It's now May in Michigan, arguably the most glorious season this state has to offer (though I realize fall has its adherents): the redbud and bradford pear are finishing, the cherry and crabapple are in their full glory and dogwood (what few I've seen: that anthracnose appears to be serious) graces us. The lilac are budding out, filling the air with their perfume; daffodils and grape hyacinths are still lovely, and tulips are in full spate. Rhododendrons blind us with their magenta blooms. The sun is slanted and golden, the temperatures gentle. I love spring in Michigan, the more so because I missed it last year, bicycling in Vietnam. I should be overflowing with the goodness and happiness life has provided me, but I'm not.
I hate this.
I have been striving for years to understand why people support the war in Iraq. How, if they don't, they can countenance the administration that started it. I read somewhere that after six months, most people's anguish, however deep at the time of the election, would recede. Mine has not. If anything, guilt has been weighing me down even worse during what should be a glorious season of resurrection.
To start with, I don't really see that the actions in Iraq should be called a war: wars are fought by two parties. We invaded them, so realistically, what we're doing ought to be called the Iraq invasion. First, the administration tried to sell the invasion on the basis of 9/11 catastrophe—but the hijackers for the most part were Saudis. Not one was identified as an Iraqi. Besides, I thought 9/11 was carried out by some guy named Osama bin Ladin. (Who? oh yeah. Gee, haven't heard about him in ages...why not?) He's a fundie nut case, as I understand it. Saddam Hussein, otoh, was a secularist despot who banned religious expression. I've never seen any evidence of their alliance besides handwaving. But then the war never was about 9/11; it was in the planning stages long before.
More conservative members of my family, in attempting to explain our dear administration's reasoning to me, tried the ‘but the president was deceived by intelligence about weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘well, we need their oil, cuz the Saudi regime is going to collapse’ (except we're not getting any, of course) and ‘saddam tried to kill Bush's daddy.’ (Haven't heard that one before on the major news, but at least it has the appeal of novelty...)
It seems to me that if we invaded their country by mistake then we ought to apologize and get out. Invading them because we really want the oil next door but can't quite bring ourselves to invade Saudi Arabia, and therefore are going for a nearby country run by a less lovable dictator instead, strikes me as pragmatic, but hardly just. Even a successful assassination attempt on Bush I surely should've justified only assassinating Hussein back, not a full-scale war.
Oh, wait. We're giving the Iraqis democracy. And the Afghanis, too, I guess.
The difficulty is that democracy has to come from the people. Sure, they might need help—if the French hadn't helped out those early American terrorists and insurgents (otherwise known as our Founding Fathers) this country wouldn't exist. But I didn't see much evidence that the Iraqis were trolling for help overthrowing their dictator. I have no doubt there were some who passionately desired this (and I have no doubt there are some Americans who passionately desire, say, an overthrow of our judicial system) but I didn't see anything like the workers of Poland, or the defiance of Tienamen square; and I note, we contributed neither to the success of the former or the failure of the latter. We just sat by. And if we really believed in this whole democracy thing (which I guess was an illusion that I truly believed, however imperfectly and haphazardly executed) we'd be trying to do something to straighten out the messes in the African continent, or make a real effort in the Israli-Palestinian peace process. But who cares about a bunch of blacks and elephants? They don't power our economy.
When this war (and it is a war now; the Iraqis are fighting back) started, I thought it was to get control of the oil so that Americans could continue to drive their honking big SUVs. This self-centeredness, besides its obvious price in American soldiers’ lives and shattered psyches, is in addition costing us billions of dollars and thus is stalling our economy, and seems to me not only wrong, but stupid. It certainly dried up the worldwide support we got after 9/11 in a hurry.
But I thought at least the victims would get some crumbs of gold from us in the form of US taxes to cover contracts to rebuild, for their bloodshed. But now I've come to the conclusion that the war does not even and was never intended to “benefit” the average American—rather, it serves as a cash cow for American firms to skim government contracts, particularly firms with strong ties to our administration. So instead of the war fueling thoughtless American middle class comfort with the blood of Iraqi civilians and American soldiers (and, be it said, Iraqi soldiers who believe their cause is just) it is merely a vehicle to fill the pockets of corrupt, rich men.
I weep.
Before the first Iraqi invasion, I remember thinking, oh no, please let this not turn into another Vietnam. And those first air strikes went so amazingly well. (For us, of course.) But the little Iraqi travel agency on Southfield road, just north of 10 Mile—well, first, I noticed their sign (which I liked because of the arabic calligraphy) was broken. And then the business disappeared altogether, a casualty of the war. This, I told myself, is one of the costs of that war. A small one, a bloodless one, but nevertheless someone's dreams dead.
And now, as the reports of people killed here and people killed there steadily mount, the conflict sounds more and more like the one that took the Uncle I never met; the one for whom the wounds finally seem to be healing.
When I went to Vietnam the single thing that impressed me more than any other about the living conditions is the scale: everything in Vietnam is smaller—the people, the fields, the houses, the transportation. They make do with so much less than we. So I believe is the case of the Iraqis. They don't have a lot, compared to us, but that little doesn't matter: we who have so much, who live in such ease, who feast on milk and honey, in a land where flowers perfume the air, must deprive them of their poor possessions, of their limbs, lives, loved ones.
How can anyone be satisfied in the face of such evil?
File originally created 11may05.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
