Saturday, February 9, 2013

"Turtles Can Fly"

     This is the title of the first film that came out of Iraq after the execution of Saddam Hussein on December 30, 2006.  It was funded jointly by Iran and Iraq, and should be required viewing for all Americans.  It has the feel of a historical documentary, except that the subject matter is emptiness--and how does one track such a thing historically?
     Emptiness is a horrible thing, we find out.  Existentialism isn't an abstract concept in this film's universe, where vast, devastated, post-human space is strewn, occasionally, with the ugly, suggestive junk of war, and makeshift tents, and children who are missing hands, arms or legs scramble to survive--but can only do so, like nettles or sawgrass, if they can get by without, love, nutrition, respect, community or protection. 
     Children are the subject matter of the film, since they--and a few elders, who are confused and displaced, and rely on the children for guidance--happen to be survivors of the neverending war.  Time and space don't figure into this world, since there aren't families, villages, buildings, culture, commerce or social networks to organize them.  Therefore, the overriding feeling of the film is one of barren existence.  Whatever movement there is, it happens without apparent purpose or governable direction.
     Watching the film was an exercise in endurance.  I felt as though I were looking at chunks of matter lost in the enormity of the cold, dark space that opened up after the Big Bang, and I wondered how inanimate rock ever could have given birth to human life.  However that happened, so might the wreckage we call Iraq some day be restored to something akin to civilized life.
     What have we done, all of us, to allow this to happen--since we're all in this together?
     Of all the atrocities against humanity committed by Hussein, the one for which he is best known, and the one which led to his conviction by an international tribunal, was the gratuitous slaughter of 148 Shi'ites, in 1982, in the town of Dujail, as punishment for an assassination attempt against him.  The film concludes with the news that Hussein is dead, from which fact these children--orphaned,  aimless, rowdy as the children in Lord of the Flies, and the survivors of unthinkable cruelty--are supposed to derive a measure of hope.
      Hussein and "the Americans" serve as a vague, spiritual backdrop for the film's characters, who assign to each the powers of evil and good in a battle the unpredictable outcome of which will determine something--it isn't clear what.
     Most of the children are so young they haven't experienced anything that existed before low-flying warplanes, bombings, state-sanctioned rape, smoking villages, their parents being murdered, and an overwhelming sense of foreboding.  Without religious faith (no one prays to Allah, in this film) "Americans" become, oddly, a symbol for being saved.  The children spend their days collecting and sometimes being killed by land mines, which they can sell for goods and money.  There are thousands of these weapons buried in the sand for miles around, and many were put in place by Americans.
     "Americans"--isn't that us?  We are the mythic hope for these Iraqis.
     What hope, really, do we represent?    

17 comments:

  1. Loved your post until you mentioned that most landmines in Iraq were placed by Americans. Other than mines placed (and later removed) by Americans on the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border in 1991, the US has not used land mines in Iraq or sold land mines to the new government. Iraq placed 25 million Soviet-era mines on the Iranian-Iraqi border and Hussein used mines to contain Iraqi minorities throughout the country. Currently, there are discussions about the use of American-made self-destructing mines (mines that become inert after a programmed period of time) to protect specific sites, but approval is unlikely.

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    1. I believe this "information" about American land mines placed or not placed in Iraq about as much as I believe anything the government "reports." In any case, the children who dig up these mines and sell them say they know which ones are "American" and aver that they get the most money for American land mines. This was after 1991. But, hey, it's just a movie, right?

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    2. I changed "most" to "many," although I don't know which, if either, is correct. Who, really, knows? But I trust you, Anonymous.

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  2. Also, in 2004, Bush established military policy that the US would only use self-destructing mines.

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    1. Maybe this is true. How thoughtful of Bush. Why don't we let the government put some of these (safe?) self-destructing mines in our own back yards, and let our children play with them, too?

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  3. I agree with anonymous this is a good post. It sounds to me as though it would be good if more Americans saw this movie. After reading Dr. Colasante's moving description of the film, I am kind of daunted by the prospect. But it might help reduce our appetite for war.

    I don't know about US policy on land mines in Iraq. The anonymous writer above could well be correct. But to me, this is a pointless quibble.

    According to one estimate 111,151 to 121,464 civilians have died from violence since the US invasion http://www.iraqbodycount.org. That's a lot of people. Americans only seem to care about US deaths when we invade places. Our news media ignore the deaths of black and brown people.

    True, some of these deaths were due to Iraqi insurgents, some deaths were 'bad people' who killed lots of civilians themselves. But lots of these deaths are innocent women, children, and men caught in the crossfire. Our crossfire. It makes me ashamed to be an American.

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  4. I wasn't trying to make sense of our Iraqi policy which has been a train wreck. We destroyed every cultural institution that mattered and invited anarchy, giving crazies an equal opportunity to seize power. All we had to do was get tough with Turkey and Iraq and join with the UN in establishing a Kurdish state. We should have toppled Sadam and put his generals on trial. Then we should have handpicked popular colonels and police chiefs that agreed to play by the new rules. A paycheck and a Mercedes and these guys would have done cartwheels to keep their power and status. In the case of the military, there weren't nutty religious fanatics ready to ally themselves with Al Queda. These guys just wanted to be able to take their kids to Disney once a year and afford a ten year old Mercedes. We forgot how we rebuilt Japan and Germany - we picked the winners.

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  5. Luring new rulers into doing what we think is right for their country by using Disney, Mercedes cars and money invites them to become just like us: amoral capitalists. There is almost nothing good about Al Quaeda, I suppose. But it's not fair to denounce the fundamental wish to preserve a cultural and spiritual tradition, over and against the tremendous seduction of Western values. True, we helped to rebuild Japan--but a lot of Japan was lost in the process. Let's face it, we destroy almost everything we touch--"rebuilding" any country is simply another version of Manifest Destiny. Look what happened to the American Indians. Do we really want a homogenized world?

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  6. I was not suggesting that we should have courted and promoted Western values. We didn't have to, Iraq was one of the most educated and progressive countries in the Middle East. I wouldn't just dismiss Western values as simply an embrace of capitalism, it is also an embrace of human and civil rights. I was trying to make the point that large segments of the military and national police had no great love of Saddam Hussein and were more likely to embrace civil and political reform than the collection of crazies that were emboldened by the power vacuum. No, I wasn't suggesting that we should have promoted Western values. I was suggesting that courting those with power, influence, and status that happened to embrace some Western values was a more constructive course than destroying every institution in Iraq.

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  7. You make some excellent points, and I agree completely. It's important to limit the power of people who are unable or unwilling to negotiate. Unfortunately, the USA doesn't have a great track record in this regard, therefore we may not have been trusted by the Iraqi people. But Al Quaeda is worse--look what's going on in Mali. Why are human and civil rights such unwelcome concepts, in the history of the human race? We must examine our own history of slavery, racism,class divisions--even the current brouhaha over border control--to begin to understand the psychology of power.

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  8. It is interesting that a large segment of the world missed the Age of Enlightenment and its embrace of democracy, as well as civil and human rights. Without Constitutional guarantees much like ours, there is nothing special about democracy and we shouldn't be imposing it on countries that fail to embrace the prerequisites. The concept of Western Exceptionalism can't be ignored, there is something different about the West. As broken as our domestic and foreign policy is, at least there is general agreement about the rights of citizens, women, and minorities (if not in practice, in theory). I'm not sure that anyone can piece together a Middle East policy that makes sense. While I'm a paleo-conservative (holding isolationist views championed by Republicans early in the last century), we could have made a difference in the Middle East in the 70's and 80's when we had the chance.

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  9. I completely agree, which was one of my reasons for writing the post on Pakistan. But, of course, hindsight is everything. What can we do now, in the MIddle East, in your paleo-conservative view? We don't have the option of doing nothing.

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  10. The Cold War is over and we have the ability to be energy independent without threatening our ecology or economy. Consequently, engaging in commerce or supporting countries militarily has no absolute imperative. Militarily, there is some merit in protecting borders and intervening to prevent atrocities. We need to be intellectually honest about the practice of Islam in the Middle East, it isn't just another Abrahamic faith. I've read the Koran and a great deal of Hadith. These folks take their Iron Age myths pretty seriously. Some, more than others. Of all the issues in the Middle East, we need to stay out of the Palestinian issue. The Palestinians did everything possible to destroy Jordan and Lebanon, can we expect them to deal fairly with the Israelis. When the Israelis conceded to a long list of demands, they were met with increased acts of terror and violence. If you are a religious or ethnic minority, or a woman, there is no safer place to be than the democratic state of Israel. Let them deal with the Palestinians. As far as the rest of the Middle East, lets reward good behavior and punish (economically) bad behavior. What should the U.S. do now? Very little, militarily.

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  11. Then, I presume, you oppose the drone attacks? Where is the international tribunal sanctioning such activity?

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  12. Twenty questions, in one. Drone attacks usually are the result of a sizable volume of intelligence regarding the targets. Good intelligence is good. Drones provide a degree of precision that attempts to minimize civilian casualties, that's good as well. Drones reduce the risk of losing an airman or dealing with the fallout if an airman is captured. As far as a weapon system, I like drones. It's the attacks that raise questions. If Congress voted on the size and scope of the war, we'd be in much better shape. A very vague war on terror is not the tasking any warrior wants or can be expected to execute with any effectiveness. Stick to the Constitution and declare wars, however small. As far as international bodies such as the UN, I'm not ready to place any faith in that mob. Let's not forget that the UN gave "W" a green light to resume hostilities against Iraq when he should have been making his case to Congress and the American people. A tough question, but I guess I prefer drone attacks as they might be a more appropriate tool against terrorist leadership than invading a country. If an attack is legal domestically and is justifiable internationally, I'm comfortable with letting our military choose the proper tools. If a B-52 could deliver the surgical attack of a drone, our government should just as easily be able to defend the use of that weapon. I do not want our leaders thinking that drones violate the sovereignty of nations any less than an aircraft, tank, or missile. In other words, no strong feelings about drones, lots of strong feelings about our military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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  13. The use of drones seems like cheating, like stabbing someone in the back. It seems safe to us, because we're not being targeted...yet. You can justify killing in a hundred and one ways, but it is still wrong. Also, we're setting an example for the world, especially because we are acting as though no one's opinion matters but ours. I don't care how much military and strategic "intelligence" is behind drone attacks, because I don't trust the people making the decisions to kill any more than I trust the people making decisions to raid and investigate individuals like me. However wonderful we may be in the arena of civil liberties and humanitarianism (are you sure that's not just a word we use to make ourselves feel good) we are retarded when it comes to making decisions that involve ethics. In fact, I'm not sure anyone in a decision-making role understands that term. It's all about what's most expedient in the moment. There are long-term consequences to using drones. This is what we need to consider.

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  14. The decision to engage in war or take a life should not to be taken lightly. Our success rate rivals Mormon missionaries spreading their mission, door to door.

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