Why They Hate Us

Information provided below can be checked at these two websites:
http://www.mideastweb.org/iraqtimeline.htm
http://www.againstbombing.org/chemical.htm

So, this morning I got an e-mail, supposedly written by a retired general, about "why they hate us":
"Envy of our position, our success, and our freedoms."

Not quite.
We can learn a lot from history, but first we have to know the history.

"Today in 1993 there are still Iraqis and Kurds who remember being bombed and machine-gunned by the RAF in the 1920s. A Kurd from the Korak mountains commented, seventy years after the event: "They were bombing here in the Kaniya Khoran...Sometimes they raided three times a day." Wing Commander Lewis, then of 30 Squadron (RAF), Iraq, recalls how quite often "one would get a signal that a certain Kurdish village would have to be bombed...", the RAF pilots being ordered to bomb any Kurd who looked hostile. In the same vein, Squadron-Leader Kendal of 30 Squadron recalls that if the tribespeople were doing something they ought not be doing then you shot them."

Wing-Commander Sir Arthur Harris (later Bomber Harris, head of wartime Bomber Command) was happy to emphasise that "The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means in casualties and damage. Within forty-five minutes a full-size village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured." It was an easy matter to bomb and machine-gun the tribespeople, because they had no means of defence or retalitation. Iraq and Kurdistan were also useful laboratories for new weapons; devices specifically developed by the Air Ministry for use against tribal villages. The ministry drew up a list of possible weapons, some of them the forerunners of napalm and air-to-ground missiles.”

Now you know.
Although most of the survivors of the first ever aerial bombings of a civilian population are now dead, the oral history is alive and well, passed from one generation to the next.

You're absolutely correct that we have to know the history first. So often, the facts are omitted that make the 'winners' look bad.

We give them new reasons and fuel the hatred, everyday. But it sure helps to know the history. Somebody should teach a course in this to the decision-makers, though I fear it's already way too late...;(

Scary stuff!

I've been reading Fisk's book "The Great War for Civilisation" in which he recounts the history of invasions of Iraq from the 20's on. It's amazing how similar the procedures and propaganda and results are now to those incursions. People who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it. Things like "if we leave chaos will ensue" and that was a war of "liberation" recur. Anyone who truly believes the present-day propaganda doesn't know much about U.S. history or Iraqi history. Most everyone today knows that Saddam was the U.S. man in the 80's but that little tidbit is left out of the propaganda. I might have been a little apprehensive that our withdrawal from Iraq would cause great unrest in the region but now I know everything this administration says is a lie, which even they are sure to know. They just hope the American populace doesn't find out. I truly hate Bush and Cheney and Rumsfield and all the neocons. May they burn in hell (if such a place is to be believed in).

My reply to the e-mail was basically what I outlined above.

I got this response from someone I don't know:

So, what am I missing here? What the Brits did in 1919 is justification for what is happening to US today? Is it like guilt by association? And, we deserve what we're getting then, right?

Sorry, I am a flag-waving American and yes, we're not perfect, but we are the best the world has to offer and I don't like the prospects of what happens if the US does not "win" in the mid-east, because I think MG Chong is absolutely right: Life in the US as we know it will end and you may very well not have the ability to say anything to anybody about what you think after that happens.

I'm more for the "America, right or wrong" crowd and I too would like to have a"perfect" world with truth and justice and equality, but being human beings, it's never going to work out that way, so I'll error on the side of survival of democracy and freedom next.

I'm sorry, I just can't waste my time trying to educate the "America, right or wrong" yahoos.