'We Were Told We Were Fighting Terrorists; the Real Terrorist Was Me'

[grovestreet]

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hi i just wanted to share.

"We were told we were fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism is this occupation. Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.

I threw families onto the street in Iraq, only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country, in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away, they are right here at home, and if we organize and fight, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world."

full article here.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/102352/%27we_were_told_we_were_fighting_terrorists%3B_the _real_terrorist_was_me%27/?page=1

[shogunfreak]

its not racism bro. MUSLIMS really hated Christians and thats a fact.... It jus happened that christians is the majority here in Pinas... thats why.....

mag unsa man diay ang military, maglingkod lng ug pasagdan ang mga muslim extremists magbuhat sa ilang mga kabuang? nya ipasangil nga Jihad daw ug sa religion cause? thats a lame bull$^&T excuse.

fact: muslims hate christians.
fact:christians just retaliate, it never happened that a christian country maoy mag una una sa gubot. mao nay giingon, way sukod sa bawos...

[Gwynhuever]

@shogun.....muslims do not hate christians...you are very wrong on that account.....the radicals maybe but not muslims in general...islam is a religion which advocates peace....please be careful pag generalize

also check your facts...do not immediately blame them...check who "invaded" who first.....

by the way i am not muslim...i am also christian...

namaste

[shogunfreak]

"patayin lahat kaaway ni Allah"

what does that implicate in their quoran?

[shogunfreak]

who invaded who?

hmm.. maybe history doesnt lie man bro... philippines is not a muslim country before if ur trying to tell me nga gi invade ang pinas ni magellan.

[Gwynhuever]

"patayin lahat kaaway ni Allah"

what does that implicate in their quoran?

...and what about 'an eye for an eye' in the bible? ...you can not just read a verse out of the many and focus on that...kay ma shot ka sa taro he he he

have you read the koran? or tinidyot lang nga chika2x from the other haters?

[Gwynhuever]

@shogun ...history ...hmmm

1- never happened nga christians mag una sa gubot? read up about the Holy Crusades

2 - did you know that The United States has operated a small military-training mission in Saudi Arabia since the 1950s? Nya ni increase ang forces pag 1990's? Mao bitaw na lagot ang mga muslim extremists kay in their opinion gi desecrate sa mga "infidels" ang ila lugar...please remember mecca and medina (the holiest cities in the islam religion) naa sa Saudi...maong nalagot ang mga radicals sad....so retaliate? kinsa nag una?

anyway ...i am not defending the terrorists bro...please don't get me wrong...i am defending the other peace loving muslims nga madala lang jud tawn sa kahig tungod aning mga terorista...

[grovestreet]

i think you didn't get the point of the article, he wasn't talking about religion. He was talking about being human. don't believe all the things you see in TV bro.

page 1 -
When I first joined the army, I was told that racism no longer existed in the military. A legacy of inequality and discrimination was suddenly washed away by something called the Equal Opportunity Program. We would sit through mandatory classes, and every unit had an EO representative to ensure that no elements of racism could resurface. The army seemed firmly dedicated to smashing any hint of racism.
Then September 11 happened, and I began to hear new words like "towel-head," and "camel jockey," and the most disturbing, "sand nigger." These words did not initially come from my fellow lower-enlisted soldiers, but from my superiors: my platoon sergeant, my first sergeant, my battalion commander. All the way up the chain of command, these viciously racist terms were suddenly acceptable.

When I got to Iraq in 2003, I learned a new word, "haji." Haji was the enemy. Haji was every Iraqi. He was not a person, a father, a teacher, or a worker. It's important to understand where this word came from. To Muslims, the most important thing is to take a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. Someone who has taken this pilgrimage is a haji. It's something that, in traditional Islam, is the highest calling in the religion. We took the best thing from Islam and made it into the worst thing.
Since the creation of this country, racism has been used to justify expansion and oppression. Native Americans were called "savages," the Africans were called all sorts of things to excuse slavery, and Vietnam veterans know the multitude of words used to justify that imperialist war.
So haji was the word we used. It was the word we used on this particular mission I'm going to talk about. We've heard a lot about raids and kicking down the doors of people's houses and ransacking their houses, but this was a different kind of raid.

[grovestreet]

page 2-

We never got any explanation for our orders. We were only told that a group of five or six houses was now property of the U.S. military, and we had to go in and make those families leave their houses.
We went to these houses and informed the families that their homes were no longer theirs. We provided them no alternative, nowhere to go, no compensation. They were very confused and very scared. They did not know what to do and would not leave, so we had to remove them.
One family in particular, a woman with two small girls, a very elderly man, and two middle-aged men; we dragged them from their house and threw them onto the street. We arrested the men because they refused to leave, and we sent them off to prison.

A few months later I found out, as we were short interrogators and I was given that assignment. I oversaw and participated in hundreds of interrogations. I remember one in particular that I'm going to share with you. It was the moment that really showed me the nature of this occupation.
This particular detainee was already stripped down to his underwear, hands behind his back and a sandbag on his head. I never saw this man's face. My job was to take a metal folding chair and smash it against the wall next to his head -- he was faced against the wall with his nose touching it -- while a fellow soldier screamed the same question over and over again. No matter what his answer, my job was to slam the chair against the wall. We did this until we got tired.

I was told to make sure he kept standing up, but something was wrong with his leg. He was injured, and he kept falling to the ground. The sergeant in charge would come and tell me to get him up on his feet, so I'd have to pick him up and put him against the wall. He kept going down. I kept pulling him up and putting him against the wall. My sergeant was upset with me for not making him continue to stand. He picked him up and slammed him against the wall several times. Then he left. When the man went down on the ground again, I noticed blood pouring down from under the sandbag. I let him sit, and when I noticed my sergeant coming again, I would tell him quickly to stand up. Instead of guarding my unit from this detainee, I realized I was guarding the detainee from my unit.

I tried hard to be proud of my service, but all I could feel was shame. Racism could no longer mask the reality of the occupation. These are human beings. I've since been plagued by guilt. I feel guilt any time I see an elderly man, like the one who couldn't walk who we rolled onto a stretcher and told the Iraqi police to take him away. I feel guilt any time I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home. I feel guilt any time I see a young girl, like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street.

We were told we were fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism is this occupation. Racism within the military has long been an important tool to justify the destruction and occupation of another country. Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.
I threw families onto the street in Iraq, only to come home and find families thrown onto the street in this country, in this tragic and unnecessary foreclosure crisis. Our enemies are not five thousand miles away, they are right here at home, and if we organize and fight, we can stop this war, we can stop this government, and we can create a better world.

[mannyamador]

1- never happened nga christians mag una sa gubot? read up about the Holy Crusades

Yes read on the Crusades. You will find that they were mainly DEFENSIVE in nature.

Even before the First Crusade, Muslim troops had already been attacking Christian communities and kingdoms. The Seljukian Turks threatened Christian pilgrims, and the Byzantine Empire. This had been going on for decades. Then the Muslim armies invaded the Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land. They conquered Jerusalem and Antioch, Syria and Asia Minor.

Both sides, as was common in those times, engaged in atrocities and even fought among each other. But this does not change the fact that the Crusades were brought about because of Muslim aggression.