A Sad Story
According to an Iraqi witness, last week an American soldier at a
propane tank got into an argument with an Iraqi woman, took her
propane tank away from her and tossed it on the ground, and gave
her a hard shove.
An Iraqi man driving by saw this, stopped his car, got out and
walked back to the two American soldiers there, shot them both
with a pistol and then left in his car. He killed one and wounded the
second.
If the Iraqi witness is telling the truth, this was not a drive-by
shooting, as the American military described it. Nor was it an
organized attack by a supporter of Saddam Hussein. It appears to
be just an Iraqi man who got ticked off when he saw an Iraqi
woman being abused by a foreign soldier.
This is both sad and revealing. It's sad because these young
American soldiers are not trained to occupy a foreign country. Their
morale is low. The temperature is hot. And we can well imagine a
young American losing his temper when some lady is screaming at
him in a foreign language. What he did should not have caused his
death.
On the other hand, it is revealing to understand that ordinary Iraqis
are getting angry at the American occupation. A sense of honor is
highly important in the Arab world, and this young man must have
thought that he was honor-bound to avenge the affront of a fellow
citizen and a woman by a foreigner.
The American administration in Baghdad is trying to depict all
attacks on Americans as the work of remnants of hard-core
supporters of Saddam Hussein. The administration has begun to
repeat the story, first floated by an Iraqi exile leader, that Saddam
is offering a bounty for people to kill Americans.
I doubt that is true. Some of the attacks are certainly by Saddam
supporters, but we will be making a big mistake if we deny that our
occupation by itself is provoking some of these attacks.
The lot of an occupier is not an easy one. First of all, he is a
foreigner who conquered the country. This will breed some
resentment even among people who hated Saddam Hussein.
Second, he is torn between the need for his own security and the
need to win over the people. Third, practically everything the Iraqis
are demanding is not in the power of the individual soldier to give
them. A GI can't help it if the big shots in the palace headquarters
are dragging their feet, but it's the GI, not the big shots, who is
exposed to the Iraqi people.
Every time our soldiers fire into a crowd, every time they kick down
a door in the middle of the night and start jerking people around,
they will breed bitter resentment. Some of our soldiers recently
killed four young Iraqis who were just firing into the air to celebrate
a wedding. It's a custom in that part of the world. T.E. Lawrence
called them joy-shots. It's also a custom in that part of the world
that every wrong must be avenged. But our soldiers aren't given
courses in Arab culture, and they are trained to shoot first and ask
questions later. Any man who intended to come home in one piece
would have to adopt the same practice.
And that's the tragedy of it all. The people on both sides are doing
what they believe they have to do, and that is leading inexorably to
a greater conflict. Several thoughtful Iraqis have warned us that the
longer we stay, the greater the potential for trouble. That's no
doubt true.
The Bush administration did a poor job of planning for the end of
the war. Unless we get lucky, we are very likely to lose the peace.
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