Thursday, October 14, 2004

Letters to Americans

from openDemocracy.net
How wide is the gap between we Iraqis and America? For me, one of the benefits of this war is that it has brought American people here. We used to imagine the American through the movies: a superhuman, devoid of faults. But the war revealed the American to be simply an ordinary person, like all of us. He could be kind-hearted, peaceful and polite, or he could be vicious, aggressive and brutish. He could be intelligent and witty, or he could be unintelligent or average.

Yet in my own personal experience here, I can truthfully say I have never encountered or heard of noble attitudes from American soldiers towards Iraqi people. I am sorry: I have wished to meet an understanding, tender soldier. I would have written something nice about him. But I never have.

4 comments:

Sheryl said...

I saw this linke last night: http://www.omarmasry.net/

I can't say anything about this source anymore than the one you mentioned, but he does make references to things in Iraq that makes me think he's actually there. But he says he is a soldier and he seems to bring up issues like infrastructure and regional issues.

I think it is dangerous to generalize about people. I'm sure there are American soldiers in Iraq who see the best side of Iraq. This guys says he has arab parents, so maybe that helps.Soldiers may be in the minority, but I think once we get Kerry in office we can reward the idealists and make the best of a bad situation.

I don't know; that's just my take on it.

gecko said...

Oh, I just don't know what to say. I have to point out that the page Sheryl posted was last posted to in January and belongs to a US Army interpreter.
As for the page that J. Ryan led me to, I'm afraid that it is hard for me to keep reading past the point where someone (in this case the Iraqi woman) has prejudged the man she is entreating to.

Sheryl said...

Gecko, I didn't post that link as the ideal source of info on Iraq. I just posted it as a reminder that even American servicemen are individuals. We wouldn't know about Abu Ghraib, for example, if different soldiers hadn't had different values.

Sheryl said...

I think Ryan must be off negotiating murals. Either that or he didn't appreciate me posting 50,000 links in his blog after questioning his own. Hey, I'm no diplomat.

To prove the point, i'm gonna post yet another link here. Hey, readers of Ryan's blog, read my essay on Kerry and my mom's on Bush:

http://szettner.blogspot.com/2004/10/one-page-case-for-kerry-by-s-zettner.html --Case For Kerry

http://szettner.blogspot.com/2004/10/one-page-case-against-bush-by-p.html -- Case Against Bush