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Riverbend: You know your country is in trouble when:


End of Another Year...
You know your country is in trouble when:

    1.
    The UN has to open a special branch just to keep track of the chaos and bloodshed, UNAMI.
    2.
    Abovementioned branch cannot be run from your country.
    3.
    The politicians who worked to put your country in this sorry state can no longer be found inside of, or anywhere near, its borders.
    4.
    The only thing the US and Iran can agree about is the deteriorating state of your nation.
    5.
    An 8-year war and 13-year blockade are looking like the country's 'Golden Years'.
    6.
    Your country is purportedly 'selling' 2 million barrels of oil a day, but you are standing in line for 4 hours for black market gasoline for the generator.
    7.
    For every 5 hours of no electricity, you get one hour of public electricity and then the government announces it's going to cut back on providing that hour.
    8.
    Politicians who supported the war spend tv time debating whether it is 'sectarian bloodshed' or 'civil war'.
    9.
    People consider themselves lucky if they can actually identify the corpse of the relative that's been missing for two weeks.

A day in the life of the average Iraqi has been reduced to identifying corpses, avoiding car bombs and attempting to keep track of which family members have been detained, which ones have been exiled and which ones have been abducted. Riverbend much more

This is really a must read. It is sad to notice the darkness pervading her writings and the continuing loss of her hope and optimism in mankind and the future.~ candy


Tina December 29, 2006 - 8:43pm
Tina's diary | printer friendly version | digg

It ends with -

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We've all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.

Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn't believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That's the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he's wanted to marry for the last six years? I don't think so.

Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn't make them more significant, does it?

Riverbend - sitting in the smoking ruin of her nation - feels remorse that she's losing the compassion and civility that makes her care about the death of American soldiers that shattered and occupied her country.

Wow.

Escher Sketch December 29, 2006 - 9:10pm
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I almost posted this this morning...


"I beseech you in the bowels of christ think it possible you may be mistaken."

Scott M December 29, 2006 - 9:59pm
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read today about the horror and lies of the execution...

Candy thanks for checking her site and posting this...i have stopped checking it regularly, because, no lie, I end up in tears every time. My heartache can only continue for so long, so i can keep it together at home. thanks.

**************************************
If this were 1700, they'd be saying: "Since civilization began, slavery has existed. It's human nature." I would have believed it. If 1800: "Women will never vote. They are not born rational". I would have believed it.
2006: Make war irrelevant

bernadene December 31, 2006 - 4:09pm
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