As the Bush-Cheney spinmeisters put the finishing touches on General Petraeus' "Report On the Great Success of the Surge", I went back to check on the reality in Baghdad from the perspective of an Iraqi resident who, since March of 2003, blogged under the name "Riverbend" at "Baghdad Burning".
She reports as of February, 2007:
And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.
Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost.
You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets.
You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had.
You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.
In one of the last notes in her blog of April of 2007, she explains that, having survived in Baghdad since the invasion of March, 2003, her family has finally made the decision to leave.
Or, to try to leave, because it is no longer certain that they will be admitted into either Syria or Jordan, the only two countries who are willing to accept those without visas. It is impossible to get visas from any of the few embassies that are still functioning in Baghdad.
Whether they will actually be allowed into Syria or Jordan depends on the whim of the particular border guard who examines their paperwork at the border.
Readers of her blog trembled with her during the terrifying "shock and awe" of the initial bombing. And, when the initial bombing ended, suffered with her as she learned that she would no longer be able to work at her programming job at the small computer firm that employed her prior to the invasion. Females were no longer wanted there.
She could no longer safely walk the street to the market unless accompanied by her brother. The religious police had appeared to harass unaccompanied women.
We learned from her that, prior to the U.S. invasion, Sunni and Shi'ite had lived together in peace in neighborhoods throughout Baghdad, had intermarried, and even been members of the same tribes.
Now, in April of 2007, she reports:
The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn't enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It's time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas"...
I remember Baghdad before the war- one could live anywhere. We didn't know what our neighbors were- we didn't care. No one asked about religion or sect. No one bothered with what was considered a trivial topic: are you Sunni or Shia? You only asked something like that if you were uncouth and backward.
Our lives revolve around it now. Our existence depends on hiding it or highlighting it- depending on the group of masked men who stop you or raid your home in the middle of the night.
Whole neighborhoods have been "cleansed" of Sunnis. Whether one is a Sunni or Shi'ite has become the defining characteristic of one's life, indeed, frequently determining whether one lives or dies.
With Riverbend, we've lived vicariously without electricity in 120 degree heat, lived without water, without being able to go to the market for food for fear of attack.
We've worried over her silence, only to be reassured when she reappeared, explaining that her absence was due to the absence of electricity, the break down of the internet system, or worse, her extreme depression over the state of her country which paralyzed her into muteness.
We read with horror as her wonderful friend who owned a music store and invited the neighborhood in to play music, was killed by militia. So many, many, friends and family dead, arrested without cause, forced to flee.
We read in her post of February, 2007, the horrendous plight of a young married Sunni woman who was seized by police, taken to the police station and gang raped by ten or more Iraqi policemen. She had the courage to make a complaint, at the cost of great public danger and humiliation, but the President of Iraq, within two hours of ordering an investigation of her complaint, publicly stated that she was fabricating. The police who raped her were given public honors for their behavior.
Now, like millions of other Iraqi, she is forced to leave her family home, her photographs, her books, CDs, old teddy bear, her lifelong neighbors, to flee her home
"There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends... And to what?
Our Congress, the Democrats elected in 2006 to stop this criminal war, still leave this "imbecile" with the power and the money to continue to destroy Iraq.
The "imbecile" and his cabal of madmen have now decided to attack Iran. How many more lives will we let them destroy?
There is no need to wait for the General's Report. The history of the invasion and occupation of Iraq is contained in the archives of Riverbend's "Baghdad Burning". The "success" of the surge can be seen in its terrible reports.
Read it, Congressional Representatives, read it and you will literally weep, weep for what has been done in the our name. Read it and be resolved to stop these horrors. Stop the money, stop the power, stop the imbeciles from wrecking still more havoc while you still have the chance.