Tuesday Topic Week 9

When I first read today's Tuesday Topic I was thrown by the author's use of the phrase "foreign soldiers". The image which first came to mind was one of the Iraqi soldiers who had been killed. But certainly many more than 3,000 Iraqi soldiers had died a long time ago. Then I thought about the British soldiers and other coalition troops, but I didn't think there had been that many deaths among them.

I was confused, stuck in the thinking of "Us" and "Them".

So I posed the question at One Million Blogs for Peace:

I'm confused by your term "foreign soldiers".
Do you not mean "American" or "Coalition" soldiers?
Or does it refer to our troops as in foreign to Iraq?

Blog Master Storey Clayton replied:

Yes, it means foreign to Iraq. It's in the same sense that "foreign combatants" appears in the OMBFP pledge.

In my opinion, one of the best ways to engage people to change their perspective about this war (and other similar issues of political compassion) is to challenge them to shed their natural nationalistic biases. Americans have a shocking tendency to assume everything from an American perspective, and if they see it as "us" in Iraq, it's hard to understand that the Americans and others are actually foreign occupiers.

Using consistent language to illuminate what's really going on helps get people to confront the realities they might rather oversimplify.

So here is today's Tuesday Topic. Remember we are "Them"!

Tuesday, 15 May 2007
Well more foreign soldiers have now been killed in Iraq than were killed in the 9/11 attacks.
While there are obvious distinctions in the manner of death and status of the dead (civilian vs. military), the fact remains that each dead person leaves a gaping and torturous hole in the world of the people they leave behind.
Could you imagine politicians leveling the same rhetoric against the Iraq War that was leveled against 9/11?
Do you feel that those responsible for perpetrating the war have any sense of this responsibility they bear?