| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm |
| 2008-09-22 |
| From the NY Times, I sh*t you not: When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation's social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis? I don't know, maybe both? That was the idea, after all. "We are normal people, ordinary people, like people everywhere," Aziz al-Saiedi said to me the other day, as we sat on a park bench in Sadr City, only recently freed from the grip of the Mahdi Army. The park was just a small patch of bare ground with a couple of swing sets; it didn't even have a name, yet it was filled to the bursting. "We want what everyone else wants in this world," he said. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the 24 months that her sons were gone, Ms. Salman said she rarely ventured outside. The exception, she said, was when she saw American soldiers. "Oh, I love them," Ms. Salman said, brightening in her darkened house. "I always knew I was safe with them." "Paging, John Murtha. John Murtha, please pick-up the nearest yellow courtesy phone..." |
| Posted by:eltoroverde |
| #2 DanNY: You're right. As they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2008-09-22 10:40 |
| #1 Even the NY Times has to get the story right once in a lifetime. Shame they waited so long. |
| Posted by: DanNY 2008-09-22 10:06 |