How will Iraqi children of American fathers be treated when we leave?

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/daughter/peopleevents/p_gis.html

People & Events: American GIs, Vietnamese Women and Children

Like soldiers occupying foreign territory in any war, American GIs routinely encountered Vietnamese civilians. As their lives became interconnected with those of local people, opportunities for problems abounded. In Vietnam, the American military generally taught soldiers to suspect any Vietnamese person could be linked to enemy forces. This policy did not encourage an appreciation for Vietnamese culture, to say the least.

Sandra Collingwood, a former community development worker in Vietnam, often saw American military personnel treat Vietnamese with blatant disrespect and worse. Sometimes GIs would throw a grenade into a field, and then laugh when the farmer jumped. If they happened to kill the farmer's livestock, the economic loss to his family was devastating.

Collingwood also witnessed good intentions on the part of GIs. Some would give food rations to orphanages. Their good deeds were often undone by corrupt administrators who sold the donated food in the black market instead of feeding it to the children.

In Saigon, journalist Anne Allen met Dewey, a six-year-old Vietnamese street boy, whom she and her husband later adopted. Dewey had been "adopted" once before -- by a group of GIs. They had a miniature set of fatigues made especially for him. Dewey wore these constantly. He adored "his" GIs, who taught him to speak English fluently, sparing none of the expletives. The GIs used Dewey as their interpreter. He even accompanied them to brothels, to bargain with the prostitutes on their behalf. Once the transactions were completed, Dewey would have soft drinks while waiting for his friends.

Many GIs formed relationships with Vietnamese women. The women worked at military bases as cashiers, waitresses, laundresses, and secretaries. It's not surprising that many thousands of young American men who were far from home looked for female companionship. Whether they sought sex, comfort, friendship, or mothering, there were a lot of needs on all sides. The women were often struggling to survive while their husbands, boyfriends, fathers or brothers were away fighting. Despite these women's dire situations, many of their fellow countrymen looked down on them for entering relationships with Americans. Vietnamese public opinion considered them no better than prostitutes.



I wonder if the fascists running this country have thought about that one?

[acmejack]

1. I don't know about that

The social and cultural mores in Muslim cultures are so different, I seriously doubt there are many, if any, of these case extant. First, unlike, nam, it is unsafe to leave post unless on an armed patrol and it is an iffy proposition even then.

[blondeatlast]

4. My sister in law is Persian and I asked her about something along

these lines. She says it's very unlikely to happen.

Although Iraq (and even the current Iran) have come very far in terms of women's rights, the culture is such that very, very few women, if any, would dare get intimate with an American GI.

Coupled with the very realistic scenario you mention, it is a near impossibility, I'm willing to bet.

Not to mention that there are American women on the ground over there this time. When you already in harm's way, a friendly face is a blessing to a lonely soldier, I'm pretty sure.

I'm reasonably certain that the armed forces have warned the soldiers to stay away from the local women.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Yea, we never heard about the thousands of Amerasian children in ...

...Vietnam until after the war was over either. It must be bad for the moral?

I would cringe at the thought of my grandchild being left behind somewhere. Wouldn't make any difference if his mother was Iraqi either.

Don

[TAPat]

7. Warned them to stay away from the local women, but check

this out - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=684109&mesg_id=684109

[blondeatlast]

9. I said they warned them; I never said anything about guaranteeing

they'd actually refraion from the locals. My point was that the locals would refrain from approaching the GIs.

I don't doubt that it will happen, just not on the scale of Viet Nam (which I am old enough to vaguely remember, btw).

[TAPat]

12. I agree ...

and certainly didn't mean to imply that you were naive enough to think that they would stay away :)
We know that it will happen but I think it's just going on in a very much more subtle way.

[cali]

2. OK, this is about Vietnam

and although I'm sure there will be some children fathered by American soldiers, do we know if this will even come close to what happened in Vietnam? It seems that the two cultures are very different. Do American soldiers socialize at all with Iraqis?

[YOY]

3. Something tells me that this will happen a hell of a lot less in Iraq

and Afghanistan...Just a hunch.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Come on now we are all adults here

http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/iraq/topstories/082204ccjrawiraqmarriage.a2df4f40.html

U.S. soldier marries woman he met in Iraq

09:01 PM CDT on Sunday, August 22, 2004


Associated Press



PORT ORCHARD, Wash. — A Washington state soldier has married the Iraqi woman he met and fell in love with while in Baghdad.

Robert Hall, 23, says he knew within a month that he would marry Vivian Mansour, 21, of Baghdad, even though at first neither spoke a word of each other's language.

Hall, an Army reservist who earned a Bronze Star for meritorious service during his one-year tour, said he's never been happier. The two were married here Saturday.

"I never in my life saw this coming," he said.

For them, cultural differences are offset by a shared Christian faith. Mansour is a Kurdish Christian — a population that makes up just 3 percent of Iraq's 24 million people.


This is neither the first case or the last of this. People of all cultures propagate.

[blondeatlast]

11. "...cultural differences are offset by a shared Christian faith."

Emphasis on the (I KNOW you will read this the wrong way, but) CHRISTIAN--as in, not Muslim.

Muslim women tend to be well-educated and not so open to male advances.

I don't doubt that this is going to happen, but it will be on a far smaller scale than it was in Viet Nam.

[ThomWV]

8. As A Viet Nam Vet Let Me Say

That I have not heard of litterly dozens of prostitutes clinging to every GI who waked down the street (if they happened to be in any city) in Iraq, but that certainly was the case in Viet Nam. I have not heard of GI's being mobbed by scores of children every time they ventured out, most of whom were offering their sisters up for considerably less than $10. In Viet Nam the official "Sin Citys" existed right outside the gates of every single base camp and street after street was lined with whore houses in every single provintial capital, every single town, every single village large enough to be home of a motorized vehicle with more than two wheels. Do you have that in Iraq. I thought not.

Unless a guy was queer he was gong to get laid in Viet Nam, and laid and laid and laid. VD was common but the shots were free and there were absolutly no repercussion to contracting a dose of the Clap or the more feared Siph, but no one was really very much worried at the grand ages found in that war.

I doubt that our current department of defense is sanctioning whore houses, but I'd love to see a credible news source venture out of the green zone to find out if we are.

[NNN0LHI]

10. As someone who grew up during the Vietnam War...

...let me say I never once heard the types of prostitute stories you just described being reported anywhere until long after the war was over. Perhaps I missed those stories during the war? Do you remember seeing any reporting of the situation you described above during that war in any US newspapers or TV news?

And even without any prostitution at all people fall in and out of love all the time. And that can lead to unwanted babies as we all know.

Don



http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1098393,00.html

US soldier left patrol duty to marry Iraqi

Julian Borger
Wednesday December 3, 2003
The Guardian


An American soldier is expecting to be dismissed from the army for taking a break from patrol in Baghdad to marry his Iraqi girlfriend, says his lawyer.

Sergeant Sean Blackwell has not been allowed to see his bride, Ehdaa, since the wedding on August 17, but the couple have recently been allowed to talk by phone, Sgt Blackwell's lawyer, Richard Alvoid, said.

The US army has accused the soldier, 27, from the Florida National Guard, of revealing the timing and location of his patrol to his bride and the Iraqi judge who married them, in organising the wedding.

The sergeant and another soldier, Corporal Brett Dagen, converted from Christianity to Islam to marry Iraqi women, both doctors, in a double wedding. Cpl Dagen and his wife have since divorced under pressure from her parents.

Mr Alvoid said Sgt Blackwell's only crime was passion in time of war. "He is guilty of falling in love. The more they punish him, the more negative publicity the military likely will receive."

The couple met when he was on guard duty outside the health ministry in Baghdad. Their marriage, after a couple of months of courting, appears to be the first such US-Iraqi union produced by the war.

[Virginia Dare]

13. Iraq, in the end will not be much different than any other war...

we will leave babies behind. Times change, places change, but human nature never changes. The longer the occupation goes on, the more babies there will be.

[ThomWV]

14. I Didn't See This In The News - I Was There For 3 Years

I had the clap over 20 times, virtually every guy in my unit screwed every Vietnamese woman they could afford. The going price for a shot of leg when I first got in country in 1967 was - I shit you not - a bar of soap or $2. By the time I left in 1970 that had inflated to as much as $10, but you could still get a blow job for a couple of bucks. The sex was so prevelent that one guy I knew finally restricted hiself to a single old prostitute who, hold my hand to god, only had one tooth. I will not elaborate on her speciality other than to say it was inexpensive.

My first tour was with the 4th Infantry Division who's base camp was, at that time, located in Pleiku Provence, about 6 miles outside of the town itself. There was a "Sin City" located 100 yards outside of the main gate, it was on the right hand side as you exited the Base Camp on the only road in or out. It consisted of roughly 25 small shacks, each a bar-whore house. It was patrolled by MPs constantly, mostly to stop drunk young GIs from killing any more prostitutes than necessary. Army medics tested the girls weekly for VD and gave shots as needed. All the girls had Army issued ID cards and needed them to go into the "Sin City" to go to work each day. Now, did you see any of that in the papers? Hell no. In the towns and citys it was prostition and the selling of abolute junk t o GIs that kept the incrediblely corrupt economy running. It was out of this mix that all those poor American/Vietnamese babys came. It was fully sanctioned by the US and quickly became the cultural norm for the Vietnamese as well.

Now tell me, you see anything like that in Iraq? Go ask some neighbor kid who just got back if they saw anything like that in Iraq. Bet the answer is no.

PS: On Edit. In Viet Nam the GIs could, in most circumstances, freely walk around the streets of most towns and citys unarmed. That will get you laid every time. Any GI who tried to walk around anywhere in Iraq alone would be dead meat in minutes and it certainly wouldn't be alone in a back room banging away on a local and expect to live to see nighfall.