Many, well before this Debacle started, and in the lead up to and since, were warning about this scenario of the youth growing up under Occupation, Death, Destruction of their Country and their People and what it might bring in the future.
This is Much Worse than Vietnam, than they only wanted us Out Of Their Country, now National Security, not only here but Around The World, are The Aces In The Deck!!
And those Aces have already been dealt!
Not only the young of Iraq and possibly Afganistan, but the youth of that whole region, and the children they may have will share in the hatreds that have been wrought!
The 64 thousand dollar question is "For How Many Generations?"!
My belief now is that it has gone way to far and will be an extremely long time, if ever, when the realities and common sense can bring about change in peoples minds and hearts, especially in that region but also here!
The universal question in the U.S., after 9/11, was "Why Do They Hate Us So?". That question was easy to answer than, if one wasn't apathedic of world affairs, because of our failed foreign policies for decades in that region, and it's even easier to answer now, it's laid out before us! Not just in a War Waged for Absolutely NO REASON, but also in the rethoric of hate and childish hateful name calling spoken on our public airways and read on many of these online boards and in the main stream media as well! Not only as to those who are fighting our occupation and now their own sectarian griefs, but we lump a whole peoples, because of religious beliefs and regional ideologies into the same label 'Terrorists', which is a criminal act by the few, but growing number, and should be looked at as same, Criminal!
Iraq's Young Blood
There's also a photo gallery at the site with descriptions of each photo.
Newsweek
Jan. 22, 2007 issue - Ammar will tell you he's proud to be carrying a gun. His father was a brigadier in Saddam Hussein's Army, a man who saw combat in his country's several wars, and from an early age Ammar had accompanied him to the shooting range. "I got used to the sound of guns then," Ammar says. So he was ready, last fall, when the imam in his Baghdad neighborhood urged residents to take up arms against the invader—who in this case happened to be members of a Shiite militia trying to push into the predominantly Sunni area. Ammar joined the neighborhood watch, a ragtag bunch of men who stand guard nightly at improvised roadblocks and rooftop observation posts. In mid-October Ammar fought his first big battle against soldiers from the Mahdi Army—"the garbage collectors and robbers," as he contemptuously refers to the Shiite militia. He says he put his Kalashnikov assault rifle to good use: "I think I injured or even killed two of them. Our group killed more than six of them that night."
There is no need to brainwash a child into becoming, in that region, a Jihadist. they are there, it is their countries, it is their regions, they are living the hell 24/7, and many can't leave. They don't serve a tour of one year, they serve a tour of duration, if they survive!
Sectarian warfare is reshaping Iraq in all sorts of malevolent ways day in and day out. But it is also forging the future by poisoning the next generation of Iraqis. Like many of its neighbors, Iraq is a young country: nearly half the population is under the age of 18. And those children have had a particularly turbulent upbringing. Kids like Ammar were born in the aftermath of one debilitating war, against neighboring Iran, then suffered two others and years of impoverishing sanctions in between. They are especially vulnerable to the demons that now grip Iraq. Hassan Ali, a sociologist at the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, estimates that at least 1 million Iraqi kids have seen their lives damaged by the war—they've lost parents and homes, watched as their communities have been torn apart by sectarian furies. "These children will come to believe in the principles of force and violence," says Ali. "There's no question that society as a whole is going to feel the effects in the future"—and not only Iraqi society. From the Middle East to Europe to America, violence may well beget violence around the world for years to come.
As generations grow farther away from old hatreds and failed policies they become very distant memories to each succesive generation, untill the fires are stoked, than those hatreds come roaring back and grip the newer generation into actions they never would have been involved in only a short time before. Than the Pandora's Box is completely broken, leaving nothing to encase those hatreds in, and they run rampant for long periods of time leaving death and destruction in their wake!
Blood and Memory: The Cycle Has Started
Iraq's vendettas could haunt the west for years.
Blood feuds flourish where family ties are strong and the rule of law is weak. Add the righteousness of competing faiths along with fierce memories of ancient wrongs and you have the makings of savage, seemingly endless conflicts from Northern Ireland to the Balkans, the lake regions of Africa to the arid Holy Land. And Iraq—well, Iraq is in a class by itself: a breeder reactor where explosive hatreds were both incited and contained by Saddam Hussein's brutality, only to become an uncontrolled chain reaction after the U.S.-led invasion liberated both the country and its vendettas. Arab culture cannot be solely blamed for the furies that have been unleashed in Iraq since 2003. But it guarantees they will not be soon, or easily, tamed.
We allowed the Flood gates to be open to these old hatreds and have made more growing hatreds the reality now. We invaded a country, once again for No Reason, we destroyed and killed and are still carrying out that death and destruction, we installed another puppet government, in a country we had already done the same before, we are picking sides in the sectarian violence that those who led the charge for this War had Absolutely No Understanding of before and still don't!
The tradition of "an eye for an eye" is so ancient and dangerously ingrained among the desert Arabs that 1,400 years ago the Qur'an called on good Muslims to forgo vengeance in order to expiate their sins. But the old codes of honor remained, and in the most troubled parts of Iraq today, increasingly, they prevail. When governments cannot or will not protect the people, then families, clans, tribes, gangs and militias will. (Indeed, among the Shiites of Karbala, gang rule has a history as old and complex as the mafia in Sicily.) As these groups gain strength, the central government and its modern institutions weaken further.
Blame for the Top Brass
And I would add to their title the Extreme Blame to the Civilian Leadership of This Country!
Given all the recriminations over the mess in Iraq, it is remarkable how little criticism has fallen on the U.S. military. Americans want to honor the sacrifice of the troops in the field and they may feel guilty about the cold reception given many veterans returning from the Vietnam War. But in the public blame game that's erupted on Capitol Hill and on the cable news talk shows, the armed services are largely given a free pass.
Some top soldiers, however, aren't so sure they should be let off the hook. Is there, NEWSWEEK asked retired Gen. William Nash, who commanded U.S. forces in Bosnia in the 1990s and remains plugged in, a sense within the Army of mistakes made in Iraq? "It's pervasive," he answered. Gen. Jack Keane, the Army vice chief of staff at the time of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, told NEWSWEEK: "Everyone recognizes that we made mistakes. The harder part is what to learn from them."
MISTAKES!!! The Mistake was going in in the first place The Mistake was not understanding that one does not Kill and Destroy others into their thoughts of 'Freedom' and their ideology of 'Democracy', especially as they redefine that 'Democracy' in their own land which is looking more and more like a redefined ideology of the old Fascisms that was thought to be beaten down!
A Defining Realignment
Ted Kennedy speaks with the voice of history. White-maned and nearing 75, the brother of two assassinated heroes and a veteran of 44 Senate years, he is—in defiance of the odds—again in his prime: a chairman in good health with a doting wife and a packed legislative agenda.
No one tells Ted Kennedy what to do; in any case, the Senate's Democratic leaders were fine with his plan to give a big speech two days before President George W. Bush announced a troop "surge" in Iraq. They are generally glad to let Kennedy play the role he relishes: Irish-American Isaiah, calling his party to account even as legislative insiders keep their distance.
This time party brass got more than they bargained for. Summoning the authority of his years as an intimate witness to history, Kennedy made an eloquent case for a Senate vote on the surge and for a court test of its legitimacy under the War Powers Resolution. "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam!" he thundered. "Echoes of that disaster are all around us today!"
It was, in its own way, a defining moment. He got a standing ovation and, the next day, congratulations all around on the Hill. By the end of the week—in the aftermath of Bush's tepid speech and Condi Rice's evasive testimony—Kennedy looked prescient.
The voices of intelligent experiances and lessons learned, not just a Kennedy but millions strong, were completely shut off, called 'Focus Groups' by what has been shown over and over an extremely unintelligent group of power brokers and their minions!
I believe these minions would follow this group into another 'Jonestown' if called upon, that's how empty headed they frankly are, empty words, empty rethoric, consistantly wrong, and consistantly biggotted!
We Might 'Win', But Still Lose
Colonel Duke says the Mahdi Army is 'sitting on the 50-yard line, eating popcorn, watching us do their work for them.'
'Win', one does not win a Guerilla War, they may shutdown, for a short time, sectarian violence, but as has already been seen that violence will rear it's ugly head once again for the hatreds have been unleased and by us still being there and supporting our puppets those hatreds will remain!
Number Of Iraqi Civilians Slaughtered In America's Rape Of Iraq - At Least 655,000 + +
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's Rape Of Iraq 3,017 - plus
The Rape of Iraq Costs $357,490,957,418 and counting by the minute
See the cost in your community
The Failed Policies will Haunt Us and the World for Decades!
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