You seem like a reasonably intelligent guy. Why did you volunteer to be in the middle of a shitstorm? Are you an adrenaline junkie? What are you doing it for?
You’re way from your S.O. more than you are with her. You are halfway around the world from friends and family. You don’t have much in common with your co-workers. The U.S. military thinks you’re a nuisance. The locals attitude seems to range between wanting to kidnap and/or kill you on sight to basically grudgingly accepting your help. You are bored and living like a prisoner. Whatever you may accomplish in months of effort can go up in an explosion at any moment. You’ve said yourself that the country is disintegrating before your very eyes because of internal and external political tensions. The current U.S. policy is not working and will not change in the next couple of years. In another few years, the country of Iraq may cease to exist entirely and the conflict may grow in scale beyond the current borders.
So what keeps you there? It can’t be what they pay you. :dubious:
What a good and surprisingly difficult question to answer.
Part of the reason is that I’m good at it. I keep my sh*t wrapped tight in a jam and don’t lose focus. There is also something really validating about the experience as lame as that sounds. I mean I’m good at something that not everyone else can do. Which brings me to the point of what I’m not good at.
I’m really really bad at the home office side of aid work. For every organization out here, there is an office supporting it. For American outfits they are in DC, where I happen to live anyway. But as far as I can tell, home office support is going to pretend meetings where your goal is to show off how smart you are. The real work and decisions are happening in the field, and all any of us want from the home office is our pay to be deposited on time and for our project funds to be in the bank account when we need them. We absolutely don’t care what hq thinks on any topic and anyways, when we do read their emails they are always wrong. The field is where the work is.
Also, I feel like I’m witnessing history and maybe making a tiny bit of it. I have this fantasy that some kid who benefited from one of our projects is all grown up and he’s telling his kid about the bad old days and how this aid agency built them a school or whatever, it’s kind of like when my parents told me about the depression. I like the idea of some Iraqi today living in a normal country and being a little bit responsible for that.
Finally, I am deeply ashamed of what America has done here. I think if people could just understand what a terrible thing we have done, we’d either all be over here, or we’d grant US citizenship to every Iraqi who wants it. We have screwed these people over many many times. We sold Saddam the components for the poison gas he used on the Kurds. When the world found out what he did with that gas, we sold him more. We didn’t get outraged about that bit of nastiness until we needed to work up public anger at home for this bit of nastiness. We called on the Shia to rise up and then watched them get slaughtered. And still there were Iraqis who believed us. They thought we were really going to help them build a better society and they put their necks out and now we’re just going to walk away again. Five years from now, we’ll make a Rambo movie in which we actually win in Baghdad and ask ourselves why the real Iraqis aren’t grateful like the ones in the movies.
Hey man, if you’re trying to tell me that living in Baghdad is better than living in DC, you’re preaching to the choire. I’ve been here far longer than I ever intended and for reasons having everything to do with my kids. So here is where I remain for the foreseeable future.
I can relate a bit to your “making history” comments. At the end of WWII when Russian troops liberated Kiev and my parents (small children then) returned to a bombed out shell of their neighbourhood. One of the few pleasant memories they have is the American care packages that were distributed to all the residents and returning refugees. In the packages where big tins of peanut butter. It’s not hard to imagine the magic of this stuff to frightened and hungry kids who’ve lost almost everything.
So I do understand the importance and significance of relief work in a war torn country.
I guess I just don’t have enough faith in human nature to always keep in mind that there are actually people who want to help simply out of the desire/calling to do so and for the meaning it brings them and those who they help.
QuickSilver actually, I love DC. I mean it, I like going to Nationals games and walking in to museums for free. I love the parks and the different feel of different neighborhoods. I love my house and my street and I’ve become one of those pissy snobs who complains about statehood issues and drivers from MD and VA. I think DC is one of the most best cities I’ve been to in over 30 countries.
But I appreciate your thoughts on the other issues
Treviathan I haven’t checked out that blog, but I will. It’s funny I always come here with a stack of books on Iraq history and politics, but at the end of the day, I just want to read some cheesy spy novel or something like David Sedaris. I just get this huge craving for fluff.
Thank you for starting this thread, it’s absolutely fascinating, and I’m surprised I just found it. I don’t have any questions at the moment, but I just wanted to say that you’re doing admirable work.
madmonk28, people like you give me a modicum of hope for our species. I stand in awe of your nerve and your compassion. I’ve been dividing my aid roughly half and half between the Iraqi people and the troops. I feel sorry for everybody stuck in this FUBAR situation and like you, I am deeply saddened and ashamed to have my supposedly representative government to blame for so much death and misery.
Is there anything you need and any way to get it to you? I’ve been sending care packages to soldiers, I’d be glad to send one for you.
Thanks for eveyone’s well wishes and XaMcQ that’s really nice of you to offer to send me something. I have access to the Green Zone which has a PX I use. I also get packages from home with books and magazines.
When I say I’m ashamed of what the US is done here, I want to make clear that I’m not talking about the troops on the ground. I’ve interacted some with US troops here and they are very very squared away people. I like a lot of the ones I’ve met and worked with.
What I meant was I’m ashamed how much pain our failed policies are creating. I don’t blame a pilot who mistakenly drops a bomb on a house instead of an army base, and I don’t blame the scared kid who shoots up a carload of civilians he thought was a car bomb. I blame the people who put the pilot and the soldier in that position.
I got into an argument with my brother’s father in-law about Iraq once. We were talking about Abu Ghraib (he’s a Vietnam vet). He said these kinds of things always happen in war, so what’s the big deal. I replied that BECAUSE these kinds of things happen in war is why one should not enter into a war lightly.
It just drives me crazy how easily the US allowed itself into stumbling into this mess. One minute we have the world united behind us after 9/11, the next we are the world’s pariahs and on the brink of starting WW III and everyone has this kind of who farted look.
And when we tried to stop this, and slow down the march to war, they called us traitors and wimps. Now they hate us for having been right all along.
Kythereia thank you that was a really nice thing to say.
MaryEFoo I don’t know what the rules of engagement are for US troops. The whole security forces thing is really ambiguous and chaotic. I know that there have been plenty of cases of shootings of unarmed civilians by international security guards and I’m not aware of any action or punishment. If you google the firm Custer Battles, you can probably find a lot of stories about abuses of power, the same with the British firm Aegis.
I make a distinction between nutter mercs and skilled safety professionals. I’ve known both types.
