I'm alive I'm dead I'm a stranger killing an arab

by anna at 10:11 AM on November 24, 2006

Somewhere between the outright genocidal mania in present-day Darfur or Rwanda circa 1994 (when the "international community" stood by wringing its hands and debating the precise definition o' "genocide") and the idyllic peacenik nirvana of 1906, when 230 murders were reported in the entire US, lies a murder rate we can all be relatively comfortable with.

Actually, a given individual's murder rate can vary from day to day. It is either zero, meaning one hasn't been murdered or 100%, meaning one has experienced being murdered on that particular day. It's just like any other crime rate. Either your home has been burgled or you've been or seen someone being gang-raped in recent memory or you haven't. Out of sight, out of mind.

It is different in Iraq. You can't get away from the murder rate. It is everywhere, as pervasive as TV or the internet elsewhere. Go to school, get killed. Line up to apply for a job, wind up in bits and pieces strewn along the street. Drive up to a phony goverment checkpoint and note that the guards have opened fire on you and your family. Stroplight, random car bomb. Dead. Kneel down to pray in a mosque and the entire building goes up in smoke. Get kidnapped. Wind up having your head gently removed on grainy website as arabs shake their sinewy fists and shout something in Arabic. (That something being Abu Akbar, which means God is great! Whenever somebody says this, no matter the language or context, terrible atrocities follow. Hmmm.)

3709 citizens were murdered thusly in October, all to remain unsolved due to the pesky lack of a government, police or court system. 200 more bought it just yesterday. People have ready access to mortar shells, rocket launchers, machine guns and grenades. In a multi-billion dollar industry, armies of contractors roam the streets in Toyota trucks equipped with machine guns mounted in the bed. New private militias spring into action every day. It's a wonder they even bother to collect the mounds o' corpses anymore.

Meanwhile US newspapers intone that the mayhem is spiraling out of control, edging toward civil war. More lately they've begun hedging their bets, saying it is edging toward full-on civil strife.

Look. It is a goddamn civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. What's more, it will never end even if US soldiers were to come storming out of their fortified Green Zone en masse. Nothing is going to stop them until everyone is dead. The only benefactors, the one laughing all the way to the bank, are those much-maligned Kurds. Who, along with the Palestinians, have long been the N-words of the middle east. And oddly enough, their chief tormentor: The guy King Bush I derisively called Sad Am. He got to voice his opinions to a worldwide audience via Court TV and he looks much more fit and trimmer than when they fished his disheveled ass out of that rathole. He enjoys three squares and meditates and reads his Koran as he awaits his hanging.

But my question is this: Why is anyone in their right mind still there? Why haven't they all fled? Yes, I realize many lack cars just as they did in New Orleans as Katrina breathed down their necks for days on end. But don't they have bicycles? Aren't there buses running over the border? Don't they have feet at the bottom of their legs? Can't they walk or at least hobble with a cane?

And yes I also realize a lot of people don't or can't. Their legs have been blown off by the bombs and landmines everywhere. But I will tell you this: If I were in Bahgdad, I would get over that border if I had to crawl. I wouldn't stand around waiting to be torn limb from limb by a total stranger. Which will ensue eventually if you stay long enough.

1.6 million people have done just that. I think that is about 1 in 12, mostly professionals with money if no jobs due to the lack of an economy. The ones who are left are a scourge, the bottom of the barrel just like post-Katrina New Orleans. Desperate people. Violent people. Vengeful people who say things like this: "If I catch a terrorist [code word for your opponent these days the world over] I will not kill him with a weapon. I will not turn him over to the government [sic.] I'll catch him and cut him to pieces and drink his blood until the last drop." Like Sanka, good to the last drop.

These are the good folks we're fighting for?