This excellent article by Dahr Jamail is well worth reading for the picture it gives of life on the ground in Iraq these days:
Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.
But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well.
Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.
I know a little of what he's talking about. I went to the West Bank and Gaza in 2002 to work with the International Solidarity Movement to offer the protection of my US passport and light complexion to the Palestinians. Over the course of two weeks I was threatened by Israeli tanks, shot at, and attacked with concussion grenades. I saw Palestinian houses, offices, mosques, and hospitals that had been ransacked or destroyed, stood at the side of a mass grave, and walked through the ruins of a refugee camp. And I had dozens of chances to see exactly how the Israeli government has used the massive amount of funding it's received from the US to reduce the Palestinians to a state of misery, hopelessness, and desolation that's difficult to fathom.
Then suddenly I was back in the US, trying to reconcile the carefree world around me with what I'd been seeing in the weeks before. It's not just jarring but feels profoundly wrong that our country can be causing such misery elsewhere in the world and yet people here are completely insulated from it (and usually oblivious to it as well). I saw the same thing on a much more intimate scale in Israel itself, where many Israelis studiously ignore what's being done to the Palestinians just a few miles away from them.
I can barely guess how strong this feeling must be for Dahr Jamail, though, since the situation in Iraq is at a level of horror that beggars imagination--like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life.
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