The view from Iraq

After five years in Iraq, it sometimes feels in the United States that we aren’t at war anymore. We’ve become numb to the fact that countless men and women are fighting everyday. Slowly the news has turned from a daily death toll to more stories about the housing crisis, a possible economic recession, and the looming presidential election. It’s easy for one to forget what is happening on the other side of the world.

The readings assigned this week were very insightful a gave a picture of Iraq that we don’t get from the major media outlets. For me, it’s all too easy to view the war as just something that happens, to pretend that there aren’t real lives being affected. I almost cried reading Baghdad Burning as the author described her feelings on packing her most treasured possessions and moving away from her home country, never knowing if she would see it again. She presents an honesty you won’t find from people speaking “on the record.”

On December 29, 2006, she wrote:

Here we come to the end of 2006 and I am sad. Not simply sad for the state of the country, but for the state of our humanity, as Iraqis. We’ve all lost some of the compassion and civility that I felt made us special four years ago. I take myself as an example. Nearly four years ago, I cringed every time I heard about the death of an American soldier. They were occupiers, but they were humans also and the knowledge that they were being killed in my country gave me sleepless nights. Never mind they crossed oceans to attack the country, I actually felt for them.

Had I not chronicled those feelings of agitation in this very blog, I wouldn’t believe them now. Today, they simply represent numbers. 3000 Americans dead over nearly four years? Really? That’s the number of dead Iraqis in less than a month. The Americans had families? Too bad. So do we. So do the corpses in the streets and the ones waiting for identification in the morgue.

Is the American soldier that died today in Anbar more important than a cousin I have who was shot last month on the night of his engagement to a woman he’s wanted to marry for the last six years? I don’t think so.

Just because Americans die in smaller numbers, it doesn’t make them more significant, does it?

The videos on YouTube of actual combat fighting was a little shocking to me. Call me naive, but I guess I didn’t realize that people would actually be in that type of situation with a video camera (other than the embedded journalists) and then post it online. I’m a wimp and would be running in the opposite direction (which is reason #1 why I’m not in the military). I’ll provide links, but will warn that the videos are slightly graphic: Battle of Fallujah, Battle on Haifa Street, US Marines in Iraq.

I really enjoyed the War News Radio podcast at Swarthmore College and applaud the students for taking the time to report on another side of the war, talking to the people who don’t often get to share their stories. It was also interesting to see the blogs written by soldiers, namely Army of Dude. I liked how he could paint the picture of his life in Iraq - from being proud of the work he was doing, to grieving for a fallen friend, to a joyous homecoming and moving on to the next stage of his life.

Given my natural curiosity for most things, I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’ve never even searched for this type of information. I’ve formed my own views of the war over the years, but now I wonder what have I based those views on? It reminds me of what we talked about earlier this semester of how people can start living in their own worlds, where what I know and think can be completely different from a neighbor just because of where we get our information.

I like the role the Web plays in presenting different viewpoints, giving us a glimpse of how other people are living. My day-to-day life isn’t really affected by this war (other than gas might cost more), making it hard to grasp what affect it is having on the lives of families who have sent sons and daughters off to fight, of those who never return home, and for the people of Iraq whose country will never be the same again. My new view of Iraq has painted a new reality which is probably closer to the truth than I had before.