IRAQ THROUGH IRAQIS' EYES
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe

Thursday, December 16, 2004

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...gh_iraqis_eyes/

(This is a slightly expanded version of the column that appeared in print.)

A year after Saddam Hussein was captured, how goes the liberation of Iraq?

If a phrase like "the liberation of Iraq" strikes you as ironic, chances are most of what you know about the situation there comes from the mainstream press. After all, a tidal wave of journalism has been portraying Iraq as a chaotic mess more or less from the moment US troops entered the country. Story after story dwells on the inadequacy of the postwar planning and the drumbeat of bad news is inescapable: looting, insurgency, terrorists, kidnappings. And, always, the grimly mounting toll of Iraqi and US casualties. This is liberation?

Yes, it is. But liberations are often dangerous and turbulent, less clear-cut while they are happening than they later become in retrospect. There was chaos during the US occupation of Germany after World War II, and journalists were certain then too that military victory was being squandered through postwar blunders. In 1946, leading publications concentrated bad news in articles with headlines like "How We Botched the German Occupation" (Saturday Evening Post), "US seen 'fumbling' its job in Germany" (New York Times), and "Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe" (Life).

But how would Iraq appear if it came to us not through the reporting of Western journalists, but through the candid testimony of the Iraqis themselves? American reporters accustomed to freedom and the rule of law experience Iraq today as a place of danger and violence. Iraqis who lived under Saddam were accustomed to tyranny, cruelty, and secret police. What do *they* make of their country today?

Last spring, three enterprising Americans -- filmmakers Eric Manes and Martin Kunert, both former producers for MTV, and Gulf War veteran Archie Drury, a former Marine -- decided to find out. They distributed 150 digital video recorders to ordinary Iraqis and asked them to film anyone or anything they thought important -- and then pass the cameras on to someone else.

From April to September, the cameras circulated from hand to hand through every region of the country. What eventually came back to the three Americans was 450 hours of raw video recorded by more than 2,000 Iraqis from all walks of life -- and not one frame of it influenced by an outside director or crew. Edited down to a taut 80 minutes, the result -- "Voices of Iraq" -- is a gripping documentary that for the first time shows Iraq as even the most skillful American journalist will never be able to show it: through the eyes and ears of Iraq's people.

"Voices of Iraq" is by turns heartbreaking, exhilarating, and inspiring. The war and its destruction is never far from the surface. One of the opening scenes is of a car bombing in Sadr City, and when a little girl is asked by her off-camera interviewer, "What do you want to tell the world about Iraq?" she answers poignantly: "These explosions are hurting everyone." A mother weeps for her son, killed in the crossfire during a fight between US soldiers and looters. There is even footage -- supplied, Drury told NPR, by a sheik from Fallujah -- of insurgents preparing a bomb.

But bad as the war is, the horror it ended -- Saddam Hussein's 24-year reign -- was worse.

In the film, a young Kurdish mother tells her daughter, who is wielding the camcorder, how she would burn herself with cigarettes to prepare for the torture she knew was coming. A policeman recalls what it was like to arrest a member of the Ba'ath Party. "You'd be scared," he says. "You'd shake with fear." One man explains that Saddam's son Uday "used to come often to Ravad Street -- every Thursday for the market -- to choose a girl to rape." A few brief clips are shown from a captured Fedayeen Saddam videotape: A blindfolded man thrown to his death from a rooftop, a man's hand getting severed, someone's tongue being cut out.

It isn't hard to understand the emotions of the man who answers, when asked how he reacted to the news of Saddam's capture, "I danced like this! I kept dancing. Then I cried."

Yet for all they have been through, Iraqis come across as incredibly optimistic, hopeful, and enthusiastic. Above all, perhaps, *normal.* In "Voices of Iraq" they film themselves flying on rides in an amusement park, dancing the night away at a graduation party, taking their kids to a playground, shopping for cell phones. A police officer mugs for the camera. Shoppers throng the streets of Suleimaniyah. A scrawny kid pumps iron with a makeshift barbell -- and makes a request of Arnold Schwarzenegger. ("I like your movies. You're a good actor. Can you please send me some real weights?")

Iraqis haven't had much experience with democracy, but we see the delight they take in the new opportunities Saddam's defeat is making possible. Two women celebrate the freedom to get a passport. An artist talks proudly about work for which he went to prison. A young woman says her dream is to be a lawyer. And one rough-looking fellow says simply, "I wish for a government elected by the Iraqi people."

Yes, it's a liberation. And the men and women we liberated, it turns out, are people just like us. The headlines dwell on the bad news, and the bad news is certainly real. But things are looking up in Iraq, as the Iraqis themselves will be happy to tell you. All someone had to do was ask.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

Good article.

I was going to point this out in another thread you commented on, but I think it's very important to focus on what's wrong in Iraq, because that chaos has the potential to undo the good that has been done there.

I hope (and I hope everyone else does, as well) that a peaceful situation emerges in Iraq. I still have my skepticism that we've discussed before, but I definitely hope I'm wrong.

Focusing and correcting problems in Iraq are definitely a must.

Focusing solely on, and dwelling on the problems creates a negative atmosphere. An atmosphere of "it's a quagmire, we need to get out."

If we take our eye of the ball, and only dwell on the negatives, than all the good that has been done will be undone.

It might help if the current administration didn't act so oblivious (whether intentional or not) to what's going on over there. Would it really be that bad to admit that things aren't going as planned and that it's going to be more difficult than we initially thought?

But yeah, I don't think anybody would deny that Saddam was a dick.

I live in the Boston area and I've been reading Jeff Jacoby for years. The guy has written a lot of garbage. I'm sure everything he writes about here in this article is true, but its a very minimalist perspective. Sure, good things are happening in Iraq... it would defy belief if somewhere were to say there is nothing but weeping and gnashing of teeth... and I don't think that's how the media portrays it, even if they fail to mention how much dancing the Kurds are doing.

What exactly was the media's criticism of the occupation of Germany after WWII... maybe some stupid shit did happen, but yeah, of course it all worked out. So what?! Is Iraq Germany? Was post-war Germany ever like post-war Iraq is? No.... there is some serious shit going on in Iraq... constant bombings, prisoner abuse scandals, post dramatic stress, depleted uranium, neo-napalm... post-war Germany was a picnic compared to this.

So Jeff Jacoby has whitewashed another right-wing fuckup yet again. That's been his gig, after all.

Exactly.

You're joking right. Go open up a history book. NOW!

I don't know why, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and do some research. Of course, when I said picnic, I didn't really mean picnic. I just don't think it could have been as bad as Iraq is now. I'll research it, but I remember how you said in another thread that Germany never had any history of democracy before WWII, which I thought was funny, since Hitler was elected during the Weimar Republic.

OK... so what exactly was so bad about post-war Germany?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... since_1945

It's the ol' "No news is good news" thing.

The things that are going well are nice to hear about on the side, but it doesn't really demand much concentration because of its very nature. Why would need to do anything if it's working fine?

When something's fucked up, though, you gotta pay attention to it and fix it.

Which side are you talking about, because that really matters.

Well, I have had some shitty success posting pictures. But let's try it anyway.

SUCCESS!

Anyhow, Kenny asked about what was wrong with post WWII...Berling Airlift anyone?

Comeon, how can you HONEST leftists let this slip through the cracks.

Go back to your history books. Post WWII Germany was FAR grimmer, and far more difficult than post GWII.

How can you even compare the task at hand to rebuilding Fallujah, to ENTIRELY rebuilding and winning back the confidence in the people of Germany in cities like Dresden, Hamburg, and Berlin. These cities were almost entirely wiped off of the map. In Fallujah, only 20% of the cities were destroyed. In Post WWII Europe, starvation was rampant across ALL of Europe. It was prevelant in all of Russian, Manchuria, China, Holland (especially Holland, more people died in post WWII Holland than during the war, and 90% of the Dutch Jews were wiped out in the Holocaust), Czeochloslovakia, Northern Africa, Italy...

It's utterly absurd to think that Iraq today is worse off than any region in post WWII Europe. Post WWII Europe was completely devastated. Even the WORST parts of post GWII Iraq don't hold a candle to post WWII Europe.

This brought tears to my eyes

WOW! SUCCESS! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED... RIGHT?

You're kidding yourself. Did 1200+ U.S. soldiers die in the German occupation? Did the German occupation turn world opinion against America?

No, I didn't forget about the Berlin airlift. I didn't think it was worth mentioning. Do you HONESTLY think that makes the German occupation compare to the Iraq occupation, which has really been a WAR since May 2003?

The starvation in post-war Europe can be blamed on those who started the war, which was the Axis powers. This time, it was the American government who initiated the war.

Also, a lot of Iraqis know they are being colonized (though some would prefer this to Islamization or re-Baathification). Iraq began as a British colony, and they know the Anglos are back for their oil. Germans had to be convinced their Nazi ways were wrong, but they never felt like they were being taken over. In Germany, its only the neo-Nazis that are still pissed off about the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg. Whereas all Muslims are angry at the bombings of mosques in Fallujah and other Iraqi cities and if Iraq remains under the control of a Western puppet... some percentage of the world's 1.2 billion muslims will continue to terrorize the West until they leave not just Iraq, but the whole Middle East.

Its completely ludicrous to believe that Iraq will be anything like Germany 50 years after the war.

It's utterly absurd to compare the war in Iraq to WWII, in any fashion whatsoever.

I agree. It's easily compared to Vietnam though.

in the post-war German the population didnt have ak-47

There was no postwar occupation of Vietnam...

And I know it's utterly absurd to compare post WWII Germany to post GWII Iraq, as Iraq is in far, far, far better shape, and the progress is going far faster.

“Within two months, all major Iraqi cities and most towns had municipal councils – something that took eight months in postwar Germany.

Within four months the Iraqi Governing Council had appointed a cabinet – something that took 14 months in Germany.

An independent Iraqi Central Bank was established and a new currency announced in just two months – accomplishments that took three years in postwar Germany.

Within two months a new Iraqi police force was conducting joint patrols with coalition forces.

Within three months, we had begun training a new Iraqi army – and today some 56,000 are participating in the defense of their country. By contrast, it took 14 months to establish a police force in Germany and 10 years to begin training a new German army.”

(SOURCE: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,
writing in the September 25 edition of The Washington Post)

You're all horrified about 100,000 displaced people in Fallujah, well picture twenty freakin' million homeless people in just Germany alone. Again, let's keep perspective here.



Way to make yourself look ridiculous. I was ecstatic that I was actually able to post a picture.



First, 1200+ US soldiers haven't died in the occupation phase of Iraq. And even if they did, I'd venture a guess that the toll in post WWII Germany was greater than that.



First of all, Iraq has not been at WAR since May of 2003. Sporadic, isolated guerrilla attacks is not war. A one week battle in Fallujah is not war. Second of all, how can you possibly say that the Berlin airlift wasn't worth mentioning? Again, I think you need to open up your history book. I think you need to realize that unlike even Fallujah, let alone any other city in Iraq, Berlin was actually devastated. I think you need to realize that Germany, and the whole of Europe in general faced one of the worst famines EVER following post WWII. Without the Berlin Airlift, more people would have died in just Berlin post WWII than in the whole of GWII. On top of that, just as many allied troops supporting the Berlin Airlift died as in Fallujah. That seems to me like it'd matter to you. But of course, you have no grasp of history, so...





Oh yeah, sixty years, two weeks ago...no difference. And not all muslims are angered at the bombings of mosques in Fallujah, some actual do understand why it happened, you know, 60% of mosques were taken over by militant groups and used as defensive positions in Fallujah. It's absolute hilarity though. All Muslims are pissed off in post GWII because we bombed a couple mosques. Yet, you think that only nazi's were upset about the complete and almost senseless destruction of cities full of civilians. Yeah, the German people were so happy, and warmed up to the fact that we killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in those German cities.



Why?

Post GWII and still no sign of these MASSIVE stockpiles of WMD.

Exactly.