Bush Policies Have Brought Segregation to Iraq

Before the ‘Shock and Awe’ of March 20, 2003, Shiites and Sunnis lived in mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad and many other Iraqi cities. There were frequent conflicts and discrimination by the Baathist-Sunni dominated government of Hussein, but the majority of the population displayed reasonable tolerance for their Islamic neighbors. Neighborhoods were mixed and some families were composed of both Shiite and Sunni members. The streets were safe and there were no suicidal bombings.

The establishment of tolerance in any society may take many generations or centuries to develop. But it can rapidly be reversed by thoughtless leaders who introduce drastic social changes into a society. From the beginning of the U.S. invasion, it was apparently the intention of the Bush administration to utterly restructure the Iraqi nation regardless of the consequences to the people. The U.S. government wanted to change the established social, economic and political institutions of the entire country. This was to be done regardless of what the Iraqi people wanted. No one even bothered to ask them their opinion. This was an arrogant nation building adventure that produced tragic results.

The Bush administration’s military strategy in Iraq has been essentially to ‘divide and conquer’. A long established White House plan to deliberately create sectarian divisions within Iraqi society. The U.S. continues to arm and train the Sunnis in some areas, while simultaneously arming and training the Shiites in other areas. To provide military arms and training to both sides during a civil war has no other explanation than to promote sectarian divisions.

The tolerance that had formerly existed in Iraqi society, was totally disrupted by the Bush invasion. The invasion essentially removed all forms of social, legal and governmental institutions and authority. What followed was chaotic disoriented confusion. Law and order ceased to exist and violence and looting were widespread. Tolerance and social order can exist, even under a dictatorship as long as the people have some degree of respect for the existing authority, whatever type of government that happens to be. When that authority and stability, which is a feature of a civilized society, is suddenly removed, people revert back to tribal instincts. Civil war and segregation are the results. When a social order disintegrates, anarchy and lack of any secular control can quickly destroy a nation. New groups must be formed to regain control and leadership must be reestablished. In a society that is dominated by religion, such as Islam does in Iraq, these will inevitably be religious groups, sects and leaders.

There are many different stages that societies evolve through with regards to tolerance. These stages are not always progressive, often they are regressive. Different periods of development generally evolve in a progressive manner from intolerance to tolerance. Not because this is the only direction that this evolution can follow, but because this is the sequence which generally produces the more peaceful and harmonious end results. These stages are essentially described as; war, intolerance, extermination, expulsion, segregation, discrimination, assimilation, tolerance and peace.

Intolerance is usually most evident in relation to racial and religious differences but it is not in any way limited to these two characteristics. It can be based on almost any characteristic such as national origins, tribal affiliations, ethnic backgrounds, economic status, cultural differences, class segregation, political opinions, sexual characteristics or orientation, ancestral traditions or any identifiable differences between any two groups of people. Often intolerance is based on some minor disagreement or trivial characteristic that is of no significant importance. Narrow minded people are more likely to overly emphasize these small differences than more broad minded people who appreciate diversity in people and cultures. Tolerance and diversity foster social and national progress and cultural and scientific development. Heterogeneous societies stimulate creativity and discoveries.

For over a thousand years there has been intermittent conflicts between the different Islamic sects in the Middle East. During some of these peaceful periods, primarily due to strong authoritarian governments, there has existed different degrees of tolerance between different religious groups and tribes. At other times there has been violent religious wars, ethnic cleansing and segregation.

Wars are the most extreme prejudicial form of intolerance. The intolerance of one group toward another is the root cause of most wars, especially Religious Wars. This intolerance produces the most extreme form of conflict and results in the extermination of weaker or minority groups. Wars and ethnic cleansing are little more than organized murder of one group by another group. When intolerance is sanctioned policy by a group or a whole nation, no attempt is made for any type of compromise. Rigid ideology becomes more important than human life, liberty or civil rights. Soldiers are systematically brainwashed and told that their violent murderous actions are necessary to protect the homeland or their religion. The opposing group is dehumanized to the point that they are viewed as little more than animals. Soldiers almost always are trained to refer to the other group with some derogatory discriminatory name (these names are too discriminatory to even be listed). This attitude makes killing easier. Military organizations deliberately teach intolerance and hatred of whomever they are opposing militarily. Soldiers are trained to kill humans and that is their only function. They are forbidden from thinking at all or expressing any compassionate emotion. Compassion is considered a despised weakness in military organizations. All wars are acts of extermination as far as soldiers are concerned. Soldiers are deliberately put into a hostile situation in which they have no choice but to either kill or be killed. Compromise or tolerance is not acceptable military policy. Surrender is not an option.

The Bush invasion and occupation reversed the evolution of tolerance in Iraq. By totally destroying the social establishment and all law and order, it unleashed a violent civil war. It turned Shiite against Sunni. It turned neighbor against neighbor. It replaced tolerance with intolerance. It created civil war, segregation and ethnic cleansing. It is producing an average of 1000 funerals a month in Iraq. Barbarism, mass murder and torture have become commonplace. If the U.S. government accepts torture of prisoners as standard military policy, there is no doubt whatsoever, that this will result in U.S. soldiers also being inhumanly and painfully tortured. Torture is an act of extreme intolerance which serves absolutely no sane purpose. Any U.S. president, vice president or attorney general who advocates torture under any circumstances, should be impeached immediately.

Wars are nationalized intolerance which are often authorized by the leaders of supposedly civilized modern nations. National leaders, dictators, presidents, kings, popes, ayatollahs, all continue to approve of war for their own selfish interests. In Iraq, the U.S. has for decades had only one interest, and it‘s not the people, it‘s the oil. The dead and injured men, women and children are just collateral damage to all of these authoritarian rulers.

In any kind of conflict, there are basically two kinds of strategies, defensive and offensive. Every individual, group or nation has the legitimate right of self defense. No individual, group or nation has the legitimate right to commit aggressive acts toward another. Aggressor nations are almost universally despised. Especially when a superpower nation attacks a weak nation that is militarily unable to defend themselves. Aggressive wars by the U.S., in Korea, in Vietnam and Iraq have seriously damaged the reputation, honor and world esteem of our nation for many decades to come. Great nations should not behave like international bullies.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a totally illegal aggressive military action. After the Iraq government was destroyed by indiscriminate bombing, the Iraqi people were faced with two national conflicts. The religious civil war that resulted from the breakdown of civil authority and the occupation of their country by a foreign invading army. Intolerance quickly developed for the different religious sects and the occupying army, which was also primarily a different religious group. This situation created three different religious groups in conflict with each other; the Shiites, the Sunnis and the Christians (majority of U.S. soldiers, including Bush) and the lesser involved northern Kurds. Judaism (14 million worldwide members) is a contributing factor, but the major world religions are Islam (1.5 billion) and Christianity (2.5 billion). Since the invasion, this intolerance in Iraq has been at it’s maximum intensity, which is producing violent war. Each religious sect is critically fighting for their own survival (at least from their own point of view).

Wars are only justified when they are for the purpose of self defense. Offensive, aggressive or pre-emptive attacks by one nation against another are never justified legally or morally. Religious institutions that support offensive wars either by their assent or by their silence, are being hypocritical. Every religion has as a fundamental part of their creed, the love of humanity, the opposition to suffering, and the promotion of world peace and happiness. Wars destroy all of these. Wars are the embodiment of intolerance and hatred. They are the glorification of conquest and military power. These conflicts are the primary concerns that every religion and every empathetic individual should be ardently opposed to. They are also the primary concerns that every nonreligious individual should be intensely opposed to. Wars kill religious people and nonreligious people alike. Everyone is equal in a cemetery.

Religious leaders, like all patriotic citizens, are justified is supporting a defensive war, like World War II. Religious leaders are not justified in supporting an offensive war, like the Vietnam War or the Iraqi War. Every religious leader or individual in the U.S. who has been patriotically waving a U.S. flag and cheering for Bush’s war, has been dishonoring and disgracing their own religion. The Iraq war was never a defensive war by the U.S., it has been totally aggressive from the very beginning. Human lives are far more important than oil company contracts.

Religious Wars, Holy Crusades, Holy Jihads, the Inquisition, Witch burnings, suicide bombings, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, slave labor camps, genocide and all forms of mass murder are all produced by the most extreme form of intolerance. War is organized methodical intolerance. Nothing can possibly be more intolerant than killing other human beings. This violent extreme intolerance and prejudice daily fills our cemeteries from Arlington West Virginia to Baghdad.

The second stage in the evolution of tolerance is less deadly, but still forcefully violent. This is the expulsion of one group from a society by another more dominate group. Our own nation of the United States originated primarily because of the intolerance of European theocracies for minority religious viewpoints. Those European theocracies, during the Middle Ages, practiced both violent extermination of minorities (the Inquisition and Holy Crusades) and an intolerance which resulted in expulsion. Minority religious groups founded our original American colonies after being forced out of Europe. We are almost all descended from refugees and emigrants. Even the American Indians migrated from Asia.

The Iraqi people have been experiencing this expulsion stage of intolerance, for the past four years. Over 2 million Iraqis are now homeless, jobless refugees in neighboring countries. Even though the U.S. is totally responsible for creating these refugees, the U.S. government has allowed almost none of them to emigrate to the U.S. This is shameful. The Bush administration should read the inscription on the Statue of Liberty standing in New York harbor.

After four years of an intolerant religious war in Iraq, about 2.25 million people are internally displaced and about 2 million have fled the country, and the number of casualties is in the tens or hundreds of thousands. The evolution of tolerance is now beginning to reach the next stage.

This is the segregation stage. This stage is less violent than the previous stages but still creates disparities and inequalities which are forced on the minorities by the authoritarian majorities. Separate but equal policies are rarely equal. Financial allocations and opportunities for the majorities are always superior to those for the minorities. Segregation creates isolation which only fosters more intolerance. This intolerance may or may not be advocated by the government leaders, but it is inevitable among the different divided groups of citizens who suffer the effects in their daily lives. As long as any society continues to have legal segregation, their will be hostile antagonism between the different groups.

The monthly death toll in Iraq is now beginning to decrease as a result of the segregation that has taken place (it‘s still about 200 deaths per week). Those neighborhoods that used to be mixed Shiite and Sunni groups are now segregated into separate safe zones. Ethnic cleansing, expulsion and suicidal murder have created distinct Shiite and Sunni areas. These areas (or tribal territories) are patrolled and guarded by local (U.S. armed) militias and the separating boundaries are defended by the U.S. soldiers. This is resulting in more peaceful but isolated neighborhoods. In some areas walls are being erected or proposed, analogous to the Berlin Wall that separated the east part of that German city from the west. Iraqi people that used to be united are now segregated, thanks to Bush. They are separated from their former homes, former jobs, former neighbors and in many cases from their own relatives. The Berlin Wall divided the people and families of that city for 28 years, from 1961 to 1989. How long will the people of Iraq be divided by Bush’s wall? After 50 years, U.S. soldiers are still guarding the partition between North and South Korea. Korean families are still separated by a demilitarized zone. How many decades are U.S. soldiers going to guard the partitions in Iraq? And more important, why should they? The U.S. may have created these divisions and segregations, but the U.S. cannot solve these problems. The problem is an Iraqi problem and it must be solved by the Iraqi people.

The Iraqi government now has democratically elected leaders and a national army and police force. It is time for those leaders to stand firm and tell the U.S. to leave their sovereign nation and stop meddling in Iraqi affairs.

The evolution of tolerance usually takes centuries to develop from intolerance into more peaceful and just societies. It is unknown how many decades Iraq society may remain segregated before neighborhoods can return to the prewar conditions that exhibited more tolerance and peace.

One possible solution to the present hostile segregation that is being considered by some members of U.S. Congress is the permanent separation of Iraq into three federal semi-independent or independent states; Shiite, Sunni and Kurd. This is not a decision that the U.S. has any legal right to make. This decision should be made solely by the Iraqi government and the Iraqi people. The U.S. presently has no right under any international law to even remain in Iraq, much less to continue to dictate to the present Iraqi government how to run their own country.

Even If Iraq remains a unified nation, it may or may not continue to have the present segregated neighborhoods. Even if the neighborhood segregation ends, discrimination can still continue. Sometimes discrimination is in clear violation of existing laws and sometimes it is simply a moral issue which can’t be legally enforced. Anyone who practices discrimination is denying to others what they themselves want. What happens in the future in Iraq, if and when segregation ends, will largely depend upon which group is able to acquire and maintain control of the government. Since the Shiites are the majority Islamic group and the U.S. is continually arming and training them, they will probably eventually have all political and military control and determine the future of the nation. (The most probable political outcome will be the establishment of a Republican Shiite Islamic Theocracy). After suffering discrimination for decades, will the Shiites be any more tolerant than their predecessors?

Upon the removal of the segregation and discrimination conditions, the last stage in the evolution of tolerance, becomes possible. This is the stage of assimilation. Only when all groups are accepted into a society and given completely equal rights, equal opportunities and freedoms can a peaceful harmonious society come into existence. This assimilation requires that all members of society have tolerance for all other members. This, of course, is never completely achievable, but it is the most important goal that any nation can strive for. Tolerance requires only that every individual respect the rights of every other individual and that they have equal opportunity to voice their own opinions. Every person wishes for others only what they wish for themselves. Every person’s freedoms end where another person’s freedoms begin. No one has unlimited freedom to act or do anything that interferes with the rights and liberties of others. Tolerance means more than to just ‘put up with’ others, it means to accept and respect them as equals in all aspects of society.

Societies may evolve through these stages in a progressive direction, but they may also devolve in a regressive direction. A society may achieve an agreeable state of assimilation and peaceful harmony only to find that changing economical or political conditions and a new authoritarian government many reverse these achievements and divisive intolerance may return. Most civilizations that have existed throughout history, have eventually failed. Nations may rise and nations may fall. A great deal of this survival or collapse depends on how a nation respects other nations and how much it respects it’s own citizens. In every instance the keyword is tolerance.

Returning to a more tolerant society in Iraq may take decades. In part due to the often strong influence of religious sects and tribal groups who place more importance on their own individual unity than on nationalism.

This condition most frequently occurs as a result of the continued struggle between competing authoritarian religions. Every religion is based on dogmas and creeds which differ markedly from every other religion. When individual religions become too rigid in their attitudes and beliefs, they become intolerant. Intolerance only destroys human societies.

Tolerance, like liberty and civil rights can never be taken for granted and must continually be defended.