{"id":1154,"date":"2008-03-24T11:29:28","date_gmt":"2008-03-24T09:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/general\/one-side-promises-virgins-the-other-citizenship.html"},"modified":"2008-03-24T11:29:28","modified_gmt":"2008-03-24T09:29:28","slug":"one-side-promises-virgins-the-other-citizenship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=1154","title":{"rendered":"One side promises virgins, the other citizenship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today the US death toll in Iraq <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/nm\/20080324\/ts_nm\/iraq_dc_21\">reached 4000<\/a>.  The death toll on the Iraqi side is a matter of dispute it goes from<a href=\"http:\/\/www.iraqbodycount.org\/\"> 85,000<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/10\/10\/AR2006101001442.html\">600,000<\/a>.  Being a pacifist myself it\u00b4s been hard to me to understand why do so many people willingly go to war.  This morning I was doing some research on the subject and came up with some unusual reasons for dying at war.  On the US side it turns out that many of those who are counted as US death toll are not really US citizens&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20080324\/ap_on_re_us\/4000_fallen_citizens_in_death_1\">until they die<\/a>.   How post mortem citizenship can make somebody from Guatemala die fighting for the US in Iraq escapes me.  Most likely the unfortunate soldier was trying to obtain both, US citizenship and a lifetime to enjoy it after the war and sadly just got the former.  But the citizen reward pales in comparison to the reward offered in the other side, that one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/religion\/Story\/0,2763,631357,00.html\">Virgins waiting for you in heaven<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p><em>In August, 2001, the American television channel CBS aired an interview with a Hamas activist Muhammad Abu Wardeh, who recruited terrorists for suicide bombings in Israel. Abu Wardeh was quoted as saying: &#8220;I described to him how God would compensate the martyr for sacrificing his life for his land. If you become a martyr, God will give you 70 virgins, 70 wives and everlasting happiness.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Considering the enormous amount of violent deaths that are occuring in the Middle East there must be an endless supply of virgins in heaven.  <\/p>\n<p>The first casualty of war is common sense.  <\/p>\n<div id=\"mainphotoarea\"><\/div><div class=\"theme-buttons\"><div class=\"fb-like\" data-href=\"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/?p=1154\" data-send=\"false\" data-layout=\"box_count\" data-width=\"71\" data-show-faces=\"false\" data-font=\"arial\" data-locale=\"en_US\"><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today the US death toll in Iraq reached 4000. The death toll on the Iraqi side is a matter of dispute it goes from 85,000 to 600,000. Being a pacifist myself it\u00b4s been hard to me to understand why do so many people willingly go to war. This morning I was doing some research on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.martinvarsavsky.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}