Kerbala, Kazimiya, memories of Lebanon
I am just saddened beyond words by today's bombings in Kerbala and Kazimiya (Baghdad).
There is something particularly sickening about people launching such horrific attacks at times of particular religious/community significance. I recall the recent dual attacks against the Iraqi Kurdish leaders during their celebration of Nowruz-- and also, a couple of years ago, in Israel, the suicide bombing against the families celebrating Pesach in the Park Hotel in Netanya.
Enough! Enough!
Regarding the Nowruz bombings and the latest attacks, one can only up to this point speculate whether the same person/organization is beyond both sets of incidents, and if so who that might be. I seem to recall the Kurds had found a suspect?
This is all so eerily reminiscent for me of the early days of the Lebanese civil war in April, May, and June of 1975, which I lived through from day to day. None of us knew what was coming next.
In those days, the "tinder" for conflagration was everywhere present in terms of old resentments, etc, etc. Plus there was no effective state apparatus that could guarantee public security. (Many Lebanese people have always had a strong anti-government cast to their thinking, and the state there had been kept weak and impotent by design.) But there were definitely foreign hands stirring things up, as well. Certainly the Israelis were active, building up their ties with some of the Maronite extremists who wanted to eradicate the Palestinians' political/military presence in Lebanon. But the Palestinians themselves, the Syrians, Iraqis, Saudis, and all other regional and world powers were also all eager to pursue their own ends inside Lebanon at that time....
That's what happens when you don't have a functioning state: everyone else from the neighborhood and from far beyond piles in and treats the country and its existing divisions like a football field on which they can kick around their own private grudges over the corpses of the country's people.
So I weep for the Shi-ites, I weep for the Kurds, I weep for all Iraqis. My special hope/prayer for them all is that they can find some way, with or without the help of outside parties, to (re-)build a decent and working national compact among themselves that will provide a strong foundation for the working Iraqi state which is the only institution that, at the end of the day, can provide the continuing atmosphere of public security that all of the world's peoples need.
I also weep for the Lebanese who are under unlawful and oppressive Syrian occupation and who have to live with Syrian-empowered and funded Hizballah.
I weep for an international community who would hold mass rallies to support a vile dictator like Saddam, but would not lift a finger to help the people of Lebanon.
Lewis,
There were certainly lots and lots of mass rallies, but as far as I know not a single one of them was in support of Saddam Hussein.
Hmmm... mass ralies to oppose the removal of a dictator. Seems to me to be pro-dictator.
Oh, by the way, the UN is in the process of undermining international law.
They are legitimising settlements created in breach of the Geneva Convention by an illegal occupying country.
They are abrogating the 'right of return' of refugees (and their families) who were forced out when that country invaded. The refugees won't even be entitled to compensation.
They are creating 'apartheid laws' that prevent freedom of movement, residence and work by the original inhabitants of the area.
... and all under the aegis of the United Nations.
This is something that surely Helena will be protesting far and wide. It goes against everything she supposedly stands for.
Friends, I find the tone of Lewis's comments here so completely antithetical to the gravity of the situation that, with regret, I am going to close this post to any further Comments.
I am sorry to have to do this. But using the Comments board on this post, of all posts, to launch into point-scoring, name-calling, and ad-feminam attacks on completely unrelated issues seems to me seriously to undermine what I was trying to do with the original post.
Shirin, thanks so much for your gentle comment there, which also tracks exactly with my own knowldge about all those demonstrations.
I am sorry to have to close down this Comments board. I'd like to remind Lewis that I actually pay for and maintain all parts of JWN on my own dime. My intention is to have the blog host respectful discussions among people who disagree, even over very fundamental issues. I really value the discussions we have had here in which that has occurred, and I know I've learned a lot from them.
However, Lewis, if you continue to try to dominate the Comments boards with your disrespectful, point-scoring hectoring, you know that I can ban you from posting any Comments on the blog at all. And no, that is not an attack on free speech. You are always free to start your own blog, in which you can say whatever you want to whoever wants to hang around and listen.
So Lewis, if you do want to continue having a presence on JWN, please tone it down a few notches. If you were to indicate in your Comments that you're even ready to learn a few things from other people, rather than just battering us all over the head with the truth as revealed personally to your good self, so much the better.