Even in Poland,
one of America’s staunchest supporters during the Iraq War, controversy rages
as to the wisdom and justifications for the conflict. In this article from
Poland’s GazetaWyborcza, columnist
MariuszZawadzki defends
himself against withering criticism about his recent book The New Iraq. Zawadzki asserts to critics
that while U.S. leaders may have been fools for sending them, U.S. troops made a
sincere and gargantuan effort to do what they were told: ‘civilize’ Iraq.
On the ninth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of their country, supporters of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr chant anti-Iraq government slogans demanding improved living conditions, in Basra on Mar. 19.
Stefan Zgliczyński is an earnest
and slightly-perverse left-wing journalist who doesn’t like the Yankees. He
wrote a book called The Shame of Iraq,
in which he methodically lays bare the last hundred years of American
imperialism. In theory, he and I should be playing on the same team, at least in
terms of comments made in my own columns. My dear Internauts,
I cite one of your comments from memory: "Zawadzki
is again trying to smear America! Zawadzki, what
torture it must be for you in the United States! If you don't like it, get out.
No one is compelling you to live in Washington!"
It turns out that even excellent references like these fall short when it comes to getting oneself invited to the anti-American cocktail party. I happened to have recently
written a book [Brave
New Iraq] about the American occupation that Mr. Zgliczyński
pretty much bludgeoned in the pages of Przekrój.
According to the Stefan, "Zawadzki discusses
the bloodiest military intervention of recent years in a tone reminiscent of
Joseph Heller's Catch 22, redolent of absurdity
and the grotesque."
I confess: Absurd and grotesque, I always thought, are
the key words for describing the idiotic war in Iraq. In a nutshell, the story
can be told as follows: on September 11, 2001, the Americans, attacked by Arab
terrorists, were shattered psychologically, and as a consequence deluded
themselves into thinking that they had to civilize the Middle East to prevent such
an attack from ever being repeated.
For that reason, they invaded an Iraq innocent of the 9-11
aggression - the presence of oil there was a nice bonus - and began to
introduce Western values and the Western agenda. They thought it was going to
be easy. But they were wrong. Resistance to the operation was just too great. The
invaders sank $1 trillion into the Iraqi desert and eventually left. In this
failed attempt at social engineering, 4,500 Americans and something in the
neighborhood of 100,000 natives lost their lives.
Mr. Zgliczyński sees things
differently. In his view, Americans are cold-blooded bastards who are liable to
kill a dozen Arabs just for a barrel of oil. That is why they attacked Iraq.
According to Stefan, that was their main reason, the others being simply Bush Administration
propaganda.
In the world Mr. Zgliczyński inhabits,
good and evil are locked in an eternal struggle, and
the Yankees represent the forces of evil. In the real world, the criteria for
good and evil have lost much of their relevance and instead, people are divided
into the wise and the stupid. The Americans are no different than the rest of
us, caring more for their own interests than those of others. But they have a
powerful war machine, so that their follies are often more costly and tragic.
Those two worlds, of course, will never meet. And one might
have concluded the discussion there, if it weren’t for other, more weighty
accusations. Stefan doesn’t hesitate to bring out his heavy artillery: "Zawadzki likes Americans." Alas, I have to confess,
there is something to this.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Over the
course of my journalistic career, I have been detained and interrogated by Hezbullah
militants in Lebanon (they suspected me of spying for Israel), by Chinese security
forces (for planning a one-man demonstration against Beijing bicycle riders during
the Olympic Games), as well as by Israeli, Egyptian and Iraqi police. I have
been kicked out of Israel for being a “threat to national security." I cannot
obtain a visa to Iran because, as stated in the letter I received from the
Iranian Embassy in Warsaw, I have a “black heart full of vengeance and hate."
In Iraq, Shiite militants tried to kidnap me for ransom,
while Sunni militants attempted to blow me up. At dawn one day, Polish Special
Forces searched my flat near Warsaw, when I allowed a friend - an Iranian
university professor - use it for two weeks. Caught in his pajamas during the
search, the Iranian scientist was surprised not to hear a word of explanation.
That is why the American soldiers who received me in
occupied Iraq as a friend, fulfilled all of my journalistic whims, transported
me in their helicopters around the country, fed me, betrayed operational
secrets to me, and to top it all off, didn’t censor me at all, never suggested anything
to me, never asked me what I was writing about them (and it so happens that at
times, I was denouncing them), seemed to me to be, when compared to uniformed
and non-uniformed forces of all the other countries - relatively nice.
And this sense of the Americans was only reinforced the more
closely I watched them expend such energy and effort, risking their lives to accomplish
the undoable and absurd task that they were given (they really tried, Mr. Zgliczynski. It was not just propaganda!)
As I have described, the Americans are not as a rule “bloody
bastards.” They are merely stooges - or the victims of the stupidity of their
leaders. For this, my reviewer concludes that I was cheerleading for them in
Iraq. “Catch 22 conveys a decidedly anti-war
message, while Zawadzki's book only expresses a sense
of regret that the American project has failed," concludes my critic.
And this is where the perversion comes in: Mr. Zgliczyński is grotesque, criticizing someone else for
writing being grotesque.
