Iraq: Land of Lies and Deceipt
BY Herschel Smith
18 years, 5 months ago
While the secularists want to bury it, ignore it, deny it and otherwise erase the memory of it, America has Christianity as its roots. It is at its foundation a Christian nation. This is true not only in the cultural morays, but in the system of laws we follow down to the customary expectations for smaller social units such as family and church. One case in point would be the expectation for honesty.
The idea of honesty is embedded in our professional organizations, state licenses, medical system, judicial system, voting system, tax collection system, and most if not all other social “systems” in our country. While it is recognized that sin has affected man and thus we all need to be wary rather than gullible, it is common to see dishonesty as a scandal. It isn’t a good thing to get caught with your “hand in the cookie jar,” or cheating on an examination, or lying on a resume, or cutting corners in your profession. People do it, but it is still generally understood to be morally wrong, and so this understanding suppresses the practice of it. This understanding comes from our heritage.
We have treated Iraqi testimony and statements essentially like we would the testimony of Americans (i.e., assume that there is a general expectation of honesty). This may be a fatal flaw in how we see the country of Iraq (or in fact, the entire middle east). I have posted before on the fact that I believe that we can find someone to testify to just about anything in at least certain sections of Iraq (when speaking of so-called U.S. “atrocities”). See Truth or Consequences in Iraq, for example. But until reading what I did today, I did not know how ingrained deceipt was in Iraqi culture. In my search of Haditha coverage during my “Haditha Roundups,” I don’t know how I missed this perspective entitled “Haditha: Reasonable Doubt.” I will quote from it at length:
There is a possibility that Iraqi eyewitness sources’ credibility may fall apart in the event of a trial. It has happened before in similar cases. The reasons are deep rooted in tribal culture.
A British case which speaks directly to the credibility of tribal witnesses and to the Islamic tribal tradition of “blood money
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