Wednesday, January 5, 2005
Two unnerving articles about Iraq.
I praised Peter Dula's Commonweal essay about conservative Catholics' support for the invasion of Iraq last month. Dula has now written a gripping and disturbing article for the Christian Century about life in Iraq, where he spent most of the last year on behalf of the Mennonite Central Committee. I read Dula's article this evening on the subway, and it amplified the unease I felt last night reading Chris Hedges' review of several new war memoirs while waiting for a friend at the airport. Dula's essay is brief, but you'll probably want to print out a copy of Hedges' article.
("Apocalypse Now," Peter Dula, Christian Century 12.28.04; "On War," Chris Hedges, New York Review of Books 12.16.04)
Copyright © 2005 by Philocrites | Posted 5 January 2005 at 11:12 PM
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Commentary by Chris Walton on Unitarian Universalism, liberal Christianity, American religion, and liberal culture. Contact me.
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1 comments:
C.C. Tidings:
January 6, 2005 01:40 PM | Permalink for this comment
From the first article: Iraqis don’t know if the disaster is due to American malice or American incompetence. An official at the State Department said, in all earnestness, “What do we have to do to convince Iraqis that we aren’t malicious? We’re just stupid.” I am not sure if that is true.
I'm confused about this, too, and the news reports I'm seeing don't clear things up much. Is the looting by soldiers Dula describes common or relatively rare? Could American soldiers be doing more to counteract all these kidnapping and carbombing threats, or are they indeed stretched too thin? I'd especially like to see some enterprising reporter (Kevin Sites, maybe?) tackle the looting story—I had certainly not heard of such behavior before this story, and I'd like to know how widespread it is.
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