“Do not kill a woman, a child or an old man. Do not cut a tree”.

[madfloridian]

From a blog called A Glimpse of Iraq:

The subject was the Date Palm Tree and their importance to the country of Iraq.

http://glimpseofiraq.blogspot.com/2005/02/date-palm-trees.html

In the countryside, small bunches of trees always indicate a farmhouse from a distance. Until about 50 years ago, some people used to hang lanterns at night atop trees to guide strangers to their homes. This acted as a ‘sign’ to where they can find a meal and a place to spend the night. (The ‘sacred’ duration of hospitality used to be three days, during which the guest takes the welcome for granted.)

The tree is so important that to harm it is almost unforgivable.
During the early Islamic military campaigns, a well-known guideline by a leader to his troops going off to far away lands were: “Do not kill a woman, a child or an old man. Do not cut a tree”.

The blog post is from 2005, but it refers to an incident from the first Iraq war.

Near the ruins of ancient Babylon, just north of present Hilla, one irrigation canal stretches for about 30 miles from the Euphrates. On one side of the canal, along a road leading to a holy shrine, the whole area looks like one huge date palm orchard. In fact, they are many small plots around 5 acres each. In most of these, a grid of steel wire is constructed using the date palms as pillars. The matrix is used to support grapevines. The vines grow in the shade of the palm trees. A most beautiful sight! During the 1991 uprising, that area was the center of much ‘insurgent’ activity. The province governor at the time decided to remove all those orchards. No contractor would do it, except one greedy character. Although the owners were duly compensated, that contractor, who moved on to become rich and influential, is still followed by that stigma. He is still is usually referred to as ‘the man who killed all those trees’.

Nowadays, most people who go along the road leading to Baghdad Airport feel a deep sense of anger at all those thousands of trees bulldozed by the US army for some security reasons.

We have been tearing down their groves of palms in the name of security.

http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2003-10/10/article11.shtml

DULUIYAH, October 10 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Khudeir Khalil was a simple quiet Iraqi farmer before U.S. forces drove tanks onto his property. Claiming his lush date and orange groves provide camouflage for resistance fighters, the U.S. occupation forces leveled Khalil's plantations.

But he feels skeptical, wondering "what kind of civilized people are those who are destroying my plants".

Khalil is sitting on the side of a dusty road leading to his native Duluiyah, a large village where Sunni Muslim tribes farm a modest living out of the banks of the Tigris river. But the plantation fields are barren resembling the aftermath of a hurricane after U.S. troops last week razed the paddocks of fruit trees. Now a handful of residents are scavenging the trunks and debris to make charcoal.

"We cannot benefit from the fruits anymore, so we will try to earn some money from charcoal," explained Mohammad Saleh amid the stone houses which were once shaded by the plantation.

Pictures are from the article above.

[tularetom]

1. I hope the mofo's happy

These are beautiful trees - we have three of them on our property. Just another reason his legacy will be shit. People will piss on his grave and he will be remembered not as the macho cowboy commander in chief he'd like to be, but as the scared little boy who likes to dress up like a soldier and act tough to hide the fact that his dick ain't as big as his daddy's (and his mama knows it).

[madfloridian]

2. When we did that kind of thing, we crossed boundaries...

that should never be crossed. It is heartbreaking to think what we have done there.

[byronius]

3. We have much to repair. n/t

[madfloridian]

10. I wonder if we ever can .

Repair anything at all. I don't think what we have done will be forgotten. I am glad to see our Democrats already reaching out overseas to the rest of the world. It might help to heal.

[Clark2008]

4. Not sure about Iraq, but I know it's against the law to cut down

a tree in Jordan.

I would imagine that the cultures and laws are similar.

[chaska]

5. It just goes to show ya, we don't understand these people and can't...

make their lives better for that reason. Democracy? Who said they wanted democracy? Their culture has evolved to where it is now, and IT WORKS - for them. They don't want our ways.

But of course, this war was never really about that anyway. Lip service, lip service, lip service.

[madfloridian]

6. This post from that blog breaks my heart...

Though I don't really understand all the implications of it. I suppose it was not meant for us to understand it all.

http://glimpseofiraq.blogspot.com/2006_07_01_glimpseofiraq_archive.html

"Goodbye My Boy

This summer, the trumpeted security plan of the new government was put in action.

Others it seemed had their own ‘insecurity’ plan. It was far more effective than the government’s. Some say that elements of the government and their allies were active participants in that other plan. The result was a chaotic, murderous situation that no news agency has the capability or the resources to convey to others living outside this hell-hole. On an average day nowadays, I alone learn about six murders that are not reported anywhere on any media."

"Goodbye my boy.

May the Goddesses of Safety, Happiness and Good Fortune blow gently in your sails.

I hope you forget all your agony and your lost childhood, leave the pain behind, make new dreams and forge ahead in a world of hope and achievement."

:cry:

I see this blog has been made into a book by the same name.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1411695186?tag=glimpseofiraq-20&camp=15041&creative=373501&link_code=as3

[madfloridian]

7. The British once called Iraq "The Mess Pot".....

http://glimpseofiraq.blogspot.com/2005/12/mess-pot.html

"The Greeks were here too. Iraq was known to the Greeks as Mesopotamia: the land between the two rivers. This is such an apt name; much of Iraq's long history is influenced in one way or another by those two rivers: Tigris and Euphrates. Alexander the Great himself also ‘liberated’ Iraq. He actually died here (reportedly from an overdose of the local liquor "Araq" – a powerful drink made from palm dates and never drunk straight).

When the British ‘liberated’ Iraq during the First World War, the British boys began calling Iraq jokingly “The Mess Pot”.

A mess pot it is.

Now that the Americans have also ‘liberated’ Iraq", it is their turn to learn what a mess pot they have got themselves into! Somehow, they even managed to add a bit of an extra mess to it themselves!"

The Iraqi bloggers keep such a good manner about them, when they must be so pained inside. Yes, we are in a mess, indeed.

[GreenZoneLT]

8. Good ol' Halliburton is doing its part

Whatever contractor the U.S. embassy hired to do their groundskeeping failed to water the trees sufficiently at the Republican Palace (the current embassy until the Gigantor Embassy is finished). So all the lime trees and several cedars have died; the enormous banyan tree next to the pool lost half its limbs, and even some of the eucalyptus trees have croaked (some of that might be kerosene poisoning from the helicopters, since the mortality is particularly high over by the landing field). The date palms seem to be OK for now, but they may be able to subsist on the few inches of rain Baghdad gets. The acacia trees, which are basically weeds, are the only other thing that's thriving (and are being allowed to sprout and grow in random, unplanned spots). As good a metaphor for KBR's nation-building competence as you'll find here.

[madfloridian]

9. We have shown such contempt for right and wrong....

We have shown such disregard for human life, such disrespect for the society of another country.

Your post is a moving one. You sound like you've been there and that you care.

My hubby and I are older than most here at DU, I think, and we are just unable to cope with what we have done. Our anger gets greater as time goes on.

[madfloridian]

11. From Dahr Jamail's weblog..... sadly, this is a common thing for us to do.

http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000168.php#more

"Also last winter I also reported on home demolitions in Samarra by the military. The consistent pattern then was that anytime an attack occurred against occupation forces, nearby homes/buildings/fields were then raided or destroyed by the military, along with complimentary electricity cuts for the villages and/or cities.

That pattern appears to remain the same, as I found today in another visit to the al-Dora region of Baghdad. Seven weeks ago, after having suffered many attacks by the Iraqi resistance in the area, the military began plowing date palm orchards, blasted a gas station with a tank, cut the electricity which is still down, and blocking roads in the rural farming area.

As we drove deep into the rural farming area along a thin, winding road which parallels the Tigris River, a wolf trots across the road. Rounding a bend I saw a large swath of date palms which had been bulldozed to the ground. Large piles of them had been pushed together, doused with fuel, and burned.

“The Americans were attacked from this field, then they returned and started plowing down all the trees,” explains Kareem, a local mechanic, “None of us knows any fighters and we all know they are coming here from other areas to attack the Americans, but we are the people who suffer from this.”

Across the way are other piles of scorched date palms."

[madfloridian]

12. Riverbend covered another incident...troops playing loud jazz.

while bulldozing the trees and orchards.

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#106599843493603927

"One of the most famous streets in Baghdad is ‘shari3 il mattar’ or ‘The Airport Street’. It is actually two streets- one leading to Baghdad Airport and the other leading from it, into Baghdad. The streets are very simple and plain. Their magnificence lay in the palm trees growing on either side, and in the isle separating them. Entering Baghdad from the airport, and seeing the palm trees enclosing you from both sides, is a reminder that you have entered the country of 30 million palms.

Soon after the occupation, many of the palms on these streets were hacked down by troops for ‘security reasons’. We watched, horrified, as they were chopped down and dragged away to be laid side by side in mass graves overflowing with brown and wilting green. Although these trees were beautiful, no one considered them their livelihood. Unlike the trees Patrick Cockburn describes in Dhuluaya.

Several orchards in Dhuluaya are being cut down… except it’s not only Dhuluaya… it’s also Ba’aquba, the outskirts of Baghdad and several other areas. The trees are bulldozed and trampled beneath heavy machinery. We see the residents and keepers of these orchards begging the troops to spare the trees, holding up crushed branches, leaves and fruit- not yet ripe- from the ground littered with a green massacre. The faces of the farmers are crushed and amazed at the atrocity. I remember one wrinkled face holding up 4 oranges from the ground, still green (our citrus fruit ripens in the winter) and screaming at the camera- “Is this freedom? Is this democracy?!” And his son, who was about 10, stood there with tears of rage streaming down his cheeks and quietly said, “We want 5 troops dead for each tree they cut down… five troops.” A “terrorist”, perhaps? Or a terrorized child who had to watch his family’s future hacked down in the name of democracy and freedom?

Patrick Cockburn says that Dhuluaya is a Sunni area- which is true. Sunnis dominate Dhuluaya. What he doesn’t mention is that the Khazraji tribe, whose orchards were assaulted, are a prominent Shi’a tribe in Iraq.

For those not interested in reading the article, the first line summarizes it perfectly, “US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.”"

I guess things like this affect older people like me more than it does others here. It is the useless destruction that kills the souls. Some of those soldiers will pay for this someday within themselves.

The ruthless, heartless destruction of a nation is never going to be far from our collective consciences. It was done in our name.