Jubilee Riverbend
Riverbend in her Blog showed the world that Iraqis are not easy to break.
Via Kled Bach..via Truth about Iraq………Lettre Ulysses Award 2005
Riverbend (Iraq): Baghdad Burning. Girl Blog from Iraq, The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, New York, 2005 & Marion Boyars Publishers, London, 2005. Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman, writes an Internet diary, using a pseudonym. Her commanding gift for observation, her intelligence and her extraordinary language skills make her account of the life of a normal Iraqi family, which has also been published in book form as Baghdad Burning, one of the most uniquely critical documents of life in this abused country under the conditions of the war and the US military occupation.
Riverbend:
أذا تقرين هذا Ù?تهانينا ومبروك
20 Comments, Comment or Ping
CMAR II
Her commanding gift for observation, her intelligence and her extraordinary language skills…
…Not to mention her rejection of anything since the fall of Uncle Saddam.
Oct 18th, 2005
Jon
CMAR’s comment makes this article all the more interesting…
link is here
Ever since its beginnings, long ago, as a gleam in the eye of Bush administration officials and neoconservative thinkers, the war has forced on all of us F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous test of a first-rate intelligence: “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
Before the invasion, there was the possibility of a world without Saddam Hussein and of an Iraq that no longer threatened endless violence in its volatile region — which was attractive. There was also the certainty of death and destruction in a new war, and the many reasons to doubt that this administration was up to the job — which was frightening.
I came down on the pro-war side, by a whisker. I understood the risks and costs; I didn’t understand how large they would be — how much larger than necessary because of the arrogance and incompetence of U.S. leaders.
Two-and-a-half heartbreaking years later, where does the balance of the evidence lie? It’s still possible that the fondest hopes of the war’s architects will be realized in a generation or two — that regime change in Iraq will advance democracy and reduce extremism across the Middle East.
But policymakers are accountable within the parameters of their own watch. For now, and into the foreseeable future, U.S. interests have been badly damaged by the fighting in Iraq. The war has been a disaster for our military, which has suffered grievous death and injury, lost a measure of its honor at Abu Ghraib and been overextended to the point where withdrawal might become necessary simply for lack of available troops.
The direct costs to the national treasure are easy to measure; the fraying of alliances, the loss of U.S. power and prestige, the draining of attention and resources from other crises, especially the struggle against the twin dangers of worldwide jihad and nuclear proliferation, are harder to quantify but no less real. The overthrow of the Baathist regime has produced anarchy, a violent insurgency that will continue for years and, more recently, the specter of large-scale civil war. Meanwhile, the weapons that were the administration’s casus belli turn out to have been phantoms.
Was it worth it, then? If it couldn’t be done right, should it have been done at all? For Americans today, the answer has to be no. For Iraqis, and for the future of this crucial region, with which our own future is inextricably linked, it’s difficult to know definitively.
But the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that the appropriate response to the events of the last 2 1/2 years is neither self-justification nor self-reproach but simple grief for the hopes and sacrifices of Iraqis and Americans alike. The war is not an argument to be won or lost; it’s a tragedy.
Oct 19th, 2005
Jon
link is here
*(The first civilian leader of the U.S. occupation, Jay) Garner was talking about putting in ninety days in Iraq and then heading home. … At dinner in the Hilton restaurant (in Baghdad in April 2003) … Garner laid out his timetable: reconstruct utilities, stand up ministries, appoint an interim government, write and ratify a constitution, hold elections. By August, Iraq would have a sovereign, functioning government in place. There was a stunned silence. Someone at the table said, “Which August?”*
-George Packer, “The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq”
This past weekend, Iraqi voters stood up a constitution. Before the vote, President Bush’s national security adviser, Steve Hadley, said that, “Whatever Iraqis decide, this is progress.” Perhaps.
The administration’s theory, which cannot be dismissed as foolish just because it is dogmatically cheerful, or because history contains ominous counterexamples, is that there could not have been a bad outcome from last weekend’s vote: The mere fact of voting enmeshes Iraqis in the democratic process and its civilities.
Still, the Bush administration’s increasingly skillful engagement with Iraq’s political evolution proves how much it has come to terms with the fact that, as The New Yorker’s George Packer writes, “victory in Iraq is a process, not an event.” The tardy recognition of that fact was costly.
So the question today, which will be answered in coming years, is whether Iraq’s new constitution “stands up” a nation, or presages the partitioning of it, perhaps by the serrated blade of civil war.
Oct 19th, 2005
Jon
link is here
Bin Laden, of course, has not been caught. Nor has Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, who harbored bin Laden as he plotted the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Nor has Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s top lieutenant. Nor has the anthrax terrorist who paralyzed Washington in 2001. Nor has Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for beheadings in Iraq.
Oct 19th, 2005
Jon
link is here
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s CIA-leak inquiry is focusing attention on what long has been a tactic of U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration: slash-and-burn assaults on its critics, particularly those opposed to the president’s Iraq war policies.
If top officials are indicted, it could seriously erode the administration’s credibility and prove yet another embarrassment to Bush on the larger issue of how he and his national security team marshaled information — much of it later shown to be inaccurate — to support their case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
“This is an administration that was trying to play hardball at every level,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy scholar at the Brookings Institution. “And that’s what they were doing with Wilson. And he of course was playing hardball, too. It was an ugly back and forth.”
Plame was named by columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, as a CIA operative on weapons of mass destruction. Novak wrote that “two senior administration officials” had told him that Plame had suggested her husband, a former ambassador, be sent to Niger in 2002 to check out reports that Saddam Hussein was shopping for uranium.
The reports had no basis in fact, something Wilson reported back to a Bush administration that ignored his conclusions, Wilson later wrote.
While Bush vowed as recently as July to fire anyone on his staff found to have committed a crime in the CIA-leak matter, he has since completely clammed up.
Oct 19th, 2005
Jon
link is here
By Dan Plesch
The US army and marines are heavily committed in Iraq, but soldiers could be found if the Bush administration were intent on invasion. Donald Rumsfeld has been reorganising the army to increase front-line forces by a third. More importantly, naval and air force firepower has barely been used in Iraq. Just 120 B52 and stealth bombers could target 5,000 points in Iran with satellite-guided bombs in just one mission. It is for this reason that John Pike of globalsecurity.org thinks that a US attack could come with no warning at all.
link is here
By Philip Giraldi
When the final page is written on America’s catastrophic imperial venture, one word will dominate the explanation of U.S. failure - corruption.
link is here
by Doug Soderstrom
In Hitler’s Germany there was a determined effort to brainwash the people so they might support Mein Fuhrer’s efforts to conquer the world. However, what if one were to suggest that much the same is occurring in the United States of America, that there has been a determined effort through the socializing influence of our schools, the government, the mass media, the churches we attend, even that of our own parents, to pressure us into believing (just as Hitler) that our country has received the blessing of God.
Oct 19th, 2005
Halliburton Oil
link is here
link is here
link is here
BTW..BBC Saddam live on the net BBC, CNN etc. think he’s guilty Ladybird?
link is here
Oct 19th, 2005
Bruno
As guilty as GWB, that’s for sure. Hang em both.
Oct 19th, 2005
Nadia
Its lovely news about Riverbend! Congratulations once again if you read my comment here!
*************
In one of the articles that Jon submitted its written “It’s still possible that the fondest hopes of the war’s architects will be realized in a generation or two—that regime change in Iraq will advance democracy and reduce extremism across the Middle East.”
link is here
I know a woman who in early childhood was physically abused by her father. A relative once took her side and she started trusting him to protect her from her father and he sort of did. However, he then wanted something in return and she ended up sexually abused by him, still a child. She is now my friend and is a great person, she has done well with her life after many, too many years in therapy and other professional help to cope with what she have been thru.
When I hear or read, people say things like “just wait a couple of years and Iraq will be so good because of Bush actions in Iraq,� it reminds me of my friend. Her father abused her; Saddam’s government abused Iraqis. Another adult said he can protect her from her father, Bush government say their actions are to help Iraqis. That person then sexually abused her many times while insisting he is only protecting her; Iraqis are now abused, tortured and killed by occupation troops who they and their leaders insist they are only there to help.
I am sure if that relative talked to her and said “you know what, the fact that you are doing so well today is thanks to me; for getting you daddy away from you so I saved you from your father and gave you a chance to a new better life� what do you think her reply would be?
I mean all criminals in the world could start using that argument that “it’s thanks to my actions�, “judge if it wasn’t for me killing your dad when you were a child you wouldn’t be sitting here in this courtroom today�???
If I were in her place, I would be absolutely furies and hurt that anyone and especially that relative can say such a thing. That is how I feel when someone tells me or I read “just wait a couple of years and Iraq will be so good because of Bush actions in Iraq”. My friend is living a healthy life today because of all the things SHE HAS DONE AND DO HERSELF, to make it that way.
IRAQ WILL ONE DAY BE FREE, PEACEFUL AND PROSPEROUS BECAUSE WE IRAQIS HAVE DONE IT THAT WAY, BY TAKING BACK CONTROL OVER OUR OWN LIFE AND COUNTRY WE CAN ALSO MAKE IT!
Oct 19th, 2005
Nadia
After writing the above it accrued to me that since this invasion I am often told by pro-war people when condemning occupation troops and their leader’s action in Iraq “aha so you want us to put Saddam back is that it? Is that what you are saying you want Saddam back?�
Imagine if my friend that I told of here; if she had found the strength and the courage to tell someone about what her relative was doing and they told her “so you want your abusive father back is that it?� as the only solutions?
Or that she told her relative to stop and he would say “aha so you are saying you want your abusive father back is that it?� Because that is exactly what these people are saying to us Iraqis.
Isn’t it amazing that they do not understand that I see Saddam’s actions and the U.S actions in Iraq simular to each other, and I belive Iraqis can make Iraq a better place without them both.
Oct 19th, 2005
LadyBird
Nadia I have the same problem with such people.
This is what Bush created
and this is the problem with most Americans also they see the world as
nothing in between
Oct 19th, 2005
Nadia
So true LadyBird, so true.
Oct 19th, 2005
CMAR II
Nadia-
Your analogy relies on a ridiculous presumption, that unlike girl being abused by her father, Iraq had another option to be free of Saddam.
LB-
George Orwell writing to a pascifist protesting Britain’s war on Germany:
Oct 19th, 2005
Nadia
CMAR II
Of course; why should I be surprised that you see it as ridiculous? That is however, YOUR view and you are free to have it.
Oct 19th, 2005
Jon
CMAR- “George Orwell writing to a pascifist protesting Britain’s war on Germany”
Your problem is that you don’t realize that the US is the invading fascist force, not Iraq. Those Republicans must have put your head on backwards.
Oct 20th, 2005
Jon
“How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?”
-Adin Ballou
===
“There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used. Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.”
-Gil Bailie
Oct 22nd, 2005
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.
Dear Staff:
Please consider my article for publication.
If you take a look at it, I believe that you will find it
rather interesting as well as thought provoking for its
message to Americans, but especially for our youth
who may well, in the next year, have to make a sobering
decision in regards to going (or not going) to war to fight
for their country (United States of America).
In the essay, I pull no punches and speak out as honestly
as I know how.
Thank you for your fine consideration.
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.
Psychologist
Advice From An Old Man
Due to a craze of events around the world, the United States may find it necessary to reinstate the draft; that is, the U.S. government might be forced into telling our nation’s youth that they have no choice but to honor the call of Uncle Sam, don a military uniform, and go to war.
The precipitating factor for such an emergency will likely be that of a joint venture between Israel and the United States, a coordinated military attack upon Iran sometime around late spring or early summer of 2006. Iran has apparently decided to do whatever it must in order to develop its nuclear facilities. On the other hand, Israel and the United States have made it clear that they will not allow Iran to do such a thing. Short of a miracle there seems to be no way out, no way to avoid such a clash.
Now, if such a war does become a reality, I suppose that our government could decide to forgo a ground war, and simply bomb the hell out of Iran. However, although such a strategy would likely “fill the bill� in the primary stages of the war, it would not be long before ground troops would be needed.
Believe me, there is no way Iran will simply roll over and play dead. As the dominant Shiite player in the Middle East, they will fight to the bitter end to protect their rights as a sovereign nation. If attacked, they can be counted on to retaliate by launching missiles upon Israel, encouraging the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq to battle coalition forces, coordinate an Iranian-Syrian “squeeze attack� upon U.S. ground forces stationed in Iraq, blockade the Strait of Hormuz impeding the flow of oil around the world, as well as activating a worldwide dormancy of “sleeper cells� set up for the purpose of attacking American interests at home and abroad.
Even worse, such an attack would provide ample evidence to the rest of the world that the United States has in fact become what it had suspected……. a lawless, viciously inspired, bully of a nation, a terrorist with little regard for the rights of other nations around the world. Indeed, a rather sad state of affairs for a nation whose president so vociferously boasts of its regard for freedom and democracy for everyone on the planet.
However, if such a scenario plays out, the government will find that it does not have enough soldiers to fight such a war. This will be the case because: those who have already fought in Iraq are exhausted, “used up,� and in no position to continue on; reenlistment rates have hit an all time low; the military has been unable to meet its recruiting requirements due to young people’s unwillingness to fight in an increasingly unpopular war; and most of America’s coalition partners have decided to either decrease the number of troops allowed to serve in Iraq, or they have recalled them, telling them to get out and to come back home.
The only plausible alternative, in order to field an adequate number of soldiers to fight an expanded war in the Middle East, would be that of a draft, a forced military conscription of our nation’s youth. However, such would be a bitter pill for politicians to swallow. It would no doubt place our political leaders into a very difficult position…… that of being unable to follow through on a preemptive war of their own making (kind of like starting a fight they are not able to finish), or, on the other hand, that of asking parents to send their kids into an increasingly unpopular war. The 1960’s protest of the Viet Nam War showed that nothing will destroy a government faster than that of forcing young people to fight a war the people back home do not support. However, if such a thing occurs once again, it will make the Viet Nam era’s protests look like mere child’s play. In the 1960’s it was just the hippies, the liberals, and college-age folks who were against the war. However, this time it will be mainstream America, the parents of our own children, who will be in the streets protesting; Cindy Sheehan multiplied by as many parents as it takes to bring down a government utterly dominated by a cohort of Bush-Cheney crazies, fundamentalist sympathizers, and corporate-stained politicians.
But what about the kids? What advice might one give to young people who may well be forced to make such a horrid decision; one of fighting in a war they do not believe, five years in prison, or perhaps even compelled to leave the country of their birth…… the kind of burden no self-respecting country would place upon its children!
As the parent of a thirty-one year old son, a teacher who has spent the past forty years teaching college age folks how utterly important it is that they develop the capacity to think for themselves, that they have the courage to challenge the status quo, I pray that the president of this country (one who will likely end up being impeached) is not insane enough to lead our country into another war, one that just might represent the beginning stages of another world war, a conflagration that could spell the end of civilization as we now know it. But if our president (occasionally referred to as “the village idiot�) chooses to do such a thing, my advice to the young people of this country is the same I have given my son.
The lesson of Nuremberg was quite clear. Man is sacred. He is more than a mere citizen, more than the holder of a simple deed on “a petty piece of property.� He is a human being, a shareholder in a much greater assemblage of men. He is a member of the human race. As such we must not allow ourselves to be bound up by the laws of our own land. The only law large enough to contain the heart of man is that which serves the best interests of mankind. Each of us will be held accountable for upholding the laws of justice, peace, and love. There are no exceptions. Every human being on this planet will be held responsible for his own actions. No one, regardless of his country of origin (even if he happens to be a citizen of the United States of America), will be allowed to escape judgment simply because he inadvertently assumed that he had no choice but to follow “his orders,� the commands given to him by “his superiors,� the government. The Nazis learned this the hard way. The people of Germany should have known better than to follow in the footsteps of a mad man. Surely we, as a people, have learned from the horrors of an earlier age. Surely we will not allow the president of our country, George Walker Bush, to do the same. Surely we understand that the only sure response to evil is to say no!
As men and women of conscience, we need to realize that we have no choice but to do what we honestly believe to be the right thing to do. Anything less than this will destroy the fabric of a nation, desecrate the human spirit, and lead to perdition. So, if called upon, that is, if you, as a young adult, are conscripted into military service, ask yourself this question: would it be better for me to appease my country by choosing to kill others in the name of a coin-engraved, cookie-cutter, American-sized God, or might it be more appropriate, more noble even, to choose to be an advocate for life by having the courage to say yes to humanity and no to the draft, by having the guts to make a determined stand against the God awful madness of war?
Someday when you become an old man (or an old woman) like myself, you will have the opportunity to look back upon your life. And when you do, you will wonder about the things you did, the way you chose to live your life. It is then you will be assessed the task of figuring out if you in fact lived a good and decent life. So, when that moment arrives, that time when you must decide if you will go to war for your country, do the right thing, do that which will enable you to stand tall as a man of integrity, honesty and good will, one who, no doubt, chose life over death, one who will one day be proud of who he had chosen to become as a human being, an old, old man who will not be afraid to look at himself in the mirror and say “Yes Lord, take me, for I have lived my life, and I am not afraid to die.�
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.
Psychologist
January 8, 2006
Jan 9th, 2006
Jon
Dr. Soderstrom - “The precipitating factor for such an emergency will likely be that of a joint venture between Israel and the United States, a coordinated military attack upon Iran sometime around late spring or early summer of 2006.”
I’m glad to find out that I’m not alone in this belief. Thank you for posting this insightful article.
I took the liberty of looking you up on Google and ran across your essay entitled link is here. A while back I made the highly uneducated diagnosis that the entity that calls itself “American society” had turned into a sociopath. I couldn’t figure out why and this article has cleared that up for me. Thank you very, very much.
Jan 9th, 2006
Keld Bach
What a pleasure to read (Dr. Soderstrom).
Jan 9th, 2006
Keld Bach
link is here:
Mar 27th, 2006