What's The Mob Got To Do With It?

The days are starting to slow down now that I’ve begun to get used to things. I stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and noticed that there are two tubes draining water into the ditch outside the office trailer. The ditch is lined with reeds and I started thinking about what use we have in creating good things in this life. Many people believe in an after life. What is the use of creating a paradise in this life when you are promised paradise in the afterlife? Is it because your rewards in the after life are warranted on your deeds in this life? What about murder? – Presuppose if it is justified in the defense of your faith, your religion, than of course you have done good in killing. – What of those you killed? Will they be saved or are they doomed to… what hell? Do you believe in such a place? Or are they truly dead? Soulless… only the righteous will be rewarded. The rest will have their souls destroyed, devoured, nullified. It doesn’t make much sense to me.

If I were to burn in hell wouldn’t I have to be self-righteous in order to suffer from what I would believe to be an unjust reward in the after life? And if that reward were in fact warranted wouldn’t I be in essence the same evil that is meant to inflict eternal pain and damnation? If that were true than wouldn’t I welcome, and be welcomed by such evil? It would be pleasure. Makes me think of the movie Hellraiser.

In the tradition of ancient empires the greatest assault is genocide, as it very much is today, but accompanied by the intent to erase an entire culture, society from history. Wouldn’t that be the most damnable act upon our enemies: the soulless ones? Their entirety extinguished from our consciousness, and their own, to create the oneness of blessed self-awareness. – I just can’t help wondering to myself as all that water fills that ditch, why are they dumping that water? For what purpose are we digging ditches, filling ditches, spending money, time, and confronting the cultural straits? What truly is the reward?

I got back to my trailer a little early and went to get dinner at the DFAC close by. I usually go to the DFAC closer to the office and didn’t know the one near my trailer closed at 8pm. It was 8:30 so I decided to walk to Burger King and hope they were still open rather than wait another two and a half hours before the DFAC opened again for the late meal. I came to find out Burger King was open until midnight so I got myself a burger, fries and a coke. A couple soldiers sat at the bench where I was eating and we got into a conversation.

I haven’t had much interaction with the soldiers here. These two so far have been the only two I’ve really had an open conversation with. One was from Wysconsin and the other was from Florida but went to college at Boston College. They were both well educated. I guess that’s what allowed me to break the ice a bit with them when I asked what schools they went to. Wysconsin went to school for marketing and Florida had his masters from Iowa and was accepted there for Radiology Biology to get his PhD. They were drinking coffee while I ate my burger and sipped my coke, and were waiting for a 1am flight south to Camp Falcon.

They started talking about their experience here in Iraq. They mentioned how they’ve seen people, Iraqis found dead execution style; one guy buried up to his neck with a bullet in his forehead, people strung by the feet of legs and hacked. But they didn’t see these killings so much about sectarian violence. They described it more in terms of a mafia mentality. In there opinion Iraqi problems are about money and power right now and not strictly religious or Islamic Fundamentalist. It's like this: if you do'nt pay off Al Qaeda, like the Gambino’s, someone’s gonna get hurt because you didn’t pay for protection. Capisce?

They also talked about the electrical power situation. One guy told them, “We’re going to blow up my neighbor’s power because I don’t have power.” they said his power would be fixed by the end of the week, "just wait." But the guy wouldn’t budge. “NO. I don’t have power, why should he have power.” He’s had to do guard duty on power transformers because people throw bricks at the transformers, either as sabotage or out of spite, I don’t know.

I had a good time talking to them for an hour. I know Iraq has problems and I know the US military is trying to help but I really don’t think the social climate is conducive to making any big advances in the short term. Iraqis still live with only an hour of electricity a day. The society has collapsed under Shock and Awe and I don’t know if average Iraqis can justify there current social conditions with the removal of Saddam.

Thankfully my job here allows me to think about real issues regarding the lives of Iraqis and understanding those issues first and foremost, as best we can from the perspective of Iraqis. Suicide bombings recently become a subject we were charged with discussing. It was mentioned 90% of all suicide bombers in Iraq are foreigners; North Africans and other Arab nationals. What brings these people to be willing to blow themselves up? It isn’t simply ideology because these same people have had to become indoctrinated into this ideology. To me it’s the same inside out situation when educated people on college campuses go on a shooting rampage in the US. These are people disaffected by their societies, either by poverty in Tunisia or New Orleans, or by affluence and apathy in the case of the Columbine shootings. Every situation is unique but in order to thwart the rise in Jihadists and militants you have to address the root of the problem; the point from which it stems.

So what drives these young people to entertain such a future as martyrdom? When you don’t have an education, or do and you still don’t have a job, no money, no girlfriend, no wife, kids, may not even have parents because of war what does “this world” have left for you? There is no dream here like the frontiers of the Brooklyn Bridge or the Mississipi River. That was a European-American mythos and they don’t wear bootstraps. So you can see how the promise of an after life seven or a thousand virgins waiting for you (shit give me one!) can be so acceptable. Of course when you have nothing left where do look? God. And he’s promising you what? Sex and your lost relatives to be reunited with; happiness is their reward for martyrdom. If these young people, within and outside Iraq, are not given a future in this world they will find it very hard to reject the ideology of Jihad; it’s the economy stupid.

Man Eating Fish and Speeding

Friends of mine know that I’ve been sending emails to keep everyone posted on my experiences in Iraq. Considering that I’ve begun this blog I’ll assume there will be folks reading this that don’t know me from a whole in the wall. Basically I’m a filmmaker from Los Angeles that landed a job as a video editor in Baghdad. I left LA about four weeks ago and this is my second week here, as they say “in country.”

Tuesday I went with one of my coworkers who has been here a couple years, Shane over to the Al Faw Palace to get another ID card. I can’t remember why. I already had one ID issued to me back at CRC in in Georgia. Shane pointed out the fabled man eating fish that live in the water that surrounds the palace. They looked like big grey coy fish to me, nothing dangerous. Supposedly Saddam kept the fish as a way to dispose of his enemies, which reminded me of the bookie in the movie Snatch that kept a pig farm for the same reason. The guards at the Al Faw Palace are Tonga Marines. I’ve never knowingly seen someone from Tonga. I know they are from Tonga because it says Tong Marine on their uniform. But that’s all they do is man the guardhouse at the entrance of the palace. Big dudes, that’s for sure.

If you know me well from LA you probably know my drinking habits. Fact is the only alcohol I’ve had since I left has been a 24 ounce can of Budweiser. I’m not sure of what the rules are around here but it’s not like the Vietnam War movies where there’s free cans of Bud everywhere. I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but I would bet that had something to do with product placement. - One thing you can find here in abundance is bottled water. It sits around on pallets mostly around the PADs. A PAD is a cluster of living trailers. All that water is gonna come in handy once the weather heats up.

Most mornings my boss Mohamed (not young Mohammed) and I meet at 7am, and drive to have breakfast at the DFAC before heading to the office. Wednesday we pulled into the parking lot of the DFAC and this army guy starts screaming at us because he felt we were speeding. No matter where you are on this military base, and it is a big base the speed limit is no more than 30mph. We couldn’t have been going any faster than 15. This guy, coming off his morning jog is screaming at us to the point he was trembling, “Don’t you be speeding around here!” I don’t know what his problem was. Whatever it was I’m just grateful I don’t have it. He ordered us to “roll the window down,” I did, he continued yelling, Mohamed and I just sat there, in the front seats of this Ford SUV, in shock, it was too early for all that shit, we couldn’t even respond it was so bizar, until this guy started walking away. I said, “Have a good day, sir,” rolled my window back up and he’s got to get his last word in, “don’t speed!” I felt like I was in second grade getting yelled at like that. And the reality is that if he was a stranger and I was in LA, I would have told him to go fuck himself for screaming at me like that. But this is not LA. This is not like most places. This is a military base in a war zone.

I don’t socialize with any of the soldiers here. Perhaps that will change. Most of my time is spent with my six coworkers. The base is very insulated from the war outside. It really is an eye of the storm. The past five days have been very quiet. I haven’t heard mortar fire for as many days until this morning. I think it was four but I can only remember hearing three. The last one seemed louder than the first few. Maybe that meant it hit closer. They usually attack with mortars early in the morning, around sunrise when I’m half asleep, and if you’ve lived in apartment buildings like I have most of my life your first thought is, “oh, it’s just the neighbors upstairs slamming the door.” But then you remember where you are and what most likely just shook the whole room.

About an hour later, following our morning routine Mohamed and I drove to breakfast and ran across General Petraeus and his entourage. I actually didn’t recognize him. Mohamed pointed him out. He was going for his morning jog like many other soldiers and contractors before they head to work. Someone mentioned he is a very competitive man. He’s also short.
Unfortunately today is turning into the second day in a row I planned to go to the gym and didn’t.