The British Officer Said: 'We Are Now Just Another Tribe'...

[bridgit]

'As the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Anglians prepared to set out on patrol through central Basra yesterday, risking mortar attack and possibly more, all the talk was of their boss's suggestion that they were making the situation worse.

General Sir Richard Dannatt's comments that the British military presence in southern Iraq "exacerbates the security problems" and that they should get out "sometime soon" was met with a mix of frustration and quiet agreement in the heavily fortified Palace compound, a former Saddam palace in southern Basra that now houses the consulate as well as 1,200 coalition troops.

"I can't believe they are saying these things," one embassy official said. "This whole thing is to do with politics and Tony Blair. It's not about what is happening on the ground here, but what is happening there."' http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1014-04.htm

[madrchsod]

1. the truth will set them free.....

you were always a tribe

[Solly Mack]

2. That's all you ever were...you just didn't understand that until now.

You invaded a sovereign country for lies. You now occupy that same country along with your American counter-parts ..all still for lies. You've destroyed lives and homes. You entered a country you didn't understand, hoping to impose your will on the people. You thought you would acclimate them to your way of thinking by force. You thought wrong.

What did you think you were? Liberators?

[malaise]

3. Couldn't say it better

although they invaded for good old imperialist reasons. Fugg Bush and Blair - 655,000 dead Iraqis will make them pay.

[DianeG5385]

4. I think he's the only sane one in the bunch

and the only one who truly understands IRAQ.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Tribe? We would call someone whom invaded our country terrorists n/t

[bridgit]

6. yep, they're being too easy on themselves as is america...

[nealmhughes]

7. Why are only Europeans accorded the dignity of the word "nation" and

and everyone else deemed to be a tribe instead of a nation or a linguistic group or whatever?

So there is an "English tribe" who have intermarried with the "Welsh and Scottish and Irish and Cornish and Norman tribes"?

Reminds me of an English colonial official who offered his take on the Arab states after freedom from Ottoman rule: "Just tribes with flags...."

Actually "tribes" are fairly complicated anthropological phenomena...witness the various Assyrian "tribes" who have split over relgious leadership, and the various "tribes" of Arabic speaking Iraqis, many of whom are traditionally nominally descended from a great mythic leader and who have a common cause for one another's welfare...

American First Nations were not tribes, they were nations with various clans and bands with common language and customs and general welfare interests... very different from a "tribe" or "band"...

Call 'em tribes if you like, just go back to Blighty and soak up some freedom on the Thames, not in Basra.