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Sarah Nicholson, The Courier Mail (Dec 18, 2006)
Iraq has been in the news a lot more than usual after the release of the Iraqi Study Group's report a couple of weeks back. While you may have heard about the document, you may be feeling a little in the dark about what the report was and just what the situation really is in Iraq. The internet, as usual, has come to the rescue with some sites that may cast a little light on the subject. Electronic Iraq is another informative site and an article on the page has declared that the study group's report was ''the policy equivalent of a stillbirth'' but the eIraq Blog ''seems to be getting to the heart of the matter'' if you take the word of one American journalist.
To complement the landing of the much-anticipated report of the Iraq Study Group, urging quick changes and an end to the U.S. combat role by early 2008 to stop a "slide towards chaos," we searched for sites likely to increase our understanding of the issues -- or, failing that, to make us smile in the face of disaster. Electronic Iraq. An article here had already declared the study group report "the policy equivalent of a still birth." The site's eIraq Blog seems to be getting to the heart of matters with posts such as "Americans Blame Iraqis, Iraqis blame Americans."
Cries of desperation: As if we needed more examples of the chaos our government has wrought in Iraq, here are some truly chilling Web postings from inside the country. I have (possibly unwisely -- hello Washington goons!) been monitoring several related Web sites: Electronic Intifada, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon. These sites provide some insight (if they are real, and they certainly seem so, but check them out for yourself) into the situation on the ground in Iraq, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern hotspots, as well as news and analysis not filtered through the Western press.
CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware insists Iraq is experiencing a civil war and refers to a piece from Electronic Iraq's "Iraq Diaries" to illustrate his point. "You stand here on these streets," Ware says, "you take shelter in these families' homes. You dare to try to go out and try to go to work or, indeed, shop at a marketplace and you will know that this is civil war."
On Saturday, I spent 10 hours watching The Royal Shakespeare Company's Henry VI parts I, II and III in Stratford. This tour de force swept us through battles between the French and the English, courtier plots against a sweetly pious and weak Henry, popular dissent, the Wars of the Roses and the breakdown of words, trust and society itself. Killings ravaged the land until the endgame. In the final scene the victorious Edward IV's white train turns red with blood sloshing on the floor. He doesn't notice the spreading stain, so occupied is he with his crown and with power.
The discovery of peace activist Tom Fox's body in Iraq Thursday was, sadly, not unexpected. But the murder of Fox, 54, a Virginia resident with Guilford College ties, still was shocking in its senselessness and brutality. We should deeply consider his own words, from a reflection he wrote for electronicIraq.net the day before he was abducted: "As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. ... 'Why are we here?' We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exists within us. ...We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls."
Love Your Enemies
Michelle Goldberg, Salon.com (Dec 7, 2005)
Living in Iraq, Tom Fox wrote of his struggles to transcend rage and fear, to forgive his enemies even as they threatened his life and murdered people around him. Now his faith is being put to the ultimate test. On Nov. 26 in Baghdad, the 54-year-old musician from Virginia and three other volunteers with the pacifist group Christian Peacemaker Teams were kidnapped by a previously unknown band of insurgents calling themselves the Swords of Truth Brigade. This weekend, their captors released a video threatening to execute the four men unless all the prisoners in Iraqi and coalition custody are released by Thursday, Dec. 8.
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