Letters to the Editor
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The attorney/blogger, the professor and the journalist nail it
When Glenn first put up the Sinan Antoon and Ali Fadhil interview on Charlie Rose's show, it immediately reminded me of the most lucid analysis that I had read up to that point regarding our occupation of Iraq: the 8/19/2007 NYT op-ed written by seven soldiers (two of whom subsequently were killed and one severely wounded in action) from the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in Iraq, The War as We Saw It @
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/opinion/19jayamaha.html?ex=1345176000&en=5a8349a0e944e61b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
Antoon/Fadhil and the soldiers make the common-sense - and imo moral - appeal to listen to those who have to live daily with the consequences of our occupation, the citizens of Iraq, and to base our assessment of progress or lack thereof on their welfare rather than basing it on X amount of violent deaths and injuries per week or other such benchmarks that we arrogantly pre-determined were best for them. The lack of any significant progress in most of benchmarks is the surest indicator that Iraq leadership had little or no stake in their conception. The similarities of the soldiers’ appeals to those of Antoon and Fadhil are striking:
… Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
… At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
… In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are - an army of occupation - and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit ...
Bush’s manipulative, tone-deaf appeals to not let U.S. soldiers die in vain while ignoring the sacrifices of Iraqi citizens only reinforce Iraqis’ belief that it is more about us than them.