The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Assyrians vs Chaldeans

Assyrians vs Chaldeans
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Wednesday, February 18 2009, 21:28:22 (CET)
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Assyrians vs Chaldeans

From my limited experience there’s quite a difference between the two. I haven’t made a study of it but it seems evident that Chaldeans have never held the “you owe me a country” attitude which afflicts Assyrians. Chaldeans have been content to be Christian Iraqis and to deal with and mingle with Muslims openly and comfortably. Perhaps as a consequence they have become successful in Iraq running restaurants and hotels and other businesses and entering public service. Whereas our Assyrians seem to have kept Islamic culture at arms length, either closeting themselves in claustrophobic villages or warily walking around Muslims as if they were diseased...which would not be conducive of economic success or much of anything else except rabid xenophobia and bigotry.

It could also be that Chaldeans were invented much earlier than Assyrians, in the 16th rather than the 19th century, well before the First World War gave an impetus to the more recent Assyrians to try for a country of their own...now that Wilson was promoting national destiny all over the globe. Having just arrived at an Assyrian identity and finding themselves, in a few short years, run out of their homelands to congregate in a welcoming Iraq, the Assyrians felt they had a valid claim to a nation, or at least a stab at one...which they wouldn’t have merely as a Christian sect...and the temptation was just too much for them to resist. Chaldeans on the other hand, had been used to being Chaldeans for a couple of hundred years already and never made the claim, or saw the need, for a country of their own. Also, Chaldeans were native to Iraq and already settled there for centuries before the First World War and Wilsonism rattled every minority’s cage...whereas the Assyrian refugees, recently flooded into Iraq, with visions of Assyria and “their rights” dancing in their heads, refused to even consider becoming Iraqis...until forced to through lack of any other option....and kept their resentment over “broken promises” and their “indigenous rights” festering in their increasingly weaker heads.

As a result Chaldeans have never committed acts of sedition or treason and have been left in peace by the government of Iraq. As a consequence of their more reasonable attitudes and willingness to enter and thrive and succeed in Muslim communities, the Chaldeans came to the West already well versed and experienced in how to get ahead, how to engage and how to interact with the powers that be. For this reason there is a world of difference between what Chaldeans have achieved, as a group, and what Assyrians have managed. Whereas Assyrians are pleased to read, outloud, letters of refusal to attend their ceremonies and seem to think that to be told “no” by someone in power is still a mark of distinction...Chaldeans have made sure to make it so that politicians and judges very much WANT to attend whenever invited...Chaldeans are far more worldly-wise in the ways in which things get done than are Assyrians...probably because it is for the first time, among Christian nations, that an Assyrian ventures to open even a lemonade stand...and becomes overly proud of himself when he earns his first dollar and from there plans a franchise.

Both communities have their fair share of assholes...but Chaldeans have far more successful assholes...and that counts for a lot.

I think the difference is primarily that Chaldeans never thought they deserved, or should have, or even wanted a Chaldea. Even though, as Christians, they could make all the same outlandish claims to persecution as the Assyrians fortify themselves with. This wailing and weeping and running after Christian nations to give them an Assyria has unhinged these people...it has kept them sitting on their haunches waiting to be favored by the rich and powerful instead of developing their own inner resources. At the very worst it has made the accumulation of martyrs, who are after all failures, their one “task”. Which is rather morbid and not something that helps develop character. On top of that their peculiar definition of what makes a martyr, of who qualifies, unhinges them even more and robs them of any shred of integrity...for the only certifiable, the only “useful” martyr is the one killed by Muslims...the rest can go hang themselves all over again for having wasted a golden “opportunity”...by getting killed by Christians. THAT is the “tragedy” of these non-martyrs; that they serve no purpose in Assyria. In fact their deaths are treated with resentment, even hostility, for it places the martyr-business in a bad light....which not, surprisingly, makes it clear as can be.



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