What If America Were Invaded and Occupied? link to original

By Dahr Jamail, The Progressive. Posted December 21, 2007.

"Unembedded" journalist Dahr Jamail reviews Meeting Resistance. With video.

"Suppose Iraq invaded America. And an Iraqi soldier was on a tank passing through an American street, waving his gun at the people, threatening them, raiding and trashing houses. Would you accept that? This is why no Iraqi can accept occupation, and don't be surprised by their reactions," says "The Imam," a young man from a mixed Sunni-Shia family, as he explains the genesis of the insurgency in Iraq and its exponential growth.

...

Aside from screenings at international film festivals and numerous private and public shows, Connors and Bingham screened the film at West Point, the U.S. Marine Corps staff college at Quantico, and Baghdad.

Bingham feels that the film represented a radically different perspective to the military personnel who viewed it.

"The bulk of the people were taking on new information that was a dramatic paradigm shift for them," she says. "To see their enemy as largely fighting for their homeland because of nationalism and religion, rather than being terrorists, is a big deal."

This is an interesting and important article. There is also a trailer for the film available with the story.

Dr. Wayne Dyer wrote a book a decade or two ago titled How to Get What You Really, Really, Really Want. 

I recommend the book.  You can also get the DVD from Netflix and elsewhere if you want to be entertained by Dyer's charm and style as you work on your inner and outer life. 

Part of Dyer's  teaching is that what you pay attention to you will get more of in your life. 

For instance, if I pay a lot of attention to the perverse gun discussion that occurs here on olyblog, I can get sucked in, and the next thing I know I am reading news stories about children dying through firearm accidents.  Holy smoke!  I could have been reading more Gandhi or Dyer or King or the Dalai Lama.

Is that guy laughing at me?   

A corollary wisdom in Dyer's book is just like you can get more of what you want in your life by attending to it, you can also get more of what you don't like in your life by attending to it.

Here is great recovery poem that reflects some of that wisdom: 

The screams of his pregnant wife, a horrible sound, woke Roger Gilchrist from a dead sleep. He grabbed his gun and ran to the garage, where he discovered that his wife had driven in and stumbled upon a gun-wielding burglar.

“Under the circumstances, with him having a gun and standing next to my pregnant wife, I’m not going to wait and see what happens, I’m going to fire,” Gilchrist said. Police say the burglar shot first and Gilchrist returned fire, injuring the intruder.

The suspect fled, but was apprehended shortly thereafter. “If [my husband] didn’t have that gun, we would’ve both been dead,” said Gilchrist’s wife.

(Daily Press, Victorville, CA, 09/26/07)