Baghdad High

So, when Jay left for Iraq I decided to invest in HBO, and it was a great choice! I thought HBO, which carries quality programming would be a great alternative to my greatest weakness–reality tv. Today, I watched Baghdad High, a documentary on HBO that gives high-schoolers from Baghdad video cameras to document their daily lives. This presentation was so sad. It shows the horror these students face during their senior year in high school. In addition to having to figure out their next steps in life, they’re engrossed in the middle of a war they can’t comprehend. This documentary shows the pain these young men feel as one of their friends moves to another country in the middle of the school year to escape the violence. Another boy’s family faces financial hardship because of the terrible economic situation in the country. The third student featured struggles to keep his grades up as he tries to cope with not knowing where his father is alive or dead.

After watching this documentary, I’m even more opposed to our involvement in this war. This program showed regular adolescents who are caught in the middle of an unjust war. It was clear that all of the families depicted in this film hated Saddam Hussein. They were excited that he was killed in an inhumane way and many gave testimonies about how they were personally affected by Saddam’s evil ways. Now that Saddam is gone, they’re struggling to stay alive. One of the kids visited one of friends who had been injured by a roadside bomb. It was sad to see this child in a terrible condition. They also showed a clip from one of the orphanages in Baghdad. It was heart-wrenching to see children who looked hungry and unkept. These were all children who lost their parents because of the death from the war. It’s a very sad situation. It seems very much like a scene described in the book, Charlie Wilson’s War. The children who were Freedom Fighters in Afghanistan during the U.S-led covert operation against Russia. Those children felt mistreated by their situation and hated America for the violence they brought to their country. One of those children was Osama Bin Laden and he we know how his story goes. I don’t want to see another Osama Bin Laden emerge from the children of Iraq and Afghanistan, and occupation is not the answer to helping them rebuild their lives. I wish there were a way to restore goodwill. 

Make no mistake that I support and respect my husband and his comrades in the efforts for the war. I don’t, however, appreciate how the Bush Administration has been careless about developing an exit strategy and restoring goodwill within the country. One of the most notable quotes by Congressmen Wilson about the covert operation in Afghanistan was…”Those things happened and they were glorious, and then we fucked up the end game.” I fear that’s where we’re headed now in year 5 of this war. There’s no clear mission. In the beginning, there was the mission of finding Osama Bin Laden and other members of Al Quada and bringing down Saddam and his administration. Osama Bin Laden is hiding somewhere (some believe in Pakistan) and Saddam and his evil sons are dead. Where do we go from here? The obvious answer is to rebuild the country, but it makes no sense to rebuild when you destroy the infrastructure you just built the week before. We have been working to deter the insurgency, but it would be solved if they didn’t have a target.

This is a moment of honesty for me and I hope everyone will take this post as it is. These are thoughts swirling in my mind as I miss Jay and watch dramatic scenes of kids who have done no wrong. I do think the children are the ones who have been forgotten about in this mess.