Reporter watches optimism dry up as occupation turns Iraqis against U.S

[TacticalPeek]

Posted on Wed, Jan. 26, 2005

Reporter watches optimism dry up as occupation turns Iraqis against U.S.

BY EVAN OSNOS

Chicago Tribune

BAGHDAD, Iraq - (KRT) - Santa Claus lumbered into the chow-hall tent in combat boots and a faux belly. He ho-ho-hoed through rows of plastic tables, leaning to sniff trays of colorless Christmas turkey and doing his best to divert attention from the fact that he and thousands of other young men and women around him in the sterile desert of northern Kuwait would soon be going to war.

But other than the setting, Christmas Day 2002 - three months before the U.S. invaded Iraq - was anything but bleak. The soldiers radiated confidence. The Kuwaiti badlands were alive with energy, a growing sliver of America fed by adrenaline and optimism. They were there to wage war in the name of American-financed freedom. For all those I met on that cold, clear evening, the sacrifices so far seemed a small price to pay to be part of history.

My mind returns to that night whenever I stop to take stock of all that has happened in the last two years, all that has been won and lost. In Baghdad this winter, finishing my last month in Iraq for a while, I can't help but be most aware of the losses - how little of America's painful encounter with Iraq has matched the expectations from that heady Christmas in the desert, how little remains of the hope we had for that country and it had of us.

Memory is marked less by the public calendar - the day the Saddam statue fell, say, or the official return to sovereignty - than by a more private timeline, the moments of insight and elation and despair.

This is not a story about policy, about what went right and what went wrong. This is a story about what it feels like to watch a nation and a people in turmoil. It is written in moments no weightier than a wisp of conversation or an expression on a face.

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http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/world/10737882.htm



Interesting article.

[enough]

1. A very interesting picture, with a long time-frame, beginning with early

optimism, descending into chaos and madness, told with a lot of human detail.

[GetTheRightVote]

2. Sad, oh so sad, I am so angry over it all

:kick:

[bermudat]

3. I hope people of Tennessee read this article.

It doesn't mention the politics of the Iraq war (bush, Rumsfeld, or Dr. Rice). It talks of the reality of the Iraq war. It will end as the Vietnam war ended, with Americans leaving with their tails between their legs.

[yellowcanine]

4. "The sounds of freedom" - this crap that really pisses me off. Look.

When an Iraqi reporter once asked a U.S. military spokesman if helicopter gunships need to fly so low over residential neighborhoods at night, the American told the roomful of journalists that sleepless Iraqi children should take heart - those noises "are simply the sounds of freedom."