---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine
Date: Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 8:34 AM
Subject: re: In Struggle for National Identity, Iraqis Rally Around Many Flags
To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
What one thinks about the prospects for Iraq's future is tinted inevitably by whom one trust to tell it's past. For a dozen years now, the U.S. has been beguiled by the vision of Mark Sykes and George Picot, who found it convenient to invent Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire they were dismantling. Before investing in holding together peoples who share no national identity, we would do well to at least consider the opinion of Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi who wrote “With my heart filled with sadness, I have to say that it is my belief that there is no Iraqi people inside Iraq. There are only diverse groups with no national sentiments. They are filled with superstitious and false religious traditions with no common grounds between them.” He was, after all, the king of Iraq.
Barry Haskell Levine
What one thinks about the prospects for Iraq's future is tinted inevitably by whom one trust to tell it's past. For a dozen years now, the U.S. has been beguiled by the vision of Mark Sykes and George Picot, who found it convenient to invent Iraq out of the Ottoman Empire they were dismantling. Before investing in holding together peoples who share no national identity, we would do well to at least consider the opinion of Faisal bin Hussein bin Ali al-Hashimi who wrote “With my heart filled with sadness, I have to say that it is my belief that there is no Iraqi people inside Iraq. There are only diverse groups with no national sentiments. They are filled with superstitious and false religious traditions with no common grounds between them.” He was, after all, the king of Iraq.
Barry Haskell Levine
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/world/middleeast/iraqis-rally-around-many-flags-as-a-national-identity-falters.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0
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