South/North, USA/Iraq Invasion

It's probably unfortunate that the claims of the cretin in chief to Texas heritage are so totally false. Had he grown up as I did, in the retained memories of the Civil War, he might have had better understanding of the eternal legacies of invasion. He might also have seen that setting two factions against each other would result.

For those of you who didn't have family stories, proudly told, of underage kids who lied about their age to go shoot Yankees, of relatives who wouldn't allow a Yankee on the land, all the lore of leftover hatred, being invaded is still unforgiven in the South. Sure, we associate now with the Northeasterners and go to those Ivy League schools happily. It is necessary however to think of them not as damnYankees but as the NorthEast.

In my small hometown, there was a race riot concerning those fearsome black people who were politely called Negroes in my youth. A usual circumstance for those days, a black man reportedly raped a white woman. He was pulled from a cell in the courthouse/jail, lynched, burned and dragged through town. The black business sectiion of town was burned down, and has never been rebuilt. The story of this atrocity was told with pride when I was growing up, because it was necessary in the old southern belief to restrain 'uppity niggers'. Pardon me but that was the kind of language used. If you don't have this kind of background in inter-racial prejudice, congratulations. But because of it, I fear I have a capacity to understand how the Sunni-Shiite conflict will play out.

There was a much greater difference in black population and white population of the old south than there is between Sunni and Shiite, and I have heard it told that the feelings were relatively amicable between them before our invasion. I have also heard that aside from the occasional rebellious runaway type, relations between white slaveowners and black slaves were pretty amicable too. As some one who has 'gotten along' with a totally abusive boss on occasion, I am well aware of the kind of amicability that actually prevailed.

From the inability to work out their differences, the south and north in this country fell into a destructive, scarring, war. It was a tragedy and the rabble rousers on both sides are probably the most to blame.

In our present civil war, that we have brought to Iraq, the rabble rousers here and there, and most especially in the White House, are again to blame.

The South lost the war in 1865, but it has won since then in so many ways that I don't need to point them out here. The black population of the south was the greatest victim, and suffered economic and educational retribution from that day to this. Of course racism can't all be blamed on the North's action to end slavery, either. The NorthEast, however, also suffered, and has had its institutions and standards pulled down ever since.

If the cretin in chief had grown up in Texas he would have had the experience of seeing the effects of undying resentment. He would have known what he was creating. Whether that would have made any difference I can't say. From seeing the amount of intelligence he was given showing what the effects would be of disrupting Iraq's stability, possibly not.