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Iraq's Innocent Civilians

Today the steamroller is being driven through Tikrit by Iran, and

tomorrow through Mosul with the US at the wheel.

And every day is the same for the Iraqis who get crushed,

And only the Iraqis can solve their own problems.

Make Dua'a for the innocent.

a young woman's dream

I wish I could hire the SEALS, you know, group in the field...I would sen them to Baghdad.

I would have them pick up my family, in the night when they were sleeping. They could load them onto helicopters. They would be drugged and asleep still asleep when they were all moved together.

Then they would wake up here in New York, and look around surprised, and wondering, and they could start a new life...

Iraq: Life between the frying pan and the pyre: ICSSI

ISIS at one hand and Maliki’s militias at the other (Yes, once-friend Maliki has been named head of the government sanctioned Shi’a militias), and don't forget the collateral damage from citizen’s defense groups. The life of Iraqis in many areas of the country is one of constant trauma.

The resilience of the ICSSI, the civil society movement, continues to march on with a broad set of active programs that are changing, albeit slowly, the tenor of life in the besieged nation. Dedicated and brave, with support of international organizations, the ICSSI maintains a strict policy of non-violence in its efforts to build another Iraq, with peace and Human Rights for all.

Their major initiatives: Active Nonviolence and Protests in Iraq, The Baghdad Marathon, Children’s Health, Freedom of Expression and Press, Human Right Defenders, Iraqi Voices, Minorities Rights and Relations, Save the Tigris and Marshes, Stop private military companies, and worker rights and Freedom of Association.

And the people. Let’s not forget that combatants are a small percentage of Iraqi citizens. The vast majority are peace loving civilians seeking, like us, an existence of non-violence, security, and a vision of a better future. Their resilience is marked by the young who still struggle, amidst the horrors, to get educated and live a forward looking life. They are the bright manifestations of the human spirit.

February 1, 2015 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

Her son, the terrorist…NOT

He came home from high school bloodied. He had been bullied before, but this was the first violence. They called him IS; they called him Sunni dog. They beat him, and he ran home to tell his mom of what happened.

She had left Mosul after her husband was killed by IS fighters. He was part of a Sunni Militia fighting to rid the city of the invaders. Resettled in a shared house in Baghdad, she had enrolled her son in what she thought was a good high school. Hard times, but hopefully the start of a new life in the city she was born in.

Mom went to the school and got an appointment with the principal. When she was seated in the office the head of the school cut off her questions with some of her own. The interview was extremely short.

“Where are you from?”

“I came from Mosul when my husband was killed.”

“Are you Sunni?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should take your terrorist son from the school.”

“But he is…”

“Just take him and your Sunni self away from here. There is not a place here for him, or for you. Just go.”

“But…”

“Just go before I have to call security. Go. Now.”

She left, and as she tearfully told the story she recalled the happy times she had spent in that very school.

Some date the modern Sunni-Shi’a divide in Iraq to the IS (then dubbed ISIS) attack on the Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq. The February 2, 2006 attack began with four men shooting the guards before detonating their suicide bombs. A ‘Grad’ rocket was then fired into the Masjid. Tens were killed. That IS would attack a Shi’a shrine is no surprise. Neither is it surprising that the attack would be part of the fuel igniting the Sunni-Shi’a divide that has now become pervasive in Iraq.

For many, the identity ‘Iraqi’ holds less meaning than the affiliation one holds to a religion or tribe. The fabric of the nation has dissolved.

January 13, 2015 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

 

Every day when we go to the Majid...the refugees from ISIS

“Every day when we go to the Masjid, especially on Fridays after the Hutbah, we we see 20s, 30s, 40s of women and children from Ramadi, Fallujah…begging. Most of them are women and children living I abandoned buildings with cardboard for windows. Each family to a room. One of the families lives under a tree…there’s no room for them. And today it is very cold in Baghdad. Some of them are very young, very young, who ISIS killed their husbands.

A young women came to the house to beg. She was so pretty, so beautiful. She looked liked from a good family. She told us she was from Heet, near Fallujah, Anbar. They killed her family and threw her from the house. Now she begs at my door.”

You can send money. You can send clothes. You can contact us for instructions.

Bruce@121Contact.org 

du'a for Iraqi people

The current political situation in Iraq is akin to a group of people, all standing in front of a burning house, discussing the role each should play in extinguishing the fire as the house burns.

[ICSSI]

The bumbling, fumbling saga of the America’s inability to bring Guantanamo prisoners to trial continues to fuel terrorist propaganda. The latest jihadi video, "A Message for American People about Killing American Hostage in Yemen," holds President Barack Obama accountable for the killing of American hostage Luke Somers and South African hostage Pierre Korkie. The video speaks of Muslim prisoners in Guantanamo and goes on to say, "Will your people dream of safety and our Ummah is in this situation? By Allah, no…”

Axe Attack: Radical Islam-Motivation or Self-Justification

 

One month after Jihadists publish a call for attacking American police officers a man named Thompson wields an axe and does just that. Was he motivated by it? Was he radicalized by it? Or did he merely find a convenient outlet that justified the psychopathic urges already rising within?

The jihadi essay "To 2.6M Muslims in USA: A Call to Arms to Defend Islam and Avenge the Slaughter of Muslims," which was distributed in Arabic and English on September 16, 2014, and in which its author wrote: "Even though just about every American man and many women are lawful targets you're well advised to pick your targets for maximum impact. For example, the impact of killing Joe Blow down the street is not the same as killing police officer Johnny Smith. Because the cost associated with the process of recruiting, training, preparing and outfitting Johnny for the job before putting him on the street is significant. So there is a significant economical impact resulting from eliminating Johnny in addition to the impact of loss of his life on his family and friends. There is also a very important icing on the cake, too. Knocking off a police, military or any other law enforcement officer sends a chilling message to the so called "civilians" and fill their hearts with consternation." [SITE]

The simplistic ‘explanation’ is clear: Islam is to blame, and Thompson received his orders from Jihadi Central. It’s so easy to put the cart before the horse...and, wait a minute: maybe there's no horse at all.

The NYC Police Department described Thompson as 'self-radicalized.' He had evidently browsed al-Qaeda web sites and watched beheadings. The media, as usual, jumped on the terrorist theme and built stories characterising Thompson as a "radicalized Muslim", with "Islamist extremist leanings" despite lack of evidence.

His Black Power anti-American feelings were rarely mentioned.  In fact his postings were more anti-government, anti-Western, and anti-white than pro-ISIS or any such Islamist ranting. 

Simplistic answers sell newspapers and thrill viewers but they don't really help us understand, or educate.

 

 

 

ISIS in the Wild West

On the one side you’ve got the most powerful resorting to the most primitive: bounties on four Haqqani Network officials like hanging wanted posters in saloons in frontier towns.

            We claim the right to murder these people because they are violating one of our basic values: “Thou Shalt Not Kill’, or whatever wording is in your book. Claiming the right to revenge as a Sacred Value, higher even than one of God’s Commandments. Step over this line only in fear of your existence.

In the other corner we’ve got an Afghan Taliban outfit calling ‘foul’ at the cash-for-enemies offer. They claim it’s a shameful practice.

            Claiming the offering of rewards violates a basic limit on acceptable combat: one does not offer rewards in lieu of direct battle. It’s beyond the unquestionable limit of acceptability. A sacred limit; a Sacred Value.

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The just-begun public war on ISIS pits the Sacred Values of one group against the Sacred Values of another. Each sees the other in a dehumanized form, fundamentalist thought abounds on both sides, and levels of intransigence are quickly revealed.

There is no known method for moving this process to non-violence. And it only partly calming to easily predict IS’s diminishing influence. They are up against forces that can expand to extremely high levels of effectiveness. They have no allies as a result of their exclusiveness. They will fall to extinction or fade away as so many others before them. Think Anarchists in the 1920s, the Red Brigades of the 70s…

ISIS will no doubt be replaced by a group espousing the same or another cause, popping up in the same or another place, probably with improved techniques, to take the media spotlight again.

August 25, 2014 by Bruce Wallace, 121Contact

The Koran, Al Baghdadi, and evolution.

IS commander Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi might take heed of the Koran’s description of him as a sinner:

“Now, there is a kind of man whose views on the life of this world may please thee greatly, and [the more so as] he cites God as witness to what is in his heart and is, moreover, exceedingly skillful in argument. But whenever he prevails, he goes about the earth spreading corruption and destroying property and progeny [even though] God does not like corruption. And whenever he is told, ‘Be conscious of God,’ his false pride drives him into [even greater] sin …” (2:204–2:206).

Al Baghdadi is not the first to twist scripture into justification for evil. He is not the first to claim singular and superior knowledge of holy texts to convince followers that they are acting in the name of a god. Most Muslims, like followers of any faith, are not experts at the underlying texts. When someone in authority quotes (falsely or not), and acts as a guide there is a tendency to believe the one who professes special knowledge. This is especially true if the speaker is an accomplished orator/writer with a clever public relations arm.

Al Baghdadi is not the first to think and act as if he is everlasting. It is unavoidable that after he has passed, in the way of Osama bin Laden and the historical chain of destructive hysterical fanatics, there will be others to be dealt with. Such is the nature of a species with an incredible breadth of thinking patterns. Totalism will continue to appear and fundamentalist thinking will continue to be a problem for civilization to deal with. With time and education this problem will diminish, but ever so slowly; as slowly as any other evolutionary change.