Annals of Liberation: The End of Education in Iraq

Written by Chris Floyd

Thursday, 05 October 2006 07:59

"I have seen the future, baby:
It is murder."
-- Leonard Cohen

Iraq's universities and schools near collapse as teachers and pupils flee. (Guardian)

Excerpts: Iraq's school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence. Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected.

Professionals in higher education, particularly those teaching the sciences and in health, have been targeted for assassination. Universities from Basra in the south to Kirkuk and Mosul in the north have been infiltrated by militia organisations, while the same militias from Islamic organisations regularly intimidate female students at the school and university gates for failing to wear the hijab.

Women teachers have been ordered by their ministry to adopt Islamic codes of clothing and behaviour. "The militias from all sides are in the universities. Classes are not happening because of the chaos, and colleagues are fleeing if they can," said Professor Saad Jawad, a lecturer in political science at Baghdad University.

Well, for goodness' sake, who needs all them pointy-heads anyway, filling young people's heads with reason and curiosity and critical thinking and other such devilish notions what would cause them to question the scriptures? What a dream come true to see liberal professors hounded from campuses and clean-living, right-minded spirit warriors for God assuming leadership roles in universities! Surely David Horowitz himself is on his way to Baghdad right now to congratulate those militias who are putting his ideas into practice so forcefully.

Ignorance, extremism, fear, death, ruin -- and oodles and oodles of bribes and war profits for the cronies, the crooks, and the cranks...yes, Iraq is definitely the wave of the future! After all, it's the first nation in the world where the Bush Agenda has been applied in its purest, most unfettered form. If you want to know what the future holds for America at the hands of the Bush Faction (in whatever permutation it replicates itself after 2008), then just cast your beady eyes to Baghad and environs. ***

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