John Farrell
Voices in The Wilderness
Chicago
October 1, 2003

Since recently returning from my three week stay in Iraq, I have been asked alot of questions by concerned US citizens. The questions about how bad the situation is in Iraq are simple to answer. All I have to do is repeat the frustrated words that many Iraqis said to me in the short time that I was there, “Where is this democracy that your country promised us?” “When will we have security, reliable electricity and clean water?” “When will there be self-determination for Iraqis?” “Did the US really care about our liberation or did they only come here to loot our country of its natural resources?”

The questions that I find most difficult to answer, however, are the ones concerning a US response to the occupation. As I spoke with Iraqis I discovered that there were many different opinions on the subject. Many people in the US, including family members of military personnel, are beginning to say, “Troops out Now!” Although I feel like proclaiming this phrase myself, I must admit that most Iraqis that I spoke with think that this is too simplistic to be regarded as a solution to the problem. Many people say that the US has created a mess in their country which needs to be addressed before any wholesale pullout of US troops takes place. The best way for this to happen is to promote true self-determination for Iraqis. With this in mind, “Elections for Iraqis Now!” might be a better mantra to adopt. In the meantime, the former director of the United Nations (UN) Oil for Food program in Iraq, Denis Halliday, cautions against the proposed plan for the UN to send international troops to Iraq under US control, suggesting that a much better option would be for the US to be completely replaced by a force that is administered by the UN. So far the only Democratic candidate for president who has advocated for this as a solution to the problems in Iraq is Dennis Kucinich.

It’s not that Iraqis don’t want the US to leave their country. They do. At best Iraqis think that the US has completely botched their responsibilities and at worst they think the US has been intentionally fomenting chaos and insecurity in Iraq. No one that I talked with thought that the US should stay for more than a few months, but it was also common to hear from people that until some self-determined governance is established in Iraq it would be important for US troops to stay and try to maintain at least some sort of order as a way of staving off the looming threat of civil war. It seems that the time limit on this welcome mat, however, is running out.

I got the feeling that while many Iraqis were telling me that they need the occupying forces to stay for a little while longer, they were simultaneously biting their tongues because they are beginning to realize that the US government’s intentions cannot be trusted. An Iraqi human rights lawyer that I spoke with in Baghdad, whom I’ll refer to as Mohammi, was arrested three times by Saddam Hussein’s regime (1971, ‘73 and ‘75) for his participation in an anti-Saddam political party. He had been hopeful that things would improve with the arrival of the US and UK forces in Iraq, but he found himself sadly mistaken when he it was apparent that some of the same abuses of power that had occured under Saddam’s regime, such as disappearances of people, were being perpetuated by the US government. When he tried to respond to this injustice by starting a newspaper that was critical of the Coalition Provisional Authority, Mohammi’s paper was shut down by US forces and his colleague was arrested and taken away by US troops for 3 days. Now Mohammi is very busy advocating for families of Iraqi civilians who have been killed by US troops. He has his work cut out for him.

Considering all of this, I find that the most clear advice that I can give someone here in the US, about what we should be doing now, comes from a story told by a friend of Voices that I met in Baghdad, Dr. Saad. Dr. Saad, a former university professor of theater and now a well-respected journalist, tells the story of his thirteen year old son who one day came into the house after refusing to play soccer with his friends. When Dr. Saad asked his son why he wasn’t playing with his friends, his son told him that he wouldn’t play with them because he knew that the ball they were playing with had been looted from the local mall during the chaos following the US invasion. Dr. Saad was justifiably proud of his son. It struck me that this courageous act of non-engagement with wrongdoing by Dr. Saad’s son could be a model for our own actions here in the United States as we wonder what we should be doing.

As our friends in the White House, Congress and CEO offices loot Iraq of its resources, especially oil, we can commit to using less gasoline as a way of not ‘playing ball’ with the looted materials of this war and many other unjustified military actions. What’s happening in Iraq is only an extension of the US policy of global dominance of natural resources, demonstrated also by the US support for the oppressive Uribe regime in Colombia, another country that is wealthy in oil. Another form of non-engagement might be to refuse to pay our taxes to the US government, which uses over 50% of those tax dollars to support an overfed military budget that will only grow bigger as the list of “terrorist countries” grows longer, while many military veterans are left out in the cold, waiting for the medical benefits which have been recently cut by the Bush administration.

Whatever we do, it seems essential to realize that the country which is in most need of rebuilding is the US, not Iraq, and the culture which needs to be scrutinized is ours, not the Iraqis’. If we keep that in mind, I think the question, “What should we do now?” becomes a little bit easier to answer.