Didn't know where to post this, but have written this new piece relating to elections in Iraq, and elections HERE. If anyone has better stats on costs of war, etc. sure would appreciate it. I'll be publishing it on the ClarkPost later this week. Comments welcome, but pls don't flame. (based on a true story).


Gimme A Piece of the Pie!
Letter from an American Citizen to an Anonymous Iraqi Woman

Dear Anonymous Iraqi Woman,

You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but I happened to see your 15 seconds of fame on the local news last night—and you’ve been on my mind ever since. You were protesting, together with your fellow Iraqi citizens, on the streets of my home town in Chicago, IL.--contesting the results of recent elections in your country, which, according to most reports, turned out fairly well—as I’m sure you must be aware, a +/- 60% turnout in the first free elections in 50 years is not bad for any country--even for a “mature” democracy like ours, where voter turnout was about the same (60%) in the 2004 general elections, up from 51% in 2000, 49.1% in 1996 and 55.1% in 1992.

I congratulate you—you and your people defied the odds, and even managed to upset the applecart by putting the Bush-backed Allawi in third place. You are better “democrats” than we—we’ve been trying to get our Bush-backed regime out of office for two election cycles, to no avail. And there are at least 58 million of us who are extremely unhappy—indeed devastated—by the results. Many of those 58 million are equally convinced that neither this election, nor the previous one, was conducted fairly or squarely, and certainly—even with a 60% turnout—does not reflect the will of citizens of this country. There’s a word for people like us: they call us “sore losers”—it’s an epithet for “Democrat.” And some of us have been out protesting—but our protests have not been deemed newsworthy by the media. So you’ve got us beat on two counts—at the polls and in the press.

There you were on the 6 o’clock news, purple pointer-finger clenched around the protest sign in your hand, demanding that the United States government “help” you, that you be given a “piece of the pie.” I’m assuming your candidate lost and that was why you came out to protest, and I am surprised no one dared to call you a “sore loser.” Hell no, the picture the media portrays is that of the American dream—live in all its purple-tipped blood, guts and glory! You are the American dream—we, the American nightmare.

How I wish the citizens of my country had the wherewithal to take the streets of this city as valiantly as you—how I wish the 50 to 60 million of us who “lost” our elections were out there screaming “gimme a piece of the pie!” just like you. Better yet, I wish those 50 to 60 million fellow-citizens of mine were out there screaming, “Forget your piece of pie—gimme the whole goddamned bakery,” just like we used to do in Germany when we hit the barricades on behalf of causes that moved us deeply. The bakery, you see, used to be ours. We built it. We bought it. We stole it from the Indians fair and square. Founders, keepers. The bakery is ours—to hell with the "expletive deleted"ing piece of the pie.

I was impressed with your English: you spoke with an impeccable American accent—in any other context, I’d have assumed you were a native-born American: one of the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, all come to look for America at a time when strangers were welcome here. At any rate, it was clear that you’ve already spent most of your 20 or so years on this planet in this country, not in Iraq. And who could fault you for that, considering the state of affairs “over there”—a place where even (neo-colonialist) white men now fear to tread.

I know it’s not your fault that most Americans can’t muster the same degree of passion for the democratic process as you and prefer not to wonder where, when, how and whether their votes are counted once they’ve been cast, but I wonder if you realize just how big a piece of our pie you have already gotten and how, to the average “sore-loser” citizen like me, your protest might be seen as insult added to injury.

As of October 2004, the estimated cost of this war was already cited at $150 billion. According to statistics published by the National Priorities Project, about $1.5 billion of that has come from the taxpayers of the city of Chicago—that is, from me and my neighbors: from our paychecks and our budgets. And we’ve been feeling the crunch. School budgets—from the elementary to the university level have been cut drastically in this city and this state, the Chicago Park District is experiencing similar slashing, and let’s not even talk about the job losses in the private sector, about the record number of bankruptcies, or how many soldiers from this city have lost life or limb guaranteeing you the right to vote and to protest on the Magnificent Mile. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their savings, their lives—so that you can enjoy the right to vote by absentee ballot in the first free elections in your country from the relative safety and comfort of wherever you live in our fair city.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I begrudge you that right, but it’s not the reason $150 billion of our hard-earned money was spent. No one asked us if Iraqi “freedom” was worth $150 billion to us. Your democracy was not the issue: ours was at stake. We were told our very way of life was at risk. Perhaps, if +/-40 million people were not without health insurance in this country, if 35.9 million did not live below the poverty line, if between 9-10 million Americans weren’t unemployed and many more underemployed, if record numbers of Americans weren’t losing long-term unemployment benefits, if the country weren’t $374 billion in debt, if 150 social programs benefiting the poorest Americans weren’t now slated to be downsized even further in order to guarantee your right not only to vote, but to WIN and to protest on our city streets when you don’t, I’d be more than happy to give you that big a piece of my pie. Honey—I’d be happy to give you more pie than you could eat in a lifetime. Make the pie higher. And higher and higher. I’d be happy to hire you as a plum-picker in my bakery and let you stick your fingers in the pie, the cake, the fresh-baked corn bread and even the cookie jar! But, frankly, I know too many people living within a ten-mile radius of my own home who cannot afford to buy a piece of pie at the local grocery store, and who will never, ever get their hands on the cookie jar. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I can no longer afford to worry about your piece of pie! We have starving minions of our own—unlike you, though, they’re not getting their 15 seconds of fame. Quite the opposite: they’re being swept under the carpet, wiped off the record and scrubbed from the stats. You won’t see them on TV, and neither will I.

Like most Americans, I never gave much thought to the conditions in your country prior to the Gulf War of 1991. I was living in Germany then, and, together with hundreds of thousands of Europeans, took to the streets for days on end to protest the brutal invasion of your country: we marched under a sky blackened by soot from the flames burning just a few thousand miles to the south of us, probably about the time you were boarding a plane to take refuge here in my home. At the time, my concern was more for the human cost of the war than for the billions of American dollars that were being blown to smithereens in the blazing oil fields of that war. Why should I have cared? I was a product of the American welfare system who rose up from poverty and was living high on the hog in Germany at the time: universal health insurance with full prescription coverage and no such thing as “pre-existing conditions,” a solid high-salaried position with 6 weeks paid vacation per year (mandated by law), with labor laws to protect me from being laid off and a guarantee for long-term unemployment benefits should it ever come to that—in the postwar economic miracle brought about by the Marshall Plan. I hadn’t had so much as a brush with poverty in years, so I really didn’t care what my government did with tax dollars, as long as it didn’t infringe on my freedom or assault my sense of right and wrong. Well, the Gulf War was a major assault on that sense of what is right and wrong—and that was why I protested: because I cared, and because I lived in a country that afforded me the luxury to care.

Since then--that’s going on 14 years now--I’ve been forced to confront the situation in your country on an almost daily basis. And it is right that I, as an American citizen, should concern myself with your problems. I firmly believe this is our obligation as good citizens of the world. But at this point, it’s becoming an assault on more than my sense of right and wrong. It’s not only costing me money, it’s infringing on my freedom, it’s costing me sleep, it’s costing me tears and taking a toll on my health, my well-being, my sanity, my life—just the other day, I had the bad sense to take a look at these photographs, sent to me by an “oversea visitor” via Internet:

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/01467.htm

Those images are now printed indelibly on my mind. Right beside your picture framed by the 26-inch screen in my living room, not far from the front page of today’s NYT, with a picture of an Iraqi family sitting in front of a TV set the same make and model as mine, watching the results of the election I bought them come in:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/internat...ast/14iraq.html?


It encroaches, daily, on my ability to do my job. I am distracted by it. Day in, day out. It cuts into my sleep: for nights after viewing that slideshow, I tossed and turned. The images disturbed me more than those of Old Glory-draped coffins, of Arab men stripped of dignity, electrodes attached to their privates and bags tied over their heads—all of it done in my name, all of it done on my dime. These images, more than any others have weighed heavily on my heart, on my mind. My own personal price tag. The cost of opening my eyes, of daring to look. Of daring to see. Of daring to care.

And last night was no different, I couldn’t sleep. Today is no different. I cannot work: your words, “gimme a piece of the pie” just keep running like ticker-tape alongside images of the homeless guy down on 57th street, of the kids I meet in the park who have no mittens on their hands. Of Indians on Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations freezing to death in their homes because they cannot pay the heat bill, of single-mothers losing their jobs because they cannot afford the bus ticket to get to work, of babies turning up in dumpsters because their mothers cannot afford another mouth to feed--and last but not least, of voters standing in 10-hour lines on the rain-drenched streets of Ohio, of elections officials locking down the elections board office and “counting” votes in secret, not to mention the hundreds I’ve shelled out of my own pocket in my attempt to deal with the “cognitive dissonance syndrome” wrought by the travesty of this past year on my mind. I can’t help but continue to calculate the cost of “doing business”—democracy’s collateral damage.

I gotta hand it to you, lady--you managed, in a 15 second news blurb, to bring it all home: I have come to appreciate the value of a clear plastic box, a paper ballot and a purple pointer finger like never before: it’s a lesson that cost me $150 billion, 1,500 flag-draped coffins and 10,000 wounded who will never be the same. If I could, I would let you cast 100,000 ballots: on behalf of the fellow Iraqis who paid the price for your right to vote on American soil. But, dear, if you want to protest the results: do me the favor, go back to Iraq and take up your cause with the government there—you can take my TV and my subscription to the Times with you when you go.

Kind regards,

The Lady who paid to bring you the best democracy money can buy

© Apathetics Anonymous (aka Dr. Lilian Friedberg)

Tombstoned, Good job. Ilike it.

Well done, with a very interesting perspective.

Thanks!

Thanks. it's better than screaming at the TV set, huh?

How the hell are we gonna survive another four years of this "expletive deleted", people, HOW?
Sigh.

Oh jeez, I'm starting to like those "expletive deleted"s!

If I knew the answer to your question, I would be a millionaire !
And maybe sane myself. Only advice I can offer is to take one day at a time (with
very deeeeeeep breaths on a regular basis.)

And continue to write as a healthy outlet for the incredible pain of it all.

eb 16 2005, 12:05 AM]
If I knew the answer to your question, I would be a millionaire !
And maybe sane myself. Only advice I can offer is to take one day at a time (with
very deeeeeeep breaths on a regular basis.)

And continue to write as a healthy outlet for the incredible pain of it all.

[/quote]

Yeah, had to miss my acupuncture this week! Writing's cheaper anyway. Heck, these days you don't even have to pay for the print cartridges!

(Not to worry, they'll be taxing internet usage soon. Or eliminating it altogether. Damn good thing I kept that old Brother AX 10 typewriter--and the print cartridges to go with it).

(Not to worry, they'll be taxing internet usage soon. Or eliminating it altogether. Damn good thing I kept that old Brother AX 10 typewriter--and the print cartridges to go with it).

[/quote]


Geez, I used to think I was just paranoid, now I'm starting to feel "prophetic" -- found this in my inbox after making that post

The Federal Election Commission "next month will begin looking at tightening restrictions on political activities in cyberspace, a controversial move that makes some FEC officials uneasy," Roll Call reports.

"Specifically, the FEC is planning to examine the question of how Internet activities, when coordinated with candidates' campaigns, fit into the definition of 'public communications.'"

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/14/164335/880#readmore

Surprise surprise.