A relative, overall calm has settled on Iraq. In March, nine Americans were killed there, the lowest number since the U.S. and its accompanying multinational force invaded the country in 2003. In an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” host, John King, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno said he would continue monitoring the ground situation in Iraq, but the violence levels there were steadily the lowest since March 2003 when the war began.
As violence has decreased, freedom has increased for the Iraqi people. The New York Times reported that the entrepreneur Jasem al-Naami recently opened a hair salon and boutique for women in Saidiyah, a religiously heterogeneous neighborhood in Baghdad, which was once the home of some of the worst of the sectarian fighting. Near the salon, loud pop music spills into the crowded street from Sun City Foods, a well-visited burger stop. Women increasingly walk in the open without veils, some in jeans, some with shorter dresses with their calves exposed. Families have parties and cookouts in public parks. Twenty-nine-year-old Sundus, who wants to one day be a biology teacher, will be going back to school in November at the Pedagogical Institute of Baghdad. Before the calm set in, al-Qaida militias forbade her from attending.
Although car bombings and other outbursts of violence continue, the moment is one that at least grasps closer to peace. Here, freedom brings richness and variety to a place of smoke and suffering. These results of liberty are simple and pleasant. But there are others too.
For the past two months, the Shiite community called Sadr City has been littered with as many as 25 bodies. Men—half-sized and grown—shot once or repeatedly, some with the Arabic word for “pervert” branded to them like a scarlet letter. Gay men in Iraq have begun to use their small doses of freedom to advance the homosexual subculture. But their increased openness has caused a backlash of violence, not just from the Shiite death squads who have always persecuted them, but now from their own families. The shame of gay relatives has driven tribal members to kill.
And that is not all. Hussein Al-Jabouri, a gambling parlor, recently reopened in a Sunni middle-class district in Baghdad that just a year ago was a center for militias with ties to al-Qaida. People are increasingly taking advantage of the freedom to venture out at night, and with unemployment at an estimated 35 to 50 percent, many of those roaming dark streets are desperate. With increased freedom to leave Iraq and more opportunities to do so, the country’s educated, professional class is quickly emptying, women especially. Educated females are empowered to leave by freedom, and motivated to do so by freedom’s limitations.
“It’s pretty much impossible to become a surgeon in Iraq if you are a female,” an Iraqi woman told Salon, an independent online magazine. “There is no law that prohibits it but there are a lot of obstacles.” The cultural barriers — the deeply rooted beliefs of society — continue to halt progress after legal barriers have been torn down.
With the going rate of freedom as high as it is — more than 4,000 American deaths and 90,000 civilian deaths — one would think it would be purely positive, upwardly progressive and untainted. But that’s not what freedom is. Agency, as a basic principle of the gospel, doesn’t always breed good outcomes. Our agency came at an unthinkable expense, and with it, many of us still choose evil. The bad must be allowed so the good can flourish. We understand this basic tenet of our faith, but many of us neglect to apply it elsewhere, especially here.
Whatever motivations our leaders originally had in invading Iraq, now freedom is our goal. We don’t want to create a perfect society there. We couldn’t if we tried. We just want to create a functionally free one. In order for families to have the freedom to recreate together, old men must have the freedom to smoke and gamble. In order for women to have the freedom to walk and move uninhibited, gays must have the freedom to be open about their lifestyles.
Both sides of the debate use these unwanted byproducts of freedom to argue to their advantage. Those who support extended control and oversight in Iraq cite these examples as reasons for Americans to stay involved. We have created this mess, they say, and now we must deal with it. Those who want an immediate removal of all troops from Iraq cite them as reasons why we should have never invaded in the first place. They argue that we should get out now before our mess gets messier.
When asked to give a 1-to-10-scale likelihood rating to whether or not the United States would leave Iraq on schedule by the end of 2011, General Odierno replied “I believe it’s a 10.” If the general’s assurances are more reliable than President Bush’s declaration on May 1, 2003, that the “mission” was “accomplished,” our fate seems to be sealed. It is now, as we gradually withdraw, that we must exercise faith in freedom. We mustn’t let the bad choices we see Iraqis making with their little liberties obstruct our view of the good that is growing.
We must vigilantly nourish the “relative calm.” Maybe one day, it will mature into a perfect calm, an omnipresent peace of mind that comes from being free to speak, free to worship, free from want and free from fear. This perfect calm would rest in our souls while our minds and hands were healthily unsettled — motivated to work, to fight for what we believe, to instigate change, to find meaning. As Americans, we still seek that perfect calm for ourselves. Maybe it will happen for Iraq, maybe it will happen for America. And maybe then freedom will mature, too — from a risk we assume because we know its inherent value and potential, to a blessing that allows us to make ourselves a part of something transcendently good.
Samantha Strong is an Issues and Ideas Editor at The Daily Universe.
Copyright Brigham Young University 14 Apr 2009
