I suppose what I'm gonna say next is going to upset some people. But before you all begin your posse's logistical search for the rope with which to hang Dada, I pray you'll just give me a fair listen before you kick my horse out from under me. First a little history on what's prompted me to blog this, pissing off some of you who will read it.
In recent days, I've been hearing hints of the same story over and over in the background noise of the mainstream media which often flows through the house like uncontainable flood waters and mud from a west coast rain swollen creek. But yesterday, after another story about an Iraqi infant, I finally paused to listen. The item was about some heroic measures being taken on her behalf.
Her name is Noor, and her's is an incredible story of the effort being expended by a number of groups to save her life. Born with spina bifida, Noor's outlook was grim. Noor's family was told she would not live more than 45 days. Amazingly, she had surpassed that grim estimate by a couple of months when she was discovered by the Georgia National Guard. They had come into Noor's Baghdad home in a house to house search operation.
Instead of finding insurgents, the Guard found baby Noor, along with her grandmother and her nine children. Upon seeing her, the Army began a Herculean international effort to save Noor. She was examined by a unit doctor, charities back home were contacted, a surgeon in Atlanta offered to operate on Noor, Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss intervened to get visas approved overnight for her and her family to travel, American Airlines agreed to fly them from Kuwait to States no charge, and Mariott Hotel chain agreed to put them up free. It's a story that's apparently made news around the world.
(This is, sincerely, all pretty heart warming stuff. But here comes the part that may piss some of you off. And if it does, it'll probably be because you are for this freakin' war I suppose. And if I do upset some of you, I say, "Too bad!" because it divulges some very gaping holes in your smug nationalism.)
Noor's story is getting the wonderful coverage it deserves, but Dada wonders why? Perhaps it's just the kind of "feel-good" news we, as Americans, need to be hearing. Maybe it serves as balm for our psyches so incinerated by the atrocities we have reaped on a nation of mostly innocent people. Maybe it saves us from choking on the tens of thousands of Iraqis caught up in the middle of the havoc being rained down upon them from American taxpayer bought-and-paid-for bullets and bombs.
Why, just yesterday several members of an unsuspecting Iraqi family in Bajii were killed by an indiscrimminate bomb dropped on their heads. As Reuters reported, our military "made no mention of casualties and said Iraqi police had handled the scene after the attack." Two of the dead were children.
How neat and expedient that is. A bomb dropped from a plane on a routine run saves American troop's lives on the ground. But the aftermath of the collateral damage is turned over to the local police. It's out of our hands. How tidy.
Sadly, this slaughter is not uncommon. It has been going on since the war began in the spring of 2003 when Robert Fisk of the UK's "The Independent" described the mortuary of dead farmers, women and children in the aftermath of the U.S. bombing of Hilla as "a butcher's shop of chopped-up corpses".
Imagine a SWAT team lobbing a hand grenade ito your neighbor's house to remove it's abusive father on a holiday binge. Great way to end a touchy situation, even if it does take out the wife and kids. Such is the nature of the U.S.'s approach to war. It's the most expeditious way to handle bad situations, i.e., bombs dropped from a couple thousand feet in an air war America's going to rely on more and more as our troops on the ground become fewer and fewer.
I have a dear friend with whom I went to college. Over the holidays, we touched on the war in one of our semi-annual phone calls. Expressing my anger at our actions, my friend chided me saying, "We need to finish the job we've started."
Jesus Christ, that's impossible for me to grasp. Having discovered and destroyed all of Iraq's WMD's (none!), and captured that evil Saddam for his part in 9/11 (none!), we now must stay to restore order to the chaos we've created. A chaos resulting from our mere presence in Iraq.
So let us continue to work toward a solution for Iraq's problems, a large part of which seems to be bombing the shit outta 'em. And killing a lot of innocents in the process. Many of whom are children.
Enter baby Noor. What a wonderful reminder of the tremendous humanitarian outpouring we are capable of. As we hear of her ongoing tribulations, will she bolster our ongoing amnesia, counter-act the continuing attrocities done in our names, clear our collective conscience? Dada doubts it. But her story sure makes us feel good, doesn't it?
As platoon medic Justin Donelly, the first medic to assess Noor upon her discovery by his fellow National Guardsmen said, "It's really something to see somebody taking a step outsidse their own personal cultural box to, you know, get help and befriend this...." (voice trailing off)
Thank you baby Noor. Thanks for the distraction, the mental balm, our clearer collective conscience.
But enough of the feel-good. Time to reload and get back to work! We have a job to finish.
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