Rambling Thoughts
(and rambling, and rambling...)
I've been back in Iraq now almost four weeks since my vacation. I thought going home would be a very surreal experience but it turns out the return to Iraq after my break was much stranger. It was like discovering something that felt like a dream is actually real. When I was flying low over Baghdad rooftops, watching people scurry, breathing the dust, smelling that heavy odor of oil and rubber it came back loud and clear. This experience that had taken on the quality of a dreamy memory during my vacation was very real and I was back in the thick of it. There's something about life in the US that acts like a sedative. We Americans (myself included) in my opinion are so satiated on over-consumption (physically, emotionally and culturally) and so isolated from the reality most of humanity exists in that we simply don't relate (or try to) with much of the world. I find it hard to keep my perspective sharp while I'm back home. My interest and concern for the greater world is dulled by the intensity of excesses that comes with living in America; fast food, digital cable, internet, celebrity, pop culture, youth, instant gratification and of course my favorite - Fox News (I like to pick on them but they're all bad). I have been to 39 countries now and lived abroad in two of them. This travel over the years has reinforced in me a developing perception of our world in general and America in particular.
I have to say I have the strangest relationship with America. I don't think I've ever both loved and hated a thing so much as I do the USA. What I do know is that there really isn't anything about our world that is "Black or White." Everything is truly tied to everything else and every action anyone takes, any decision anyone makes produces ripples which in some way (often imperceptibly) changes everything else. Why does our government lie so much? Because it believes it must do so in order to best serve the objectives of those in power. What do those in power desire? Some want to serve the people, empower them and help them to help themselves. Others want to serve only themselves and or their constituencies. The point is the political Right and Left in this country (and abroad) are neither right nor wrong, they are both. It seems to me that we Americans are so drawn to the quick fix that we loose site of the bigger picture (and we aren't the only ones). The small or limited picture of this Insurgency problem within Iraq is: These guys are evil and they need to be flushed out and killed. The reality is this "problem" is rooted in years of cultural indoctrination starting from a very young age in many countries all over the world including Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and more recently Turkey, Israel, France, and the US. Most of the insurgents are young, (teens to late 30's) poor, have had limited exposure to a formal education and are often searching for answers to their own small and dysfunctional world view. They have limited choices and continue to make decisions and take action based on the very sick and twisted picture they understand the world by.
Unfortunately in western societies, especially America, style beats substance (almost) every time. Some who seek power exploit the fears and ignorance of the masses to achieve their goals. George Bush is guilty of this but so too is Michael Moore. It's easy to order 75,000 troops into a country and wipe out a lot of trouble makers but that will never, ever, fix the larger problem. It's easy to make a "mockumentary" about the evils of government when you control the money, editing, writing, filming and production of a film. These are just two examples of what I like to call, "taking an aspirin for a brain tumor." Until we all (Americans especially) see the bigger picture and act on that picture we will always fail.
We should never have come into Iraq but now that we are here we need to stay for the long haul and help rebuild this country, not just with military might but with lots and lots of investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and I’m talking long term. Expensive you say, well we asked for it. We are directly responsible for this war and we must see it through.
America and its allies need to stop lying. In the last 20 years we have been a very good friend and a vengeful enemy to the same governments. It has only been a matter of what served America more at a specific moment. We cannot expect to squelch the insurgency problem if we continue to use foreign operatives and facilities to interrogate and torture our enemies, especially with the broad brush we use to determine just who is an enemy. We cannot continue to go to bed with certain despots one day because of strategic interests, declare them evil the next day and expect no action in return. We cannot ignore the desperate cries for help all over the world for many years then suddenly act out of "humanitarian concern" for a country that coincidentally sits over the world's second largest oil reserve. All of these actions are transparent and have consequences. They set the stage for hatred and terrorism for decades to come and reinforce a limited angry view of the western world. It is a fool's game to expect to fix the problem with military might after acting the way we have for so many years.
It's not just America who's guilty either. This includes the British who bend over backwards to keep their Yankee masters happy, the French who want it both ways by objecting to the war yet continuing to turn their backs on their own disenfranchised immigrant population in prejudice and greed, the Spanish who were initially happy to include themselves in the "coalition of the willing" because it served them to do so but backed out when things got ugly sending the message that bombs really do work. It's also the Japanese whose own military is underwritten by American dollars and the South Koreans whose borders are stable thanks to the American military, which is there because of the strategic advantage it gives the US more then some notion of protecting a ally. These countries (including the US) as well as India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, etc., are all complicit in their self serving actions that have fostered the sickness that lead to 9-11. Their direct and indirect actions over years and years led to the insanity that made some people believe it was correct to fly a plane into the World Trade Center.
We had a great opportunity to do the right thing after 9-11. We could have gone into Afghanistan and I mean really go in, not just with a few discrete Special Forces units but with a comprehensive, effective and transparent military operation. We should have stayed there and only there, focusing as much on providing education and infrastructure as destroying the hatred of Al Qaeda, Our goal should have been to help rebuild this desperate country from an Afghani perspective, with a long term commitment to repairing the deeper cultural damage that we helped foster for so long. With our courage, kindness and actions on their behalf we could have served them, us and the rest of the world in such a better way.
What a shame...
M.
