See why "reconciliation" is a pipe dream?

Once there is killing, and the blood of your family members is flowing in the gutter, there can be no real reconciliation..ever!

Sheer force may subdue the hard feelings, but it only drives them inward and turns them into folklore passed down throughout the family's history.

I challenge anyone to wander through just about any town in the south and start asking questions of some of the locals..about their "war of aggression".. (Northerners call it the Civil War..even though there was nothing civil about it).... The people may not be ready to take up arms again, but the feelings of anger are still there, and they are shown daily in very passive-aggressive ways.

Armenians & Turks are still a heartbeat away from violence...and have been for almost 100 years.

The Israelis & Palestinians have been non-reconciled for thousands of years.

True peace & reconciliation between the Serbs, Croats & Kosovars will never really happen...... they must be separated and watched over by outsiders, so they don't start killing each other again..

For the Bush administration to believe (or try to convince US they believe) that Iraqis will all just sing cumbaya and suddenly start getting along, is utter nonsense.

Economic development and education are the only things that can forestall violence between old enemies.

There are parts of ireland where the British are still hated and probably always will be, but as long as families can better themselves and lead normal productive & prosperous llives, they are willing to try and get beyond their own negative feelings about their former enemies.

When people are without hopeful futures and their children are uneducated and even less hopeful, there can be no reconciliation... only a supression of the hatred. It never goes away..It only recedes for a while and then returns with a vengeance.

The history of the world is violent. People do learn to live together peacefully though. It can happen. Whether it will happen in Iraq is doubtful at the moment but not out of the question for the future. Germany and France are pretty good friends at the moment but only sixty years or so ago they were total enemies. "Childrens do learn"

pretty sad :(

At some point in the history, if the Native Americans had had a common language and had been able to unite, history could have been different, eh?

Germany & France...proves the economic/educational point:)

Just like it was the first time.

don't you have to have been "conciled" at some point before you can be reconciled?

"The Israelis & Palestinians have been non-reconciled for thousands of years."

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is only a few decades old. If you go back a few centuries, you'll find Muslim and Jewish peoples living in relative, if not total, harmony in the ME (although you'll also find all sorts of wars and persecution with nothing to do with the modern I/P conflict).


FWIW, as far as I can see reconcilliation between peoples happens when, and only when, each side starts admitting partial responsibility for the conflict, and apologising either explicitly and implicitly.