Are Iraqis Worthless?

  
          People—Iraqi and non-Iraqi—keep killing Iraqis in Iraq.  Since the handover in June 2004, killing focuses more on those running Iraq from the lowest to the highest levels, from ministers to police recruits and citizens.  Burgeoning civil forces making some dent in the problem, with arrests and punishments, but the killers keep killing.  Why?  What is not happening?
 
          To answer these questions, I put myself in the situation the Iraqi citizens are in.  What would I do?
 
          Given my values, I would want a free, open, and stable Iraq where people could pursue life, liberty, and happiness.  To get those, I would have to clean out the detractors first.  I would start or join civil counter-terrorist groups of other like-minded citizens, and we would recruit others.  Our goal would be to create a citizen-based intelligence network using like-minded citizens.  We would seek out and otherwise detect these ne’er-do-wells and funnel this intelligence both to Iraqi police authorities and to the U. S. military.  I would inform both in order to minimize the effect of spies and fifth columnists skulking about within the Iraqi police infrastructure.
 
          We would not have to use the muscle ourselves and probably should not.  I would not rule it out, however.  The idea of taking out some of the vipers and putting their heads on pikes in the public square sits quite comfortably with me.
 
          The lack of sufficient citizen participation, if not THE missing element in Iraq, is one of the crippling deficiencies.  The ne’er-do-wells get away with far too much because far too few Iraqis rat on them.  If Iraqi citizens did expose and turn in these human debris for punishment, the violence would start decreasing quickly and dramatically.
 
          Right now, too many Iraqis are like too many Americans when it comes to crime.  We let the officials do the job.  We do not get sufficiently involved.
 
          There are not enough officials.  There are not enough soldiers.  The problem is, there are not enough Iraqis who want to live free badly enough to invest in their future.  An invested and involved citizenry exerts enormous power and serves to keep a country from tyranny.
 
          We always come back to Islam.  What a sore, a cancer, a poison this ideology is on human beings.  When Muhammad was putting together this monstrosity, called “Islam,” this warriors’ code for his murderers, thieves, rapists, and enslavers, he worked hard to establish the code of complete obedience to authority.  Islam means “submission,” and that means complete submission and obedience to following orders.  Muhammad made sure that the orders went down to the smallest level of detail in a Muslim’s life.
 
          Islamic obedience, in part, requires that Muslims support other Muslims and never do anything that can be remotely construed as adverse to another Muslim.  Ratting on the nefarious in Iraq violates Islam because the evil-doers are Muslims.  Having been turned into Muslim robots as children, Muslims keep allegiance to Islam before country, just as ordered by Islam.  Imams make sure they never forget it.
 
          Most of the really independent-minded Iraqis live elsewhere, I suspect.  Those left in Iraq either could not get out or would not.  Most Iraqis are the latter.  They are the ballast, and, as such, they keep their ship of state grounded on the rocks, weighted down with Islam. 
 
          Me?  I was born in America and grew up here.  I love my country and know its principles thoroughly.  I have fought for my country and would do it again, despite being “long in the tooth.”  To paraphrase Charlton Heston’s remarks as President of the National Rifle Association, I would say to the ne’er-do-wells, You can take my country when you can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.  Mr. Heston referred to guns and gun control efforts.  His expression works either way.
 
          Iraq has never been free, until a few weeks ago.  Centuries ago, Islam turned it into the Sterile Crescent, intellectually.  Caliphs, sheiks, imams, kings, dictators and assorted other tyrants have run poor old Mesopotamia for as long as history can tell us.  Iraqi citizens must work hard to understand ideas such as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  The fatalism (determinism, predestination) of Islam tells them that such values are not possible.
 
          I fear that Iraqis may never pledge their lives, their treasure, and their sacred honor to be free.  It is all within their grasp right now.  If they do not mobilize as citizens on their own behalf, their opportunity will slip from their grasp just as does the sand under their feet.
 
          My title question asks, “Are Iraqis Worthless?”  The answer is really a set of answers.  As homo sapiens, they have all the potential any of us has.  In this respect, the question is inapplicable.  The final verdict awaits the outcome of their trial with freedom and what they do with their opportunity.