Happy Holidays, everyone!
Baghdad is cool and slow today, this Christmas Eve, and the Green Zone has become even more fortified, if that's possible. The entrance where journalists are allowed to go in looks like Normandy Beach, with tank caltrops, razor wire and sandbagged defensive positions that have taken over half of Tahir Square. A Bradley squats in the middle of a briar patch of concertina wire facing out into the city, ready to shred whoever would be so foolish as to attempt to storm this Fortress America.
There were very few Iraqi civilians manning the checkpoints, too, and when I asked one of the 1st Cav soldiers if they had fired the Iraqis, he said, "We didn't get rid of them; I guess they just decided not to show up today."
Perhaps the Mosul suicide attack have led to a breaking of the trust between Iraqis and Americans working together. That would be a crushing win for the insurgents. Or it just might have been Friday evening on Christmas Eve, and no one wanted to work. Many of the Iraqis working in the Green Zone are Christians.
Speaking of Christians, this is possibly the worst Christmas ever for Iraq's Christians. What used to be a pretty fun holiday for all Iraqis has almost completely vanished from the streets. Iraq's Christians are staying in, keeping their heads down and hiding their faith because of fears from jihadis who have bombed churches, threatened families and leafletted neighborhoods warning the Christians either to convert, to leave or else.
Back in September, I wrote about the Christians' flight from Iraq for TIME. (Paid archive, sorry. Note to TIME: Let the stories go free!) This modern exodus has continued apace, with Christians numbering about 500,000 now, down from 800,000 before the war. And even that's down from a population of 1.2 million before the Gulf War in 1991. It's yet another tragedy in the breakdown of Iraqi culture since the invasion in March 2003 -- especially since George W. Bush has made his own Christian faith the central pillar of his personality and presidency. Ironic, no?
Finally, I will be on a C-SPAN call-in show at 7:30 a.m. EST (egad) with Robb Harleston on Sunday, Dec. 26. I understand the questions on such shows can be ... creative.
Happy Holidays everyone. Wish us peace here in Iraq. We need it.
Indeed, I do wish you peace, and safety, too. Speaking of the Prez & his religion, here’s the irrefutable logic I offer for today’s examination:
It is a well-known phenomenon that Americans do not change presidents during wartime. Rove and Bush of course knew that when we were hit on 9/11, hence their rush to promote their irrelevant-to-war agenda beginning on 9/12. But there was only so much war-time we could get out of Afghanistan, so …
Who is more cynical? Me or the Bushies?
Thanks for the description of a Green Zone Christmas, Chris. It seems so bizarre that there is doesn’t seem to be public effort to help the Iraqi Christians; no web site or blog, no way to contact them for Christians here to send them Christmas wishes or assistance. If you run into any, let them know that some Americans are thinking about them. They deserve better than they seem to be getting.
Hope it’s as good as it can be for you and your friends these next five days. Stay low and safe.
Merry Christmas to all.
The fate of Christians in Iraq is just another in the long line of hypocrisies and misconceptions that has followed our invasion into Iraq. It is truly saddening to think that we could screw something up so badly…and yet still have many Americans patting themselves on the back for trying to do the right thing the wrong way.
The bombing in Mosul will have, as you mentioned, a seriously negative effect on our efforts, as it will make it more difficult to trust and employ an Iraqi populace that is already untrusted and unemployed. With the other U.S. contractor pulling out this week, we see a continuing downward spiral developing.
What’s worse is that our failing efforts in Iraq will embolden those who wish to fight to the death with the West but had not believed victory to be possible in such a struggle. At a time when the world should be drawing together in peace and harmony to tackle the problems we all share, we are instead being driven toward more bloodshed, more anger, more distrust, and are able to rationalize more evil acts on the back of all the above.
I truly hope, and this is from one who has opposed the war from the moment they started floating the idea in Summer 2002, that the elections will bring a stronger sense of purpose and meaning to the lives of the Iraqis that are fighting for their freedom. This is a foolish hope I know, as they are fighting both sides of this global struggle for the right to write the history books, but it is Christmas and this is when we wish for miracles.
Peace, love and unity.
I do indeed wish you peace - in Iraq, in you, in all of us; we all need it badly, you and everyone in Iraq most of all. I am sorry you are spending Christmas away from your family and your home base, and grateful to you for doing it so that we can all benefit from your blog and the comments it provokes. Many blessings, great good will and thanks to you, especially now. Maybe wah’s wish will come true - this is when we wish for miracles, and sometimes they do happen. Merry Christmas to everyone.
A good general site for information on the Iraqi Christian community is www.aina.org
www.zindamagazine.org provides news and commentary about and for the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac communities around the world.
Both of these sites have links to other such sites.
Merry Christmas,
Thanks very much Bob.
I have been praying for the people of Iraq and the american boys and girls since before the war started.
The power of prayer seems to be subservient to the power of the pentagon and the godless rebels,however.
I have lost all hope for Iraq. The elections are a fraud. The promises made will come to nothing. A civil war is in the wings. Bush and Blair have brought nothing but havoc on this country. No doubt they will hold their dreadful elections and leave, claiming victory. Then the civil war will begin.
To marklatham: Viewed very closely, it often appears that the power of prayer is indeed subservient to the interests of those of us human beings who seek to inflict pain and death in order to achieve their goals. I’ve noticed, in my own life, that when I gain a little distance on whatever situation I am praying about, I often see that prayer has indeed achieved change, although not always in the format I was, rather arrogantly really, expecting it to appear in, and not always as quickly as I would have chosen, had I been in charge. I also noticed that often benefits I didn’t foresee are being gained simply because the pace IS a little slower, in some situations - so I suggest to you that maybe prayers for peace and harmony and understanding DO have an effect, although not perhaps the effect we in our rather limited wisdom thought it would be. In my case, the effect I noticed that prayer seemed to have something to do with looked a whole lot different that the one I had had in mind; it was also usually more positive. Sometimes we don’t see the effect things are having because we are expecting them to look like one thing, and they don’t look like that at all when you finally notice them. And then again, of course, prayers may have no effect at all. In case they do, though, I’m hedging that bet, and praying even more.
we thank you for all your efforts to infrom everyone about this horrible war.we saw you on tv the other day nice to see a face to identify with.keep up the good work and please stay safe.
Bush man of the year and Powerline blog of the year. Do you swallow, Chris?
Good Lord. If you think I have some influence over TIME’s editorial process of deciding who gets PotY, you’ve think I have a lot more power than I do.
I’m a freelancer. I get no, none, zero, input on the magazine’s picks. I didn’t even work on any of those stories. And as for Powerline, hell, don’t you think I’d have named B2I as blog of the year if I had any power?
Use some common sense and lay off the cheap — and vulgar — insults.
Good grief, it’s not supposed to be a popularity award; it’s supposed to go to the person who most influenced the world that year, for good or for ill.
Remember 1979, and the hellacious flak TIME got for making the absolutely correct decision to name Khomeini Man of the Year?
It’s that kind of narrow-minded yowling of thin-skinned fools that has cowed TIME from daring to put deserving villains on the cover ever since.
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