Big Men Cry

It was August 2, 2002, twelve years to the day after Kuwait’s invasion by Iraq. With my feet firmly planted in a sand berm on the shore of the Arabian Gulf, I stared at Kuwait City awash in the light of the blistering mid-morning sun. Nothing had changed. A few new buildings and parking garages that replaced ones that were damaged in the war. It was very hard to imagine that, little more than a decade ago, this place was a war zone and that where I stood was a treacherous field of mines. I looked down at my feet. Had the liberating soldiers removed every last one of them? What would a prosthesis feel like if I lost the real thing in a freak explosion? Would I die or would my legs have to be amputated? Which is worse? Sufficiently burned by the sweltering heat, I shook myself back to reality and made my way back to the beachfront apartment complex where I was staying with my parents. Why we were back in Kuwait, I do not know. Maybe it was the long-harbored need to return to the place called home, maybe it was because of nothing else to do, maybe this part of the world was at peace again.

Mulling over our strange decision to move back to this hole of heat, I walked up to a huge crowd of people gathered outside the apartment building we had recently moved into. The same was true of all the dwellings around us. If there were a biblical exodus, this is what it would have looked like. Almost everyone was weighed down with bags overflowing with valuables and essentials and appeared to be preparing for a long trip. I found my mother in the midst and ran up to her to ask what was going on. And, where was dad? My mother calmly told me that Kuwait was in trouble yet again. The government had just announced another invasion by the Iraqis and that each man, woman, and child were for themselves to make it out of the country before the bombs dropped and the tanks rolled in all over again. Where was dad? It was explained to me that my father, not wanting to be a hostage a second time, had taken it upon himself to find a reliable and fast vehicle to get us out of the country before the proverbial camel dung hit the fan. With that, my mother quickly walked away from me to console a neighbor who had begun a slow dance of hysteria in fear of the impending disaster.

I took off in pursuit of my father. He would not be far from me at a time when all of us needed to be together. Whatever happened, my family would be as one and nothing would separate us this time. Not Saddam Hussein, not a bomb, not a quest for a Hummer that would take us across the desert into freedom. I ran like I had never before, and I ran and ran and kept running until I found my father bargaining with a car dealer, price-gouging opportunists they are even at dire times like these. They were close to a deal and we were going to get out of this infernal country. Never had I seen my father with such brimstone in his eyes. So determined, so angry, and so full of love and hope for our survival.

And, that’s when it hit me. D. D back home in the United States. I had to get through to him and let him know what was happening. Damned cell phone! The blasted piece of electronic garbage can never get reception when one absolutely needs it to. I ran out of the dealership and into the middle of a huge parking lot where I was bound to get good service. Dialing the fifty-digit number to connect to the United States, I heard D“s voice on the other end. I screamed into the phone, Iraq is attacking again! Come get me! Do something, do anything! Let the government know *rumble* that American citizens are *big rumble* trapped here! Come get me! Come get me! D was saying something back to me, but I could not hear it as the rumbling kept getting louder and louder. That is when I looked up, cell phone in hand, and saw a giant tsunami of flame working its way towards me. Taking in a sharp breath, I realized I was exactly where I didn“t want to be: in Kuwait, separated from my family, with a torrent of flame and shrapnel about to envelop me. I thought of my parents, my beautiful nieces, my D. I thought of the 28th birthday I would never live to see. I thought of how ridiculously beautiful the bright reds and oranges of the nearing conflagration looked against the cloudless blue of the summer sky. I thought of …

I woke up crying. Sitting up in bed, not a scream or a blank stare came from me, just tears pouring down my face. All I could get out of the cotton threads that passed for my vocal cords were the words, “They bombed Kuwait again, and they got my mother and father.” How odd it was to say that while realizing the soft warmth of my blue flannel sheets and D lying in bed next to me. How bizarre it was to have him wrap his strong arm around me. How strangely comforting it was to hear him say, “It was just a bad dream. It’s alright. It was just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.” Sleep? Perchance to dream? Going back to sleep was the last thing on my mind.

Days. It took days for me to get rid of the feeling of being burned alive without anyone there with me. The loneliness of death. The loneliness of dying in a war. I don’t think anyone is ever so alone. And I would not wish this on any being in the universe. No matter how many nightmares I have been through, I will never wish this on a 15 year-old Iraqi girl, nor will I wish this to come back to haunt her 12 years later. How many young Arabs wake up from these nightmares? How many of them have second and third leases on life? How many of them are as lucky as I am?

When Americans want to “lay the smack on Iraq,” I hope they realize that the Iraqi people pay for it with their lives and their sanity as they have for so many years. They pay the price of the trade embargos, the sanctions, the skirmishes and the wars, while Saddam Hussein lives as a king in a palace, not by one iota of his breath paying for what he did. How is justice served in the laying of the smack? How many smack-layings result in death and nightmares? Death and nightmares. Death and nightmares.

I did not move to America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, for this to continue.

This country elected a man who declares, “You“re either with us or with the terrorists.” As a wise man once opined, “Some choice.” What about the Iraqis? If they are not with Saddam, are they with America? Totalitarian and fundamentalist Iraqis would think so. You vote Saddam, citizen, or you vote for Bush. Some choice.

The America I know is a great nation! What other country can boast of a revolution on the scale that its founding fathers pulled? What other country has this much intellectual independence, political discourse, wealth, religious freedoms, ethnic intermingling, advancements in science, education, and arts, liberated culture, and hope to offer? What other country has this much potential? Americans got this far because they always looked adversity in the face and refused to cower before it or change for the worse because of its arrival. As Americans, it is our courage and open-mindedness that should take us forward into a brave, new world and not our fear. Since September the 11th, or even since the Vietnam war, we have looked less and less like the majestic bald eagle soaring over our land, but like a caged feral cat caught in the glare of its captors, spitting and hissing our way through this confusing time. That shows the difference between where we could be going and where we are headed now.

As an American, I refuse to fall into either of the two categories of being with Bush or being with the terrorists. We as a nation have achieved a lot in the way of cultural and intellectual diversity to segregate us into the withs and the againsts. A mind once opened can never regain its original dimensions, it is said. How are we to narrow our collective perspective to that of a war-starved businessman and his team of yes-men, who prey on the paranoia and identity frenzy of a hurt and confused nation? Or to that of a network of proselytizing, patriarchal, and belligerent hate mongers who seek a homogeneous world ruled over by a vengeful god? What did we accomplish by killing more than 3000 Afghanis and imprisoning countless other supposed members of Al-Qaeda, while Osama Bin Laden and the rest of the fundamentalist Islamic world roam free to terrorize and reproduce their hatred as they see fit? All it did was to turn us into them.

What most Americans don’t realize is that they are trying to vanquish the same hatred that grows within them. When phrases like “the Arabs will pay for killing my son, Jim,” “we hate them and they should be eradicated,” and “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” are uttered, we are the terrorists. We share their mentality, we share their blind hatred, we share their indiscriminate anger, and we share their unpardonable crime. As long as we are them, we will never win against them. Therefore, it is not Arabs or Islamic fundamentalism that we should be ridding ourselves of, but the narrow, irrational, and unaccepting hatred of which we are all guilty.

On 9/11, some Americans turned into hateful and jingoistic blood seekers that we accuse the terrorists of being. Others of us became inhabitants of a land ruled by a regime of laws and tribunals. Useless legislations that leave us incapable from getting away and onwards from the true thrust of the tragedy. Terror wasn’t just on September 11, 2001, it is everyday since. Terror. What is real terror? Terror is coming to America, the fair land of opportunity, and being gunned down while unlocking the door to your convenience store in Mesa, Arizona because your assailant could not tell the difference between a Sikh and a Muslim. Terror is listening to a friend in Virginia loudly proclaim that he is going to get in his truck and drive around town picking off Muslims because of their audacity to live and work in this country. Terror is walking down State Street in Madison, Wisconsin a week after 9/11 and having most white folk stare at me as if I am the enemy. Terror is looking at my Arab friend and wondering if she is in any way involved with Islamic terrorist activities. Terror is turning on the television to watch a well-dressed, white, middle-class American child ask the question, “How dare these terrorists attack our nation?” Terror is wanting to reach into the television set and shake the parents of this child who will never tell her about the men, women, and children, yes children, we killed in Korea and Vietnam. About the scores of men, women, and children, yes children, who have died in Iraq due to our embargo against them while their horrendous leader reaps the fortunes of his malice in a protected castle. And about the men, women, and children, yes children, who will die as long as America does not rethink and realign its foreign policy and security infrastructure and turn them into a working series of foreign relationships.

Millions of people emigrate to America hoping for a better future for themselves and their descendants. This move presents a lot of rewards and questions, but the biggest reward and question is that of identity. Being an American is a prize, sought-after by a majority of world citizens, and most of them do great honor and justice to that title. Who are we, though? How do we define ‘American’ today? Is it being a materialistic and white person of European extraction? Is it being an equally materialistic and opportunistic immigrant who comes here to partake of the wealth and the glory? Or, is it being, as I once described, a good, kind, and forward-thinking human being who meddles as little as possible in the affairs of others, takes proper care of him/herself, and is willing to go all out and help when asked? We almost achieved that status in the two world wars that we helped win. We were Americans then. What are we now?

America is where I came to be who I wanted to be with no regard to my race, sex, or economic standing. To celebrate my old culture along with my newfound one. That’s the beauty of this country – you don’t have to choose between one or the other. You can be both or all or nothing. I am an American, and I will die for my country, but not for a plutocracy that hijacks my government and makes a travesty of the freedoms that make America the great country that it is. America was not founded to render my thoughts and feelings impolite; it was made to be a bastion of liberty for all lovers of independence, growth, and enlightenment.

To that end, let us not forget where our ancestors and we came from and why we are here. We came from an ability to make few choices for ourselves and for our children, and we are here to make a multitude of choices available to ourselves and to our fellow Americans. We did not come here to turn back into the xenophobic cave-dwellers, devoid of volition, that we escaped being. And, we ought not to, not while we are made up of foreign parts, have foreign interests, and use foreign products on a daily basis.

This naturally leads into a discussion of our dependence on our consumer lifestyles. We drink coffee in the morning, fill up our cars with petrol, and head to the jewelry store to by diamond engagement rings. How can we not when the best part of waking up is Folgers in our cup, we see ourselves in a Mercury, and the three stone diamond anniversary ring is forever? The United States of America is the largest global importer of oil. About 35% of that oil is Arab in origin. But, we need gasoline for the larger and more fuel-inefficient vehicles American car manufacturers put out every year. Second in the import roster to black gold is the black elixir, coffee. We consume 20% of the world“s coffee production, are its largest consumers, and pay close to nothing to get it into our country. To top it all off, Americans buy 65% of the diamonds mined in the world today. Diamonds mined in the villages of Sierra Leone, Ghana, Angola, and Botswana whose inhabitants are forcefully removed by threats, amputation and murder. Children in Sierra Leone have their arms cut off while we carelessly wave our gems and baubles about. If these kids grow up to become America-hating militants, will they be all that wrong? Imagine having a limb of yours cut off by a large rusty sickle before you answer that question. All for comfort and luxury.

The Islamic fundamentalists are not our killers, our dependencies and our horrible foreign policies are. If we have any self-respect, we will secure ourselves by giving up our need for unnecessary gas-guzzling vehicles and petroleum. If we have any guts, we will stop being slaves to our lifestyle wants. How dare we talk of taking Arabia off the map while we give them money to feed our addictions? Where do we get off proclaiming our moral upper hand when our elected representatives fill the coffers of the same Arabs, their religious fundamentalism and their weapons of mass destruction, in return for 35% of the gasoline we put in our vehicles? We give them money, arms, and resources over a long period of time, and then we wish to go to war with them? We support the tribal rule of these self-serving, scripture-spouting horror mongers and we demand justice from them? Calling a spade a spade in that case would take true patriotism, wouldn“t it? Shame on us!

While we are on the topic of doling out “infinite justice,” why is it not being given where it is due? Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers of 9/11 were of Saudi nationality and not one of them was an Afghani citizen. Yet, Afghanistan paid for its helplessness, and Osama Bin Laden and his ideology still walk free, aided by attacks such as those on American soldiers and bomb blasts in Islamic Indonesia. I want President Bush to answer why we are not going after the root of the growing Wahabi crusade in Saudi Arabia, the admitted possession of nuclear arms by North Korea, and the known terrorist cells worldwide. I want him to explain to me why we are preparing to attack a nation that has close to nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on our country, while glaringly culpable Al-Qaeda outfits, like Indonesia“s Jemaah Islamiyah, are not being so closely investigated and eliminated. Do he and his team think that provoking an Islamic nation into a war to boost our own economy is going to be unnoticed and unpunished by those same terrorists that he should be seeking out right now? Does he not understand that it was action similar to this about 11 years ago that brought about the onslaught on our country and its people in 2001? Warning! Warning! The terror has only just commenced.

Any Devil, regardless of religion and nationality, can cite scripture to his purpose. In 1096 A.D., Pope Urban II launched the Crusades to wrest the Holy Lands back from the control of the Turks. Holy warriors on a religious quest, the Crusaders traveled to Jerusalem where “… they] now began an orgy of killing. The Crusaders went on a rampage, killing everyone they met. They went into houses and dragged out the inhabitants to kill them. They stole everything they found. The streets [were] running with blood and of horses splashing blood up onto their riders’ leggings. All the Jews of Jerusalem were dead. All the Muslims were dead.” ^[1] And that was the end of only the first crusade of which there were six more. These holy wars were and still are looked on as nothing but heroism. Why do we not condemn them as brutal and barbaric onslaughts on the peace and lives of fellow humans? Why do we not criticize the Crusade just as we do the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon which reduced those areas to nothing but a great orgy of death and destruction? That was a holy war for the Islamists, too. It is because the west can commit global atrocities with impunity and when the east does it to us, we meet it with shock and outrage. Why are we outraged? Why are we angered? Did it hurt our veneer of civility or our American self-righteousness? Or did it shock us because we had never seen it before? Either way, welcome to the rest of the world!

The D.C. snipers are deemed cowards and thrown in prison. They are most probably going to be given the death penalty for the evil cowardice of killing innocent people they did not know. That evil cowardice is no different from killing 3000 people by flying airplanes full of other people into them. Unfortunately, it is no different from lobbing Peacekeeper missiles at a village in Iraq that contains men, women, and children who support their leadership just as we blindly support ours. These actions are in no way different and they are all equally spineless and indefensible.

If the deaths of Iraqi, Afghani, and Iraqi civilians is the price of our war against the terrorist attackers, weren’t those 3000 innocents in the twin towers and the Pentagon the price of the war that Al-Qaeda deemed just? If it’s not alright for them to do it to us, but for us to do it to them, doesn’t that reduce us to little other than vengeful racists? Ann Coulter conveniently unmasked this mystery for me. “We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That is war. And this is war.” ^[2] You are absolutely right, Ms. Coulter, this is war. But, it was war long before September 11, 2001, long before you deemed it so. Just as Vietnam did not go away after the American army pulled out of that country, Arabia and its troubles did not go away due to the cessation of colonialism or our troops going in for a little over a month in early 1991 to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqi military. It was a war that started long before now. It stemmed from our history of bedfellows and Arab antagonism over western imperialism, and was declared by people who were sick of American meddling in their affairs.

It was war long before we deemed it so. This is precisely what we as Americans cannot come to terms with. That someone else could declare war on us before we could on them. That someone could get to us before we got to them. The sad truth of it is that we had already got to them. We support the fascist and duplicitous state of Israel in their eradication of the equally questionable Palestinian people from their homeland, we buy oil from Saddam Hussein, invade his country and go back to buying oil from him, and we deliberately ignore and exacerbate the overwhelming plight and poverty of the developing world, all while furthering our own gains as a modern and improved nation. If this is the image of Christianity we present to the Muslim world, why should they not want to invade our country, kill our leaders, and convert us to Islam? We got to them, and horribly so.

Now that the ball is in our court, we are going about it the wrong way. America“s decisions and positioning over the past year are deplorable even from a political strategist“s perspective. It shows that we did not learn from past wars, and that history is bound to repeat itself when boondoggles like “the proposed war on Iraq” are sanctioned. Either we are sorely lacking in the military history department, or the poorly-pondered motive to attack Iraq is not as overt as getting rid of a despot and a potential threat to American security. What if Russia, one fine morning, decided that Bush is a dictator and ought not to govern this country any more? Would we stand for Russian troops and bombs descending on our country just because Putin or his successor wanted Bush unseated? Even the biggest dissenter in America today would not want such a thing. If the Bush administration thinks that it is passing a ‘subliminable’ over us, it has another thing coming. Precisely how stupid are we? ^[3]

White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, derides the Iraqi people for not doing away with their own president for his utter violation of human rights. He advocates this while the mere suggestion of the deposition of President Bush is considered heresy by many in our own country. Saying that Bush should reconsider his political agenda, before we lose our civil liberties, would be a crime under the new USA Patriot Act. Furthermore, my words would be taken note of as a possible future threat to homeland security. If we, and our elected representatives, are to unequivocally support our leader“s journey down a perilous road, who are we to question the inaction of the Iraqi people?

Again, war with Iraq or a potential invasion by Iraq may happen, but the erosion of our freedoms and rights is already happening. It is odd that we scream for the blood of Islamic militants while we are in the process of eroding our civil liberties all by ourselves, thank you very much. When they should have taken the bull of terrorism and blind fundamentalism by its horns, our elected representatives meekly complied to unleash their own brand of terror and narrow-mindedness on their own people. Republicans and Democrats alike took advantage of a weakened America to further their own political gains and voted for measures such as the USA Patriot Act, Operation TIPS, the Total Information Awareness project, and the creation of the Homeland Security Department. ^[4]

When I was a first-grader in Kuwait, I was physically punished and then sent to the principal“s office for drawing six-pointed stars in the sky of my Picasso-esque rendition of what I did on my summer vacation. While I fought back tears and turned my attention to a lollipop offered me by a sympathetic principal, I discovered that I was guilty of drawing the horrible Star of David, the sign of Satan in an anti-Semitic country. ^[5] If you think that happens only in Muslim oligarchies, turn your attention closer to home. In schools across America, our own children are looked down upon if they do not recite the pledge of allegiance. What is the difference between what happened to me in Kuwait and what happens in American classrooms today? And Americans think they are different from the rest of the inhabitants of the world. How appealing! About as appealing and invited as a group of forty-something white males at Lambeau Field irritatedly glaring at me because I was singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with the rest of them before the start of a game. Stop the presses and look right there. I, too, am an American, and I am perceived as different. There“s a lot that can be said from that instance alone.

Women have rights in this country that they can enjoy in few other countries of this world. At the same time, the United States has never elected a woman president, while supposedly backward countries like India, Pakistan, and Turkey have. We just need to wake up and realize that we too live in a country where a few men control all. John Ashcroft and the Justice Department shamefully cover up classical statues of bare-breasted women for “aesthetic purposes.” But, in the same breath, this government rebukes fundamentalist Islam for forcing its women to cover up and admonishes the Taliban for blowing up statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. The indecency of simply being a woman. It is as welcome in the United States of America as it is in the Muslim world. Only the feminist revolution and a handful of hard-fought civil liberties here set us apart from the most miserable sexism of Islam. Undisputed intransigence exists everywhere, even where you are.

Observing all of this, I wonder if the attackers of our freedoms are not in our own midst. While missing the proverbial forest for the trees, the current American administration has been conducting un-American activities to possibly thwart an attack on us by un-American interests. Instead of calmly working out why the terrorists would have done such a thing to us and what the next step for a free America should be, our elected officials did nothing but make our hole a bit deeper. They advise us that this is not the time for dissent or questioning the government“s motives? This is the time for dissent and free speech, America! A time like this, when our mettle and strength are being tested, is exactly the right time to be vocal about our philosophy and convictions. This is not the time to grasp at straws and whimper in paranoia and hypocrisy. This is not the time to argue whether the Democrats or the Republicans are right. They are but ideologues with political agendas to fulfill, we are humans with hearts, brains, and lives. Now is when we stand up and speak out about and against atrocity where it happens, be it at home or abroad. This is not the time to give up our rights and liberties and to turn a blind eye to what does not suit us. If you allow yourself to be stripped off your individuality and your beliefs, you are not an American and you have let yourself and America down. “They that can give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” Benjamin Franklin once said. To think and act in a manner deserving of that liberty and safety is the only solace and salvation we can find in today“s chaos and uncertainty. ^[6]

For those who think we are being smart by essentially colonizing Iraq to assuage a misplaced anger, please rewind your calendars back to September 11, 2001 and observe the events that took place on that frightful day. If you think that was bad, the fallout from a takeover and “liberation” of Iraq will knock the socks off your inner ghouls. It’s not going to stop, you see. Until we realize that, we had better take anthrax shots and head for those dugouts that our granddaddies built. Am I being too extreme for you? Wasn“t 9/11 extreme enough or are you looking for mushroom clouds over Los Angeles and New York City to convince you? In a planet of this size, we can only run so far before we realize that unless we stop all sorts of atrocity and now it will do nothing but consume us. Please let us not sit idly by and allow anyone claim a global and timeless grief to fulfill a momentary political intention. The media says we weren’t warned of the attacks that took place on that horrible day. Even if we had been warned, like I am warning you right now, we would have pumped our Jeeps full of unleaded, been at the whites sale at JCPenney“s, and curled up in our couches to watch prime-time television. Is this how much we truly care, America, and how much we pay attention?

“Judge not, lest ye be judged yourself,” goes the saying. The United States has judged and we have been judged. From here, only madness begins, not peace. Attacking Iraq is the first in this new series of follies. I, for one, do not support it, even if it was Iraqis that almost ruined my life twelve years ago. For I believe that acting out of vengeance is inconsequential and impotent. It has only just begun for most of you. But, for me, the nightmare has been playing in my conscious, subconscious, and unconscious for twelve long years and it will never go away. Revenge and being the biggest bully in the playground are not worth the hefty price of America“s honor, the sanity of its people, and its soul. If you want this war, if you seek this future, if you don’t care about your embittered self, consider the next child you see. If you are going to wipe out terror for the sake of that child, do it with a surgical exactness that will assure against the recurrence of the horrible atrocities we have witnessed. Assure that they will never happen again. If you find this an impossibility, then rethink the method and give proper national security, peace and rationality their due. Give me a chance to smile and to know that the world is going to be a better place for the young Americans that I am going to bring into this world. Give me a chance to forget what happened for one night of good, dreamless sleep.

Saddam Hussein I want that man tarred, lynched, beaten, plucked, castrated, drawn and quartered for what he put my parents, forget me, through. All of their hard work, hopes, and dreams culminated in nothing but a violent and humiliating uprooting from their home of thirty years. My mother went back to Kuwait in April of 1991 to visit what remained of our house and to reclaim our belongings. There was nothing there, not even the wall-to-wall carpeting. Nothing but the words “Long live Saddam Hussein!” spraypainted on the door to what once was mom“s bedroom, the room she shared with her husband, my father. What do you think went through her head? Indignation. Self-pity. Hatred. Push all of that aside and fathom this: How would a fifteen year-old Iraqi girl feel if she were to go back to her house in the ruins of Baghdad and find an American flag or a sign that says “Long live Bush!” planted on the rubble and wreckage that used to be her room? I bet she would feel the same disgust and loathing that my mother went through to see her home so violated. Do not create that girl. Do not make that girl feel the abject and irreconcilable powerlessness and anger that my family and I continue to experience and suppress. That girl may fly a commercial airliner into your home some day.

[1] Excerpts from Sack of Jerusalem in The Crusades by Dr. E.L. Skip Knox of Boise State University. More reading at crusades.boisestate.edu

[6] I am an American, the people spewing hate and calling for war are no more American than me. Is there such a thing as more American? If so, it should be one who upholds the values of freedom and liberty this nation was founded upon and has striven to achieve.