I Heart Iraq

This week I showed the comedy "I Heart Huckabees" in class. Granted, this is an obscure film (although it has very well-known actors such as Mark Wahlberg, Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), and if you don't know anything about Buddhism, Existentialism, Nihilism, String Theory, Environmentalists and Suburban Sprawl, you are apt to find the film ridiculous, devoid of meaning, and definitely not funny. My students had to research all of the above before watching the film: they got it.

One of the film's main themes is the idea of interconnectivity. We are all connected to everything else, and the past, the present and the future manifest themselves simultaneously. In a nutshell, as Dustin Hoffman's character notes, "You are now what you were and will ever be." We are not free of the past as it dwells in every action we take in the present and in the future. We are also not isolated; our actions and very being are connected to world and to everything in it. As String Theory postulates, the only thing that differentiates you from the chair that you are presently sitting in is that the sub-sub atomic strings that make up you are oscillating at a different "frequency" than the chair's. But really, you and the chair are fundamentally interconnected by these strings. Like Zeno's Paradox, there is no dividing line, no separation between things at a sub-atomic level: separation is an illusion perpetrated by the macroscopic world we live our lives in.

While the above may seem strange or hippy-dippy, it can be applied to Iraq. We are now what we were and will ever be in Iraq. Our actions in the past resonate in the present, and manifest themselves in the future. We, the American public, like to think we are somehow isolated, or not a part of the war, but this is an illusion. Every action or non-action taken in Iraq affects all of us in some way. For some it is a direct connection, such as a family member that serves in the armed forces; for others, it is more indirect, such as the rise in fuel prices because of instability in the region, and the consequent rise in food prices and energy. But every child that dies in Iraq has some impact on a child in the U.S., whether the death manifests itself in a revenge killing of a soldier/parent, or helps turn the good will of the Iraqi people into a smoldering hatred of the United States, which in turn creates more instability in Iraq, which in turn affects the region, and affects us. Perhaps mom can't pay the gas bill and buy enough food, and the child lives without heat and adequate nutrition, which affects his or her performance in school, and may indeed determine whether he or she succeeds in life. This is just one example of a myriad of examples of interconnectivity.

So how do we leave Iraq without shaping a more problematic future for the country, the region, the world? We do not live in one bubble and the war does not exist in another. We went in carelessly, and must exit carefully (to crib a line from Obama). I would love for readers to post their ideas of an exit strategy, or whether there should even be one. Post away!

Dog-tag Days Redux. . .

Steven Coll's book Ghost Wars is a must read for anyone who is interested in how the Taliban movement took shape in Afghanistan and the tribal territories of Pakistan. Coll, a former CIA officer, was in on the ground floor of supplying arms to militants to fight the Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan. But he notes that the CIA's relationship with the militants was never a love fest, and that it was born out of cold war policies, rather than any clear-headed evaluation of the fomenting civil strife in the region. He also traces the beginnings of bin Laden's influence, or in some cases, the lack thereof. Bin Laden had an "aid society" of sorts set up in Pakistan, very close to the CIA's offices (about which Coll gives a harrowing account of a siege orchestrated by protesters).

Coll traces the CIA's interest in bin Laden, which really became acute when bin Laden and company moved, in the early 1990s, to the Sudan. There was a group in the CIA that was assigned to monitor bin Laden, and they became known within the agency as the "Manson Family" due to the fact the group was composed of a male analyst and several female analysts. The moniker was also a reflection of their obsession with bin Laden and their impressions that he was, and would become even more so, a major player and organizer of attacks directed toward the West. The group's worries were dismissed, and in time, the analysts were disbanded and assigned to other tasks. Coll paints a really distressing portrait of the CIA's leadership being completely out of touch with the "people on the ground," the regional experts, linguists and analysts.

I heartily recommend this book. Although it is quite thick, it is an absolute page turner!

"Run away, run away''!

For those of you who have seen the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the above line should evoke the memory of "brave Sir Robin," who even had a minstrel following him and singing his praises; a knight who turned out to be not so brave, and would cry "run away, run away" at any daunting challenge (A great comedy, can't recommend it highly enough, and even funnier if you have read Thomas Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur.)

But I couldn't help but think of this when reading about the sudden defections of Republican senators from the president's vision of the war in Iraq. Some of them were the loudest saber-rattlers when the war was initiated, and now, in the face of all the senseless carnage, they want to throw in the towel.

Blame the Iraqi government, blame poor leadership, blame the inability to adequately train Iraqi soldiers and recruit American ones, but whatever or whomever you, dear Senators, blame, don't blame yourselves. Never mind that Hans Blix, inspector for the U.N. said there were no serious "weapons of mass destruction," never mind that middle-east experts said that this would be folly, never mind that the Syrians said "you will be opening the gates of hell," never mind that you didn't have enough soldiers or the equipment to protect them, and never mind that none of you, not a single one, seemed to have any appreciation of the history of Iraq, the various occupations, and the results—never mind and don't blame yourselves.

And those of us who opposed this foray into another quagmire, a mere thirty years after we did exactly the same thing in Vietnam? We were unpatriotic. We were even called traitors. We were, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, "very naive." So we packed up our humble, naive opinions, and let the "seasoned and knowledgeable" Secretary Rumsfeld run and turn this war into what can be best described as "Apocalypse Now II: Mesopotamia."

Now you want to run away? And what of the Iraqi citizens? Whose lives this war has reduced to praying for electricity in 120 degree heat, praying for water, and praying that the banging at the door is a relative, and not a kidnapper or militiaman, or the police or Iraqi forces. "Democracy is messy," but so is an insurgent war. We lose soldiers, sometimes seven to ten a day, but the Iraqis lose around sixty civilians a day, on "a 'good' day," as the journalist David Brookes chillingly noted.

I have never supported this war; anyone with even a whit of knowledge about the region knew this would be a benighted adventure. But leaving the Iraqi citizens in such dire straits is shameful; it's beyond despicable. And it will come back to haunt us. Blood on our hands.

Just like the minstrel following "brave Sir Robin" changed his tune to something not-so-flattering when Sir Robin retreated in the face of hardship, so will the world change its tune about us.