President Bush spoke Monday about the Iraq war on its four-year anniversary.
“Exactly four years ago coalition forces launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to remove Saddam Hussein from power,” Bush said. That was done at the expense of 3,218 United States soldiers and 258 soldiers from other countries as of March 2007, during the operation.
The president explained that we must stay in Iraq until the Iraqis feel secure in their capitol city of Baghdad. My question is were they ever stable to begin with?
Most people do not know the facts about the situation that has arisen in Iraq. We simply trust our president to lead us into situations he deems necessary.
If most of the American people where to be informed about the situation they are in, and recognize the irresponsibility of launching a war in a nation that is already undergoing a civil war, things may be different and lives would have been saved.
Iraq has been an unstable country for a long time now. Why should we assume that we can fix the problem?
A brief history on why they are unstable is because of the dislike between the Muslim clans called the Sunni and the Shiites. The Sunni are the followers of the prophet Muhammad, whom are considered the “orthodox” Muslims. They are by far the majority.
The Shiites follow Imam Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and close confidant. They believe that Ali and all of his sons should rule the Muslim world. The Sunni do not believe in this. This causes conflict about whom and how the country should be run.
A person once said to me, in a political science class of all places that, “The Muslims don’t even have the same God that Christians do.” I was concerned by this statement. How could one speak of something they know nothing about?
It was in a class about politics during a group discussion and probably only three people knew anything about the Muslim religion. This baffled me, and frankly irritated me, that people were making comments on subjects they know nothing about.
I myself knew some information about the religion and culture because I took Intro to Religious Studies. I highly recommend this for those who want to learn about other religions and to become more informed about the history of all religions.
When this statement was said I immediately responded with, “yes it is!” The translation of the word “Allah” is God in English. The Quran recognizes the Jewish and Christian Bible and believe there are similarities because they believe it came from the same divine source.
According to the Quran, “It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (of judgment between right and wrong,” Quran chapter three, verse three. So what does that mean to the people who want to believe that this just is not so?
The Judea-Christian beliefs are quite similar to the beliefs of the Islamic. But that means you would have to know something about the enemy in which the government has made the targets. Instead we just believe they are bad and have to be the exact opposite of Americans.
Do the people who believe that the Muslims could not have anything to do with “our” God believe this because they want to villainize the Muslim culture? Maybe this is because our president blamed the Arab nations for Sept. 11?
It would reflect poorly on the beliefs in which most Christians have if the people who committed the terrible acts on Sept. 11 were praying to the same God as they themselves pray to each night. I was astonished at the amount of people who just could not handle the facts.
I wish people would not speak about a religion and culture they know nothing about. It is OK to have an opinion but I believe opinions should be based upon facts. The facts are that we are in a war and it will continue to be that way.
“It can be tempting to look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that our best option is to pack up and go home . if American forces were to step back from Baghdad before it is more secure … in time, this violence could engulf the region. The terrorists could emerge from the chaos with a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they had in Afghanistan, which they used to plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. For the safety of the American people, we cannot allow this to happen,” Bush said. The reality is that the president is going to keep the troops in Iraq.
Maybe it is the fear that keeps people’s minds wondering. Fear controls everyone everyday. This is shown in the terror alert system. Fear drives many of our thoughts and maybe this is why people do not necessarily want to know the truth.
We rationalize things by saying, “no they don’t have the same God,” or “they all are radicals.” When in reality it is only a very small portion of the Muslim population who are extremist not the entire Islamic nations.
I believe that speaking out about something you know nothing about is a way of coping with the fear and a way to rationalize what is going on with the war in Iraq.
For more information on the Muslim culture and religion you can go to www.usc.edu/dept/MSA which has information on the Quran, and the history of the Islamic culture.
You can find the transcript of the president’s speech, or you can watch the video of the conference, at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/03/20070319.html.

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