This might also be an answer to "why they hate us" and it's pretty grim.
What I have posted here are comments by Dr Maryam, an Irak children's doctor on a liveblog recently on Firedoglake. It was quite lengthy and hard to follow after the fact. I extracted Dr Maryam's statements and in some cases, included the question asked to keep things in context. Otherwise, each paragraph is a separate entry.
Continue on ...
(source link)
http://www.firedoglake.com/...
Thank you for your welcome.
What shall we talk about today you and I?
No I am in Europe buying and arranging for supplies of medications to be brought. When I am in Irak I live in and run a refugee camp for children whose parents have been murdered by the American war against my people. I will be back there in a few days. For obvious reasons I will not under any circumstances detail my movements to any American.
The Red Crescent to answer your question Siun is the only body working everywhere in Irak and outside it. It is probably the best way for those who want to undo some of the evil that America does to Irakis to help with humanitarian relief.
Q: In the days of Saddam, all Americans felt that the Iraqi people were good, and the Iraqi government was bad. Is there a similar feeling in Iraq about the American people and our government?
A: Stop telling lies to yourself American. We know that your racist brutal murdering war criminal troops came from your society and reflect its values. we know that because we see how they behave and have to bury their victims. If you are stupid enough to think we feel anything but hatred and contrempt for your soldiers and the country that sent them to make war on my people then you are a fool.
Irak is a better transliteration. The quote you are referring to is this:
"The only thing these sand niggers understand is force and I’m about to introduce them to it."
And is from a senior American officer. It is a perfect example of how your troops regard us. Which is why we highlight it.
Q: If I were an Iraqi my thinking might go something like this. President Bush is doing these atrocities in my country. And the American people elected this man not once, but twice.
A: As I am an Iraki and as my job is to treat children maimed and deformed by the weapons your country uses and then prevented me from getting the medicines used to treat those cancers you will forgive me if I tell you that you too are telling lies to yourself. What we konw is that when it comes murdering Iraki civilians that there is no difference between the cynical and corrupt party called the Democrats and the cynical and corrupt party called the Republicans. Both are infected with the belief that America has the right to behave as it wishes especially when the people being killed are not white.
Q: I don’t think they lived in peace before. If they weren’t fighting each other it’s because Saddam enforced some semblance of order.
A: Wrong we lived in peace for centuries.
Q: And Saddam was no friend of the Kurds or the Shia.
A: So how came it that 60% of the officer corps was Shia? Saddam was brutal in his response to rebellion. He did not particularly care which sect you were a member of what he was interested in was whether you were loyal to him or not.
As to Saddam bad though he was your country is far worse.
As to the Kurds they are not Arab. Nor are they Turkish. Nor are they Persian. They have not forgotten that they at one time ruled a large part of the Middle East. Salahuddin Al-Ayyubi whom you call Saladin and who defeated the crusaders was a Kurd. Their problem is that that was many centuries ago and that over the intervening centuries they are divided between themselves and between 3 other lands. More importantly they control water resources. If you are speaking of right and wrong they deserve a homeland. Being practical their alliance with the Americans has set that back for a very long time. When you are forced to leave things will go hard for them I fear.
How does it feel to know that your country "the shining city on the hill" is not only well into genocidal territory but has been for a long time.
All dictators are brutal. But if you did not threaten him and stayed out of politics life was safe for you.
Pow wow - nobody cares what your stupid congress thinks or does. Your country is defeated the only question now is the scale of the defeat.
It is not for the loser to dictate terms. Until your troops leave the resistance will keep on killing them because that is the only thing that works with racist empires such as the American empire.
Irak is for the Irakis the murdering pigs who have boiled my people alive in a sea of their own blood are the government and people of the USA. Expecting us to tolerate the presence of your war criminals in uniform on our soil is too fucking stupid to be worth refuting.
Al Maliki is a traitor to Islam and a traitor to Irak. He collaborates with the invaders.
There has been no electricity none in more than half of Baghdad for 10 days. In the rest of Baghdad 1 to 1½ hours per day.
Q: In your opinion, Maryam, why did America invade Iraq?
A: Because you’re an empire now and you can make your own reality. Working really well isn’t it?
Q: Maryam, how long do you think it will take to drive out the occupiers
A: When the resistance have killed enough of them that your country whipmers in pain. Not long now. They are already being forced to fly water into their outlying bases and can no longer supply from the north.
Q: How in the hell do you function as a medical team? How?
A: With difficulty. Generators help. For stabilising a badly injured patient there is enough. Anything else such as my specialism there is almost nothing. The clinic I run is outside of Baghdad and is funded from Islamic religious taxes we get nothing from the green zone government.
Q: Maryam, thank you for spending this time with us...do you forsee war between Iraq and Turkey after Turkey invades Northern Iraq following the inevitable American withdrawal? Do you think Iraq will fight the Turks, or help them against the Kurds?
A: My short answer to that is that is between us the Kurds and the Turks. The KRG only exists because of America. They will have a choice. Sit down and cut a deal with us, the Turks, and the Iranians, or face savage reprisals. The Iranians allow the Turkish army to cross into Iran in as large numbers as they wish if they are in pursuit of peshmerga that has been the case for more than a year.
The problem in Irak is the presence of the invaders. It is not possible to even begin to reconstruct until that problem is solved. The violence is because the American invader is there. Not despite it. If as you claim, you want to help, then you tackle the root problem. Which is that your troops are in our country. Until then the violence will escalate. The attacks are to make the country ungovernable and they are working.
[re her nephew]
This is his reality. This is what America has created for his generation:
When I heard the bomb explode last Saturday the first thing I did was telephone my father. But there was no reply. Again and again and again I tried to phone him. My fingers hurt I stabbed them onto the buttons on my phone so hard. I fell onto the floor and prayed please let him not be dead. Please let it be that he died quick if he is dead.
in the time since he wrote that:
His brother Hussein Ibn Laith was killed by a bomb as he ran with his rescue team to the site of a bombing.
His parents were killed in the Arba’in massacres.
His younger brother was wounded in the Al Qhilani bombing as was Mohammed himself and his sister.
Aged 16 Mohammed is the head of his family.
I will let him speak about forgiveness:
Let Us Understand One Another You And I
O God! Pardon our living and our dead, the present and the absent, the young and the old, the males and the females.
I am a Muslim I am Iraki.
what america does to irakis especially to our children
Do not come to me talking of your feelings. Do not come to me asking for forgiveness. Who do you think you are?
I will not ever forgive or forget what your country has done to us. I will not ever forget or forgive what your country has done my family, my city, my country, my people.
Never.
My grandchildren’s, grandchildren, will teach their grandchildren to hate America for what she has done to us. Never ever ever will I, or they, forget or forgive what your barbaric country has done to us.
Never.
(ENDS)