Iraq 2007: Still Smokin'

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Althane

I just gotta wonder, at what point why are you just acting like a dick, blowing the people up who are trying to rebuild basic needs for your towns?

I mean, hell, if I just got freed from a genocidal dictator, and had the people who dumped that say "Hey, we'll station a few troops in here for peacekeeping until you're running on your own, and in the mean time, let us help you build some stuff", I'd say "Sure, why not. Just, when we're ready, you can leave."

Which is, as far as I can tell, what's been said.

Really, the problem is with all the infighting between the people, which, as far as I can tell, is retarded on the level of, oh, I dunno... Friends or something (I dun know any sitcoms. <_<)

Well, just put yourself in their shoes a little further. If the EU invaded the US tomorrow on the pretext of we have WMDs (we do) or GWB has done terrible things at home and abroad (he has), what would your reaction be? I'd be pretty pissed, and I don't even like WMDs or GWBs. When everybody is angry and has too much time on their hands and no money, things get ugly no matter where you are; especially so when you have a foreign power on your soil uninvited shooting at stuff.

[Althane]

Originally Posted by Mannix

Well, just put yourself in their shoes a little further. If the EU invaded the US tomorrow on the pretext of we have WMDs (we do) or GWB has done terrible things at home and abroad (he has), what would your reaction be? I'd be pretty pissed, and I don't even like WMDs or GWBs. When everybody is angry and has too much time on their hands and no money, things get ugly no matter where you are; especially so when you have a foreign power on your soil uninvited shooting at stuff.

I'd be laughing my ass off as the EU got beat down.

I mean, they don't even have the death penalty, so if they can't LEGALLY kill people, then they've gotta be equipped with tasers or rubber bullets.

...

Enough of being a smartass.

Okay, now, let's put it this way:

I'm a citizen of the soverign country, say, Joetopia. Joetopia had the horrible dictator of John, who killed everyone who lived in the southern region of Joetopia simply because they were Southern Joeians, instead of Northern Joeians.

Now, the other country Jacktopia saw this, and upon being attacked by a rogue group of people from Bobtopia, decided that they should try and do something about this rotten area of the world. Now, they discover that John might have had weapons that could seriously hurt Jewtopia (okay, broke my train, but it was too funny), an ally of Jacktopia. So, they decide to attack Joetopia, with the intent of eliminating these weapons, getting rid of John, and hopefully getting a government that might be amiable to their needs.

Meanwhile, other people point out how Joetopia contains resources that Jacktopia might find useful when shortages of those resources become apparent in a decade or two. Why Jacktopia didn't attack the southern country of Aarontopia, nobody quite knows. However, Joetopia is succesfully invaded, John is put down, and now Jacktopia attempts to help Joetopia back into a state where it can work well. Now, some Joetopians, as well as people from Bobtopia, dislike this, and start attacking Jacktopia.

The moral of the story is: If someone's gonna offer you help, DON'T BITE THE HAND THAT FUCKING FEEDS YOU.

>_>

Nah, I just got tired of writing Jacktopia. Joetopia was fun to write though!

I'll chalk this up under "Why the hell are people irrational, and hate each other when it's possible to leech good things from other people?"

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Althane

The moral of the story is: If someone's gonna offer you help, DON'T BITE THE HAND THAT FUCKING FEEDS YOU.

>_>

Nah, I just got tired of writing Jacktopia. Joetopia was fun to write though!

I'll chalk this up under "Why the hell are people irrational, and hate each other when it's possible to leech good things from other people?"

We're the ones that knocked everything down to begin with. Like if I went in your room, smashed all you shit up, and then forced you to let me put everything back together the way I like it. And then called you an ingrate and irrational for wanting me to just leave already.

edit: oh, and I tore your room up because your landlord is a prick.

[Althane]

Even if we knocked everything down (and I have no clue what the state of the towns were before we starting blowing shit up), why wouldn't you want us to set it back up, better?

Maybe I'm just looking at it as a chance to take advantage of a more prosperous country, rather than this whole "OMGTHEYINVADEDOURLANDZ" thing. Too cynical of me? Probably.

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Althane

Even if we knocked everything down (and I have no clue what the state of the towns were before we starting blowing shit up), why wouldn't you want us to set it back up, better?

Maybe I'm just looking at it as a chance to take advantage of a more prosperous country, rather than this whole "OMGTHEYINVADEDOURLANDZ" thing. Too cynical of me? Probably.

No, not cynical enough. It isn't an advantage to have somebody you don't like knocking stuff over then putting it up their way and totally ignoring you the whole time. It's a giant pain in the ass.

It'd be like if France forced us to revolt against England in the late 1700s. Regardless of what we were going to do anyway nobody likes being told what to do and how to do it, let alone by a foreign country. These people wanting to be left the hell alone for a change isn't some kind of massive scale retardation; it's the exact same kind of thing we were looking for when we started out as a country.

[Fifthfiend]

Even if we knocked everything down (and I have no clue what the state of the towns were before we starting blowing shit up), why wouldn't you want us to set it back up, better?

If Osama bin Laden showed up in New York City with a set of blueprints, a construction crew, and a hundred thousand armed men saying don't mind him, he's just here to build a shiny new World Osama Trade Center, you would be totally okay with that, right? You would say no really guys, we should totally take advantage of Mister Bin Laden's entirely well-meaning generosity?

---------------------------------------

Anyway on to what I came in here for:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/...eref=rss_world

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The women are too afraid and ashamed to show their faces or have their real names used. They have been driven to sell their bodies to put food on the table for their children -- for as little as $8 a day.
art.iraqwoman.cnn.jpg

"People shouldn't criticize women, or talk badly about them," says 37-year-old Suha as she adjusts the light colored scarf she wears these days to avoid extremists who insist women cover themselves. "They all say we have lost our way, but they never ask why we had to take this path."

A mother of three, she wears light makeup, a gold pendant of Iraq around her neck, and an unexpected air of elegance about her.

"I don't have money to take my kid to the doctor. I have to do anything that I can to preserve my child, because I am a mother," she says, explaining why she prostitutes herself.

Anger and frustration rise in her voice as she speaks.

"No matter what else I may be, no matter how off the path I may be, I am a mother!" Video Watch a woman describe turning to prostitution to "save my child" »

Her clasped hands clench and unclench nervously. Suha's husband thinks that she is cleaning houses when she goes away.

So does Karima's family.

"At the start I was cleaning homes, but I wasn't making much. No matter how hard I worked it just wasn't enough," she says.

Karima, clad in all black, adds, "My husband died of lung cancer nine months ago and left me with nothing."

She has five children, ages 8 to 17. Her eldest son could work, but she's too afraid for his life to let him go into the streets, preferring to sacrifice herself than risk her child.

She was solicited the first time when she was cleaning an office.

"They took advantage of me," she says softly. "At first I rejected it, but then I realized I have to do it."

Both Suha and Karima have clients that call them a couple times a week. Other women resort to trips to the market to find potential clients. Or they flag down vehicles.

"It's increasing," Suha says. "I found this 'thing' through my friend, and I have another friend in the same predicament as mine. Because of the circumstance, she is forced to do such things."

Violence, increased cost of living, and lack of any sort of government aid leave women like these with few other options, according to humanitarian workers.

"At this point there is a population of women who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their children alive," says Yanar Mohammed, head and founder of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq. "It's a taboo that no one is speaking about."

She adds, "There is a huge population of women who were the victims of war who had to sell their bodies, their souls and they lost it all. It crushes us to see them, but we have to work on it and that's why we started our team of women activists."

Her team pounds the streets of Baghdad looking for these victims often too humiliated to come forward.

"Most of the women that we find at hospitals [who] have tried to commit suicide" have been involved in prostitution, said Basma Rahim, a member of Mohammed's team.

The team's aim is to compile information on specific cases and present it to Iraq's political parties -- to have them, as Mohammed puts it, "come tell us what [they] are ... going to do about this."

Rahim tells the heartbreaking story of one woman they found who lives in a room with three of her children: "She has sex while her three children are in the room, but she makes them stand in separate corners."

According to Rahim and Mohammed, most of the women they encounter say they are driven to prostitution by a desperate desire for survival in the dangerously violent and unforgiving circumstances in Iraq.

"They took this path but they are not pleased," Rahim says.

Karima says when she sees her children with food on the table, she is able to convince herself that it's worth it. "Everything is for the children. They are the beauty in life and, without them, we cannot live."

But she says, "I would never allow my daughter to do this. I would rather marry her off at 13 than have her go through this."

Karima's last happy memory is of her late husband, when they were a family and able to shoulder the hardships of life in today's Iraq together.

Suha says as a young girl she dreamed of being a doctor, with her mom boasting about her potential in that career. Life couldn't have taken her further from that dream.
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"It's not like we were born into this, nor was it ever in my blood," she says.

What she does for her family to survive now eats away at her. "I lay on my pillow and my brain is spinning, and it all comes back to me as if I am watching a movie."

So that's too awful for words.

[Demetrius]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

If Osama bin Laden showed up in New York City with a set of blueprints, a construction crew, and a hundred thousand armed men saying don't mind him, he's just here to build a shiny new World Osama Trade Center, you would be totally okay with that, right? You would say no really guys, we should totally take advantage of Mister Bin Laden's entirely well-meaning generosity?

New York wasn't broken. Of course if I lived in NY with no real human rights, open sewers, contaminated drinking water and assholes killing my family because they could; I'd probably at least give the bastard a listen.

Plain and simple. If we left the place alone and Sadaam decided he wanted to slaughter a bunch more people for fun and have a BBQ for his friends using all of the resources in the country and letting his people starve, we'd be talking about why we haven't done something about that horrible crap going on over there. Iraq isn't a OMFGGETTHEHELLOUTTAHEREZ!! kind of situation. We have done damage to the country, but we're trying to repair it. Of course the warlords that were wandering around blowing up anything they felt like were always very courteous and replaced any windows they may have broken.

My point is that we are trying to do good in the country and set up a stable region. A stable region means a stable economy and that means no more burning oil fields and destroying assets, something that is good for business. Saying that we destabilized the region is BS. We had our part but it was at the very end of a long slow boil.

[Fifthfiend]

So if Osama had blown apart our sewers, contaminated our drinking water, and was killing our people because he could, then you'd be totally okay with him invading New York City with a hundred thousand armed men?

Okay, I guess that's an answer.

[Demetrius]

You're taking what I said out of context.

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Demetrius

You're taking what I said out of context.

He isn't though. Before the invasion the average Iraqi had electricity, running water, and employment. Sure Saddam had rape and torture rooms, but unless you haven't been reading the news you'd know those are basically just being staffed by other people now. The average Iraqi was better off before the invasion then they are right now. All of this rebuilding is stuff we blew up on the way in.