Would you ever trust and befriend anyone who did an "Abu Ghraib" to your fellow citizens?

[NNN0LHI]

As for me the people who did that to my friends and family here in America could be out on my corner handing out hundred dollar bills and free turkeys and I still would hate their guts with all my might.

And that is not even taking into consideration Shock and Awe.

How about you?

Don

[seemslikeadream]

1. All Iraqis know what AMERICANS did at Abu Ghraib

just imagine how you would feel if it had been done to your neighbor

[blm]

2. Should we trust and defend those leaders closest to the Bushes and their policies

and who have protected their secrecy and privilege over the rights of American citizens and humanity?

I agree that we SHOULD NOT trust anyone who defends torture and add that we SHOULD NOT trust anyone who defends and protects the Bushes.

[seemslikeadream]

3. How many members of Congress have seen the photos

not made public yet?

[MADem]

4. It IS a different culture over there. Make no mistake. It still has tribal vestiges.

As we know, and as BushCo learned to their dismay, there were, and still are, a SHITLOAD of people who are loyal to the al-Tikriti way of life--Saddam, the strongman, was a "good guy" to them, and a martyr now. And we know full well his goons pulled some pretty horrific shit.

The citizens who are making good money as a result of this occupation, whose lives will get WORSE when it ends, because they won't have jobs, or they'll be excoriated, or what have you, see the employment of Strongman Measures as par for the course, normal, to be expected by anyone wanting to maintain power. They'll take the turkey, kiss the hand of the fellah who gave them the hundred dollar bill, mince out of the room backwards, and then tell all their friends how wonderful, generous and merciful the 'authorities' are to them.

We have people over here who still have that attitude--"Well, if he hadn't done anything WRONG, he wouldn't have been arrested" or "The authorities MUST know what they're doing, they must have some good reason that we don't know about for putting that guy in jail," or "I don't care if they listen in on my phone calls/read my mail/what have you, I've done nothing wrong..." I've seen that kind of stuff written here every once in a blue moon.

It's way too easy to give over the reins to a strongman--easier than thinking, certainly. And it is CUSTOM over there--not just in Iraq but in other nations in that region.

It's not the same 'rule of law' that Americans are taught in school. It just isn't. Strength=Respect. Fear=Obedience. It's a totally different paradigm.

[NNN0LHI]

5. So if we are strong enough and scare the Iraqis enough they will respect us and become obedient?

I don't think so.

Don

[MADem]

6. I didn't say that, now, did I?

You ASSumed that is what I meant, though, because it suited your preconceptions and desire to snark.

I used to live there. I'm not talking from theory, here.

But hey, whatever. Enjoy.

[NNN0LHI]

7. Well what did you mean?

My question was will the Iraqis ever trust us after what we have done to them?

Are you saying that they will?

Don

[Name removed]

9. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MADem]

10. I'm not saying either. I am describing a mindset that makes Strongmen rulers

not only possible, but accepted, and in some quarters welcomed and desired, in that region.

Look at Egypt. Only a naive person would actually think that Muhamad Hosni Mubarak is a "democratically elected" leader. He consolidated and strengthened the power his old partying partner at the Air Force Academy, Anwar Sadat, had garnered. That's why he's still in charge. Look at Syria, Kuwait, Oman, the House of Saud--the way power is maintained in that region is through brute strength, fear, intimidation, and a network within the culture that ENFORCES discipline and shields the leader. Move over to the Indo-European side of things--Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan--it's part and parcel of the culture. Strongmen are respected. The practice does not have the same negative connotation that Americans ascribe to it.

Why you choose to extrapolate from that that I support a US adoption of that behavior is a bit simplistic.

My 'point,' if you can follow it, is that it is not productive, and culturally insular, to look at the culture from an American perspective of "trust." What I am saying is that "trust" in a leader has everything to do with whether or not you are on that leader's team.

The Sunnis and particularly the people from the al-Tikriti region "trusted" Saddam with their lives. He could torture Shi'as till the cows came home, and they'd continue to trust and revere him.

Those who lived in the old Saddam City certainly didn't.

It's simplistic and unproductive to look at the people who live within the borders of Iraq as a monolithic glob who will "trust" or "not trust." There are many factions there, and they all have interests of their own.

They aren't a borg, if you will. Trust me on that score.

[NNN0LHI]

12. I see the problem here

You are comparing an indigenous leader of a country who for better or worse was the accepted leader of that country to a foreign occupying force who claims to have invaded through ignorance but refuses to leave.

I don't like freepers very much but let the army from some other country come and invade and occupy us and begin torturing and sexually humiliating them for the fun of it and the freepers will become my allies real fast.

See what I mean?

Don

[MADem]

13. No, because to the Shi'a in Basra, the al-Tikritis are the "Army from some other tribe"

if not from a country. But what is "country" anyway? It's not so set in concrete over there, especially in that nation, as you might think.

You're making the mistake of seeing Iraq as a firmly nationalized entity. It is about as firmly nationalized as Yugoslavia was...and we saw how well THAT worked out after Josip Broz Tito kicked the bucket, didn't we?

It's family first, then tribe, then faith, then region, and lastly, running well to the rear, those lines around the border of a mass of land a bunch of fat, white western males drew, and termed "Iraq"--and handed of to a Sharif to run, with the title "King."

So long as he understood, of course, who REALLY was in charge, he could do as he liked....

See what I mean? The people over there do.

[NNN0LHI]

14. How many Shiite and Sunni Iraqis died fighting shoulder to shoulder during the Iraq/Iran war?

Any ideas?

Don

[MADem]

15. You made my case...they died, not willingly, mind you, under a STRONGMAN leader.

Only a strongman, like a Saddam, like a Tito, like a Mubarak, can hold a diverse nation like that together, raise a conscription army, and run it from the top-down with ruthless discipline.

Shoulder to shoulder? That's a laugh. What, you're thinking those poor kids were volunteers? And did you realize there was a real defection problem as the war ground on, particularly with the shi'a conscripts on the Iraqi side? Talk about "One, Two, Three, what are we fighting for!" Only two people wanted that war--Saddam and the Ayatullah. And they had the clout as absolute rulers to make it happen, populations be damned.

Hell, Iran and Iraq did a "prisoner swap" from that war just three or so years ago--prisoner swap, my ass. We're talking defectors--plenty of them asked for and received asylum in Iran. It's an interesting legacy, that war--the humint assets Iran harvested during that bloodbath certainly have helped prosecute their hegemonic efforts in the region to this very day.

And the answer to your question is two hundred thousand to a quarter mil, give or take forty or fifty thousand. Some figures go minimal, others to the max. Total casualties, to include the maimed, blinded and so forth, exceed a million--on both sides.

And of course, that's only the number of dead from the LATEST war. If you go back through all the wars between the Mesopotamian region and greater Persia down through the centuries, the numbers are surely in the millions.

[NNN0LHI]

16. No you made my case

They fought and died under the leadership of an indigenous leader. Sounds pretty nationalistic to me.

Don

[MADem]

17. No, they did not. An al-Tikriti leader forced Kurds, marsh Arabs, indo-European

shi'ites from southeastern Iraq, Turkomen AND sunni Arabs--all with their own tribal, ethnic, religious and regional loyalties-- to fight under a single flag. If they could have chosen, they wouldn't have gone. The shi'a, especially, had no desire to fight their brothers who served under the flag of THEIR religious leader, the Ayatullah.

By that post of yours, though, I now realize that you don't have a good understanding of the ethnic makeup of the entity that is today known as Iraq. You also don't understand the defintion of some words. The "indiginous" population is NOT homogenous. They all live in the same region, but they don't share the same ethnicity, links, faiths, motivations and affiliations. Being located in the same general area does not automatically translate to 'fervent nationalism'--again, ask Tito. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?indigenous

You're operating from a serious paucity of information and understanding of the region, I'm afraid.

[dsc]

8. I think we would have to judge it on a case by case basis

I look at my own life both as someone who took a lot of degrading crap in high school (not abu ghraib but certainly cruel and dehumanizing) and who also isn't proud of everything he has done, I have a strong belief in redemption. Not get out of jail free cards but honest redemption. Redemption which follows a since making of amends. I have no idea to what extent, if any, those involved in Abu Ghraib have done any such thing. But I can't take a measure of redemption for myself without extending it to others.

[Cleita]

11. I don't hate people for what their country has done in their name.

I was taught to hate Russians but I met a few in South America during the cold war. It was then that realized that they were as much a victim of the Soviet system as anyone else who was tortured by them. I hope those who have been our victims will see it this way.

This is why we need to disapprove of what our present government is doing loud and clear out in the foreign press and hopefully our press. We can't approve of this and we can't back any American who does. I am not talking about military here because they are stuck under orders but our politicians and media who talk in code words calling torture extradordinary interrogation methods or whatever it is they call it. I can't remember off hand.