Our Lefties - The People of the Slogan

Steve was also present for a celebration that hasn’t been allowed since Saddam took over the country. That celebration was called Ashura. He managed to get a cab driver to take him for all of the festivities. He had some interesting notes regarding the celebration. He said that the Shia celebration was not an uplifting celebration at all. But he also said that it offered some interesting insights into the Arab mind. At the very end of the celebration he had to ask himself ‘Is this it? There is no uplifting spiritual message here? No thought of the sacrifice for things of the other world?’ He concluded that it was a celebration of misery and death. It was a reenactment of a slaughter from times past. He also mentioned that dying leaders have twice cursed the people for being impossible to rule. This is part of the Iraqi legacy. I suspect that observation may have been the reason for his murder.

He made some other observations that were probably a camel spider in the underbelly of the locals too. He spent a lot of time listening to the locals and some of the people with United Nations NGO’s, one of which was a guy named Ali. The subject of free speech came up and Steve asked him some rather pointed questions regarding freedom of speech. It became clear that the UN people are going to put the same system back into place that has caused the area to fail miserably in the past. But that isn’t really news for anyone now is it? The liberals have been saying this whole thing will fail and now they are doing their best here and over there to ensure it.

His other observations were that tribal relations trump anything that even borders on a national identity. Saddam tried to break up the tribal relations and in the process made it worse by causing them to regroup and tighten those relationships so that they would survive. Part of Iraq’s problem is the lack of a national identity. If you need to get something done you go to the local tribal authority. Maybe by not attacking that it may slowly dissolve. Time will tell. It is obvious that trying to beat that system into dissolution only makes it get stronger. Maybe for once the UN people are accidentally getting one right. That would be a first.

There was one point on the book where he was asked to speak on freedom of the press. He lectured them on the need to dig deeper than people want you to dig when researching a story. He said the object of freedom of the press is to get the real story out. When he finished his discussion a man approached him and told him that it’s easy for him to say things like that because he lives in America. He thought about it for a moment and told him he had been a little arrogant in his choice of words when he spoke. He said that because the man had told him that if one digs too deeply for anything in Iraq they will die because there a re a lot of people that aren’t interested in telling the truth on anything. They feel it is important to hide the truth at all costs. He exposed much of the hatred and the basis for it between the various people over there. His observations on the Shia probably went too deep for their comfort.

It will take a long time for that place to know freedom and we must stay the course because it will turn the Mid-East into what it has the potential to be. That will cause many of the despotic regimes to be toppled in the long run. It will mean the end of radical Islam because it will no longer be tolerated.

For me the best part of the book was reading the comments about the people of the slogan. That tells me those people see things as we do for the most part. It means there is a chance if we learn to ignore our own people of the slogans.

R.A. Hawkins is the author of "Through Eyes of Shiva", available through http://www.amazon.com/. Visit http://www.entropical-paradise.com/ -- Entropical Paradise - The Home Of R.A. Hawkins for more commentaries and editorials by R.A. Hawkins.

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© 2005 R.A. Hawkins