Home | Culture And Society | Current Affairs
In a recent article by Dr. Amaal V.E. Tokars, she writes: "There has been much talk recently over whether or not Iraq has fallen into a state of civil war. If this talk is true, then the question of who is to blame for the violence has a simple answer, and a rather convenient one for the US administration. If we buy into this notion of civil war being the result of sectarian unrest, then the cause of the violence falls on the Iraqi peoples rather than on the US administration that declared war on Iraq in the first place. In the recent violence in Amarah, it was reported that 25 people died in a showdown between the sectarian forces of Cleric Muqtada al-Sadre and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq. The showdown involved one established militia fighting with another. Both militias are Shiite, that is, they are both of the same religious sects. Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, U.S. citizens were painted a chaotic picture of unrest between the Iraqi and the Kurd, where a U.S. intervention was needed in part to relieve this friction. After the invasion, U.S. citizens were told a similar story about unrest between the Sunnite Sect and the Shiite Sect, and warned that a U.S. withdrawal could lead to all-out civil war. A closer look at the present violence in Iraq, however, raises an eyebrow about placing the blame on civil dichotomy alone. Recently, Bush met with General John Abizaid who is now the top U.S. commander in the Middle East--part of the U.S. administration's public relations push for Iraq to take responsibility for themselves. It seems that this P.R. campaign is catching on, as congress is now beginning to call for the same. One thing being ignored amid all this political hand-shaking is that the deep violence done to Iraq's civil society has been a result of a collapse of infrastructure, which occurred over the last 15 years of U.S. embargo and U.S. war. Civil society, by definition, should permit and perpetuate all the essentials needed for the fabric of society to flourish. It should be a haven for the arts of antiquity, equitable education, daily electricity, drinkable water, meaningful work. These are just a few things that the flourishing existence of Iraq experienced prior to U.S. intervention. Now, the fabric has been frayed, and these precious things lay in ruin. Without that prolonged harmony of infrastructural and societal systems that is essential to civil society, it is certainly not possible for Iraq to readily raise itself from its ruin now. Recently, the U.S. military announced the deaths of a Marine and four U.S. soldiers, raising the number of American service members killed in October to 83, the highest monthly toll this year. The U.S. military generally avoids reporting the Iraqi death toll of the like, which is usually much higher. Story after story of young men and even boys being killed after being sent to Iraq come home to us. In the intervention that began as Operation Iraq Freedom, we have to wonder: what are we teaching our youth about civil society?"
Information and Articles: http://www.mastersmba.com
Providing Information on various topics, please browse our other Articles for more informative resources, we house information on every topic imaginable so regardless of your needs you can be assured to find the answer here. If you wish to reprint this on your own website, simply click the "Web Version" in the right menu, and you are presented with a pre-formatted document to use.
A lot of the information is written by the Master Article team, and published exclusively on the MastersMBA.com website, and we do our best to research all information to ensure it's as accurate as possible. However at times we also publish documents given to us by other sources, we do examine these documents to ensure they are as accurate and correct as possible however at times they discuss highly specialized fields making it hard to authenticate the validity of every fact in the document. These are written by specialists in their respective fields, and we do trust their integrity and judgment however it's always a good idea when doing any research to consult a number of sources and form your own conclusion based on a number of view points.
