The Fruits of Religion: 500 Yazidis Killed, Some Victims Buried Alive

The fruits of religion

I try not to write about religion all the time, but the pestilence that religion is to humanity is hard to avoid.  From the Israel's murder of children in Gaza, to religious discrimination against gays, to the atrocities and genocide being committed by Sunni Muslims in Iraq, the common root of the hate division and death is religion.  Religion that justifies a mindset that anyone different or who subscribes to differing beliefs is subhuman and even worthy of death. Yet insanely, religion still is afforded special deference and privileges even in modern nations which by now ought to realize that religion outside of one's home or house of worship is not a positive good.  Oh yes, we hear of religious based charities, but in some total those good works pale in comparison to the evils done under the guise of sincerely held religious belief.  The ongoing horrors in Iraq underscore this reality (in the past, Christianity has caused similar horrors and widespread murder such as the Cathars in France and "old believers in Russia).  Here are highlights from the Huffington Post on the horrific fruits of religion in Iraq:

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority, burying some alive and taking hundreds of women as slaves, an Iraqi government minister told Reuters on Sunday.

Human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani accused the Sunni Muslim insurgents - who have ordered the community they regard as "devil worshippers" to convert to Islam or die - of celebrating a "a vicious atrocity" with cheers and weapons waved in the air. No independent confirmation was available.

Sudani said in a telephone interview that news of the killings had come from people who had escaped town of Sinjar, an ancient home of the Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking community whose religion has set them apart from Muslims and other faiths.

"We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar," he said

"Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar."

Kurdish regional president Masoud Barzani urged his allies to send arms to help his forces hold off the militants, who have bases across the Syrian border. During a visit by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Barzani said: "We are not fighting a terrorist organization, we are fighting a terrorist state."

"In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses," he added. "This is a vicious atrocity."

A deadline passed at midday on Sunday for 300 families from the Yazidi community - followers of a religion influenced by the Zoroastrianism of ancient Persia - to convert to Islam or die. It was not immediately clear if the victims to whom the minister referred were from that group of families.

Obama said it would take more than bombs to restore stability, and criticized Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government for failing to share power with Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated before the U.S. invasion.

France joined the calls for Iraq's feuding leaders to form an inclusive government capable of countering the militants. "Iraq is in need of a broad unity government, and all Iraqis should feel that they are represented in this government," Foreign Minister Fabius said.

Maliki's critics say his sectarian agenda has prompted heavily armed Sunni tribes to join the insurgency. 

Personally, I believe Iraq needs to be divided - as it should have been at the end of World War I.  It has always been an artificially created country and  it is time to recognize the reality that maintaining Iraq as a unified country will likely never succeed.

Will Religion Yet Again Lead to Genocide in Iraq

Time and time again throughout history religion has lead to the genocide of others of different faiths or even different sects within a faith tradition.  Anyone or anything that threatens the typically blindly followed dogma of the aggressors must be destroyed and rooted out so that no challenge conceivably exist to the generally ignorance based religious teachings.  Now, in Iraq, we see the phenomenon yet again as the minority Yazidi sect faces slaughter because they are seen as devil worshipers by Sunni extremists.  The impending slaughter has prompted Barack Obama to announce a US airlift of food and water to stranded Yazidis and targeted airstrikes against the ISIS extremists.  Here are excerpts from The Guardian:

Tens of thousands of members of one of Iraq's oldest minorities have been stranded on a mountain in the country's north-west, facing slaughter at the hands of jihadists surrounding them below if they flee, or death by dehydration if they stay.

UN groups say at least 40,000 members of the Yazidi sect, many of them women and children, have taken refuge in nine locations on Mount Sinjar, a craggy, mile-high ridge identified in local legend as the final resting place of Noah's ark.

At least 130,000 more people, many from the Yazidi stronghold of Sinjar, have fled to Dohuk, in the Kurdish north, or to Irbil, where regional authorities have been struggling since June to deal with one of the biggest and most rapid refugee movements in decades.

At least 500 Yazidis, including 40 children, have been killed in the past week, local officials say. Many more have received direct threats, either from the advancing militants or members of nearby Sunni communities allied with them. "They were our neighbours and now they are our killers," said Atyas.

The Kurdish minority Yazidis have long been regarded as devil worshippers by Sunni jihadists who have targeted them since the US invasion. As the extremists' latest and most potent incarnation, the Islamic State (Isis), has steadily conquered Iraq's north, the small, self-contained community has been especially vulnerable.

"Iraq is spiralling out of control," said Ali Khedery, the former longest-serving US official in Baghdad. "The centrifugal forces are spinning so quickly. They are on one timeline and Washington is on another. I am beyond concerned."

Khedery, who reported to five US ambassadors and three US central command generals and is now chairman of the Dubai-based consultancy Dragoman Partners, said: "Everybody is retreating to their corners. And there is no credible international actor that I can see that is trying to bring it together again.

"It definitely is an existential threat to the Iraqi government and I think it represents yet another manifestation of the disintegration of Iraq as we know it.

"Iranian overreach, the genocide in Syria, [Nouri] al-Maliki's consolidation of power in a very sectarian way, have all led to the disillusionment, the disenfranchisement of the Sunni Arabs, who have fatally, but perhaps understandably, chosen to consummate a deal with the devil. Now we are locked in a race to the bottom."

It is critical to remember that Iraq's spiral into utter chaos was triggered by  the Bush/Cheney regimes invasion which was based on deliberate lies to the American people.  It is also important to remember that Bush and Cheney also saw Iraqis as less than human because they were Muslim.  Indeed, Chimperator Bush seemingly saw himself on a modern day crusade against the infidel. On all fronts religious based bigotry (and greed in the case of Dick Cheney)

Is Iraq Descending into Chaos - Did Bush/Cheney Make Us Less Safe?

I have never supported the war in Iraq and I can still see my former living room where I watched the televised address of George W. Bush announcing that he had sent America to war.  We now know that his entire premise for the war was based on deliberate lies - lies which a lazy media never bothered to expose.  As of the lies of Bush and Dick Cheney, thousands of American died needlessly, billions of dollars better spent on America's infrastructure were squandered, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died.   Increasingly, it is becoming clear that the war was ultimately all for nothing.  Current circumstances in Iraq show a county spiraling towards chaos and an internal religious war that must have extremists in Iran salivating.  And Bush and Cheney set it all in motion.  And committed war crimes along the way.   Yet many American still can't understand why some Muslims came to hate America even if they had not done so before.   American actions have been the best terrorist recruiting program Islamic extremists could have asked for.  A piece in Foreign Policy Magazine looks at what Bush/Cheney and American hubris has likely wrought.  Here are excerpts:

Iraq is spiraling out of control. Following the arrests in December of the bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafi Issawi, Sunnis took to the streets, revealing their widespread sense of alienation in the new Iraq and demanding the end of what they consider a government policy to marginalize them. As with other protests in the Arab world, they were initially driven by legitimate grievances. But against the backdrop of provincial elections, little was done to address the concerns of the protesters -- despite calls to do so from the top Shia cleric, Ayatollah Sistani. Politicians instead exploited the demonstrations for electoral gains. President Maliki took the opportunity to distract attention away from the lack of services and rampant corruption, presenting himself as the defender of the Shia, in the face of Sunni regional powers intent on overthrowing Shia regimes -- Syria first, then Iraq. Sunni politicians, for their part, sought to benefit from the demonstrations to rail against government oppression to gain support for their own electoral campaigns.

Last week, the Iraqi Army entered Hawija, near Kirkuk, to arrest people accused of attacking Iraqi Security Forces. In the ensuing violence, 200 people were killed. There are reports of desertions from the Iraqi Army. Kurds have moved peshmerga into positions in the disputed territories. Tribes are forming militias to protect themselves from the Iraqi Army. Five Iraqi soldiers were killed in Anbar -- and the province has been put under curfew. Ten satellite channels, including al-Jazeera, have been banned, accused of spreading sectarianism. Bombs exploded in Shia towns. The speaker of parliament called for the government to resign and for early elections.

By seeking to eliminate his Sunni rivals, Maliki has removed the wedge that the U.S. military drove between Sunni extremists and the Sunni mainstream during the Surge, at such great cost. There is a growing sense that the conflicts in Syria and Iraq are merging into one, with Shia regimes, backed by Iran, battling against Sunnis, including al Qaeda elements. We may be witnessing the breakdown of the post-WW I settlement and the nation-states established under the Sykes-Picot agreement. 

Will our legacy from the Iraq war be a regional power struggle ignited by the resurgence of Iran, the contagion of sectarianism into Syria, the horrific violence of jihadist groups? Is this in our national interest? Can we not do more to make Iraq a more positive influence in its neighborhood? 

There were those who saw the likelihood of this disaster even before the fools and power made in the Bush/Cheney regime took America to war on a campaign of lies.  Sadly, their voices were drowned out by jingoism and the willingness of too many Americans to fall into the dangerous "America, love it or live it" mindset which always seems to bring disaster.  Remember Vietnam?  America learned nothing.  I continue to believe that sometimes the most patriotic thing one can do is challenge the conventional thinking, especially if it is sourced in ultra conservative factions.  Time and time again, America has been the loser when patriotic critics of adventurism in foreign policy over rides logic, reason and hard objective facts.  For what they did, I remained convinced that Bush and Cheney are war criminals who deserve to be tried and severely punished.