Every war has it’s own realities. The question is where does one look to get a true measure of the realities of this war. My modest suggestion is to use the approach that Studs Turkell used to write his books. He went out and listened to the people who were most affected by the various issues he was trying to understand and he wrote down what they said verbatim. He presented their thoughts… their words without comment, without bias. He let the people on the street speak for themselves and the reader was free to draw his or her own conclusions.
Who has been impacted by this war and how have these groups been affected?
On our side, of course the soldiers who are having to actually fight this war. For the “privilege” of preserving the American way and “promoting” democracy around the globe, these men and women in the armed services have had their lives interrupted at minimum and severely disrupted in the worst cases. We must not forget the children of these soldiers who have to watch their mothers and fathers march off to war, not knowing if they will ever return. And what about the extended families of these soldiers? They are certainly affected profoundly. Of course, there are those of us who make up the collective group of “men and women on the street.” We get to pay the bill for this war, and so will our children as well as our grandchildren. We have little choice but to stand by and watch the little drama play itself out and for the moment we will have very little say in how this conflict is being handled by our generals and our leaders. For us, all the while, critical problems in this country go unresolved because the resources that it takes to fix the problems are being diverted into a seemingly bottomless military and political money pit. And of course there is that nagging matter that our government either was using bad information to justify going to war or our leaders flat lied to us to get what they wanted, which was to go to war with Iraq. In either case, we have had little reason to have much faith in the wisdom or judgment that our leadership has exhibited since the leadup to the war itself.
Over there in Iraq, we need to be listening to the ordinary men and women, who are quick to ask, “Are we better off now that the Americans and their allies have come?” All but a few would answer no. They have made it plain what it is they expect from the Americans and from their own government. What they want is a reliable water supply, a phone system that works reliably and adequate electricity to run their homes and businesses. They want safe streets. They want adequate gasoline to fuel their cars. They want to be able to send their kids off to school without worrying that some suicide bomber will murder their child. The average Iraqi is painfully aware that neither their newly elected government or the Americans control the streets of Baghdad and the other cities of Iraq. Read the blogs written by Iraqi citizens who just want to get on with their lives. They are saying that life in Iraq has become impossibly unpredictable and extremely dangerous. The reports of daily life in Baghdad reveal that the secular thugs of Saddam Hussein have simply been replaced by the religious thugs of the warring religious factions, the Sunnis and the Shites. These ordinary Iraqis want the Americans and the Brits and all the other foreign soldiers to go home, because the allied forces are not able to make a noticeable difference in what happens on the streets and in the neighbors of Iraq, from their perspective.
There are other groups in Iraq which are also impacted by the way this conflict has played out. Those Iraqis who step up to become members of the new Iraqi army and police force become prime targets for the insurgents. The children of Iraq will certainly be profoundly affected by the conflict. The scenes of death and destruction are what they will remember most about their childhood. Most of all, the innocent civilians who get caught in the crossfire between the Americans, the insurgents, the government internal police and the religious militias, live increasingly precarious lives. Life is cheap and uncertain in post-invasion Iraq. For all their good intentions, the American forces cannot change that reality or impact the outcome very much. .
Interestingly enough, almost all these people, whether American or Iraqi, have little use for the politicians. George Bush and his advisors have virtually no credibility with the ordinary Iraqi any more than he does with a fair percentage of the American people. Neither do the politicians who are trying to build the new democratic government of Iraq. One Iraqi blogger derisively noted that the Iraqi leadership was taking a two month vacation, overseas, or course, away from the fighting in Iraq. He notes that the only thing that they have managed to accomplish so far is to decide who is going to do what in the government. To date, no substantive problems have been resolved by this fledgling government.
Sometime in the nineteenth century, civilians became fair targets in the game of warfare. Increasingly, the very notion of war has lost any quality of nobilty of intent or purpose. So rather than studying the military campaigns or the political maneuverings related to this war, we need to focus on the words and thoughts of all the ordinary men, women and children whose lives have been so profoundly impacted by this conflict. Forget about all the happy hoopla that the Americans are bringing a new dawn of democracy to the Middle East. My guess is that you are going to get a much truer sense of what this war is really all about: poor judgment on the part of the political leaders, a badly flawed American game plan, disrupted lives, human misery, unnecessary human suffering and death.
