Letters to the Editor
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This is heartbreaking
poor iraqi people... what did they do to us?
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I Feel Very Sorry For These Two
But I'm going to go out on a limb with my fellow progressive-leftists and suggest that things cannot possibly be as bad as people like Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk have been suggestsing.
The folks in this documentary can go out in the middle of the day and eat in a nice restaurant, go to school, visit with friends and relatives, and generally do what they want and live as they want - within limits. They hear gunfire, worry about roadblocks and must be cautious, yes, but otherwise life appears strangely normal.
Or perhaps this documentary series is focusing on a very wealthy group of Iraqis? I don't know. But it's all becoming quite confusing. Either Iraq is a chaotic maelstrom of violence, or it's what were seeing in these documentaries. It can't be both.
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ROB, ROB, ROB...
Are black and white the only colors in your palette?
It's this OR that...
lil american minds...
so sad...
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I Smell A Troll Who Can't Read...
...but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and engage anyway.
My entire point was that Fisk, Cockburn, et. al. have been painting a relentlessly grisly and horrid picture of conditions EVERYWHERE in Iraq. Based on their reports, one is naturally led to believe that it would be impossible for someone to, say, go out with friends to a nice restaurant and enjoy a meal.
But as we can see in this documentary series, that's not the case. Yes, there are dangers. Yes, people are dying. But day-to-day life does seem much more "normal" than those gentlemen have led us to believe.
That was my point, and that's what I wrote.
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Rob Anderson isn't using his imagination
Rob, I don't know what you read by Fisk or whoever. But your statements that "if people can eat in a restaurant, Baghdad can't be so bad" are a failure of your own imagination.
Neither you nor I really knows what it's like to live in Baghdad. But what we do know is that it is a huge, huge city. I don't know exactly how big it is, but I'm guessing it has at least 7 million people in it (there are 26 million people in Iraq, and Baghdad and its suburbs are probably a large portion of that). It's probably as big as Houston, Texas....
I don't know where you live, but where I live, even if the entire city were riddled with gun-toting insurgents and a foreign occupying army, there would still be many areas where life could proceed in a semi-functional fashion at least 3/4 of the time.
I just don't think "Look! People can eat in a restaurant!" is much of an argument that things are going swimmingly in Iraq.
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Oh For the Love of Merciful God!!
I am NOT saying that things are "normal" in Iraq. I am also not saying that there are no places in Baghdad that are a bit closer to normal than the rest of the city. In fact I'm not advocating any particular view about the situation there at all.
What I have been writing - over and over again now - is that the pictures drawn by Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn (among others) is that things are so bad in ALL of Iraq (which would include, presumably, ALL of Baghdad) that people spend all their time indoors, can barely eat at all let alone in restaurants, and that most of the schools and universities are closed. But please, don't take my fucking word for it. Go here...
http://www.counterpunch.org
...and READ IT FOR YOURSELF.
GEEZ....
I'm beginning to understand how some of the columnists here must feel.
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Um, Rob...
...apparently you don't have a point at all, then.
Maybe you could quote some Fisk excerpts to show how this contradicts what he's described. I am not familiar with his writings, but the Iraq that I've been viewing in these videos does not appear like a pleasant and carefree place to live.
In one video the speaker explains that his neighborhood is a place that was designed for higher-ranking military officials. So obviously it is somewhat upper-class and probably has better-than-average security (and as he points out, almost all the homeowners have guns).
Keep watching the videos...