Day: December 24, 2008

Iraqi Christians under attack in Mosul; find safety in Irbil

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While Iraq as a whole is far more peaceful and safe than it was a couple of years ago, Mosul, in northern Iraq, is still plagued by violence, especially the Christians. Violence from whom? The Telegraph (UK) names the attackers as “opposing factions,” “vigilante groupss,” and “al-Qaeda fighters.”  Oh yes, and “gunmen” in the headline: “Iraqi Christians flee gunmen for sanctuary of monastery.”

…the tranquil life of Mar Matti’s black-robed monks has been shattered by the arrival of hundreds of Christians fleeing a campaign of persecution in Mosul, just 20 miles away.

Their homes raided, their priests attacked and their relatives murdered, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians have become the latest victims of violence in the city, once the most cosmopolitan in Iraq.

“First they came against the Kurds, then against the Yazidis and now they have come for the Christians,” said Jalal Mansour, 43, a former marble worker who fled to Mar Matti with his family after they were threatened by gunmen. “My uncle, an old man, was killed just because of his faith.”

….Christians believe they attracted the ire of the vigilante groups that roam Mosul’s dangerous streets when they considered a plan to take up arms themselves.

But these displaced Christians don’t need to leave Iraq.

Now they are considering a move to Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region 50 miles away where there have been no major terrorist attacks for nearly two years.

The city’s affluent Christian neighbourhood of Ainkawa was a world away from the tense atmosphere around Mosul. Happy groups of giggling teenagers sat together in the courtyard of the Chaldean church of St Joseph – the girls wearing the sort of short skirts and tight leggings that would be unthinkable in a Muslim district.

Oh, those uptight Muslims. Kind of like Puritans. But wait, maybe not:

In the Bureau for Christian Affairs, a small committee of church members were allocating menial jobs, lodging and pensions to refugees from Mosul and Baghdad.

Many of them had been forced to leave all their belongings behind. A young man with an intense, haunted stare, said he had been kidnapped in Baghdad by the Mahdi Army and tortured for seven days.

“They told me I should become a Muslim like the other Shias in that area,” he said. “They held my hands in the fire and beat me with sticks and rifle butts calling me an infidel. Finally my family negotiated my release for £7,000 and they freed me. When the police came I was too scared to tell them who took me, so I left and came to Irbil.”

You mean those vigilantes, opposing factions and al-Qaeda fighters who drove the Christians away were Muslims? Imagine that. Lucky I kept reading down to the very last paragraph. Let’s hope U.S. forces can protect the Christians in Irbil, if that’s allowed under the Sharia-compliant agreement we’ve made with the Iraqi government.

Americanize ….. or else!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Last week the federal government released the results of a government-wide task force that has concluded a larger effort must be made to assimilate immigrants and predicts dire consequences if they don’t assimilate.

The United States must embark on an aggressive effort to integrate immigrants, including teaching them English and U.S. history, a federal task force recommended Thursday.

If this “Americanization” fails, the nation could see major problems in 20 or 30 years, with foreign-born populations detached from the larger society and engaging in anti-social behavior, said Alfonso Aguilar, who heads the U.S. Office of Citizenship.

Aguilar compared the potential strife to what is occurring in some Western European countries where foreign-born populations do not feel part of the larger society and are not accepted by many as full citizens.

I would like to see the report because if Aguilar’s gang is suggesting what is happening in Western Europe (riots in Greece and Sweden right now) is completely due to lack of assimilation, implying the natives are being mean to outsiders somehow and not accepting immigrants, they are wrong.   First, some of those immigrants, especially the Muslims, don’t want to assimilate and others leading the riots are anarchists who want to bring down democracies and replace them with Marxist governments.

“We should not be naive and assume that the assimilation process is going to happen automatically,” Aguilar said at a news conference.

As for this comment, it won’t happen fast if  there isn’t some real adjustment on the part of the multiculturalists first.    The cultural relativism that has seeped into governments and non-profits that manifests in acceptance of some of the most anti-American behavior—polygamy, abuse of women, female genital mutilation—needs to be dumped.   People must return to passing judgement on behavior that is unacceptable in America. 

One of my pet peeves has been the ready acceptance of ethnic enclaves throughout the US.  These non-profits settling refugees see nothing wrong with resettled Africans heading off to African communities in places like Minneapolis or Seattle.   It is understood that certain nationalities want to live together.   However, if someone wanted to set up a completely white European community all hell would break loose.

To achieve assimilation the task force recommends more and better English instruction as well as education about the US and its history.   Good yes, but of course we need to build more bureaucracies and throw more money at the problem.

The Task Force on New Americans recommends that the federal government take a leadership role in an “Americanization movement,” but also says that states, local governments, nonprofit groups and the private sector should play a key part.

[….]

The task force also recommends that every state create a “state integration counsel” comprised of state and local government officials, businesses, faith-based organizations, civic organizations, and nonprofit groups that work with immigrant communities.

So what might the ‘or else’ be?

On the same day we heard about the Americanization task force warnings we get word of a report from the Army War College entitled,   ‘U.S. Military Preparing for Domestic Disturbances.’    Any connection between the two?

A new report from the U.S. Army War College discusses the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis.

The report from the War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warns that the U.S. military must prepare for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States” that could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.”

Entitled “Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” the report was produced by Nathan Freier, a recently retired Army lieutenant colonel who is a professor at the college — the Army’s main training institute for prospective senior officers.

He writes: “To the extent events like this involve organized violence against local, state, and national authorities and exceed the capacity of the former two to restore public order and protect vulnerable populations, DoD [Department of Defense] would be required to fill the gap.”

Freier continues: “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order … An American government and defense establishment lulled into complacency by a long-secure domestic order would be forced to rapidly divest some or most external security commitments in order to address rapidly expanding human insecurity at home.”

Read on, there is more.