"The Americans and Their Dust"

On my weekly trek over to Watching America I came across this picture, appended to this opinion article in Iraq's al-Rafidayn. The picture is a marvelous display of what wonders the US has wrought in Baghdad and all of Iraq. The massive dust storm is a fitting introduction to the article, marked as it is by understandable bitterness.

We are in the prime years of our servitude to the U.S and their occupation and yet we “esteemed” citizens have received nothing from our American masters but ruin and fear … and dust! This dust, a hallmark of our bond to our beloved America, is one of the more prominent legacies of American policy in the region.

It began with the American caravans, caravans of solders and of doom that brought the black Baath regime to Iraq and tyranny to the region. It dried up the marshes and killed the people and eradicated the trees- pustules of a war grew throughout the land and American boots churned the ground and wrought destruction. Then came the violence, liberating the people from their lives, compounding the dryness of the land and the dustiness of the air.

This dust, which has sapped us of natural life for generations, reminds us what it is that the American administration truly deserves, culturally, legally, and according to the laws of the United States itself: a trial before the courts for its crimes against society!

The lament reminds us that the US was involved in Iraq long before 2003, just not so blatantly as it was after this second invasion. The devastation brought by the second invasion has quite literally ruined the earth: the fertility has been pounded out of it by bombs, tank treads, and boots.

The author of the article calls for a trial which would result in the US having to fix what it has broken in Iraq. He wants the US to bring rain, but also to bring clinics which will offer treatment for the respiratory illnesses brought on by the dust.

And then he wants US and its soldiers and tanks to leave. It isn't hard to understand those feelings. Not hard at all.