|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
January 30-February 5, 2003 slant Back From IraqOne student’s trip to the object of Bush’s ire. I had the aisle seat and he, the window. I was a 20-year-old, mainstream white American. He was a baby-faced 16-year-old Iraqi. We were both on a plane to Baghdad earlier this month. Ragib was going to a home plagued by uncertainties and I would just be visiting. Fifteen minutes into the flight, Ragib could no longer keep his questions inside. "Amer-i-can?" he inquired. "Yes," I said, and simultaneously made a hesitant gesture toward him. "Iraqi," he responded. There was an awkward moment of mutual understanding of the situation. I couldn't help but think that most Americans who have flown over Baghdad in recent times have had a far different mission than my own. Ragib was no doubt acutely aware of this as well. And yet, as I fumbled for something else to say, Ragib simply extended his hand and greeted me. I wasn't the only American on the plane. In fact, I was traveling to Iraq with a group of 32 U.S. academics -- a group comprised almost entirely of faculty from some of America's most well-known universities. As an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, I was the youngest person in the delegation by six years. We were an independent group, trying to make sense of the crisis we now face. Ideologically, we were hardly uniform. Most delegates were pragmatists who would support a just war, while a minority of others were peaceniks, unwilling to endorse a war under any conditions. The group, billed as U.S. Academics Against the War, represented more than 30,000 American faculty, staff and students who signed an online petition against both the war with Iraq and the Bush administration's stated policy of pre-emption. The primary purpose of the trip was to take part in an exchange of dialogue with Iraqi students and faculty during a three-day conference at Baghdad University. Personally, I was going to Iraq because I believe that too often, the American media reduces Iraq to a single, cruel face -- that of Saddam Hussein. Iraq has a population of more than 24 million people and I needed to see, firsthand, that they have hopes and anxieties similar to my own. I found evidence of this again and again during the course of my trip. Our first morning, for instance, one of our translators was late because she was helping her son do some last-minute studying for a math test. Iraqis, at a most basic level, want to provide for their families and watch their children grow up healthy. Unfortunately, over the last dozen years, our policy toward Iraq has provided a barrier to these simple rights. The imposition of the most comprehensive embargo in history and significant bombing campaigns in 1991, 1993, 1996, 1998 and 2001 have collectively done nothing but harm the Iraqi civilian population. Therefore, their feelings for the Hussein regime aside, the Iraqis don't trust the U.S. to do the right thing. As one Iraqi student told me, "After all that you've put us through, if you think that you're going to be treated as liberators when you march on Baghdad with tanks and troops, you're kidding yourselves." Through one-on-one conversations with the Iraqi students, countless tragic stories came to light. One student who I came to know particularly well was a 24-year-old computer programming Ph.D. candidate named Nihal. Nihal had lived in Golden, Colo., from age 2 to 12. Her parents, like many Iraqi academics, were doing their post-graduate work in the U.S. Taking their cues from a demonizing media, Nihal's classmates relentlessly made fun of her nationality in the months leading up to the first Gulf War. After the family's request for a visa renewal was rejected, they were forced to return to an unstable Iraq. On Jan. 17, 1991, Nihal, not yet a teenager, was left paralyzed with fear for more than 12 hours as the first wave of coalition bombing blanketed Baghdad. She recalled a sense of total disbelief and betrayal. She hadn't really believed America would bomb Iraq. America was the only home she had ever really known. Some of her best friends had fathers in the U.S. Air Force. "If only they knew that I was down there," she recalled, "they'd have felt terrible. You just go from one day to the next. You wonder when the next bomb will drop and who it will fall on, because you have family all over." Before traveling to Baghdad, I felt I had a relatively strong grasp of the political and historical arguments against another war with Iraq. Yet it is clear that a significant line of reasoning also lies in the faces and stories of Ragib and Nihal. We will be bombing sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers, and in setting aside our nationalism, our rationality will suggest that the suffering of an Iraqi looks every bit as heartbreaking as the suffering of an American. Spencer Witte is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper executive editor, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., Pa., 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net. 
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
| ||||||||||||||||||
