[Vision2020] Saudi Arabia: Free and Fair Elections?

[Melynda Huskey]

Dear Pat,

Of course school supplies are nice, and so are schools.  But without electricity, running water, sewer systems, food, medicine, and safe streets, all the school supplies television actors can collect will be useless.  Most of the funds designated for re-building infrastructure--including schools--in Iraq are not being spent, as the hopeless task of trying to contain violence with more violence sucks up more of our time and energy.   

As the occupying force, it's our responsibility to provide for basic human needs.  Instead, we continue to make matters worse.  Children cannot safely leave their houses, or get reliably clean water to drink.  As their nation spirals into chaos, the Iraqis are expressing their rage and frustration against us, the occupying imperial power which cynically claims to have "liberated" them.  They have turned on each other and on us, and violence is consuming us.  A few pencils and some notebooks funnelled through U.S. soldiers is not going to purchase the devotion of Iraqis who have lost children, spouses, neighbors, and livelihoods to the unrestrained violence of this irresponsible war.  We are building a terrorist machine in Iraq.   

Good could indeed come out of this horrible situation--God is immeasurably powerful, and turns our grimmest sins to good.  But let's not forgive ourselves before we've repented.  This war is a wicked, wicked waste of human life, a horrible catastrophe in every possible way.   

Melynda Huskey

----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Kraut
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 9:01 PM
To: vision2020
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Saudi Arabia: Free and Fair Elections?

I am disappointed by your pessimism which is so much like all you hear from the US Press. But, for me its like this: Paul Cisneros of the new show CSI: New York has been on all the talk shows talking about his project to send school supplies to the kids through the soldiers and this means that the children are learning a new way of life. Most importantly they are learning to read so that they don't have to believe what their leaders tell them they can read it for themselves. The soldiers are helping these kids go to school and stay there. If you don't read beyond the major press you don't know this and everything in Iraq is bad to you...but there is good happening. It won't happen easy or soon...but it can happen.  
PK
----- Original Message -----  
From: Tbertruss at aol.com  
To: predator75 at moscow.com ; sunilramalingam at hotmail.com ; vision2020 at moscow.com  
Sent: Monday, September 27, 2004 8:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Saudi Arabia: Free and Fair Elections?



DC:

We have military bases there, but we are not "occupying" Germany, Japan or Cuba with troops and tanks in their streets.  In South Korea, we have a more active military presence, actually guarding a border, but this is with the relatively stable South Korean government's permission.

I am pointing out that we could be militarily "occupying" Iraq for decades to prevent all hell from breaking loose (as if with us there now all hell is not breaking loose!).  I doubt that if we leave the security of Iraq to Iraqis that we will see a democratic system emerge.  If we really withdraw and leave the country to whatever the Iraqis come up with, we will see a brutal civil war or another brutal dictatorship.

Ted Moffett  



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