Thursday, October 11, 2007

Deliberately NOT Comprehending the Horror

From a CNN article on Jordanian schools accommodating Iraqi refugees:

For the first time since the start of the Iraq war, Jordan is allowing all Iraqi children -- regardless of refugee status -- to enroll in state-funded schools.

Simply, this means that even illegal refugees with no paperwork can send their kids to school with no questions asked.


This sort of thing should be "stroking out" Lou "My Flag Pin Means EVERYTHING" Dobbs, please somebody tell him:

The move is cementing a massive population shift in the Middle East. More than 2.2 million Iraqis have fled the violence in their homeland, most of them seeking refuge in neighboring Jordan and Syria, according to humanitarian officials...About 10 percent of Jordan's population is now made up of Iraqi refugees -- the estimates range from 500,000 to 750,000 of them.


That may be a conservative estimate, 2.2 Million have fled form a country with a pre-invasion population of 27 million. Imagine 25 Million American's fleeing the country in four years -- consider, especially that these refugees were heavily comprised of the nations physicians, business people, professors, and lawyers. What you'd have left would be a shell of what was the United States (though James Dobson would have a good solid session of beating his meat in the shower and scaring children just thinking about it).

And, of course, there are their actual life experiences:

In a nearby neighborhood, in the study room of the Ahmed Toukan School for Boys, a handful of Iraqi kids talk of their experience living far from home. Seated at a rectangular table covered with a red and white tablecloth, the boys tell stories of horror and displacement.

Eighteen-year-old Qutaiba lost five immediate family members before moving to Jordan to try to live a normal life. Matter-of-factly and with a straight-ahead stare, he repeats the number: "Five members."


One thing that we in this country are being willfully determined to ignore are not only the vast number of refugees, but the sheer number of Iraqi dead and wounded, all directly at our hands, or at the hands of forces opposing us -- that wouldn't be if we were not there. Latest estimates 1.2 million. But our media manages to cover their ears and go "LA LA LA oh look Britney Spears and flag pins and Betrayus Ads".

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