The house is on fire, and everyone discusses the politics of the fire brigade. Between 50 to a 100 innocent Iraqi civilians are dying everyday. The more that are killed, the more the horrendous death toll is turning into a mere statistic to fill the time slot for CNN or BBC, or whatever. The attention has turned much more to the politcal negotiations and machinations, the finacial cost to the US, the exact number of soldiers to be sent to Iraq or Afganistaan…<\/p>\n
\nTalk, Talk, Talk, Talk,
\nIt’s sickening how we can all avoid the real issue. The individuality of the deaths. The pain of the children.
\nWhile the US fires their Surgeon General over the lack of care to returning US soldiers from Iraq, and the papers in the UK are full of the psychological cost of being in the war zone for British Soldiers, lets turn our attention to the psychological cost to all the Children of Baghdad. How are they being affected by living in a city of death, where everyday at school they hear about a friend that was killed, or a friend’s father, mother, brother or sister ?
\nImagine this – everytime you leave home for school, you don’t know if you are coming back, or if you will ever see you mom or dad again, or you granny or any loved one. Every goodbye as u leave your doorstep could eb a final goodbye to your loved ones. It’s a nightmare of Baghdad.
\nYet the Coalition of the Willing (Killing ) just talk. The US generals are saying we will have peace back in a year. A year ? At this rate in a year another 25,000 innocent lives will be lost. Bush says he needs nore soldiers. More soldiers ? How can a protected armed force do anything against those that look forward to death for their beliefs. The truth is that the US just does not have enough soldiers, or enough political and financial will to win this battle. It’s because the US keeps moving the goal post of it’s so called ‘victory’ ?
\nWhat does victory mean in Iraq to the coalition of the kiling ? That all violence must stop ? The problem is that it will never stop as long as there is a presence of foreign troops in Iraq. That has been proven everyday on the streets of Baghdad.
\nWe can go on saying “well, it’s sectarian killing, it’s Sunni vs Shia” . But when something like this goes wrong in a State, who do we hold responsible ? Who do we hold responsible for a breakdown in Law and Order ? The authority, right ? So the authority in Iraq is the Coalition. They MUST take responsibilty for the hundreds of thosands of civilian that are dying in Iraq. The world must hold the Coalition responsible and not allow this to be blamed on just sectarian violence.
\nRemember that Hindu’s and Muslim’s in pre – partion India lived in relative harmony with each other till the British Colonists decided to leave the country divided by artificial boundaries. We still suffer from that.
\nIraq, like Afganistan, India, Pakistan, the Balkans and large parts of Africa, stands as a vivid and horrendous example of a long suffering casualty of the sins of colonization.
\nAnd yet it goes on ! The invasion of Iraq is just turning into another modern colonial occupation.
\nShekhar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The house is on fire, and everyone discusses the politics of the fire brigade. Between 50 to a 100 innocent Iraqi civilians are dying everyday. The more that are killed, the more the horrendous death toll is turning into a mere statistic to fill the time slot for CNN or BBC, or whatever. The attention […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-point-of-view"],"yoast_head":"\n