Machine gun, tearing my body all apart. Machine gun yeah, tearing my body all apart. Evil man make me kill ya. Evil man make you kill me. Even though we’re only families apart.
I sit, my eyes transfixed to the TV, as a campaign of shock and awe unfolds on screen. In the comfort of my home, upon a soft, cushy couch, I watch the actions of a war that are anything but.
Loud, powerful explosions are seen and heard in real time. A news reporter taking in the spectacle from the 14th floor of a nearby Baghdad hotel tries to make sense of what he is seeing as pillars of smoke bellow from a flaming building.
Switch the channel.
There’s the comforting face of Ted Koppel. He’s standing with the US Army Third Infantry Division just inside the Iraqi border. He’s speaking in composed, measured tones. If he is nervous he hides it well. Koppel gestures toward the cameraman. The camera pans to a line of tanks and armored personnel carriers. Koppel explains that later in the day he will ride in a military helicopter and experience a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield.
Switch the channel.
There’s Wolf Blitzer, blitzing everyone from Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to “embedded” field reporters in an effort to dispatch the latest CNN news of the moment. And make no mistake about it – many of these events unfurl instantaneously, before journalists and editors can drum up colorful prose to complement and spin them. Sure, spin still occurs – there is tight control over what cameramen are allowed to film and what reporters are allowed to say. And these images show only a small piece of the deeply intricate puzzle that is Operation Iraqi Freedom. Yet they are pieces nonetheless. They are real. They speak for themselves.
Click.
The TV fades to black. I stand up, walk into the kitchen, and pour a glass of water. I let the tap run even after my glass is full. The water flows over the side of the glass, streams into the drain and swirls down the pipe. I shut off the tap, raise the glass and take a sip. Cool. Clean. Refreshing. I wonder how long it has been since our 250,000 troops experienced any of those sensations.
I think of them. I think of President George W. Bush, and the incredibly bold decision he has made to attack Iraq.
I am told his intentions are to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people. I hear that his invasion will bring peace to the world, and make life safer for Americans.
I desperately want to believe him.
So much of what I hear from our president seems scripted and overly simplistic. I think Bush keeps secrets, and often wonder if he and members of his administration have ulterior motives.
The oil-service firm Halliburton Co., of which Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive, is already in line to reap hundreds of millions of dollars from an American takeover of Iraq’s oilfields.
There are so many questions.
What will happen to Iraq after the war? Can the Kurds – who have spent years fighting themselves in Northern Iraq – unite to defeat Ansar al-Islam, a group with alleged links to al Qaeda? Or will the Kurdish civil war continue? What about the Shiite and Sunni Muslim parties?
Right now, experts say the only thing keeping these people from each other’s throats is their communal distaste for Saddam Hussein. Once he’s gone, what will happen?
It’s anyone’s guess.
I wonder if U.S. officials understand this sensitive situation. I wonder how a democratic government will be formed in a state that has known no such thing. Will other countries help with the rebuilding effort, or will the U.S. go it alone? Who will foot the bill for this billion dollar diplomatic failure? American taxpayers?
Another uncertainty looms to Iraq’s left, in Israel. How will the emergence of an American-style democracy affect Israeli/Palestinian relations, and Middle East stability in general? Will our former European allies embrace us after a job well done, or have we destroyed the bridge of good will that took half a century to build, to a point where it can’t be reconstructed? What about Russia’s delay in signing a treaty that would reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles by nearly 4,000 warheads apiece?
How about the future of the United Nations? If its authority couldn’t prevent our unilateral action against Iraq, who is to say that India and Pakistan won’t follow suit in a potential war that could have nuclear consequences?
And what about North Korea?
The world more complicated now than it was in 1970 when Jimi Hendrix’s hippie generation spoke of peace, love and understanding. Let’s hope it hasn’t changed soÃ¥ much that these notions – like the rock icons who inspired them – have become relics of the past.