CPTnet
9 June 2005
IRAQ REFLECTION: Tunnel vision
by Tom Fox
"Iraqis always seem to have lots of guns in their houses." We were meeting
with a U.S. Army colonel in his office in the Green Zone. Draped across
his high back chair was an ornate leather holster with his service revolver.
"Our young technician can barely keep up with the demand." The colonel
described the work of a sergeant who is an expert in constructing artificial
limbs. The colonel said proudly that no one
in Iraq has the equipment or expertise that this young man has. Yet he did
not seem to acknowledge why there is such a demand for artificial limbs in
Iraq at this time.
"The Iraqi NGOs we work with have a lot of trouble developing a level of
trust between them." He noted that when his office organizes a conference
of NGOs in the Green Zone, often they don't want to follow the set agenda
but need to express their lack of trust for the U.S. military and for each
other. Yet he failed to mention the years of totalitarian rule by Saddam,
followed by two years of anarchy--neither of which would tend to develop
trust in any institutions.
"All of us took a nine hour seminar on understanding Iraqi culture when we
got here a year ago." The colonel said his unit would be going home at the
end of the month after a year in Iraq. As is the case with many U.S.
military and civilians working in the Green Zone, the colonel said he has
never set foot on a street in Baghdad. He has never been inside the home of
an Iraqi family nor has he seen any of the historical or cultural sites of
the country. I kept having an image of the colonel on the North Rim of the
Grand Canyon holding a tube from a roll of paper towels to his eye and
describing what he saw. We are all finite creatures with a limited field of
vision. But what I do (and I sense that the colonel does this also) instead
of opening up my field of vision to include things that I don't understand
or agree with is to make my field of vision even narrower.
"Out of sight, out of mind" is an old saying that seems apt. The colonel
was confident that the vision of the world he described was accurate and
complete. Within his extremely limited world-view, his vision was indeed
clear. But what about the vast universe he was not seeing? What about the
vast universe I'm not seeing? How do we all expand our vision to see things
we don't want to see? How do we stop putting "out of sight" things we don't
agree with? I wish I had an answer but I don't even know where to start.
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