GUEST columns After
GUEST columns After Iraq, climbing out of the moral abyss The only message our children will take away from the war in Iraq is that if you repeat a boldfaced lie enough, it will someday become accepted truth. And as a corollary, saving face is much more important than admitting a mistake, no matter how destructive the outcome. Unfortunately for our children, manipulating the truth became the norm for the Bush administration, which invaded Iraq on what we know now (and the administration almost certainly knew then) were utterly false pretenses. Thanks to these lies, Americans, including our soldiers and civilians serving in Iraq, were convinced Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9/11 attacks and had weapons of mass destruction, two of the ever-evolving reasons for getting into the war. Many still believe this. Engaging in mass deception in order to justify official policy both degrades and endangers democracy. But by far, it is ordinary Iraqis who have suffered the most. We know now beyond any doubt that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 and had no weapons of mass destruction. But as Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA analyst with the Iraqi portfolio, wrote on March 14, “Intelligence did not drive the decision to invade Iraq – not by a long shot, despite the aggressive use by the Bush administration of cherry-picked fragments of intelligence reporting in its public sales campaign for the war.” Indeed, Adil E. Shamoo SPECIAL TO THE CHALDEAN NEWS this was a war in search of a justification from the very beginning, and any little lie would have worked. It is very fortuitous for all those politicians, policy makers, and bureaucrats with Iraqi blood on their hands — Republicans and Democrats both — that the only courtroom they’ve been shuffled into is the court of public opinion, where most received light sentences. Indeed, the Iraq war boosters are still a fixture on our television screens. Dan Senor, who served as a spokesman for the U.S occupation authorities and willfully misrepresented events on the ground during that time, is a regular commentator on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a veritable roundtable of Washington establishment punditry. Kenneth Pollack, a longtime Brookings fellow and CIA analyst who wrote the 2002 book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (which is barely mentioned today on the Brookings website), is a familiar face on the commentary circuit and among think tank salons. Ex- Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal, who each left their most recent posts in disgrace, are raking in thousands of dollars for speeches, lectures and consulting work. Sure, there are pundits and reporters who admit they wrongly supported the war, but their regrets are usually reserved for their blind faith in the war planners and their own lack of inquisitiveness. For example, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius confessed in a March 21 column that Iraq was one of “the biggest strategic errors in modern American history.” But the thrust of his own mea culpa was that he did not write enough “on the overriding question of whether the war made sense,” which would have allowed him to see that the U.S was not strong enough nor flexible enough to succeed. Rarely do pundits apologize for the horrendous Iraqi losses inflicted by the war: more than a million deaths and millions more wounded with varying lifelong disabilities, including thousands of tortured prisoners, with an estimated 16,000 of them still unaccounted for. Twenty-eight percent of Iraqi children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and 2.8 million people are still internally displaced or living as refugees outside the country. Add to that the complete upheaval of the Iraqi economy, as well as its transportation, education and medical institutions. Don’t forget the countless people suffering from trauma and depression, sectarian strife, terrifying birth defects from toxic pollution and a brain drain that has left the country illiterate. Not since the American Civil War has the U.S citizenry had to endure such horrors. Yet discussion of these repercussions is noticeably absent as we still struggle to understand the scope of the Iraq War and what all of its lies have wrought. Let us start with a sincere apology to the Iraqi people for the crimes the U.S government has committed. We now know beyond any doubt that Iraq was not involved in 9/11 and had no weapons of mass destruction. A long-range plan for restitution is a second step. Empires decline due to moral decay from within. Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, our nation is looking at the moral abyss. If lies have delivered us to this place, then only the truth will begin our journey back. Adil E. Shamoo is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, a senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, and the author of Equal Worth – When Humanity Will Have Peace. He can be reached at ashamoo@som.umaryland.edu. Randall Mansour Attorney & Counselor at Law Our firm is fluent in both Arabic & Chaldean 888-886-6400 www.damichigan.com dreams come true! Introducing new painless laser machine www.beautykingdom1.com Iman Michael PAIN FREE Duet LUMINOUS LIGHT SHEER Duet 7115 Orchard Lake Road Suite # 130 West Bloomfield, MI 48322 FULL BODY LASER HAIR REMOVAL $ 150 PER TREATMENT Limited time only 248-757-2129 Fax: 248-862-6681 10 CHALDEAN NEWS MAY 2013
Bring God along on vacation Few people these days try to put the effort into finding a Catholic church and going to Sunday mass during vacation. It always seems in times of happiness and excitement, God is put to the side. But whenever any sort of suffering or problems occur, we go running to God. Last month I traveled to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, for spring break. Upon my arrival I was shocked to see more than 100 fellow Chaldeans staying in the exact same hotel as I was. I realized how such a large group of practicing Catholics was going to miss Sunday mass. It was especially important because that was the Sunday after Easter, in the Chaldean church known as “New Sunday” or “Divine Mercy Sunday” in the Latin Rite. After finding many others with the same Junior Jwad SPECIAL TO THE CHALDEAN NEWS desire to attend mass, the hotel easily planned for our transportation and we were on our way. Upon our arrival at the St. Lucas Cathedral, I met the celebrant, who was the former Bishop of Florida. I explained to him the ethnicity of our group and showed him pictures of our church. While looking at the pictures a big smile formed on his face and he said that he recognized a person in the picture — our very own His Excellency Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim! He remembered him from more than 50 years ago as a fellow student at the seminary they both attended in France. He was delighted to know that his old friend also became a Bishop. During the mass His Excellency asked me to say the gospel, homily and petitions in Chaldean. Before giving the final blessing he asked the Chaldeans in the congregation to say the Our Father in Chaldean so he may hear it the same way Jesus had said it. He was so moved that he began to tear up. This truly made me realize how lucky we are to be Chaldean. It is truly a gift that we share the language of our Lord. During all of this and seeing how moved the Bishop was just to hear the Lord’s Prayer in Chaldean made me think of the many people who don’t embrace our culture and language and sometimes are embarrassed by it. We truly are blessed with our culture, language and rite, which I believe our community takes for Chaldeans from Michigan gather after mass in Cabo San Lucas. granted. Being Chaldean gives me pride in knowing that we were the first civilization (Mesopotamia), that God himself spoke our language, and how ancient our Chaldean Church is. Our culture truly is amazing and we must take pride in every aspect of it and preserve it to the best of our ability. Junior Jwad is a junior at Brother Rice High Catholic High School. He reads and writes Aramaic and is a server at St Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church. MAY 2013 CHALDEAN NEWS 11
