From Truth About Iraqis
The following is a response to a request by a US soldier to answer some questions regarding Iraq.While I felt his questions were poignant and sincere, a perusal of his blog convinced me not to engage in his Q&A.
I have posted the exchange below because I believe it reveals how there is very little knowldge of Iraq and the related issues therein. This has led to unfortunate misconceptions, and in part fuelled this illegal war
Hello Dean,
I took a look at your website and after reading some of the contents, I am sorry, I have to decline answering your question.
I have outlined just some of the reasons below:
1) Your reference to Iraqis as Haji is as offensive as my reference to all black people as niggers and all white people as honkies in the US.
2) Your reference to a picture of power lines as evidence of reconstruction. First off, power lines existed in Iraq long, long before any foreign troops set foot on Iraqi soil. Secondly, examine the word reconstruction - it means building anew something that had been destroyed/broken/etc. During the 1991 Gulf war and the subsequent 13 years of bombings, Iraqi power stations, power lines, water-filtration facilities, and oil refinment facilities were bombed and destroyed by US and UK forces.
So, the reconstruction you speak of is the moral and ethical duty of every US taxpayer for what they destroyed in the first place.
That's not an achievement to be proud of, Dean.
3) You show pictures of Iraqi girls walking to school and your caption says that before you collectively came to Iraq this would have been a rare sight. I feel sorry for you, Dean, because you seem to be under the impression that either a) Iraqi girls did not go to school or b) Iraqi girls never walked to school or c) both a and b.
Dean, I sigh in grief because you should not speak in terms of before and after as you had not been in Iraq prior to 2003. You cannot speak of how things were before. Did you see evidence of Iraqi girls NOT going to school?
No, I don't think so.
Iraqis and women in particular were the most highly educated in the Middle East since the 1950s. Since the Baathists came to power, literacy rates increased in Iraq up to 96% of the population, the highest in the Middle East.
UNESCO even awarded Iraq for this achievement.
I do not think Iraqis could have achieved this had they been kept out of schools. That may have been the case in Afghanistan, but you are in Iraq.
I would suggest that before blogging you take the time to maybe read up on Iraq and the Iraqis and some of the great things that existed in that country before 1991 and before 2003.
Once you have cleared up your confusion, I may reconsider to answer your questions.
Dean, I understand you want to be educated as you put it. In that case, consider the issues I raised above.
Thank you for emailing me.
TIA
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Hello,
Here is my question:
Why am I here? Obviously I mean this in the military sense and not the biological sense. Why am I and 130,000 of my friends currently occupying your country? What brought us here and what will get us to leave?
Thank you for considering my request.
SPC Dean Michael Dorman
US Army
