Letter from Iraq: U.S. liberated oppressed people

The Press Enterprise | 8-06-04 | Sabah Salih

[eagles]

The following letter appeared in our local paper. The author is an Iraqi-American professor at Bloomsburg University who is currently visiting Iraq.

U.S. liberated oppressed people

By Sabah Salih

I’ve been living in Iraq for several weeks now, and I must say I have become ever more convinced that the war was the right thing.

Of course, what one’s take is on the war depends largely on the political framework one happens to be functioning in, both consciously and unconsciously.

Some opposed (and continue to oppose) the war simply because they don’t like Bush, some because they consider peace at any price preferable to war, some because they consider all foreign interventions to be counter-productive, some because they don’t want to see the U.S. becoming the world’s policeman, some because they have always been in opposition to the U.S.

Political frameworks like these, however, have one serious flaw: They prevent you from feeling your way imaginatively into the experience of others, as they tend to dissolve the issue into mirror images of your desires.

My own political framework functions quite differently. Rather than reducing Iraq into a sound bite, detail, an image or idea, I see in Iraq a flock of peoples and cultures---not abstractions but intimacies.

That’s why for me the war was---and still is---not about weapons of mass destruction, or oil, or imperialism, or a crusade against Islam, or a culture, or a people, as many in the corridors of the gaudy market of the American academy tend to dismissively portray it. For me the war was about liberation from fascism and I do not use the word fascism haphazardly. I lived under it for 25 years. I was raised on a culture of blood, racism, militarism, fear, torture and public spectacle such as this one:

I was a middle school teacher in 1977 in one of hundreds of Kurdish villages destroyed by Saddam in 1986. We were at midday recess, five teachers and some 120 students, enjoying the April sun, when several military trucks pulled up. They were packed with people we knew, families of children in our school. And now the military had come for the students. One by one they were put up onto the trucks for a journey of no-return. Everyone but the soldiers was crying. The good-byes were faint but piercing: “please don’t forget us.”

Thanks to the intervention, spectacles like this are a thing of the past. Fascism---both Baathist and Islamic---has been dealt a mortal blow. Pluralism, freedom of expression, and the language of debate are taking a hold in much of the country. Women’s and minority rights, as well as freedom of movement and worship and commitment to social equity, have been enshrined into law. The days when the government could take away a citizen’s passport or property at will are gone forever.

Thanks also the intervention, cultural life has never been this vibrant. In cities like Arbil, Slemani, Baghdad, Babylon, Kirkuk, Mosul, Koya and Saqlawa, streets are buzzing with life. Internet cafes and restaurants and bars remain open well after midnight. Theater groups offer everything from political satire to “Romeo and Juliet.” Poetry reading is a nightly feature in most city parks and beer gardens.

Some people were earning between $10 and $20 a month before the war. Now the lowest salary is well over $200, some as high as $1000. Inflation is fairly low. Jobs are plentiful. The economy is really in a boom.

This is the kind of reality I have been witnessing here, in Iraq, and it is a far cry from what gets shown on television. Yes, there is a car bomb here, a car bomb there; an attack here, an attack there; a kidnapping here, kidnapping there.

But this is not a national resistance; It is fascism getting desperate in its final hours. Virtually all the car bombings have been the work of Islamic terrorists coming from Syria, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. These regimes aid them because these regimes, being undemocratic, feel threatened by democracy in Iraq. In the case of Syria, it is also because, being a Baathist dictatorship itself, in the fall of Saddam it lost a strategic ally. Other acts of sabotage are carried out, as was to be expected, by former Baathists, still smarting from the loss of power and privilege they had enjoyed for so long. The vast majority of the population is busy at work building a new Iraq.

Yes, mistakes have been made, as was to be expected with such a mammoth undertaking as replacing fascism with pluralism. But mistakes tend to distort the big picture, and the big picture I have been observing here in Iraq gives me reason to believe that the country is better off today than it ever was under Saddam.

[eagles]

If you live in Pennsylvania or would like to commend this author for his courageous remarks, you can send letters of no more than 120 words for publication in the 30 seconds column to sachetti@pressenterprise.net.

[ClaireSolt]

I am very glad to see that their income has increased. That $10/mo is hard to encompass.

[The Seeker of Knowlege]

It is so sad that more countries cannot be help. Under the Geneva convention, we cannot attack a country unless it is in self defense or another highly justifiable action. It is so sad that countries that are 10 times worse off than Iraq was are still not being helped.