It's a gray, rainy, blustery day here in Amsterdam. While checking the news on BBC online, I ran across a link to this story in the International Herald Tribune, "Iraqis fleeing the 'slaughter farm'" (apparently this was also in the NY Times). Funny how the weather suits the news.
http://www.iht.com/...
My comments on this are below the flip.
It's a good thing I'd eaten breakfast an hour before reading this, as this story just makes me ill. Some Americans, and I'm one of them, are seriously considering leaving permanently because we don't like the direction the country is going in, and we feel powerless to stop it for a host of reasons. Well, here's an entire country full of people who are scared to death of the direction their country is going in, and if they even try to endure they will be killed. Even the garbage collectors are being killed as they do their jobs, and are left in the streets! These people have no choice but to flee so they can survive.
What kills me about this is that this is the US government's fault, and by extension the American people's fault. We did this. Oh, we can scream that it was not in our name, that we did not personally approve this, that we marched and wrote letters, held sit-ins and slapped bumperstickers on our cars, begged our kids and students to not join the military, but the truth of the matter is that the government of our country, supported with our tax dollars, did this. Follow the money. We're all culpable.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and make all of this go away. I want there to be some miracle that brings the murdered children and teachers and parents, ordinary people trying to live their lives, back to their families, to make it all a nightmare from which they can awaken. But there is no magic, there is no miracle, and they're not sleeping.
When nearly 40,000 families withdraw their children's school records, you know you've got a big movement of people. I don't know what the average size of an Iraqi family is, but if it's five, you've got at least 200,000 people who have already fled. And what of those who didn't even take the time to get the records?
Why we aren't all in the streets protesting this horror is beyond me. I don't know about you, but I cannot stay silent anymore. We may not be able to put a stop to this outrage immediately, but we, as a people, have got to start working for a solution. As someone I once knew liked to say, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." I just can't bear to be part of the problem any longer.