It's Iraq Today ... What About Tomorrow?

"A lot of the bombing stuff that you see is really toned down. To be honest, sometimes it should be. God, it's relentless. It's hard to look at. People have no idea what's happening in Iraq. You wonder, even as a photographer, if you're being gratuitous by photographing some of this. At the same time, as horrific as it is to see, people should know how horrific it is to live it every day. We should feel some sort of responsibility to make sure we have the best possible grasp of what's happening there."

(Photographer Stephanie Sinclair, quoted in this piece published by Salon.com in August of 2003. If you don't want to see real war photos, don't go to page 2 of the piece. These are uncensored pictures of war casualties, including children)

Today marks the 5th anniversary of the official invasion of Iraq. All week I have watched as the "retrospectives" have been aired, written or spoken. I watched in utter horror as Dick Cheney showed up in Iraq in order to ... what? Commemorate the ongoing misery? I watched as a 14-year old Iraqi boy was interviewed on BBC America's World News, and he told the world that his greatest desire was to be able to go outside to play football. His voice caught as he expressed this longing. What does he think, I wonder, when he hears the words "freedom" or "liberation" and "Iraq" used so easily, so callously, in the same sentence by someone like our vice-President?

I have found myself thinking that Iraq is turning into "Katrina" now. An ongoing war, like the misery left in the wake of that natural disaster, is now something about which the busy and/or lazy and/or selfish and/or campaign-consumed American public must be "reminded." New Orleans and parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are still being rebuilt. Don't look for any headlines about the rebuilding or that ongoing struggle; bracketology for the NCAA tourney and write-ups on your regional team must occupy the front page. No matter - I'm happy to report that in spite of the lack of coverage on the post-Katrina gulf coast devastation, the fact that there is still work to be done is recognized by younger Americans and they are answering the call to help.

I haven't read many of the perspectives on Iraq five years on. They are beginning to feel too veneered, as if something is "over." I have returned to the past, to read truths previously told, but which we refused to hear or grasp the first time.

News about young collegians taking action in rebuilding our gulf coast, watching the young Iraqi boy on television, made me think of my own daughter. It made me hope that she will be someone who will want to put her shoulder to the wheel of change and service. It made me remember a moment we shared 5 years ago when this war started and she, now a young woman, was still just a child.

My daughter was in the 5th grade. She had just read The Diary of Anne Frank. A neighborhood friend, two grades ahead of my daughter, had invited her to go see a local production of the play based on the book. One morning, as I drove my daughter to school, radio tuned into the news, when it was clear that invading Iraq had somehow become inevitable, my daughter told me she wanted to ask me something important. I turned the radio down; it had long been our way to have tough discussions in the car when one or the other of us was "captive." The captor, of course, is the party initiating the difficult discussion. Forgive me for paraphrasing - I don't recall our exact words, but the gist of the conversation is as follows.

"Mom, you know Anne Frank?"
"Yes."
"Could that happen again?"
"Yes, I suppose it could, but hopefully it won't. The world would watch better, thanks to people like Anne Frank."
"I mean could it happen with Iraq."
I was confused by this question and I admit I didn't know what was on her mind.
"Well, Saddam Hussein has been very cruel to people in his country -"
"No. I mean would our president do that. To Iraq people."

My 11-year old daughter intuitively, I guess, understood something about the relative powers of the players involved that I did not. She grasped something I did not. It was easy for me to put her mind at ease; the scenario she was imagining was, to me, unthinkable. I had not voted for President Bush, but he was still an American president. I assured her there would be no concentration camps; in fact, I knew an American president would not act with cruelty at any level.

Then came Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and torture legislation. Five years on, I have no comfort to offer my daughter as so many unthinkable things have come to pass; however, she, like so many others, has stopped asking those difficult questions.