(no subject)

[novapsyche]

Let's say you are a mother with several children. Your husband is abusive. In fact, you believe he killed several of your children. You are afraid of this man. Then someone comes in and takes him away.

Someone else takes you to the side and tells you that they will take care of you. In fact, this someone is an emissary of the person who took your husband away. You think of your remaining children. You thank them for their help.

This someone sets you up in a home, free and clear, but it's broken down in many places. The roof leaks. The phone is never on. Sometimes even the mail doesn't come. But how can you complain? Your children are being taken care of.

But you have to let this someone, or whomever he chooses, to inspect your place, because though it is your place, it is also his place, too. So your home is open to anyone he chooses, himself too. Anytime.

This someone reads over your shoulder. He takes your newspaper away. "You can't read this," he says.

He moves you from place to place without your prior consent.

He walks into any door as though he has a right to be there.

He and your children don't get along.

At one point, he's playing with the kids and roughs one of them up. He roughs her up according to the rules of the game, but you can tell from the way he's hitting her that he's doing so for other reasons, but you can't perceive them.

He is the United States and you are Iraq.

Comments

[prema.livejournal.com]

Only one problem with this analogy. If the second man leaves, the house will get sold, the deeds taken away by some grown kid who had long since walked out on the family coz he hated his siblings. The kids will amongst each other, maybe starve because you have no way of making money since the keys of the car you'd take to work have been stolen (Same kid who took over the house). You cannot discipline the kids because a second spouse has turned up and claimed ownership to the kids and the furniture you're left with.

Thirty years on, everything's a wreck - your life, the life of all the kids, and those of the neighbours with all the conflict that blew up in your face. That is why we need the welfare folks to conme in.

[prema.livejournal.com]

kids will _fight_ amongst each other. I type too fast for my thoughts :)

[zenrabbit.livejournal.com]

good one!

[poetpainter77.livejournal.com]

I didn't like this. They are having problems. A lot of problems. But why can't you understand that they're trying their best to stop these bouts of violence that plague the nation. It's definitely not our fault that there are Muslim extremists roaming Iraq's soil. Would you rather the US pull out and have Iraq return to a state of tryanny under an evil dictator? I don't want that to happen. So at the moment, I'm backing the president's decision to stay there because...well...we're doing what needs to be done at this time. Iraq was not a safe place whatsoever. I thank God everyday that Saddam Hussein no longer rules the nation. But I also wish that the violence would end. We all do. But the thing is...at this point, what needs to be done is a restoration of Iraq to a state of peace, but wouldn't you want it to be under a democracy or a system like that of England, or any Western nation that is successful economically and in other ways? That is our job. We need to follow through, or we'll be criticized and hated forever for not fixing a mess that we made during our first step of ridding that country of what is poisoning it.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

This was an unnecessary war. If we hadn't gone into Iraq, none of those soldiers and civilians would be dead now. They'd be with their families. This would be an entirely different world.

Of course now that we're there, we have to stay. Of course. That doesn't mean we should have been there in the first place. The world is not safer for our action.

The metaphor just came to me. It's fine that you didn't like it, but I do think it corresponds to reality fairly well.

[kittenkissies.livejournal.com]

But if the US is busted, does that mean we ALL go to jail?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

No, just the master of the house.

[kittenkissies.livejournal.com]

Amen to that.

[xiombarg.livejournal.com]

I smelled where you were going with this, but it's still very spot on.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to be predictable. :) Oh well.

Part of my point is that people would have a visceral and empathetic reaction to this situation if it were happening to a flesh and blood person. But because this is happening to "Iraq" (not the people thereof), because this is framed in a political fashion as one nation-state against another, people here in the States are very ho-hum to Iraq's plight.

[mrgodot.livejournal.com]

"This someone reads over your shoulder. He takes your newspaper away. "You can't read this," he says."

Sorry I must not be up on the news I didn't know the US was restricting the press in Iraq or restricting what gets printed or read over there. How wide spread is this and isn't it in conflict with their desire to set up a democracy? Doesn't anyone notice these things?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Well, shutting down al-Sadr's newspaper is what started the whole Falujah insurgency in the first place. I don't understand how a country whose first enshrined right includes the freedom of the press could justify (and I don't think it has) the shutdown of a newspaper. It just makes no sense.