As of this year, almost forty percent of all Iraqis will have known nothing but the occupation of their homes by American oppressors:
"0-14 years: 38.8% (male 5,711,187/female 5,514,794)"
Those at the upper limit of the range were four years old when the US invaded their country. Eleven million, out of twenty-nine million total, whose normality is occupation.
That's the point of staying in Iraq.
Having children who grow into adulthood knowing nothing but occupation.
And if you think it doesn't work - check out what's left of Palestine. When your frame of reference is occupation, when all you know is that your home really belongs to soldiers and the army, who can enter and invade it at will - you negotiate, fight and defend yourself from that position. Your enforced disadvantage means that any "gains" you make still end up being wins for your oppressor.
Crow's Eye: Maintaining a commitment to Pointless Acrimony™ and Hate Filled Invective™! Also available in corvid mischief and traditional sly dog's mistrust.
Well, that's fucking sobering.
ReplyDeleteAnd old, old, old lesson to be learned here (I think), Ethan.
ReplyDeleteLook at one company, one church towns - under their own sort of occupation, producing degraded people who act like victims (paranoid conspiracism, substance abuse, fragmented relationships, armageddonist fantasies, etc) and then act against their perceived opponents as if everything those opponents do is an attack.
Crippled, not-quite-persons. Soldiers. Shock troops. People who negotiate away their own interests, because the desire for the image of stability itself becomes addictive, becomes the only form of power. Because they don't have the capacity to know better.
Our economy is a refugee camp, in that light - churning out people who are very easily manipulated because they know just enough to feel their disadvantage, but never enough to do anything about it.
That's why a power occupies - absorbs all the costs, all the burdens, even the high risk of failure.
Because the reward, damn that reward is something - isn't it?
Respect,
Jack