Another Perspective

This NYT article is making the rounds of the political blogs:

The War as We Saw It

It is written by 7 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, who are at the end of a 15 month deployment in Iraq.

....The ability of... American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security.

(Note: Recall William Kristol praising the calm and obvious progress as he walked selected Iraqi streets.)

...we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure...

There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers.

..the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably.

Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise...

...we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect......

The article indicates a sense of responsibility for the quality of life that the Iraqis experience. In this way it expresses a humanistic perspective that continues to be completely lacking in political and main stream media reports.

Being robbed of self respect is something that I connect with the values of the authoritarian. The authoritarian personality is at the root of the Bush administration.

If we look at torture used on the Gitmo prisoners, on Jose Padilla, at Abu Graib, and other black sites, we see that removing self respect is of primary importance. In this context, there is a sense that Iraqis are experiencing the effects of torture. How could it be any other way when they witness the violent decay of their society and simultaneously try to live as ordinary people.

I have never believed that the benefit and well being of the general population is at the core of the political agenda in Washington. Only when this occurs, when this core value truly returns to politics, will the political structures of the US be regarded as not corrupt and as having desirable value in people's lives.