This is just... Shit.
Oct. 28th, 2003 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamBloody hell. So now the *Red Cross* (or Red Crescent, as it is known in the Muslim world) has been targetted in Baghdad.
Implications and possible reasons
This is just going straight to hell, isn't it? If the Red Cross leaves - who pride themselves on being the last to leave and the first to arrive in any sort of conflict - it's just so, so not good. Aid to the ordinary Iraqis will diminish, said ordinary Iraqis will become more and more frustrated and probably blame the Americans, anger will be fuelled, maybe some of them will think it was better under Saddam.... This is just going straight to hell. It may be possible to save it yet, of course, but the more the security situation deteriorates, the worse it will be to 'fix it'.
And Mr Bush declared in *March* that this war was won. Yeah, I can see that. I cannot help but think that the Bush administration, in their great hurry to get to war just did not plan too well for the peace to come after. Not to mention that we have still not seen the great stockpiles of WMDs that the US claimed made Iraq a threat - nor have any real links to Al Queda been proven. As one commentator in Norway said it: "Iraq is now a battleground for the war on terror. Not because the muslim fundamentalists chose it, but because the US chose it. And the fundamentalists came." (My translation)
And of course, the real victims of all this are the Iraqis themselves, who have suffered the highest death toll (even more so if you add the civilian death toll from the war itself). They deserve so much better.
But quite frankly, so do a lot of people. I sometimes wonder with all the 'give money to Iraq' that we're forgetting that others need help and aid just as much? Shall we just forget them? Have we already forgotten them?
I fear for the future.
Implications and possible reasons
This is just going straight to hell, isn't it? If the Red Cross leaves - who pride themselves on being the last to leave and the first to arrive in any sort of conflict - it's just so, so not good. Aid to the ordinary Iraqis will diminish, said ordinary Iraqis will become more and more frustrated and probably blame the Americans, anger will be fuelled, maybe some of them will think it was better under Saddam.... This is just going straight to hell. It may be possible to save it yet, of course, but the more the security situation deteriorates, the worse it will be to 'fix it'.
And Mr Bush declared in *March* that this war was won. Yeah, I can see that. I cannot help but think that the Bush administration, in their great hurry to get to war just did not plan too well for the peace to come after. Not to mention that we have still not seen the great stockpiles of WMDs that the US claimed made Iraq a threat - nor have any real links to Al Queda been proven. As one commentator in Norway said it: "Iraq is now a battleground for the war on terror. Not because the muslim fundamentalists chose it, but because the US chose it. And the fundamentalists came." (My translation)
And of course, the real victims of all this are the Iraqis themselves, who have suffered the highest death toll (even more so if you add the civilian death toll from the war itself). They deserve so much better.
But quite frankly, so do a lot of people. I sometimes wonder with all the 'give money to Iraq' that we're forgetting that others need help and aid just as much? Shall we just forget them? Have we already forgotten them?
I fear for the future.
