Five years have now passed since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.It has caused me to reflect on how I as an American citizen unwittingly entered this conflict.
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When President Bush gave his "Axis of Evil" speech my freshman year of college, I told my mom, "Just watch. There's going to be a war, and I'm going to miss the whole thing."
My political sixth sense tingled from the beating of war drums. But major combat operations were still months away.
Fast forward to March 2003. Elder Stoddard walked the muddy streets of Durán, Ecuador (his second area) with his worst companion of the whole mission. We heard rumors of an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and U.S. troop buildups in the Persian Gulf, but our missionary efforts overshadowed any further intrigue.
Then the bombs began to fall.
Being so isolated from the world-at-large and the tumult of the news media, I really didn't have any facts at hand to use to fully analyze the situation. Most of the time the only thing that ran through my mind was a catchy hip-hop number by Outkast that had come out years earlier--"Bombs Over Baghdad."
Missionary work slowed to snail's pace--the entire country was glued to their ramshackle televisions as American munitions destroyed Hussein's palaces and Iraqi military infrastructure.
As the only American guy in the room, fingers were leveled at me daily. "This is YOUR country! Why are YOU doing this?"
I had to repeatedly state that I personally had nothing to do with the bombardment of Baghdad and that the President had detailed information upon which he based his decision.
For days we faced the same situation of glassy Latin eyes gazing upon Mesopotamia on fire and brushing off any serious discussion of the restored gospel.
Soon we couldn't go to the American-style malls on p-day.
Then drunks in the street tried to grab us and slobber the phrase, "Why are American soldiers killing Iraqi children?"
Occasional spouts of ignorant anti-Americanism accompanied the rest of the tenure of my mission.
When I returned home, I discovered an insurgency ripe in stealth and lethality that hadn't been communicated to me before.
I didn't know what to think. I hadn't been living the picket-fence-read-the-paper-in-front-of-the-fireplace American lifestyle during the war. I was in a completely alien country doing an apolitical work.
I still don't know what to think about the war. I was so far removed.
Perhaps my feelings are only a magnification of the schism of thought and emotion so many Americans possess over the Iraq War.
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6 comments:
Excellent post Bukran. I had a similar experience in Argentina at the beginning of the war. It's interesting that they used the same question down there -- "Why are you killing Iraqi children?" It has been called the greatest foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States. As I have observed the war and its effects on so many lives and on the American and World Economies, I am inclined to agree. I only hope and pray that history proves me short-sighted and absolutely incorrect.
Alexander, if there is one thing I know about history its this, wars are too multi sided to prove anything. Interesting post Buck. I've heard other people in this same position come to hate America along with the people in their mission. Thats a little sad, you are an American after all.
Whoa whoa whoa...let's back this presumptive train up.
I never came to hate America one iota on the mission. If anything, the mission made me come to love America more for our prosperity and functional government.
The crux of this post was that I still don't know what to think of the Iraq War five years on because it happened while I was in a vacuum.
no, I didn't mean you, I was speaking retrospectively, to the other people I know. That do hate America.
Those people are ungrateful troglodytes...
Thats probably true. Hey, did you ever play that math game during computer lab in elementary school with the troggles that wanted to eat you? Thats what troglodytes made me think of.
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