"Fear and Posing in Baghdad" -The LAT should be proud of this reporting

[Rose Siding]

Obviously someone -a reporter in the Times' Baghdad Bureau is named as contributing- ventured beyond the Green Zone for this accounting. Suhail Ahmad is very brave. I've tried to snip it down to the theme, but I strongly recommend reading the entire article.

Here's the thing: I don't think we've even begun to pay for this war yet.

...Bloodshed has turned Iraq into a country defined by disguise and bluff. Violence in the streets has begun to defy logic, and this is part of the fallout: A lively city where people used to butt gleefully into one another's business has degenerated into a labyrinth of disguises, a place where neighbors brush silently past one another like dancers in a macabre costume ball.
...
When they talk about the loss of intimacy, many Iraqis are mournful. Like members of most Middle Eastern societies, Iraqis have traditionally prized warmth and valued social interchange over what Westerners might regard as personal privacy. In the old Iraq, it was better to err on the side of nosiness than to appear cold or distant. It was perfectly normal to grill strangers on their marital status and the price of their possessions.

Little by little, that warmth has been bled away by war. Tension pulls on the city now. The atmosphere is thick with intrigue; it feels film noir, cloak-and-dagger. Except it is real — and deadly....

Etiquette used to require men to ask one another about their jobs; it was a way of showing concern for a friend's livelihood and to demonstrate willingness to help a man if he had fallen on hard times.
...
Iraq may be the only country in the world where militia members and anti-government insurgents walk the streets with bare faces while government workers, soldiers and cops cower behind masks......

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-disguise28jun28,0,889224,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Look what we did. The implementation of that uniquely American freedom, "Don't ask, don't tell" 2.0 seems to have lost something in the translation.

What have we done? Iraq's very culture has been altered. On an individual level -one by every one, far over and above the suffering of death and trauma for a hundred thousand? more?- they've been robbed of the ability to care for one another. Every Iraqi awakes every day and pays for our crime. They are changed

If I were tasked with designing an appropriate karmic retribution for this shameful offense, he would probably look very much like the schmoozing fool in the WH right now. On balance, the destruction of our Constitution -the jewel, the one thing that preserves our unity more than any other, an iconic binder of our own preciously disparate society- seems almost fitting.

Did the universe figure this one out before the fact? Will this pre-emptive penance be enough? The hell it will. I can still go outside my home in the morning barefaced and wave to neighbors, ask about their kids, wash my car -I can even slap on a "Bring Them Home" bumper sticker. I can still stand in the supermarket line wearing whatever I please with a dead certainty that nothing's going to explode. I can sign my real name to a letter ridiculing a humiliating majority in Congress for asserting that something with a thread count is sacred.

For all that this crime of a war has cost -and some have paid an horrific price- I can't shake the feeling that the score isn't even close to being settled.

[Rose Siding]

1. Thank you.

From GD-

It isn't news that so many are dead or broken or bereaved. We already know that they live in fear and darkness and unbroken heat. We know about the flight of the middle class and the tent cities for ethnic refugees and the devolving of rights based on gender and the targeted destruction of educators. We even know that the traumatized children have no hope of solace.

But the report in today's LAT (linked above) reveals something more: The destruction of fundamental cultural mores - basic societal identifiers, agreements between strangers to care about one another -something that united what may never be united again.

This is tearing me up.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Great post, Rose! nt

[Rose Siding]

3. ...

A kind word from a Mom was what I needed :hug:

From a broadcast before the invasion, I learned that Iraqi tea sellers had carts placed throughout neighborhoods and market places. The reporter said that it was the custom that no visitor should be allowed to pay for their own tea. Four years ago, an unassaulted American woman was given tea to drink on the streets of Baghdad.

And we think our culture is changing. -It is, of course, and if we can't put things right only more tragedy will follow. Today, though, the scale of their troubles in comparison to ours is weighing on me.

[XelKarin]

8. Tea Carts & Street Markets

I really like the idea of open markets. I've seen pictures of bustling foreign street markets where people can just set up a place in the street and sell items they've crafted and foods they've grown and prepared. It makes me wish there were more things like that here in the U.S. There's a farmer's market near where I live, but it's seasonal and only held once a week. It seems to pale in comparison to markets I've heard about in other countries.

[Julius Civitatus]

4. We started with the looting of their archaeological heritage

over 6,000 years of history, of the background of their (AND OUR) culture vanished suddenly by looting. Their entire historical heritage pillaged and vandalized in a matter of days. Most artifacts from the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia... GONE! But Rummy just comforted us by telling us "war is untidy."
Isn't that nice?

Then our intervention completely changed their culture, their safety, their lifestyle, and now even their interpersonal relations. They still can't get more than a few hours of electricity a day, their economy has been obliterated, and the levels of violence, crime and chaos skyrocketed to nightmarish levels. And this doesn't include the incipient civil war that takes hundreds of innocent lives on a weekly basis.

Nice job, George! Mission Accomplished! Freedom's on the march, bitch!

:sarcasm:


What a horrible MESS that Bush & Cheney and their neocon cohorts have made in that country.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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[hobbit709]

6. This is how "Our Glorious Leader"

defines bringing "freedom". Every day I find a new reason to hate the neocon regime.

[katty]

7. a churning, bloody across the board genocide of a people

[brer cat]

9. Thank you, Rose. This is a very important post.

We all need to realize how dramatically we have changed Iraqi life. How to get it to Corporate Media is another story, but thank you for bringing so personally to DU.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. Sam Seder did a great interview with Nir Rosen today while subbing for

Randi Rhodes.

He is a reporter for the New Yorker, and has been working in Afghanistan and Iraq for three years. He wrote "In the Belly of the Green Bird : The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq".

He gave the most realistic and depressing appraisal of what is going on there that I have ever heard. He said that when it comes to reporting what is going on in Iraq, it isn't that not enough of the "good news" is being reported, but that actually we are not hearing the truth about how bad it really is.

He said that there has been a civil war there for over 2 years, and there was nothing we could have done to prevent it since we did not have enough troops there after we created the vacuum of Saddam's downfall.

His opinion was that it will probably be 25 years before that area will be able to be considered stable.

He provided a lot of info about what is going on between the Shi'ites and the Sunnis, and how bloody it is there, and that it is not getting any better. Only worse.

[Sad4world]

17. Saudi money vs Iran money

I listened to Nir and this is what I got out of his comments

We don't get the real news because it is too dangerous for reporters.

The US is just another armed militia in the Iraq civil war.

This civil war is basically between the Sunni militia(backed by Saudi Arabia) and the Shiite militia(backed by Iran).

My personal opinion is: Bush wanted to create this mess to keep Iraq's oil out of the market to keep oil prices(and profit) at high prices(supply and demand).

[BrklynLiberal]

20. Excellent synopsis.

Bottom line: The Iraqi citizens and American soldiers are expendable as far as BushCo is concerned.

[Sad4world]

22. Bingo

"Everyone" is expendable in the eyes of sadists

[Prophet 451]

11. Geez...

Ya know what? You remember that insult thrown at us when we opposed the war, the one that said we supported Saddam?

I have to say it but the Bush administration has made such a mess of the occupation, I'm starting to wonder if it genuinely would have been easier on teh Iraqi's to leave Saddam in charge. Psychopathic dictator he might have been but he didn't have the resources to do this much damage.

[motocicleta]

12. I can't either

I've never been out of the country. I love this country so much, I am absolutely addicted to our geography, all of my closest friends are here - but I am seriously considering taking my family away. The repercussions of this war and this era in US history are so obviously going to resonate for at least the rest of my life, and I really don't want my daughter to suffer for my decision to stay here. The US is in my blood but it doesn't need to be in hers. I can't shake the feeling that she'd be better off without it in her blood, and I couldn't have fathomed such a thought even just 4 years ago.

[Alcibiades]

13. We are not responsible

At least, that's what I keep telling myself. If there is a God who exacts karmic retribution, then I am sure he/she/it is accurate enough with his thunderbolts to strike down the real miscreants, and not everyone in a whole nation for the acts of their policymakers.

[madrchsod]

14. i`ve been reading the iraqi bloggers for over a year now

they have been reporting on what has been going on but no one would listen. finally the lat decided to stick their head out the window and discovered iraq has changed..as usual the american press is a day late and a dollar short.

[drduffy]

15. The citizens of a nation

are responsible for what their government does in their name.
If you are not actively fighting the real evil doers, then I would expect some of that karma to come back to you.

[ptolle]

19. just deity

What was it that old deist T. Jefferson said: indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; ...All those american talibangelists yearning for the rapture better think about being careful what you wish for.

[leftchick]

16. I wonder if the fundies are aware of this?

Christians POSE AS MUSLIMS to stay alive!

<snip>

Rich people hide their jewelry and dig frayed clothes from the back of their closets to evade ransom-seeking kidnappers. Muslims claim to be Sunni or Shiite, depending on circumstance. Christians pose as Muslims. Lying about employment is de rigueur. Street police wrap their faces in masks so nobody will recognize them.

<snip>


But religious isolation has been the most painful of all. She and her family no longer dare attend church on Sundays. And she has been forced to hide her identity with Islamic dress — a head scarf, or hijab, and robe, or abaya.

"It scares me: There are people who believe that all Christians are with the Americans," she said. "We can't trust each other now. I have to keep all my secrets and everything to myself, because I don't know the people in front of me."

[The Wizard]

18. When the cabal

started this immoral war with a shocking and awful display of brute stupidity a friend called and asked what I thought. I said we'll be paying for this for the rest of our lives. We allowed it to happen by sitting back and throwing our hands in the air. If everyone who was able would have been in the streets and raising hell we might not be seen as the scourge of civilization.
During the 04 campaign I told people if we don't throw off this corrupt regime the rest of the world will do it for us, and it won't be nice.
After we pulled our combat troops out of Vietnam oil prices skyrocketed and living standards for most dropped. 1998 marked the first time since 1973 that the working class got an actual increase in income. But the powers that be wouldn't nor couldn't allow that to continue. So they imposed their will on us in the form of the Chimperator and things have gone down hill ever since for those who earn their incomes.
We are all the more poor for PNAC's illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. We'll never get the oil prices stabilized as the criminal cartel is making record profits. The unitary dictator has done his damage to the world and the CCE (continuing criminal enterprise) reaps profits off the backs of working people, the disabled and the disenfranchised.
With unverified electronic voting we'll all be making $5.15 an hour, and the Gobbels/Rove media will have us convinced that we are the greatest nation on Earth. Their idea of traditional values is slavery.
The British philosopher Thomas Carlyle said he couldn't understand the American Civil War as the South wanted to own their slaves while the North wanted to rent them by the hour. We have become the most servile obedient subjects in world history.
The question is: When will enough people rise up and say enough is enough and demand true representation from our elected leaders?
Our pResident is a nut.
His puppet masters are evil to the core.

[BrklynLiberal]

21. kick