Travels in American Iraq
By John Martinkus
Black Inc books, 2004
224 pages, $24.95 pb
REVIEW BY ANNA SAMSON
Smart bombs. Guided missiles. Minimal collateral damage. Attacks on high-value targets. All phrases designed to give the impression that modern warfare, although just as deadly as any time throughout history, is now shorter, sharper, cleaner and more precise than ever before.
The US currently spends more on its military than almost every other country in the world combined. It is the undisputed big kid on the block. The US struts its stuff on the world stage not just daring or double-daring other countries to mess with it, but skipping straight to the physical challenge. The USA ain't happy to see you — that's daisy cutters, depleted uranium and cluster bombs in its pocket.
And yet, somehow, it seems that the good people of Iraq didn't get the memo.
By all accounts, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been anything but simple, straightforward or clean. It is brutal, messy, drawn-out and totally in your face.
John Martinkus is a renowned journalist and filmmaker who spent time in Iraq during both the lead-up to the US-led invasion and the subsequent occupation. Unlike many other members of the international media who chose the relative safety of the Green Zone and other "secured" venues, Martinkus ventured beyond the world of Coalition Provisional Authority press conferences to provide chilling eyewitness accounts of some of the most violent episodes in the US occupation, from the bombings in Karbala in March 2004 to the emerging scandal of the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities.
More revealing, however, are his interviews with ordinary Iraqi workers, Kurds, young people, religious leaders, members of the new Iraqi police force and the occupying troops, all of which move beyond the polished spin of the likes of CPA head Paul Bremer. Martinkus interrogates and successfully undermines the notion that all those fighting the occupation are "terrorists". He contrasts this labelling against the demands of people like Moqtada al Sadr and thousands of other Iraqis for immediate democratic elections, running water and control over their economy.
US President George Bush said recently that even if he had known everything he currently knows about how unpopular, difficult and costly this war on Iraq would be, he would have gone ahead and invaded the country anyway.
On one reading, this statement belies some refreshing honesty about the war having nothing to do with the reasons officially proffered for it. However, on another, more disturbing reading, Bush has highlighted his complete, continuing, reckless indifference for human life, global stability and democracy.
Martinkus brings home the disastrous human consequences of such a blunt, ham-fisted approach to foreign policy. Travels in American Iraq reveals the fragility of the US war machine which, for all its firepower, can still be brought to its knees by a resilient population that just won't grin and bear an occupation.
[The Stop the War Coalition is holding a public forum with John Martinkus in which he will discuss his experiences in Iraq and screen previously unseen footage of his travels at 6pm, on September 11, at the Newtown Neighbourhood Centre (opp Newtown Station). For more information, visit <http://www.stopwarcoalition.org>.]
From Green Left Weekly, September 8, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.