Firts the war was a quagmire and now the relief effort is a quagmire. Some folk need to take a healthy dose of glass half full.
What can you expect from the 
?
Posted on 04/08/2003 7:56:09 PM PDT by Pokey78
UMM QASR, Iraq — It's hard to smile when there's no water. It's hard to applaud when you're frightened. It's hard to say, "Thank you for liberating me," when liberation has meant that looters have ransacked everything from the grain silos to the local school, where they even took away the blackboard.
That was what I found when spending the day in Umm Qasr and its hospital, in southern Iraq. Umm Qasr was the first town liberated by coalition forces. But 20 days into the war, it is without running water, security or adequate food supplies. I went in with a Kuwaiti relief team, who, taking pity on the Iraqis, tossed out extra food from a bus window as we left. The Umm Qasr townsfolk scrambled after that food like pigeons jostling for bread crumbs in a park.
This was a scene of humiliation, not liberation. We must do better.
I am sure we will, as more relief crews arrive. But this scene explained to me why, even here in the anti-Saddam Shia heartland of southern Iraq, no one is giving U.S. troops a standing ovation. Applause? When I asked Lt. Col. Richard Murphy, part of the U.S. relief operation, how Iraqis were greeting his men, he answered bluntly and honestly: "I have not detected any overt hostility."
Overt hostility? We've gone from expecting applause to being relieved that there is no overt hostility. And we've been here only 20 days. As I said, I'm certain things will improve with time. But for now, America has broken the old order — Saddam's regime — but it has yet to put in place a new order, and the vacuum is being filled in way too many places by looters, thugs, chaos, thirst, hunger and insecurity. A particular problem here in the south is the fact that British troops have still not totally secured Basra, the regional center. Without free access to Basra, the whole southern economy is stalled.
It would be idiotic to even ask Iraqis here how they felt about politics. They are in a pre-political, primordial state of nature. For the moment, Saddam has been replaced by Hobbes, not Bush. When I asked Dr. Safaa Khalaf at Umm Qasr Hospital why the reception for U.S. forces had been so muted, he answered: "Many people here have sons who were soldiers. They were forced to join the army. Many people lost their sons. They are angry from the war. Since the war, no water, no food, no electricity. . . . We have not had water for washing or drinking for five days. . . . There is no law, no policeman to arrest people. I don't see yet the American reign of running the country."
The scene at Umm Qasr Hospital is tragic. A woman who delivered a baby an hour earlier is limping home, and her mother has the baby tucked under her black robe. An old orange Dodge speeds up and a malnourished teenage boy moans on the back seat. A little kid is playing with an X-ray film of someone's limb. In the hospital lab, the sink is piled with bloody test tubes, waiting to be washed when the water comes back on.
What is striking, though, is that after people get through complaining to you about their situation, they each seem to have a story about a family member or cousin who was arbitrarily jailed or killed by Saddam's thugs. They are truly glad to be rid of him. America did good in doing that, so now we must build a peace we can be equally proud of.
But this is such a broken land. Its spirit was broken by Saddam long before we arrived, and now, because of this war, its major cities and iron-fisted order are being broken as well. Killing Saddam alone will not bring America the thank-you's it expects because Iraqis are not yet feeling free. Only replacing Saddam's order with a better order will do that. "There is no freedom because there is no security," said Dr. Mohammed al-Mansuri, the hospital's director.
We are so caught up with our own story of "America's liberation of Iraq," and the Arab TV networks are so caught up with their own story of "America's occupation of Iraq," that everyone seems to have lost sight of the real lives of Iraqis.
"We are lost," said Zakiya Jassim, a hospital maintenance worker. "The situation is getting worse. I don't care about Saddam. He is far away. I want my country to be normal."
America broke Iraq; now America owns Iraq, and it owns the primary responsibility for normalizing it. If the water doesn't flow, if the food doesn't arrive, if the rains don't come and if the sun doesn't shine, it's now America's fault. We'd better get used to it, we'd better make things right, we'd better do it soon, and we'd better get all the help we can get.
Firts the war was a quagmire and now the relief effort is a quagmire. Some folk need to take a healthy dose of glass half full.
AMERICA BROKE IRAQ??? HUH???
Kind of like the way we "broke" Germany in 1944-45.
Friedman has fallen into the gutter next to Krugman.
"America broke Iraq; now America owns Iraq, and it owns the primary responsibility for normalizing it. If the water doesn't flow, if the food doesn't arrive, if the rains don't come and if the sun doesn't shine, it's now America's fault. We'd better get used to it, we'd better make things right, we'd better do it soon, and we'd better get all the help we can get."
This is the clincher. It's our fault and our responsibility to fix it, but we'd better let the french, Germans, Russians, and Kofi Annan get their cut of profits.
It's too bad all the stray rounds are in Baghdad, because this jerk is a prime candidate for one.
Firts the war was a quagmire and now the relief effort is a quagmire. Some folk need to take a healthy dose of glass half full.
What can you expect from the ?
Iraq was broke long before America came along. Tommy and America doesn't own Iraq either. Its the Iraqi people who in the long term, will have the final say on all matters relevent to normalizing their future.
You got that right no UN or france or germany or russia.
Di he really mean this?
How about this guy doing something?
Friedman has become an insufferable jackass and shill for the new world order, starring the UN and realigned Europe in the formation of the new Middle East. This line is telling.
Too many people at this forum believe that Friedman has some special insight or better vision for the Middle East (and how it intersects with our strategic interests). From the evidence--his columns over the last three years--he does not. He trades on his cozy insider status and self-professed close personal relationships with the Arab movers and shakers. They, in turn, play Friedman like a fiddle.
He cannot countenance a unliateral (or union of the group of the willing) strategy by the US in Iraq (pre- or postwar), even when it is clearly in our national interests, such as here. We have come up aces every time we have had to administer postwar reconstructions built around emerging democracy (see Japan and Germany for recent examples). When the UN and Europe become involved, "quagmire" becomes a relevant term (see Bosnia).
Tune this clown out.
He has always been in the gutter. He is very rarely correct about anything in the MidEast. Remember "Land for Peace". He was all for it.
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill
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