Lost in Translation

I read a truly disturbing article in March 26th's New Yorker Magazine about the fates of translators in Iraq who had helped the United States: it wasn't pretty—not the article nor the fates. Basically, it appears that the Greenzone was being run by high school students (not literally) during the Bremer years, and didn't really improve much afterward. Translators, who were allowed to view privy information and documents, were made to wait up to three to four hours in the "Greenzone" line to get to work: they were denied the "speedy passes" to bypass the lines (But Jordanians were given them!). This allowed the translators to easily be spotted by insurgents, and then targeted by the same. Many translators lost their property when forced to flee from their homes; in some cases, they lost relatives or even their own lives. Very few Visas to the United States were given to "outed" translators; most of them fled to Jordan, Syria, England, Sweden, Canada, essentially anywhere other than the country that they laid their lives on the line for.

This is a national disgrace. But a familiar one. We did the same to the Hmong, who helped us in Vietnam. They are still feeling the heat from the Vietnamese government, and still are trying to immigrate to the U.S. Fortunately, the governor of Minnesota, who was helped by the Hmong when his plane was shot down over Vietnam, has done a great deal to try to bring as many Hmong as he can to his state. Our federal government apparently has had no such attack of conscience.

But back to the translators.

Our treatment of them brings up a couple of very obvious questions. 1) If you trust Iraqis to translate documents that might be sensitive, it seems that you would trust them not to bring bombs into the Greenzone, especially if they had worked for you for years. 2) Hearts and minds. If you alienate the very people who are willing to lay their lives on the line to help, you aren't going to stand much of a chance with those less enamored with your occupation. Furthermore, if translators were so inclined to help the insurgents after you turned them over to the jackals of war by not helping move them and their families to safety, they would be a great asset: translators know you, and know you better than you think.

As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon." It's the stupidity, stupid.

The Hammer, or, "If I Only Had a Brain"

My neighbor said to me yesterday, "Do you know what lesson you should teach a man with two black eyes? . . . None: he's already learned the lesson twice." Entirely relevant to the 4th anniversary of the war in Iraq.

As I am wont to do, I watched NBC's "Meet the Press" this morning, and was amused/distressed to see Tom Delay, aka "The Hammer," squaring off against Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), a retired Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy who is the highest ranking former military officer to serve in the House. Also on the program were Richard Perle (who looks terrible--one wonders if the stress is killing him), primary, and unapologetic, co-architect of the war, and rounding out the foursome, a former house member who is involved in an organization that opposes the war. Delay is still the ridiculous former-pesticide huckster (appropriately, since he is "toxic" beyond belief) and was promoting a new book that deems all those are opposed to the war as "traitors" and the purveyors of "treason." Hmmmm, democracy? Methinks Mr. Delay should clarify what his own country's democracy is—you know, the freedom of dissent—before foisting it off on countries who never asked for it in the first place. When Rep. Sestak pointed out that the vast number of Iraqi citizens wanted the U.S. out of Iraq, Delay responded with his usual brilliance, "I only care about American citizens." Good lord!

The report that caught my ear, and the one that was most distressing, as Delay is hopelessy and willfully ignorant and will never be more than a bilious clown, was Sestak's narrative that told of resources being lifted from Afghanistan and being, unnecessarily and stupidly in his mind, directed to Iraq. He was actually there—launching airstrikes and other operations from his carrier—unlike anyone else on the show. He told of how when his ships were ordered to go to the Persian Gulf, the only ships from the coalition that followed them there were the British and the Australians. The Japanese, Italians, et al did not go. That, according to him, spoke volumes. He is not the first former brass that has spoken against the war. The six retired generals that spoke out earlier this year were recently profiled in Vanity Fair, (a must read) and their stories are heartbreaking—the most compelling is Lt. General Newbold's, who resigned in protest of the the impending Iraq war because he did not see, along with other officers, Saddam Hussein as a threat. He saw the battle in Afghanistan as being of primary importance. He has been reviled by many, but history, I believe, will redeem him, and will prove him to be a real patriot, not a paper-tiger patriot like Delay.

But back to the "black eye" analogy. We are running out of eyes, and limbs for that matter. What will it take to refocus our efforts on Afghanistan? Not just militarily, but economically? What will it take for us to eat humble pie and seriously, and I mean seriously, negotiate with all the warring factions in Iraq and Iraq's neighbors? It won't take a hammer to the head; it will take a brain transplant—essentially a change in our government. I hope that all parties concerned can hang in there for two more years.

Oh, the inhumanity


It is said that you can judge a country's humanity by how it treats it veterans. I guess that places us somewhere between the bone-wielding primates in "2001 Space Odyssey" and the Visigoths. The military hospital, Walter Reed, and the Veterans Administration are a plague upon our house. Billeting the war-wounded in conditions that include rats, molding walls, and water leaks is horrifying enough--to find out that the present adminstration tried to cut the budget of the already overwhelmed Veterans Administration last fiscal period is just inconceivable. There are over 24,000 wounded from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and because "we" didn't plan for this amount of wounded passing through the system, it somehow becomes a "tragic mistake" rather than a idiotic miscalculation on our government's part. You can dress this ugly up in any sematics that you want, but it is sheer callousness. Both the adminstration and the legistrative branch deserve a prolonged vacation in Fallujah. You can't convince me that veterans and/or their families didn't complain to their respective congressmen, or didn't write letters to the administration.

And I haven't even discussed the Iraqi hospitals, and our government's blatant refusal to give anything but nominal help. Non-profit organizations have extended more of a hand.

The shame, the shame. If my grandfather, who fought in the trenches of WWI, was alive, he would be horrified. He received better care, in 1920, for exposure to mustard gas, than our veterans receive presently.

Good luck with that recruiting for a "Volunteer Army" after this fiasco. As if the war, itself, wasn't bad enough.