Thanks champ. If only everyone was like minded.
The town where I was born, Tel Tamar was one of the villages attacked. A few of them my relatives and friends and it's been distressing to say the least but out of all of this, there's at least one thing we can look at and feel good about and thats that our people have come together in a way that I've never seen before. I have some Chaldean friends as do many Assyrians and to see the Chaldeans help out so much with donations (not that I didn't think they would) is so awesome but at the same time it makes me a little somber as it brings to light the nature of our people and what could have been had we all come together for our cause.
IMO, we failed to see the bigger picture. The irony is that the one thing that gave us the courage to withstand the Islamic dynamism, (our dedication to our beliefs) , was the one thing that ended up being our downfall.
What I mean is that it was our strict, religious values and ideals that prevented us from moving forward with the rest of the world once the 1800's and 1900's came about. Humanity started moving in a new direction and unlike the Jews, we failed to realise how the most dangerous weapon was now simply a child with an open mind.
Honestly, even now I feel we’re failing to see the bigger picture. Like a lot of Assyrians, I have a decent sized family, many relatives and a few Assyrian/Chaldean friends all of which either were born or spent their fair share of time in the west. It’s odd to me that even after living here, a lot of them still seem closed-minded to western ideals. We want support for our militia in the middle east right? From who? The west. How? Convince them the Assyrians are worth fighting for. Convince them that if given the chance, we will build a state in the middle east that holds true to modern ideals.. Unfortunately, even after moving to the west, a lot of Assyrians hook straight back up to middle eastern TV, Arabic radio in the car and again fall victim to islamic propaganda and all I hear is Jew this and America that.
Wow, that ended up being a major rant. Take it easy bud ;)