May 3, 2008

• Iraqi Waterparks – A Discourse on This American Life

  Update:  Haider Hamza, the subject of the video I posted here just wrote to me.  He saw the video and my blog, and then added me on Facebook so we’re chatting right now .  Isn’t technology wonderful?  I’l have more on this breaking story as it develops.  LOL.  He’s coming to LA in June and we’re having dinner.  Anyone have a question for an Iraqi?  He’s your man! 
  I have to get to bed now, as I have to wake up really early to go to my cousin’s First Communion.  LOL  How’s that for irony?  After this week, I hope my tongue doesn’t fall off when I take communion!  Pictures tomorrow!

  

  I met Lora & Frank for dinner tonight before we headed over to Century City for the the “This American Life” show, that was being broadcast to theaters nationwide, live from New York, with host Ira Glass.  For those of you TAL is a radio show on NPR and a TV show on Showtime.  “Each week the show loosely centers on a particular theme.  Content varies widely by episode, and stories are often told as first-person narratives. The mood of the show ranges from gloomy to ironic, from thought-provoking to hilarious.”  If you’ve never listened, I strongly encourage you to download the free podcasts.

  I wish the ignorant woman who left the comment on yesterday’s blog about Iraq invading America could have been there tonight!  (Actually, come to think of it, she wouldn’t have understood any of it.  She’s got her head too far up George W. Bush’s putrid ass.)  One of the stories featured an Iraqi student, living in America, who decided to travel around the Southern United States and gives red state Americans a chance to “Talk to an Iraqi”.  I filmed this clip in the theater tonight and the quality isn’t great.  For the whole thing, in two parts go to:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPEX0PnV-LU  and  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPfLdxEr0jk

  Haider Hamza of the Babylon province in Iraq is on a trip. He wants to resolve a conflict within himself.

  As a 22-year-old college student in New York, he loves America. But as an Iraqi citizen, he hates the suffering his people have endured in the chaos that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein.

  By meeting ordinary people in cities and towns across America this summer, Hamza hopes to quell the questions in his heart. He stopped in Fayetteville on Thursday. A five-person camera crew followed him.
  The cameras were for “This American Life,” a TV show on the Showtime cable network. The television show is based on the public radio show of the same name.

  As they do on the radio show, we present Hamza’s story in three parts.
  Act One: The library. A little girl gives Hamza insight.

  Act Two: The Chevy dealer. The sales manager tells Hamza why America invaded Iraq and why it can’t bail out now.
  Act Three: Epilogue. What does it all mean?

  The library
  Hamza conducted 16 interviews in his “Talk to an Iraqi” booth in front of the Cumberland County Public Library. His third guest was 11-year-old Tori Allen, who said her father has been in Iraq since May 2006. He won’t be home until November, she said.

  “I’ve been waiting to apologize to an Iraqi for the past three years,” she said. “I’m sorry for the way we walked into your country acting like we owned it. I’m really sorry about that.”

  She said Iraq didn’t attack the United States, so the U.S. shouldn’t have attacked Iraq.

  Tori caught Hamza off guard with her apology and her knowledge of world affairs. He laughed with surprise.

  “As an 11-year-old, shouldn’t you be playing, I don’t know, playing with dolls? Or going to school and hanging out?” he said. “Why do you spend your time following the news that’s happening halfway around the world?”

  “I just feel like I shouldn’t be oblivious. I mean there’s so much that I can do. I can make a difference,” Tori said.

  When she grows up, she plans to become a psychologist and then she wants to be president. She plans to run in 2032.

  Afterward, Hamza said Tori impressed him. “I just learned from her that the lives of American children have been directly affected and changed” by the war.

  The Chevy dealer
  All of Hamza’s guests at the library, from soldier’s spouses to a school teacher who drove about 30 miles to see him, said roughly the same thing: They support the troops and oppose the war.

  Hamza didn’t expect so many anti-war feelings in a military town.

  Gary Brown was so eager to give Hamza a different point of view that he invited him and the camera crew to set up at Powers-Swain Chevrolet on Bragg Boulevard. Brown is the general sales manager there.

  On the sales lot, surrounded by Impalas and second-hand Corvettes, Brown and Hamza hunched over the booth in intense conversation. They raised their voices at times, sometimes with emotion, sometimes to be heard above the roar of traffic.

  Brown supported the invasion. He believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he needed to be removed from power because he was an oppressive dictator.

  Now, even though there have been serious problems, the U.S. can’t leave, Brown told Hamza.

  “The Democrats are probably going to win the election next time because of this war,” he said. “I’m afraid they’re going to pull out, and the slaughter that could take place is — it’ll be disastrous. And I don’t want to see that happen.”

  Americans don’t like seeing the Iraqis dying in the conflict now, “but they don’t want to see them live in hell like they were before, when you don’t have a freedom.”

  “Hell is now,” Hamza told Brown. Iraq is extremely dangerous, he said. As long as there are foreign soldiers in Iraq, the insurgents will continue to fight, he said.

  What Does It All Mean?
  Brown was the type of person Hamza was hoping to meet on this trip, he said.

  Conservatives tend to be portrayed as refusing to listen to other opinions. Brown was different. Even though they disagreed, Brown and Hamza sat together, talked and listened with respect and open minds.

  “People like him are willing to talk…and accept a different point of view,” he said. “That’s very promising.”

  
  There’s still something wrong with the focus on my SD850 when it’s on automatic, so some of these are blurry, buy you get the idea.

  
  Dibs on the Dibs

  

  
  The show was being broadcast live from Skirball Center in New York.

  
  There was a funny segment on high school kids, and what’s important to them.

  
  And a great piece on kids from the projects of Philadelphia who ride horses through the city.

  
  An illustrated story about a Jackie Kennedy sighting in NYC.

  
  A 12 year old who decides to write a pornographic book, but knows nothing of sex.

  
  A summer camp for kids who want to be stand up comics.

  
  A story of two men who try to escape from prison with rope they made from dental floss.

  

   
  Carrie Bradshaw ain’t got nothing on Lora!

  

  
  Pondering this American life…or is it married life??

  It was timely that I went to this show tonight, as the story about the Iraqi tied in nicely to some of the comments that have been made on my blog the past few days.  Don’t you just love a healthy debate?  Here are a few of the response from this entry:

  http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/654662922/pandoras-war-chest.html
  

  
  

  

  
  

  http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/651268943/pinkberry-with-a-bonafide-hero—a-busy-night-at-the-hc.html
  http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/620655167/the-increasingly-few–proud.html
  http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/622825885/fires-update.html
  http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/652710662/burgers-with-smeagol-the-iraqi-lizard.html
  http://weblog.xanga.com/CareyGLY/597520961/email-diaries—the-death-of-oreo-christmas-in-africa-iraq–impeachment-if-only-today.html

  

  Xanga Weblogs Xanga

  Hey CareyGLY!

  infinitysurfer just posted a comment on your weblog entry: “Pandora’s War Chest” @mdrezz - The problem with your tobacco industry analogy is that in your example, the inanimate, indiscriminate and soulless cigarettes are doing the killing. In theater, our soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors are doing the killing. How then, do you convince an entire military to well, keep killing? Promise them slices of future oil contracts? Obviously not. From all the way to the Commander-in-Chief down to mid-level officers to peons like me, we all saw/see reasons to continue our work, whether it be firsthand observations, intelligence reports, or personal convictions. If I was Bush, would I have gone into Iraq? No, I would’ve concentrated on Afghanistan. In fact, the majority of the military leadership (Powell included) despised the idea of invading Iraq– why diver the manpower and resources? But if I saw the false (or genuinely mistaken) reports the intelligence community produced at the time, I might have voted for the war (incidentally, Saddam was guilty of genocidal rage against the Kurds, which I believe is reason enough for the UN to have acted). Here’s the situation now: it’s generally accepted that the reasons Bush gave America to justify the Iraq invasion were false. Ok. But we can’t leave now. First of all, it’s damn near impossible logistically to move troops as quickly as some of the Democratic candidates suggested. Second of all, we fucked that place up. Iraq (which was stable under Saddam) is now in shambles. It’s now our responsibility to help fix it. We crashed a party, trashed the house and now must help clean it up. The problem, it seems, is tripartite: a) an ineffective and corrupt Iraqi government, b) Washington’s corruption and cronyism (just one example: giving away key reconstruction jobs to friends and associates rather than the most qualified), and c) the Sunni’s (perhaps rightfully justified) fear of being marginalized within the new government. Mdrezz, I certainly was not offended– everything I said was tongue-in-cheek, and I really do appreciate your thoughts.

  Hey CareyGLY!

  mdrezz just posted a comment on your weblog entry: “Pandora’s War Chest” A very astute and insightful analysis, and a compelling argument for maintaining a military presence in Iraq. I completely agree with most of it. While I am obviously outraged by the fact that we invaded Iraq and are in this mess in the first place, I have always felt that it be would be grossly immoral and irresponsible to abandon these people to this theme park from hell we’ve created. It was Powell I think who trotted out the old Pottery Barn Rule first, and in principle it sure made sense to me then. Still does. We definitely broke it, so we ought to pay for it. And we do pay, but is the price realistically bearable? From an economic standpoint, it’s seems pretty untenable in light of the fact that we’ve been reduced to financing this romp by borrowing money from China. And the price in casualties? That’s not something we can sustain for much longer for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we can’t continue to “recycle” our armed forces. How many consecutive tours of duty are we subjecting our soldiers to? (I’m genuinely asking you) We need to replenish our armed forces, but the recruiting climate is obviously less than ideal and it’s just not politically possible to institute a draft. As a member of the military, I trust you’ll forgive my armchair strategery for the amateur speculation it is, but short of a major infusion of fresh bodies, enough to constitute a force sufficient to the provide blanket coverage needed to pacify Iraq long enough to shore up a physical and institutional infrastructure, I don’t see how we can expect anything short of an extremely protracted engagement with the body count to match. Given this scenario, is it reasonable to sustain these casualty rates indefinitely because we created this mess, when we could pull them out and spare their lives instead? It’s not a decision I’m comfortable with. But I think the case could be made that it’s morally justified to withdraw when it seems we have limited hope of establishing a stable, humanitarian government (for the tripartite reasons you outlined, not to mention the influence of neighbors like Iran and Syria, among other reasons I’m not going to delve into to keep on track). So my beef generally is that we have no reasonable, sensible exit strategy in place at this point. And I think we need one. If that makes me a quitter so be it. If it means more suffering for those we left behind, this is unfortunate at best. If it means we risk ultimately having to return years from now to finish what we should’ve completed the first time, I’m prepared to take that chance. We need a phased withdrawal that is as sensitive to the Iraqi people’s circumstances as can be reasonably expected and makes sense logistically and strategically. As for the point about the tobacco companies, I concede it’s not a perfect comparison, but in principle I think it’s valid. Lastly, I think it’s not terribly difficult to convince the military to keep killing. Propaganda works wonders for starters. Isn’t Rush Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio? How about Al Franken? But more importantly, the military serve at the pleasure and direction of the President of the United States. I think our soldiers take their constitutional duty quite seriously, and as we’ve seen in Vietnam, even decent men can be compelled to commit unthinkable atrocities under the right circumstances. I’m not saying our troops are committing atrocities, mind you, I’m just saying it would take quite a bit of convincing for most U.S. soldiers to lay down their arms unless ordered to do so by a qualified superior. So I agree and I disagree with you, I think. Either way, you make a very sound case.

  • 5:11 am
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