I'm currently sitting in the hold of a C-130
troop transport plane, staring at the bottom of a combat boot
belonging to the soldier across from me and suddenly I realize
there's a word on his sole. "Converse".
"Why are you flying to Kuwait," I
idly asked the soldier. "Going home on leave?"
"My mother died suddenly this morning."
I felt so bad for him, I even vainly tried to struggle past
all of my seatbelts and Kevlar and give him a hug. When my
mother died suddenly several years ago and my neighbor gave
me a hug, it had really helped. The soldier was pretty much
devastated by his loss. I felt so bad.
And the soldier next to him was absent-mindedly
pointing his M-16 at my knee-cap. "Would it be okay if
you pointed it at my duffel bag instead?" He obliged.
Will we get to the airbase in Kuwait before
the dining facility closes? It's gonna be a tight squeeze
but I hope we make it. I haven't hardly eaten anything in
two days, having been suffering from "Montezuma's Revenge."
Anyway, I was day-dreaming about this and that
during the flight when it suddenly hit me - the military over
here in Iraq is equipped with almost every single weapon imaginable;
it has spent almost a trillion dollars on weapons that you
see all over this country - but has spent only piddling amounts
on the one weapon that counts the most - words.
Two nights ago I was happily sleeping away
on my cot at Forward Operating Base Haditha when the peace
was totally shattered by the Thunder-Clap from Hell! OMG!
This is it! We're being invaded! I thought about crawling
under my cot for protection but really - have you SEEN my
cot?
"What the freak is going on!" I screamed.
"We're all gonna die!"
"Jane, those are just outgoing illumination
rounds," said our Captain. "If they had been incoming
rounds, trust me, you would have known. The entire ground
would have been shaking." Oh.
I'd gone up to Haditha to see the Marines'
Lioness train program, where female Marines are taught how
to interact with Iraqi women. The program has been a huge
success. Iraqi women have really appreciated being able to
deal with women like themselves. For instance, some of the
Lionesses were asked to go provide moral support to a woman
who had just been assaulted by an Iraqi man. And the Marines'
female Iraqi interpreters are also important in helping make
Iraqi women feel at ease.
Then we all trooped off to see a new medical
clinic being build in joint collaboration with Iraqis, Marines
and the US Army Corps of Engineers. Several Iraqi building
inspectors were there. And yes when you build in Iraq, just
like when you build in the States, you still need a permit.
Which reminds me that when I get back home to Berkeley, I'm
going to have to deal with getting a permit for my window
because while I'm over here writing about Big Things, the
Board of Directors at my housing project is busy tormenting
me about Little Things. Punks.
Then we all got back in the Seven-Ton and convoyed
over to the local hospital. It was only two blocks away. "We
coulda walked here," I complained, "All this military
stuff is making us look like we're the evil occupying force
instead of just your friendly local neighborhood Marines trying
to help the local police dudes keep the peace."
The Marine next to me laughed. "Jane,
we usually just run foot patrols here in Haditha, sort of
an informal neighborhood watch."
"Then what is all this heavy-duty gonzo
in-your-face military equipment about?" Those Seven-Tons
are HUGE. And totally intimidating.
"We're using all this gear because of
YOU, Jane." Really? "How would it look if a 65-year-old
visiting grandmother passed out from heat-stroke or something
on our watch?" Ha. I bet that wasn't it. I bet my daughter,
Ashley, phoned up the Marines and told them that she was all
worried that I would get lost again and would they PLEASE
keep me on a short leash. Humph.
At the hospital, we looked at the emergency
room and thought about ER and Gray's Anatomy but there wasn't
much action there. It was a pretty calm day. "And here's
our oncology room, cardiac room, men's ward, women's ward
and pediatric wing." They had 80 beds total but only
about 15 of them were filled. I had wanted to go see their
morgue but it became pretty obvious to me while doing rounds
that this hospital's morgue was gonna be empty.
But the hospital ward I liked best was the
pediatric ward. There were cute little babies! Totally cute.
And the mothers and sisters and grandmothers and the entire
extended female family of each baby's mother was there, drinking
chai tea and having a picnic on the floor. The older woman
had blue tattoo marks on their faces. Table clothes were spread
on the floor and everyone had made themselves at home. Cute
little babies. I loved the maternity ward.
Back at Al Asad airbase, I started chatting
with a young Marine. "Where are you from?" I asked.
"Arizona. I'm a full-blood Navajo. And
my wife's grandfather was a Codetalker during World War II."
A Codetalker? Holy cow! And then it dawned on me. That's what
we need here in Iraq! Not necessarily a Navajo native speaker
but someone who could speak Arabic - lots of someones who
could speak Arabic, to be exact. Heck, we have all these expensive
weapons - 100,000 different ways to blow people up. But can
the average American soldier even speak to the average Iraqi
on the street? Nope.
I propose a new program wherein every single
soldier in Iraq is required to memorize 20 words of Arabic
a week. "But, Jane, the Arabic grammar is really complicated."
Yeah but so is a Howitzer. If they can learn to operate one
of those bad boys, surely they can master basic Arabic. Knowing
a few sentences in Arabic would be SO much more effective
and maybe cost one-thousandth of the price.
While we were at the hospital, one Iraqi man
came up to our officer in charge and said, "My mother
is here because she had a diabetic attack in the middle of
the night and we couldn't get her to the hospital because
of the curfew and now she is very very sick because she couldn't
get here for medicine in time."
"If that ever happens again," said
the major, "approach one of our Marines and ask for an
escort. Tell them it is an emergency."
"But if I do that, they will shoot me."
"No they won't. I promise you. They won't."
Guess what? I finally made it off the C-130
and actually got to the dining facility with only seconds
to spare. But unfortunately, all that food just fueled my
already-intense case of "Montezuma's Revenge" and
I was then forced to go do "research" on what the
airbase's sick-bay was like. Thank goodness for Imodium! But
as I sat in the waiting room, I noticed that the medical staff
had the movie "Frankenstein" playing. "Don't
worry about that," joked the medical tech as we watched
Dr. Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant steal a brain from
a surgical lab. "We only use this as our training film."
Meanwhile, back to my own brainstorm - I think
that having all the soldiers here learn Arabic would really
help out. When I was in South Africa last month, I was told
that the best way to remain safe in the villages and towns
was to make friends with as many neighbors as possible. And
if we learned the language, that would be a big safety help
too. "They appreciate the effort you go through to learn
Setswana, even if you only can say a few words." And
that strategy of becoming safer by getting to know the locals
can also prove true in Iraq. So. Let's start by having multilingual
block parties in Baghdad, which, according to the Washington
Post, is the most troubled region here and really could use
a friendly neighborhood meet-and-greet.
To quote the Post, "'I honestly
thought we were making a difference in Tikrit. Then we come
back to [this] hellhole,' Marino said. 'That was a playground
compared to Baghdad.' The American people don't fully realize
what's going on, said Staff Sgt. Richard McClary, 27, a section
leader from Buffalo. 'They just know back there what the higher-ups
here tell them. But the higher-ups don't go anywhere, and
actually they only go to the safe places, places with a little
bit of gunfire,' he said. 'They don't ever [expletive] see
what we see on the ground.'"
And with regard to our troops' burn-out in
Baghdad, I also talked with a young West Point graduate stationed
there - one of the best and brightest of our younger generation
of American military. "When my tour of duty here in Baghdad
is up, I'm not going to re-enlist," he told me. "The
West Point code states that one of its goals is 'To educate,
train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets . . . toward a lifetime
of selfless service to the Nation.' To some this clearly means
a lifetime of service as an officer in the Army. I disagree.
I strongly believe that there are myriad other ways in which
to selflessly serve the Nation and the world." Has serving
as a career Army officer stopped being a satisfying goal?
If so, that's scary.
For all the money they have spent on weaponry
bling in the past seven years, Bush and Cheney might have
done better to have just learned Arabic themselves, or, better
still, stayed home and tried to make friends in America -
before villagers across the US come after them with pitchforks
and torches because of the damage those two Frankensteins
have done to America's military, America's Constitution and
America's budget.
In Iraq, things are looking a lot better right
now, thanks to the Marines and their house-by-house efforts
to win hearts and minds - and also because, according to my
friend Stewart, "Anbar is doing well because of the Iraqis,"
who are really trying hard to make omelets out of badly broken
eggs and also are sick of all the killing. If the "insurgents"
think that the recent kidnapping of ten major sheiks is going
to endear them to the Iraqi people, they are definitely drinking
the Kool-Aid. Iraqis really seem to like their sheiks and
do not take kindly to anyone who messes with them.
But for whatever the reason, things truly are
looking up in Iraq. I mean seriously. But, geez Louise, I
surely do hate to see Bush and Cheney take the credit for
any successes over here - not after our military has worked
like dogs to pull all of their chestnuts out of the fire.
Please let us never forget that if it hadn't been for Bush
and Cheney, we would never have been in this mess in the first
place!
But perhaps I'm being too hard on Cheney and
Bush. Perhaps they have finally seen the light and are finally
starting to do a good job now? Apparently not. According to
even Time Magazine, these two duds are STILL missing
the boat. "George W. Bush has abdicated his control over
the military mission and seems boggled by the political side
of the Iraqi equation," sez Time. "He has
lashed himself to the inept, unrepresentative government of
Nouri al-Maliki but seems powerless to influence that government's
actions. Bush's Iraq poster boys, General David Petraeus and
Ambassador Ryan Crocker, are doing a wonderful job but lack
the rank to make strategic regional policy. The Administration
was so inept in dealing with Turkey that its designated mediator,
retired General Joseph Ralston, recently quit in frustration.
Bush's refusal to engage the Iranians has left a clear field
for Russian mini-czar Vladimir Putin to move in and build
an alliance. The Secretary of State is chasing an Israeli-Palestinian
chimera at a moment when a burst of high-level U.S. diplomatic
pressure might actually make a difference in Iraq. There are...hugs
to be had, and [Bush is] not grabbing them."
I'm really really glad that things are finally
looking up in Iraq right now - but I can't help but worry
about what all this has cost us. According to the New
York Times, "The operation itself - the helicopters,
the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for
enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors,
the rebuilding of Iraq - is costing more than $300 million
a day, estimates Scott Wallsten, an economist in Washington.
That translates into a couple of billion dollars a week and,
over the full course of the war, an eventual total of $700
billion in direct spending." $700 BILLION DOLLARS? That's
approximately $35,000 per Iraqi! If we had spent that $700,000,000,000
on, say, California, I bet that we coulda built a new McMansion
for every single victim of the San Diego fire and still have
had enough money left over to build one house apiece for every
Katrina victim too.
Ah, the tax-and-spend Republican neo-cons.
Thanks to them, I strongly fear that the wealth of America's
future generations is going down the toilet like a bad case
of dysentery. According to the House of Representatives Committee
on the Budget, "The national debt on October 27 [is]
$9,061,206,589,592.53. Your share of the national debt [is]
$29,883.69."
And according to Congressman Pete Stark, "I’m
just amazed that they can’t figure out - the Republicans are
worried that they can’t pay for insuring an additional 10
million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200
billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going
to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you’re
telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war?
You don’t have money to fund the war on children. But you’re
going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get
enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to
get their heads blown off for the President’s [sic] amusement."
Ann Coulter may accuse Rep. Stark of over-reacting, but Rep.
Stark is right. Where ARE we going to get the money to afford
more of Bush and Cheney's endless fiscal irresponsibility,
with or without wars?
I'm not the only one with intestinal problems
here. Any close examination of America's budget over the last
seven years will clearly show that Bush and Cheney's irresponsible
fiscal policies have given the US Treasury dysentery too.
And if we don't send some Imodium off to the White House immediately
and slow those bad boys down, then there is a very real danger
that America is going to collapse from fiscal dehydration
soon.
Perhaps historians will call it "Bush
and Cheney's Revenge".
PS: While waiting for my flight from Kuwait
to Frankfurt, I sat next to a contractor - the whole airport
gate area was filled with contractors so this was not hard
to do - who gave me his personal version of the history of
the so-called war in Iraq. "In 2003 and 2004, it was
pretty peaceful and then all hell broke loose for the next
few years. And now things are starting to stabilize again."
And now that I'm in Frankfurt - that plane
ride was SO different from flying in a C-130 - some new questions
are popping into my brain. For instance, "Why is the
population of rural Iraq still living in Third World conditions
when they are sitting on top of so much petroleum wealth?"
Perhaps I am being naive? And also, "What do I think
should happen next in Iraq?" Should our troops get out?
Rep. Dennis Kucinich recommends replacing American
troops with an international peace-keeping force. He recognizes
that the Iraqis still need help in keeping the peace and I
agree with him there. But perhaps putting another force in
place might not be the best way to go - because after all
these years, Iraqis are finally starting to trust the Marines
in Al Anbar and sometimes even the Army in Baghdad. And if
a new "peace-keeping" force were to come in now,
that fragile trust-building mechanism would have to start
all over again. However, if the American military is now serving
as a de facto peace-keeping force - and it is - then perhaps
the UN and/or various oil-using nations could help foot the
bill, including the European Union, Russia, China, the Saudis
and even Iran. Or perhaps the American oil companies who are
making so much profit off this so-called war might be persuaded
to finally "give something back".
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist Jane Stillwater is a freelance writer, civil rights
and peace activist from Berkeley, California. She is also
the author of Bring
Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips for Touring Today's Middle
East.
Click
here to contact Ms. Stillwater.