Poland, Israel/Palestine, South Africa and its Bantustans, Pakistan, India, even the UK with its English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish partitions. Closer to home the partitioning of Quebec from English Canada and what of the great unseen partition between Canada's first Nations and its pasty newcomers? What of the Balkans? Tibet? Kurdistan?
The word partition shares letters with another infamous word; apartheid. Whatever happened to tolerance and the inclusive aspirations one reads so much of in the good books of the religious. Are we not as a race, in theory at least, supposed to embrace one another, notwithstanding belief, colour, gender or culture?
When we harm one another where is the inclusiveness? How do we embrace when we embrace in death and hurt?
It is with morbid interest that we witness now the sudden notion that perhaps only a partitioning of Iraq will result in a lasting peace or at the very least a lasting, but peaceful, mutual fear. Is this the democracy that architects of the invasion of Iraq had in mind? Did they sit down and say: First we will invade because we fear that Saddam Hussein will destroy millions with his WMDs, then we'll just say that we came to save the Iraqi nation from Saddam, then we'll say they could with a good dose of western democracy and become of the American dream, then if that don't work, hell, we'll just partition the suckers to save 'em from themselves. 800,000 dead Iraqis, 5000 US servicemen and counting, a bill for one thousand billion US dollars (and counting), a confused and sickened US public. For what, the next thing that pops into the Whitehouse's mind?
What brilliant idea, one wonders, will follow the proposal for partitioning Shia, from Sunni from Kurd? Perhaps they can all join the boy scouts and sit around camp fires singing "Hail to the Chief - the idiot"? Donald Rumsfeld, I have very little doubt, will bring the marshmallows to roast over the open fires.
No comments:
Post a Comment