more civilized. Which is curious because that's just what the original Muslims encountered when they entered Iraq back during the Muslim Conquest...when they had to step between the most holy Christians who were gouging each other'e eyes out and disrupting communities with their interminable nonsense about whether Christ parted his hair down the middle or on the side..and if he came FROM the body or THROUGH the body or AROUND the body of God...things which give any sane person the fan todds but required buckets of blood to resolve back then...so "important" was it all.
So what do we do? Naturally we decide to throw our lot in with the Brits...who must have been startled...against the people who just took us in...we dress up in their uniforms...take up their rifles and use their bullets to kill the people who took us in and gave us a home.
And what do you think we're going to do this time? And just where do you think this will land us...this time?
If you answered..."with our own Christian enclave of a country in the Mideast"...congratulations...you are a boney fide Assrin.
-- pancho
-- signature .