First Person: On Second Thought

Was this how Iraq was supposed to look?

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I've seriously tried to see things the way the administration sees it. I've tried to see success in Iraq. As the years begin to stretch on, and the US still refuses to leave Iraq, I've started wondering if I just wasn't looking in the right places.

I first went to Iraq in 2003 and American soldiers were eager to show me their successes. They took me to a small northern town near Kirkuk where Bechtel had apparently refurbished a concrete schoolhouse. The walls of the school were painted a bright, new yellow and a group of children yelled enthusiastically in the front yard. But there were no chairs, no heat and no running water. There weren't enough books for both boys and girls to take classes so they had to alternate, a teacher told me. Often they chose only to

educate the boys.

On my second trip to Iraq, I witnessed similar evidence of success. While embedded with the 10th Mountain Division in Baghdad, the soldiers often complained of the negative media coverage of the war. "Show me something positive-please," I would say to them. I wanted to see success not only because the administration claimed so adamantly that it existed, but also for the Iraqi people. I wanted to see that there was something apart from daily car bombs, kidnappings, random murders and destruction of property.

To satisfy my request, soldiers drove me out to a section of western Baghdad where soldiers were rebuilding a sewer system destroyed by an insurgent-planted explosion. Feces and garbage covered the street and the smell of excrement filled the air. The explosion had occurred many months prior, yet the rebuilding project had hardly begun. Men were building large trenches on the outskirts of town and concrete pipes lay strewn on the side of the road. This was success? I asked. The soldiers looked sheepish and made excuses, then answered with a statement I heard often: "You just don't understand." Evidently I didn't, and I don't. Yet it wasn't just me. I met dozens of exceptional young men and women serving and working in Iraq, many of whom would admit to me over time that they, too, didn't understand.

As the months and now years pass, I fail to see where this elusive "success" the administration speaks of is hiding. Initially, I assumed what many people do: that the catastrophic failure in Iraq is evident to all, and the administration's response is a combination of mammoth denial and media spin. It's not as if White House officials didn't know the dangers; this government had some of the best and brightest advisors who predicted exactly the chaos and civil war we are now witnessing.

The immense disconnect has led me to wonder if perhaps my scope is far too myopic. What if I have been spending my time trying to understand the trees and forgot to see the forest? What if Iraq's descent into civil war, its complete chaos and spreading violence is indeed, in the eyes of the administration, success? What if destabilizing the Middle East, crippling Jordan and Syria with a flood of refugees and positing countries one against the other, is written exactly as planned? Iran, we are being told, is the hotbed for Shiite radicals and the cause of much of Iraq's violence (not to mention a danger to the rest of the world); Lebanon is the home of "terrorist" Hezbollah and a particular enemy to Israel; Syria, another enemy to the world. With surrounding countries now being drawn into the mess of Iraq, there are fewer resources-monetary and strategic-for these countries to put toward their own economic success and expansion. Lebanon was just beginning to re-emerge from the 1982 war when it was attacked last summer in the name of fighting terrorism. Even our great ally Saudi Arabia is beginning to feel the crunch and recently spoke out against the US occupation in Iraq.

I could never embrace the liberal credo-it's the oil, stupid-because it didn't appear that Iraq's oil fields were worth it and, in fact, production is still only a fraction of what it once was. However, if Iraq's oil fields seem too paltry, combine them with those of nearby countries and the picture changes dramatically. What if the intent was never the oil of just one rich country but the geopolitical positioning (and positioning may itself be the goal) to access the oil of all Middle Eastern countries? With the entire region on the verge of combustion, the US may be sitting prime, ready to help pick up the pieces. The thousands of American lives and tens if not hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis may be considered a small price to pay for empire building.

It's a cynical idea and certainly extreme, but perhaps not lacking precedence in this country. Decades ago, as African-Americans were gaining rights and social status, liquor stores started to crop up in vast numbers in low-income black neighborhoods. Alcoholism and violence became a scourge in many black communities and social advancement a near impossibility. Critics believe the strategy was intentional-in fact many claim that tobacco and alcohol advertisers still target these communities disproportionately-so that white society could sleep in peace knowing blacks were busy killing each other.

People may call this a conspiracy theory. I simply call it a theory. Because in the ever-worsening chaos of Iraq-its growing refugee crisis and tensions with its neighbors-nothing else makes any sense as a definition of success. Or maybe that nice yellow paint job really is what the administration had in mind.

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