Amariyah

"We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us."
--Osama bin Laden

Many anticipate - some eagerly - that the Haditha incident will enrage the people of Iraq, perhaps even stir the rage of the oft noted and much broader "Arab street".

Many are wrong. There are numerous reasons for this misjudgment, not the least of which is the inability to comprehend a culture that seemingly places more value on the physical incarnation of it's scriptures than it does on human life, that will rise up over cartoons of the prophet but accept the will of Allah when children are gunned down.

And in Iraq above all live a people who interact with American soldiers on a daily basis, and long ago made up their minds whether they were angels or demons, or merely fellow human beings. To assume they will consider a few individuals as representative of the whole is to assign an undeserved ignorance to the mass of humanity, the equivalent of saying they aren't ready for the benefits of free society, or other arguments made all too often by those quite wrongly confident in their personal superiority to members of a lesser race, to children of a lesser god.

But Osama was wrong too. They don't love death. But thanks to him they know it's face quite well - Baghdad's civilian death toll in the past three months is roughly 3,000, more than the US loses during three years of war.

Not from attacks by US Soldiers and Marines, but in attacks by Osama's own:

Harith says the insurgents began arriving in Amariyah after the deadly US assault on Fallujah in April 2004. The first jihadis sought haven with relatives, many of them former senior officers in Saddam Hussein's Army.

The new neighbors roamed the streets at night with rifles and heavy machine guns, planting bombs targeting US patrols. "We'd peer through the blinds and watch them firing mortars at the Americans from my street,'' recalls Harith, a Shiite Arab from Amariyah who asked that his full name not be used. "We decided it was safest to ignore them. They were leaving us alone."

But that didn't last. Not content with having found a haven, the militants set about transforming the demographics and social mores of the area.

"At first it was just the outsiders, but some of the young men - surrounded by these people telling stories about what the Americans did in Fallujah and these preachers telling them it was their duty to fight - joined up,'' says Aqeel, a former resident of Amariyah who fled in February.

Soon, graffiti praising Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and promising death to traitors proliferated; new prayer leaders took over mosques, issuing strident demands for jihad over their loudspeakers every Friday; leaflets were distributed warning women not to work and to cover their hair, men not to trim their beards or wear shorts; then bodies started to appear on street corners.
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But residents say hundreds have been killed here this year by Sunni extremists aligned with Al Qaeda. Shiites mostly, but Sunni shopkeepers, bus drivers, and former Baathists, too. For a while, bound and mutilated corpses were dumped frequently outside the popular Honey Sweets Shop on once-bustling Public Works Street. Most of the shops there are now closed.

Amariyah's pain demonstrates the evolution of Iraq's war, from one in which faceless Sunni Arab insurgents targeted mostly US and Iraqi forces with roadside bombs and suicide attacks to one in which killing squads - both Shiite and Sunni - are focused on unarmed fellow citizens. And they are seeking to transform neighborhoods into enclaves of fear. Baghdad's civilian death toll in the past three months is roughly 3,000, more than the US loses during three years of war.

But that didn't last. "

It rarely does.

0ne Sunni Arab neighbor had joined the insurgents, and explained their choices of targets, he says. "This guy told me that 'if we focus on the Americans they grind us into dust,' " says Aqeel. "So they prefer to hit the Iraqi police, Shiites, translators, people they think are too secular. That's easy for them."

So perhaps there is yet hope for Amariyah.

In America we will wring our collective hands in horror as we await further word on whether our boys killed two dozen innocents in Haditha. And that is right and good, and a luxury reserved for we who don't live in a cold world beneath a burning desert sun.

Angels Call

UPDATE

Thank you all for such an overwhelming response. The family has recieved so much support that they’d really appreciate it if we helped out other service members in need. There are many others who need help and your donations can be used to help them.

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A Marine in Need:

G. is a Marine assigned to 3rd LAR Bn Delta Co, Twenty-Nine Palms, California. He was deployed to Iraq on 6 March 2006. On or about the 1st week of May he was notified by a message from the Red Cross that his 11 year old son was diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma cancer. As hard is it was for him to accept this information and knowing that he had to leave his fellow Marines back in Iraq to carry on the mission without him, he returned to the United States to be at his son's side for this ongoing processes of undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

The boy is currently undergoing chemotherapy in San Diego at Balboa Naval Hospital. Balboa is about three hours (if traffic is good) from Twenty-Nine Palms where they are currently stationed. The doctors will not allow him to travel to Twenty-Nine Palms throughout the length of chemotherapy which is about six months. Since chemotherapy wipes out the immune system any infection can be fatal, he must stay in San Diego where he can receive treatment.

This family is in desperate need of our prayers. They do not have any family in California and have sent their 7 year old daughter to family in Texas. Besides our prayers they are in immediate need of gas cards, gift cards for food, cards of encouragement and monetary donations. For the past three weeks G. has been paying for food and lodging and all expenses in San Diego out of his own pocket. His unit is working on getting him moved to be stationed at San Diego, but that procedure takes awhile and in the meantime they need our immediate assistance.

For details on how you can help, go here