I was glad to see her new post this week. So many of us have wondered what happened to her and her family.
This post from 2003 is filled with a kind of understandable bitterness about the attitude of Americans toward her country. What we did, our attitudes and propaganda were so very ignorant.
There is not a direct link, but it is about 5 posts down, and it is called The Promise and the Threat
The Myth: Iraqis, prior to occupation, lived in little beige tents set up on the sides of little dirt roads all over Baghdad. The men and boys would ride to school on their camels, donkeys and goats. These schools were larger versions of the home units and for every 100 students, there was one turban-wearing teacher who taught the boys rudimentary math (to count the flock) and reading. Girls and women sat at home, in black burkas, making bread and taking care of 10-12 children.
The Truth: Iraqis lived in houses with running water and electricity. Thousands of them own computers. Millions own VCRs and VCDs. Iraq has sophisticated bridges, recreational centers, clubs, restaurants, shops, universities, schools, etc. Iraqis love fast cars (especially German cars) and the Tigris is full of little motor boats that are used for everything from fishing to water-skiing.
In other words- there was something there in the first place. We have hundreds of bridges. We have one of the most sophisticated network of highways in the region: you can get from Busrah, in the south, to Mosul, in the north, without once having to travel upon those little, dusty, dirt roads they show you on Fox News. We had a communications system so advanced, it took the Coalition of the Willing 3 rounds of bombing, on 3 separate nights, to damage the Ma’moun Communications Tower and silence our telephones.
....Something you should know about Iraq: we have over 130,000 engineers. More than half of these engineers are structural engineers and architects. Thousands of them were trained outside of Iraq in Germany, Japan, America, Britain and other countries. Thousands of others worked with some of the foreign companies that built various bridges, buildings and highways in Iraq. The majority of them are more than proficient- some of them are brilliant.
Our ignorance of the country of Iraq allowed a shameful invasion to happen, with Americans cheering the shock and awe on TV.
I have never forgotten an article by Arundhati Roy. It told of one of our military who was unaware that we were bombing the hell out of the cradle of civilization. I am not sure how that happened in this America I thought I knew.
Private AJ, when told Iraq did not do 9/11..."Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head"
On March 21, the day after American and British troops began their illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, an "embedded" CNN correspondent interviewed an American soldier. "I wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna take revenge for 9/11."
To be fair to the correspondent, even though he was "embedded" he did sort of weakly suggest that so far there was no real evidence that linked the Iraqi government to the September 11 attacks. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue out all the way down to the end of his chin. "Yeah, well that stuff's way over my head," he said.
There is more from Arundhati Roy.
But why should poor AJ and his fellow soldiers be burdened with these details? It does not matter any more, does it? Hundreds of thousands of men, tanks, ships, choppers, bombs, ammunition, gas masks, high-protein food, whole aircrafts ferrying toilet paper, insect repellent, vitamins and bottled mineral water, are on the move. The phenomenal logistics of Operation Iraqi Freedom make it a universe unto itself. It doesn't need to justify its existence any more. It exists. It is.
President George W Bush, commander in chief of the US army, navy, airforce and marines has issued clear instructions: "Iraq. Will. Be. Liberated." (Perhaps he means that even if Iraqi people's bodies are killed, their souls will be liberated.) American and British citizens owe it to the supreme commander to forsake thought and rally behind their troops. Their countries are at war. And what a war it is.
No one has ever had to answer for those lies that led us to that awful time in our history. Maybe it is because I am older, but it hit me so hard how much our country had changed almost without warning during that decade.
Now to top it off we continue the huge war budgets, and we taking away benefits from our elderly and our needy to make it all happen.
I am home from the hospital a while now, doing okay. My husband is in health care rehabilitation, and we can see the effects of the cuts already made to such facilities in the name of fiscal responsibility.
It is also one of the most irresponsible things our country has ever done.
Crossposted at Democratic Underground