Bottom Line Up Front:  Iraqis band together in defiance against terrorism after the suicide bombing in the Iraqi run Parliamentary section of the Green Zone.  Meanwhile, America seems to have forgotten it’s own history.

In what is being called an “extraordinary session of defiance”, Iraqi lawmakers met in a Parliamentary session Friday to stand unified against the terrorist attack by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber in the Parliament’s cafeteria on Thursday in the Green Zone. One Iraqi Parliament member died in the blast. Below is a short video of the blast and a brief statement from the Speaker of the Parliament:

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Speaker of Parliament Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said on Friday:

“The Iraqi Parliament, government and people are all one unit. They cannot be torn apart. They all sail in one ship and if this ship had to sink, all will sink with it, and that will never happen. The only ship that will sink is the terrorists’ and criminals’ ship.”

Some point to the attack in the heavily fortified Green Zone, presumably an inside job, as an example of the impossibility of success in Iraq. An insurgency, violence and bad guys disguised as good guys are all reasons, cynics say, why the mission in Iraq is doomed.

Well, let’s not forget our own history. The Klu Klux Klan  was born from the failed effort of the South to secede from the North and was literally an American insurgency. “The Klan became the violent arm of the Southern Democratic Party.” The Indiana Historical Research Foundation put it this way: 

In April 1865, the war of Southern secession came to its bitter end.

Civil authority thus fell into a void. Lawlessness abounded. Millions of emancipated Negroes roamed about. They had no education, no work, no homes, and no money. To avoid starvation they raided and stole whatever they could. Rape and murder became commonplace.

The collapse of the Confederate armies alone guaranteed an upsurge in crime as half starved veterans began their long march back to their homes…… In desperation they scrambled for handouts and resorted to petty thievery…… Such riots were widespread in the deep South following the war’s end.

Does any of this sound familiar? While Iraq is not in a civil war, they are engulfed in a war nonetheless. This insurgency of the KKK consisted of the worst sorts of violence imaginable and the organization still exists today. In essence, insurgent elements still reside in the United States 121 years later.

Factoring in the many Presidential assassinations and assassination attempts, which were committed by political opponents of one sort or another, and the litany of domestic acts of terrorism within the United States including the Alabama church bombing of 1963 or the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995, the religious cult the Branch Dividians at Waco, Texas in 1993 under David Koresh and the bizarre conflict between the religious extremist group and the US government, or any number of insurgent/terrorist like crimes, doesn’t it stand to reason that Iraq should be afforded the same standard that we afford ourselves? 

What about the 32 Students Gunned Down at Virginia Tech?  Was this not an act of terrorism?

At least we should not expect Iraqis to do better than we have. That would just be hypocritical.

Cross-posted @: Bottom Line Up Front

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