This semester I've been teaching a undergraduate survey of the history of the modern Middle East. It's late in the semester, and so this week, we came to the US invasion of 2003. Grim. On Monday, I gave an overview of the sanctions regime of the 1990s, and then the lead-up to the war itself. Wednesday, we discussed some issues raised by Monday's lecture, and then viewed excerpts from James Longley's superb Iraq in Fragments.
More below...
Longley is a brave person. He filmed in Iraq in 2003/04, focusing on everyday life for ordinary people in the post-invasion maelstrom.
There is a moment in the first segment when "Muhammad of Baghdad," an 11-year old working-class boy, describes his old wish to be a pilot some day: "It's scary here...I'd fly to other countries, I want to be in the beautiful one. I want to go to the beautiful country." (A paraphrase). The class was absolutely still.
We had also discussed the difficulty international monitors have had in determining Iraqi deaths in the war and postwar civil violence unleashed by the occupiers' irresponsible destruction of mechanisms of social order.
I've just now read what seems to be an important AP story, that may begins to help clear things up. Terrible. Note that the figure offered is a low-ball one. (It does not even mention the losses among the Iraqi refugee populations in Jordan, Syria, and Egypt.)
This diary was mostly an excuse to share mention of Longley's film, and the AP story.