On the ground in Baghdad

An Iraqi blogger states the obvious:

“It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.”

The contrast she observes between Oprah advising women on how to control their luxury spending, and an Iraqi woman’s televised description of her gang rape by security forces is beyond chilling:

“As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks.”

While we fixate on Britney’s baldness or a four-legged duck or the tumbling housing market or the lucky Wall Streeters and their obscene bonuses, Sabrine and other Iraqi women are being raped and beaten and killed by henchmen that we have trained, for no reason at all other than that they are females.

This is what we have wrought, and every one of us is complicit in the suffering that’s been dealt in our name. While our President cracks jokes and blusters about like a jackass, and our Congress takes baby-steps in passing non-binding resolutions, the suffering of Sabrine and others continues unabated. What have we wrought…