Posted by panchmaster from pool0172.cvx24-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.210.172) on Wednesday, October 16, 2002 at 8:52AM :
There is no precedent I can think of for our claim to the land of the Iraqis. Iraq is a modern state...so is America. Countries evolve and are plunked down on top of others all the time. It would set the worst precedent imaginable to grant one set of people their Doodling Rights after their lease expired 2600 years ago...and after the territory has shifted ownership that many times. You'd have all sorts of ethnic groups who can't prove any "ethnicity" stepping forward to claim this or that...and most of these people who maintain their "rights" to national territories aren't the brightest ducks, usually with a list of grievances a mile long to prove that they've been kept down and out and would have done just swell if only "their" land had been returned to them much sooner. Fat chance.
There are people who have been blowing up other people over this issue for a long time and not a one of them is going to get anything but a new status as crimminals and terrorists. We just hope that by begging we can get what others can't snatch and steal and terrorize people for.
The Jews were an exception...who were so roundly hated in Europe that their status was somewhere between lepers and cholera victims...the Jews could compell no one to give them anything...it was to get rid of them that Lord Balfour signed that paper...not because he wanted to help them to attain their National Diaper Rights.
No one hates us enough...that is Peter and "Ross's" challenge. No one is chasing us anywhere. We are welcome in the West, in Europe and America and Australia...so far. And many of us were living perfectly good lives in Iraq before the Iran Iraq War and the Gulf War Set-Up...as many would be happy if the United States would back off and pay a fair price for oil. The irony in calling everyone in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, "Arabs" may be that we of those countries who are Christian...will be seen as Arabs too. Wouldn't that be cute.
Just allowing the Kurds this much autonomy makes Turkey nervous...as it does many countries who have ethnic minorities among them who also want their own Diaper Rights.
We are being given what "hope" we think we have because it serves that age old tactic of getting all the various people in those countries aggitaged and looking to their own advantage...it tears the community fabric...divides people...makes them eager to cut deals and cooperate...like the Kurds are stuck now...do they back the United States in hopes of securing those territories, even though they remember being betrayed just recently by Uncle Sam...or do they show solidarity with the rest of the Muslim world in expressing their anger at becomming a playground for the United States to test itself in. A few more "easy" victories for the United States and we'll be ready to think we can take on anybody and all of them together for as long as we like. You KNOW what happens to these empires eventually.
Our best bet was always in unity with the diverse people of the region we occupied. It may not have suited us in many ways, but who gets everything they want? Muslim Assyrians have certainly been paying a high price for years now and could once again. Life is rough...but it is no easier for the person who fouls his own nest.
We are looking for help and salvation from the one source that consistently betrayed us and so many others like us. We're so gaga over being mentioned by Bush we think it's significant. So much wounded pride and ego... so much self-loathing it hurts.
-- panchmaster
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