You’ve been projecting your shit at the world
Self-hatred tarted up as payback time
You can self-destruct—that’s your right
But keep it to yourself if you don’t mind
Tell the universe where you’ve been
With your bloodstained shoes and your dunce’s grin
Got to notify the next of kin
Tell the universe where you’ve been
“TELL THE UNIVERSE,” 2003
To listen to a sample of this song visit b.hc.com/s/99.
I wrote those words one month after the invasion and about two weeks after the staged photo op of “Iraqis” toppling a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. (Later, on December 30, 2006, at the Iraqi-American military base Camp Justice, during the beginning of Eid ul-Adha, the Muslim holiday commemorating the day that Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son, the statue’s model would hang.) It was the other side of the “Put It in Your Heart” coin. The absence of real information about what was happening in Iraq, except for the reports of “embedded” journalists, set me to thinking about going there. I hadn’t taken the notion very far until I happened to have a night off during a tour in the fall of 2003. I was having dinner with my friend Linda Panetta, the Philadelphia human rights activist and photojournalist. Partway through the meal, the reason for her apparent state of suppressed excitement revealed itself.
“We’re going to Baghdad,” she said. “Want to come?”
An invitation like this from Linda was very real. She’s a purposeful and adventuresome woman who has put her life and well-being on the line in world hot spots to grab images and gather information, for print and public presentations, to raise awareness about the suffering of the world’s poor. I knew Linda as a longtime opponent of the School of the Americas, now operating as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, the military training centre at Fort Benning, Georgia, that conducts classes for interested parties in the Western Hemisphere in how to disrupt societies, torture dissidents, and orchestrate coups, among other geopolitical fields of study.
Linda garnered a small amount of fame in early 2009, and a death threat that brought the FBI into the picture, when the right-wing blogosphere claimed that she was the daughter of President-elect Obama’s proposed CIA chief, Leon Panetta. (She is not.) The blogs showed a picture of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez with his arm around her, standing next to Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. This much was true, but nothing else was. One blog has yet to take down a photo and story that says, “[W]e think senators should ask the nominee to be the next CIA chief about his daughter’s support for sworn enemies of the United States.” Accuracy in media indeed.
Linda was working with a friend, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, a founding president of PAX Christi USA, who was planning the trip to Baghdad to see how his friends and contacts were faring during the war. Tom had been arrested several times for civil disobedience, including as a protester against the Iraq war—the only U.S. Roman Catholic bishop to do so. Previous peace missions had taken him to Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Hiroshima, Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia. Prior to the journey we would take together in 2004, Tom had visited Iraq seven times from 1990 to 2003 in conjunction with Voices in the Wilderness, an activist group that, among other actions, ferried crucial medical and food supplies to Iraq in defiance of the embargo.
Rounding out our little gang of four was Johanna Berrigan (no relation to the famous activist brothers, Catholic priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan), a cofounder of Philadelphia’s Catholic Worker Free Clinic and founder of the House of Grace Catholic Worker House, which assists Philadelphia’s large homeless population. By 2003 Johanna had been to Iraq four times with Voices in the Wilderness.
Getting into Iraq was surprisingly easy, as border security in early 2004 was nonexistent. Thanks to Tom’s church connections, we were able to board a U.N. flight from Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad. We could have gone by car, but that would have been foolish. Not only was there no security at the borders, but there was no security anywhere in the country. Besides the chaos of the war itself, banditry was rife along the five-hundred-mile desert highway.
The flight in was adventure enough. The plane took off from Amman’s Civil Airport, as expected, then flew east-northeast toward the Iraqi capital, but when it came time to land, the pilots, to avoid ground fire, flipped the twin-engine Beechcraft on its side and into a quickly descending corkscrew spiral—like those motorcycle daredevils careening inside the tightly circular walls of tiny steel tanks I saw on the midway as a kid. We kept spinning until we’d almost touched down, and the plane flattened out for landing. Looking out the window, straight at the turning face of the twilit landscape, I watched what at first looked like an oval racetrack expand into the main runway.
Homeless families demonstrate in front of the Green Zone, while their children make their own playground, Baghdad 2004.
photo credit: LINDA PANETTA, OPTICAL REALITIES PHOTOGRAPHY
Everything at the airport was shaded brown, threaded by a line of olive-drab Black Hawk helicopters and a few grey C-130 cargo planes. Prior to the war, this had been Saddam Hussein International Airport. The Americans had put up a shiny new sign: Baghdad International Airport. Open for business, but eerily quiet. The only people in the terminal were the dozen or so passengers on our flight, a few uniformed immigration officers, and a number of Asian-looking guards who turned out to be Gurkhas, members of the elite Nepalese military caste. The Gurkhas wore khaki overalls and carried kukris (the traditional Nepali curved knife) and MP5 submachine guns. Their ball caps read “SECURITY” on the front and, in smaller lettering on the back, “Custer Battles,” a Rhode Island–registered private security firm that distinguished itself by becoming the first American contractor in Iraq to be sued by the U.S. government for fraud under the False Claims Act. (In 2012 the U.S. Justice Department also sued KBR for submitting false claims. You’d think that for $82 billion, a company could get it right.)
The most dangerous journey of our week in Iraq was the drive from the airport into Baghdad, as the road was a virtual free-fire zone. In spite of the threat of ambush, improvised explosive devices, and panicked “friendly” fire, traffic was heavy and, in the absence of functioning stoplights, chaotic. There was the expected conspicuous military presence. Before we had even left the airport parking lot, a Marine in full battle kit spotted Linda’s cameras and called out, without apparent humour, “Yo! You a photographer? Take my picture. Make me a star!”
Tom had arranged for a couple he knew from the American Friends Service Committee, based in Baghdad, to help organize meetings and get us around. Rick and Mary picked us up and delivered us safely into town, where we settled into a small hotel well away from the official Green Zone. (The Green Zone is the heavily fortified four-square-mile section of central Baghdad that primarily houses government buildings, including the headquarters of the Iraqi Governing Council.) Since we lacked official status, our best defense against attack was to keep a very low profile. I never felt safe in Baghdad, though I was never aware of a direct physical threat. We hit the country during a relative lull in the fighting, but the mission never really was “accomplished,” despite Bush’s fatuous proclamation aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, anchored off the California coast, on May 1, 2003. The proud banner behind Bush momentarily obscured an asymmetrical war that continues to rage right up to the present moment.
Before the invasion Baghdad was apparently a very livable city, a thriving hub of culture and commerce. It was functional and modern, with palm trees giving it a semitropical feel and the older buildings displaying a distinctive Middle Eastern style. It was a secular city in a conservative Arab world, known as a party town, where tourists from the region could openly dance in nightclubs without worrying about religious backlash.
There were no tourists when we arrived. Evidence of bombing was everywhere. Daylight shone through
modern office towers pierced by cruise missiles. Whole city blocks consisted only of piles of rubble. Much of Baghdad was in ruins, society completely upended. People were mired in mourning, poverty, and constant fear. Just outside the downtown core we visited a squatter camp. Five hundred families, some two thousand people, were living in the remains of a bombed-out former police training centre. They appeared to be mostly middle class, part of a new community of at least fifty thousand who had lost their homes. Many had also lost their jobs. There was a rumour of reconstruction going on, plus other forms of employment, but anyone who had been a member of Saddam’s Baath Party (as were most of those who had had jobs) couldn’t get hired. So in 2004 labour was being imported from outside Iraq, further feeding Iraqis’ indignation and rage.
The squatters seemed organized. Their former comfortable status was evident from their clothing, but also from the presence of the occasional fine (and now useless) floor lamp or expensive sofa, placed for privacy in the corners of the shattered concrete rooms. Two million people had managed to flee to neighbouring countries, but these folks either had nowhere to go or had no means to get anywhere.
The Iraqi Governing Council, which was what passed for a government, had decided that the Baghdad police should get their building back. Under threat of forced expulsion from their only shelter, the families were preparing to resist. All the men were armed. The hulking ruin was full of AKs. In the hope of finding a way to avoid what would surely be a bloodbath, the squatters organized a demonstration at the gates of the Green Zone, asking the Provisional Authority to intervene so they could remain in relative safety in the only home they had. We went along.
At an intersection, in front of a steel gate in a wall twelve feet high, a couple of hundred people gathered. They chanted and waved placards in Arabic. About twenty minutes after we got there, the gate opened wide enough to permit four U.S. soldiers to pass through. Three of them spread out around the entrance. The fourth, clearly in charge, strode up to a man in the centre of the front row of demonstrators. Standing quite close to the man, he said in a loud voice, “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to clear the road.” The man shrugged and turned toward those near him as if to say, “What does he want?” When he didn’t get the response he wanted, the sergeant brandished his rifle and said again, more loudly, “Sir! I’m going to have to ask you to CLEAR THE ROAD!” Like almost all U.S. troops, he wore sunglasses. Iraqis generally don’t wear sunglasses. They think it rude to hide your eyes. They want to see who they’re dealing with.
For a few minutes it seemed as though something really bad might happen. The protesters weren’t moving. The soldiers were getting tense and looking around aggressively. Then the Iraqis found somebody in the crowd who spoke English and could translate. As soon as they understood what was being asked of them, the protesters, without objection, relocated themselves onto the verges of the road, leaving it clear. It took awhile. The Americans moved about, trying to hustle people along. They started hassling our two Iraqi drivers, who were trying to stay close to us. As the sergeant approached the drivers, I tapped him on the shoulder. He whirled to face me, then relaxed when he saw a non-Arab. I explained what we were doing, and that those men were working for us. He said, “Okay, no problem, but get those cars out of there right away.” I assured him we would. Linda was deep in the crowd, camera to her face. “Sorry to tear you away,” I said, “but we have to go. Now.”
Two trillion dollars for the war, but no one at the front speaks Arabic?
The faintly positive outcome of all this was that the squatters were given a month’s reprieve. They had time to find other accommodations. Only there were no other accommodations, and even if there had been, there was no way to get anywhere else. For a while, back home, I scanned the news for stories of a firefight in a Baghdad homeless encampment but, seeing none, I assumed they had secured some other solution.
Everybody in Baghdad seemed to be armed. The nicer neighbourhoods were patrolled by local residents or hired security men toting automatic weapons. We met women whose husbands, leaving home to seek work or food or water, had been shot by hypertensive U.S. soldiers. Carjackings and kidnappings were routine. Bombs obliterated wedding parties, then more bombs decimated survivors as they mourned at funerals. We learned of one family whose five children had been kidnapped the week before our arrival, kids being more lucrative ransom targets than adults.
Iraqis were clear about their unfortunate position as impediments to an easy resource grab. They were living with uncertainty, and the possibility of bloodshed, every minute of the day. Violence—past, present, and imminent—was palpable. We heard gunfire all the time. Some of the fusillades, though, were celebratory. One evening in the dining room of our hotel, which was also the bar, the dozen or so non-Shiite patrons, ourselves included, were lounging about eating, drinking, and talking when we were startled by the sudden bap-bap-bap of automatic weapons right outside the window. Everyone hit the deck. In Baghdad the drapes are always closed in case of flying glass, so we couldn’t see what was going on. A woman crawled over to the curtain and peeked out through a crack. “It’s okay,” she called out. “It’s just a wedding!”
The Baghdad sky was smudged with diesel exhaust. Everyone who could find and afford a generator had one running in front of their house, to provide heat and light and refrigeration. Deliveries of water and electricity were sporadic, if they occurred at all. With only occasional electricity, there was no way to effectively pump sewage, so it pooled untreated in the streets, along with the rubble and the uncollected trash. And here, at the end of the cycle, were the children, playing in it. While mountains of money were being shoveled into the country, newly “liberated” Iraqis scrambled on dangerous streets for basic necessities such as food and water. (Even the bottled water wasn’t necessarily safe. When we arrived, our hosts suggested we give our water containers a squeeze to make sure the seals were intact and the contents uncontaminated.) Irony fell in layers over daily routines. The whole thing was about oil, but one of our drivers had to wait thirty-six hours in a half-mile line of cars to fill his fuel tank. The absurdity of such an ordeal in an oil-rich country was not lost on Iraqis.
The Iraqis we met were well educated. Under Saddam’s rule, college education was free, so everybody who wanted one got it, and most people did. That probably did not apply to the Shiites, though, who were hated by Saddam and his ruling Sunni minority. Saddam killed Shiites, and Kurds, whenever he felt like it. One of the more interesting developments in Iraq was that Shiite pilgrims, mostly from Iran, could now enter Iraq to visit Shiite holy sites. Every day another busload would turn up at our hotel. The little lobby was always bustling with conservatively attired, sober, somewhat surly men, and women clad in the all-concealing chador.
Shiites were quite relieved that Saddam was gone. In fact, few people outside the Sunni elite were sorry to see him go. Many Iraqis told us that immediately after the Saddam regime fell, they felt they had been liberated. Had the United States actually overthrown Saddam to assist a transition toward true democracy, the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, though based on lies, might have had a silver lining. But self-rule seemed to be the last thing American policy makers wanted in Iraq. We were told repeatedly by people of all affiliations that if the United States didn’t handle things correctly Iraq would end up in a civil war, which nobody wanted, but that’s exactly what they got—an ongoing, horrific bloodletting that has now lasted ten years and continues to prevent stability from taking hold.
Through it all the people remained impressively lucid, sane, and gracious. I got stared at a lot—I seemed to be an atypical Anglo in Iraq—but once I said hello, people smiled and offered whatever English words they might know. I jammed with a young virtuoso oud player, which was pure, transported pleasure. I also gave a guitar seminar at an alternative art school, exchanging ideas with very intelligent and polite young people, mostly boys, who were earnest and inquisitive and seemed grateful for the distracti
on. The people I met were remarkably civil. At one point a guard apologized for having to search my guitar case. “Very sorry, sir,” he said.
If you were in a car that innocently passed an American convoy, you could be fired upon. Even those waved along by the Americans sometimes got “lit up.” A neurologist working at a hospital we visited said it was not unusual to encounter truckloads full of dead and injured people pulling up to seek help. Orderlies separated the dead and buried them on the hospital grounds. Every day new corpses littered the streets. The religious sectarianism was “new and dangerous,” one Iraqi told me.
Saddam’s reign had been brutal; no one spoke in favour of it, except in contrast to the anarchy wrought by the Americans, which actually made some Iraqis pine for the old mustachioed tyrant. “Under Saddam we felt more free,” one Iraqi woman told me. “Now we’re just here as puppets, and we feel like we’re living in an endless nightmare. We would like to live our lives as human beings. Our children don’t know anything but violence and fear.” Not long after we left Baghdad, the situation got much worse.
The United States arrested tens of thousands of people during the occupation. A lot of them went to Abu Ghraib, the largest and most notorious U.S. prison and torture centre in Iraq. Iraqis were quite aware of the abuses occurring at Abu Ghraib, which came to light internationally on January 16, 2004—the day after we arrived—when the U.S. Central Command announced that it was investigating allegations of maltreatment at the prison, an inquiry undoubtedly inspired by the understanding that 60 Minutes and The New Yorker would soon be breaking the story. The Bush administration attempted to paint the crimes at Abu Ghraib as an aberration, but since then it has become clear to all (just as it was clear in the moment to those who were paying attention) that the abuses accurately reflected U.S. policy with regard to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, a policy also represented by its rendering of prisoners to “black sites” for torture and by its maintenance of the abhorrent prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Rumours of Glory Page 49