Iraqi Family Ties Complicate American Efforts for Change

Iraqi Family Ties Complicate American Efforts for Change

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: September 28, 2003


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/international/middleeast/28CLAN.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/oyb3

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I really had a laugh when I read this headline. Some of you , may well
recall my messages from last year about how in the end, regardless of
how the Bush rush to war went, the US policy makers and empire
building dreamers were bound to fail because they never learned to
understand tribal people and kinship systems.

American reservations are generally poor and destitute places with the
exception of some of the smaller tribes close to populated area that
have been able to use casino profits to better their positions. After
stealing the wealth of land and resources of tribal people here, the
US Govt. sought to civilize and coporatize them via reservations,
housing projects that brought clans of families together, who would
never have lived close by on their own (but that was the cheapest way
to provide utilities), and to enforce BIA drafted constitutions on
their governing bodies and citizens.

They totally ignored the cultures of the tribes that are based on a
kinship system that greatly expands relationships beyond what European
standards considered family and where the status of an individual was
based on his generosity towards his relatives and his band as opposed
to gaining material wealth for him/herself.

Had American citizens not worked so hard to erase the indigenous
people of this land from their collective minds (except when they can
use them for sports team mascots or they want to further deplete the
scares resources tribes still own), and had all the brainy folks in DC
considered the reality of what Iraq being a nation of tribes really
implied (instead of simply focusing solely on the idea of their being
Islamic terrorists), they would have seen this one a mile off. I am
not the smartest kid on the block and I saw it.

Everyday citizens can be given some slack for allowing what they want
to blind them to reality. Those hired for their brains and expertise
should not.




-- 
"When our children fail competency tests the schools lose funding.
When our missiles fail tests, we increase funding."  ---Dennis
Kucinich