I encountered Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman blogger after reading a post from Turning Tables, the blog of an American soldier serving in Iraq. During the "halcyon days" of the U.S. invasion and occupation, I used to read Turning Tables' blog aloud to my son and nephew on Saturday nights while they were playing video games. I wanted them to hear the words of an honest witness from the ground in Iraq, an American soldier who hoped our cause was just. Turning Tables admired and deeply respected Riverbend, as well as many of the Iraqi people with whom he came into contact.
I wanted my son Adam James especially and Scott David, my nephew, to admire the sacrifices of U.S. soldiers, and Turning Tables personified all those qualities that one prays that his nation's soldiers will have ... intelligence, compassion, professionalism, insightful, dedicated to the soldiers under his command, willing to ask most fundamental of the combat soldiers' questions: "Is this thing I am doing, is this the right thing?"
Prior to August, 2002, when my guts told me, when I knew, that the cheney sock-puppet would send the U.S. war machine to rain down the American people's wrath upon the poor peoples of Iraq, I had given thought to how my son might benefit from military service. He's a drummer, a very fine drummer. But school had been a curse upon him. Diagnosed with ADD, innaattentive subtype in sixth grade, he went to a nearby private school, and then enrolled at Elgin Academy, a college prep school near by. He lasted a month there, before he stopped going. I didn't learn of this until the day before his 15th birthday, which we celebrated here, at my parents' home.
On that day, his mom called and told me the news. She wanted me, with my health insurance background, to help him get into Alexian Brothers outpatient mental health facility. She swore me to secrecy, that I could not tell his maternal grand father, who was footing the bill for the private schooling.
Eventually, we all got over this, Adam went to a private school in town, with intensive one-on-one teaching, got his GED, and is presently, to the best of my knowledge, taking courses at the nearby Harper Junior College. I've seen him but on a handful of times since last August (2006), when I quit taking my meds, and he tried to emotionally black mail me into getting "professional help". I think we've gotten beyond that. After all, he's 22 now, drumming in a kick-*ss Indie Rock and Roll Band, The Alleyways, a paid drummer at Holy Family Catholic Church in nearby Inverness, a Tae Kwon Do black belt who teaches pee wees, and a church youth leader, who teaches catechism, and feels it would be hypocritical for him to practice other than what he teaches.
To say that Adam James is a good Roman Catholic young man really does justice to neither Adam James, nor good Roman Catholic young men. He has always been my light and inspiration. And the emotional blackmail, well, he did from of love. On his mother's side of the family, there is a long tradition of involuntarily committing "problem children" to mental hospitals. My ex-wife had me involuntarily committed twice during the first four months of our marriage. But, by the second commitment, I had already begun divorce proceedings. Adam's mother spent a lot of time in various hospitals when she was younger. Plus Adam's Uncle Grant, whom I greatly admired, was committed after breaking a kid's nose at school, and getting drunk. The kid called him a faggot. There were consequences. We are condemned either to both repeat and reject the patterns of our parents. Would that we repeat the best of those patterns, and reject the worst.
That family does these things out of love, although, as my dearest Natalie Jean once said: "Mark, committing someone to a mental hospital is not how I would show my love." My in laws also did such things out of frustration -- a sub contracting out of what some might consider parental responsibilities.
Adam is still taking classes at Harper. At the rate he's been going, he ought to get his associate's degree in, oh, about eight to twelve years, God willing. We've talked a couple of times since the emotional black mail days, and he sounds genuinely interested in listening to the tidbits of my life. I even invited him to accompany me to the mosque this Saturday for the Hadiya Ameen Ceremony to which my Muslim Brother so graciously invited me.
The only time I have ever feared for Adam was December, 2003, when he came over and informed me that he had dropped his classes at Harper, and was going to enlist in the army. He had seen a recruiter. His mom and grandfather were pleased. They thought it was a great opportunity for him. I was heart sick with despair. Not that I would entertain thoughts of him dying a soldier. The U.S. wages technological war, dropping bombs and ordnance, killing the innocents from long distance. Such strategy comes from a belief in the effectiveness of terror bombing, and of technological war -- we worship our technology. The science of killing more and ever more of "them" while minimizing our own casualties has produced things like cluster bombs, and bunker busters, and bombs that will kill people, but leave city infrastructures largely intact.
Besides, my actuarial training gives me the analytic tools. The numbers are like this:
four years of war
3,200 troop fatalities
800 mercenary fatalities (they are called "contractors" in the press)
160,000 troops on the ground, per year, more or less
40,000 merc's on the ground, per year, more or less.
Average annual exposure to combat fatality risk: 200,000 (including merc's)
Average annual combat fatalities: 1,000
Fatality rate: 1,000 / 200,000, one in 200, or 0.005 (half of one percent)
These are approximations, but they are close enough, even more than close enough for government work.
See how easy that was? Actuarial science in action. Take human beings, and dehumanize them -- turn them into numbers - the numbers numb one. Take the reality, the blood, the pain, the confusion, the agony, the hatred, the fear, and put it out of your mind. Turn it into an analytic exercise. Make sure to use the Balducci Hypothesis, so that each death is credited with one full year of exposure to the risk of fatality. Only under the Balducci Hypothesis does the mortality rate for an individual in the year of his death equal 100%.
So, the probability of Adam dying would be small. No, that was not my fear. I feared for his life. I feared he would kill another human being. And I knew then, as I know now, that he would be VERY good at killing. On my father's family side, our roots are all German. The Teutonic peoples produce outstanding musicians, scholars, philosophers, and Adolph Hitler, of whom Norman Mailer said, "If you will accept that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, then I will say, that Adolph Hitler was the son of Satan."
The Teutonic peoples followed Hitler, blindly. So few resisted. "I was only doing my duty", the Eichmann defense, although one man, Albert Speer, confessed to his war crimes, and served 23 years in prison. He also wrote a book, Inside the Third Reich, from which Daniel Ellsburg quoted extensively in an essay about American war crimes.
So, who was the most monstrous? Hitler, for giving the orders? Or the German generals for having obeyed? And were not, in fact, the German peoples who chose oblivion the ones who enabled the Halocaust.
And thus, today, if one looks a tad too closely in the mirror, one risks asking the question: Who is the most monstrous? george bush in giving the orders? Or the American people, for re-electing him?
Some things you don't forget. They become part and parcel of who you are, of what you do. When my humanity is threatened, I can retreat into my numbers, and forget my humanity. No, that's a lie. I retreated into numbers and lost a good deal of my humanity.
My humanity is most at risk when I retreat from it. So, to recover my humanity, I read Riverbend. I hope she can forgive me for repeating her blog in full, but even if there is but one of you reading this, out there in cyberspace, this message will make you feel, even if not make you think.
It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed. But I had to write tonight.
As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.
She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.
They abducted her from her house in an area in southern Baghdad called Hai Al Amil. No- it wasn’t a gang. It was Iraqi peace keeping or security forces- the ones trained by Americans? You know them. She was brutally gang-raped and is now telling the story. Half her face is covered for security reasons or reasons of privacy. I translated what she said below.
“I told him, ‘I don’t have anything [I did not do anything].’ He said, 'You don’t have anything?’ One of them threw me on the ground and my head hit the tiles. He did what he did- I mean he raped me. The second one came and raped me. The third one also raped me. [Pause- sobbing] I begged them and cried, and one of them covered my mouth. [Unclear, crying] Another one of them came and said, 'Are you finished? We also want our turn.' So they answered, ‘No, an American committee came.’ They took me to the judge.
Anchorwoman: Sabrine Al Janabi said that one of the security forces videotaped/photographed her and threatened to kill her if she told anyone about the rape. Another officer raped her after she saw the investigative judge.
Sabrine continuing:
“One of them, he said… I told him, ‘Please- by your father and mother- let me go.’ He said, ‘No, no- by my mother’s soul I’ll let you go- but on one condition, you give me one single thing.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘[I want] to rape you.’ I told him, ‘No- I can’t.’ So he took me to a room with a weapon… It had a weapon, a Klashnikov, a small bed [Unclear], he sat me on it. So [the officer came] and told him, ‘Leave her to me.’ I swore to him on the Quran, I told him, ‘By the light of the Prophet I don’t do such things…’ He said, ‘You don’t do such things?’ I said, ‘Yes’.
[Crying] He picked up a black hose, like a pipe. He hit me on the thigh. [Crying] I told him, ‘What do you want from me? Do you want me to tell you rape me? But I can’t… I’m not one of those ***** [Prostitutes] I don’t do such things.’ So he said to me, ‘We take what we want and what we don’t want we kill. That’s that.’ [Sobbing] I can’t anymore… please, I can’t finish.”
I look at this woman and I can’t feel anything but rage. What did we gain? I know that looking at her, foreigners will never be able to relate. They’ll feel pity and maybe some anger, but she’s one of us. She’s not a girl in jeans and a t-shirt so there will only be a vague sort of sympathy. Poor third-world countries- that is what their womenfolk tolerate. Just know that we never had to tolerate this before. There was a time when Iraqis were safe in the streets. That time is long gone. We consoled ourselves after the war with the fact that we at least had a modicum of safety in our homes. Homes are sacred, aren’t they? That is gone too.
She’s just one of tens, possibly hundreds, of Iraqi women who are violated in their own homes and in Iraqi prisons. She looks like cousins I have. She looks like friends. She looks like a neighbor I sometimes used to pause to gossip with in the street. Every Iraqi who looks at her will see a cousin, a friend, a sister, a mother, an aunt…Humanitarian organizations are warning that three Iraqi women are to be executed next month. The women are Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and Liqa Omar Muhammad. They are being accused of 'terrorism', i.e. having ties to the Iraqi resistance. It could mean they are relatives of people suspected of being in the resistance. Or it could mean they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of them gave birth in the prison. I wonder what kind of torture they've endured. Let no one say Iraqi women didn't get at least SOME equality under the American occupation- we are now equally as likely to get executed.And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.
Tears are running from my eyes,
Down my face,
I can barely breath,
My heart is sick
Forgive me Riverbend
Forgive me Allah
I have not done my all to end this
I have not done enough for my ummah
For my brothers and sisters in Iraq
That changes, going forth, from this moment on.LEAVE IRAQ - NOW.DON'T DARE BOMB IRAN
