Translation
Another unattended-to question
by James L. Secor
There are some truly amazing things about Iraq, a country war-torn and engaged in more--as if one were not enough--that amaze me. Here is a country with an embattled walled city within a city that calls itself the Green Zone or the Safe Zone or the Government dispensing nothing but more self-interest and hate and death and rhetoric. Here is this country with no infrastructure--a really big word people like to throw around 'cause it makes 'em sound really smart--and no social structure outside of warring factions and shouting clerics, dying patriots and sobbing, wailing survivors and yet it can mount an internationally acclaimed football (soccer) team, a team that nearly won the World Cup early on in its career of representing a, basically, non-country. Why? How is this possible? Where comes the money much less the manpower? Since all Middle Easterners look alike, could they be illegal immigrants posing as Iraqis? Are these players and coaches hired hands, George Bush's Boys? Like Chalabi and Maliki just not as well known. They are definitely not your average Iraqi: no busted heads, no shrapnel wounds, no missing limbs.
Ben Heine / MWC NEWS
More disturbing, perhaps, is the mysterious Iraqi polls the media, mostly US it must be admitted, comes up with to back whatever claim it wishes to make. Lately it's been for getting out of Iraq; before the invasion, it was for getting into Iraq. And sexist pigs say that women are whimsical! Where do these polls come from? Some Iraqi is interested in entertaining an American or British or Australian journalist in a question and answer session? Some Iraqi is interested in sitting down in the middle of a gunfight and taking a little quiz? There's no question of how the media in the US could do this: everyone knows the media lies and colors its stories, mostly yellow and red, though lately they've added green to their repertoire. This is upsetting, yes, but not nearly so upsetting as the fact that US citizens actually accept these polls, these fake consensus-taking statistics when, in fact, there's only one: 100% of Iraqis want the US, Britain and Australia out of their country. Is it that the US public is fucking stupid? No one can see or think past the inked words on the page? Oh, yeah, it's in print, it's in the newspapers, it's gotta be true. It's on TV too. But. . .there's more! Even the "left" accept these obvious woolgathering polls without question. Well, hell--what's truth when whatever it is agrees with your beliefs, eh?
I'd like to say Paul Goodman had it right 40-some years ago when he began railing against the US school system but the real culprit is Plato who, some 2500 years ago, said that with the coming of print culture (the written word) people would forget how to think.
Yup, yup, yup! An' then we're gonna go to the zoo! Uh-huh.
Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature.
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