When National Public Radio did a sample questioning two weeks
ago, several Americans responded by saying that if more than 10
Americans died in a war with Iraq, it would be akin to
disaster.
Well, more than 10 Americans are dead, and people are getting
nervous because the war is lasting this long. The news is
questioning the war, Amnesty International is chastising, and
people are pulling out of the stock market. But who are we kidding?
What did we expect?
War has never been a bag of peanuts, and just because we can hit
Iraq with missiles doesn’t change the fact that the United
States is currently invading another country and acting as an
international police force.
In general, most people frown at the sight of police cars
despite the label on the sides, “To protect and serve.”
People resent the power of police, but how much more
fear-inspiring, insulting and humbling would it be if the police we
witnessed everyday spoke another language, attacked with
“overwhelming force,” and represented a foreign
government that we had not elected? Add the conception that those
police are around to dominate and control rather than to protect
and serve, and the result is what many Iraqi people feel. In
previous war projections, the majority of Americans have been too
busy comparing arsenals to realize the difficulties of controlling
an unwilling people, no matter how unarmed they are.
Also, invasion is never viewed favorably. This truth is
underscored by Al-Jazeera television, which conveys that Operation
Iraqi Freedom is by no means viewed as a liberation movement by
Middle-Easterners.
So, is it surprising that people are fighting back? If so, we
ought to be a little more introspective. None of us would favor a
foreign military force coming into the United States to impose
freedom and order by ousting President Bush. It makes no sense to
expect the Iraqi people to come out with palm fronds.
The one thing about which the Bush administration has been
straight and consistent is the statement that the current war will
neither be easy nor short. The U.S. military is superior, and good
luck to them, but the American people need to be reminded that war
is not a game of guns but a game of psychology. Laser targeted
bombs are not greater than the indomitable human will. If the Iraqi
people want us, they will have us, and if they do not, even the
position of the United States as sole global superpower will not be
able to surpass Iraq.
The American people need to put on their seat belts and begin
taking the world seriously. The war in Iraq is not a game. At times
it seems that way because of sophisticated technology and the clean
killing of smart bombs. But that conception is grossly inaccurate.
Operation Iraqi Freedom isn’t shrink-wrapped and sanitized
like everything else in American life. More Iraqi civilians will
die; more suicide bombers will destroy, and more days of costly
combat will ensue.
The American people need to wake up and realize that this war
isn’t going to be nice, and it isn’t necessarily going
to be short. It’s not about M16s; it’s about messy and
misjudged mentalities.
Frymann is a fourth-year cognitive science and history
student.