Tannishblog

BBC reports Iraqi blogger “Riverbend” and Baghdad Burning is one of 19 nominees for a prize for non-fiction. The winner will be announced on June 14.

I visit Baghdad Burning frequently, awaiting sporadic posts. No doubt, electricity is equally intermittent where she lives. This past Saturday’s post is a poignant reminder of false promises and failed tactics in the destruction of all she once knew after three years of bloodshed.

I don’t think anyone imagined three years ago that things could be quite this bad today. The last few weeks have been ridden with tension. I’m so tired of it all- we’re all tired.Three years and the electricity is worse than ever. The security situation has gone from bad to worse. The country feels like it’s on the brink of chaos once more- but a pre-planned, pre-fabricated chaos being led by religious militias and zealots.

Sounds like Red-State/ Blue-State mentality to me. How long before Americans draw lined in the dirt and extricate themselves to chosen enclaves? I’m also inclined to believe that not all of her “zealots” whom are supposedly benefiting by Iraqi chaos are natives of Iraq.

I’m sitting here trying to think what makes this year, 2006, so much worse than 2005 or 2004. It’s not the outward differences- things such as electricity, water, dilapidated buildings, broken streets and ugly concrete security walls. Those things are disturbing, but they are fixable. Iraqis have proved again and again that countries can be rebuilt. No- it’s not the obvious that fills us with foreboding.The real fear is the mentality of so many people lately- the rift that seems to have worked it’s way through the very heart of the country, dividing people. It’s disheartening to talk to acquaintances- sophisticated, civilized people- and hear how Sunnis are like this, and Shia are like that… To watch people pick up their things to move to “Sunni neighborhoods” or “Shia neighborhoods”. How did this happen?

I read constantly analyses mostly written by foreigners or Iraqis who’ve been abroad for decades talking about how there was always a divide between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq (which, ironically, only becomes apparent when you’re not actually living amongst Iraqis they claim)… but how under a dictator, nobody saw it or nobody wanted to see it. That is simply not true- if there was a divide, it was between the fanatics on both ends. The extreme Shia and extreme Sunnis. Most people simply didn’t go around making friends or socializing with neighbors based on their sect. People didn’t care- you could ask that question, but everyone would look at you like you were silly and rude.

I grew up in a Christian neighborhood. There, I learned racial slurs against Italians, Poles, and most especially Jews. I had never met a Jew, but I learned to dislike them (I later married one; we’re raising our daughter Jewish). I never clearly understood such behavior. That the Irish-Americans would debase others of European descent, fellow Christians and Caucasians, seemed weird to the young Tannish. Perhaps that was why I had so much trouble fitting in socially, that I didn’t parrot my peers or take odd behavior at face value.

In my limited experience, this is how Christians act. Demeaning others is part of how the Irish Catholics and the German-Scandinavian Lutherans are raised. No wonder our Born-Again evangelical president starts a war against brown people. This is just a natural progression of his upbringing. Not tolerance, no quarter.

I can’t wait until 2008.