By Ramzi Kysia
Having spent a year in Iraq, I remain continuously startled by the things I see and feel here. Perhaps I shouldn’t still be surprised by the resilience of these people. Perhaps I shouldn’t still wonder at their ability to absorb incredible amounts of suffering and go on with their lives. Or marvel at their determination, in the midst of suffering, to maintain a spirit of hospitality and generosity - with strangers and within their common lives - that is unsurpassed in any of my travels. But I am surprised. I remain in a state of perpetual amazement.

To my shame, I cannot imagine my fellow Americans being able to cope with even a fraction of what Iraqis have had to cope with over the last 30 years. How would America meet brutal dictatorship, 3 terrible wars resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings, the devastating impoverishment and isolation of 13 years of sanctions resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands more, military occupation, massive unemployment, out-of-control crime, and months without electricity or sanitation in 120+ degree heat? September 11 was only a flirting shadow of what Iraqis have experienced, and only time - and our active resistance to the Bush Crusade - will demonstrate if our democracy can manage to survive its aftermath.

People sometimes ask me how I feel about our “failure: the failure of the anti-sanctions movement over long years of struggle, the failure of the anti-war movement over short months of protest. But that question is itself a lie.

It can be overwhelming to stare, wide-eyed, into the crushing weight of a $400 billion-a-year killing machine fed by fear-mongering politicians, headed by a fool, protected by a captive media, only existing to protect an entrenched corporate-capitalist system that is eating our world alive. But if we would wonder at our inability as yet to fully overcome the death sellers and fear merchants, let us also wonder at how hard they have to work to keep their system running.