Baghdad before and after - Updated
By Libby
I think about Iraq a lot. Sometimes when I'm reading about the occupation, which I do for hours every week, I'm struck by a profound sadness that I never traveled there before the invasion. I always wanted to see the antiquities of Baghdad but many of its ancient treasures have been destroyed or ruined in the "liberation" so even if peace ever inflicts itself again on that city, it won't ever the same.
Not having a guidebook handy, I decided I wanted to see what it looked like before our bombs arrived. I discovered it's not that easy to find photos of Baghdad before the invasion. These were the best I could find. As you can see it was once a green and beautiful place.
Now, not so much. It's a broken city. [Click on the photos to enlarge them. I can't copy them full size.]
There's more shots from this photograher at this album and others have posted more. Iraq was beautiful before the 'war.' None of this will ever be the same.
I think a lot about the people of Iraq. I look at the shots at the last link, of ordinary people smiling, the kids with innocence still intact in their eyes and it breaks my heart. I haven't been able to get through the whole nine minutes yet. I find it physically painful to think of all those normal comfortable lives forever disrupted for the crass ambition of politicians.
Two weeks before the invasion Bahgdad was a happy place. The people smiled on the lighted streets, filled with sidewalk vendors and laughing party goers. An American traveler was safe to wander them at will. Now you need a flack vest and an armed guard to leave the Green Zone.
Two weeks before the invasion, the Tigris river was blue. Today it's a different color. The lights don't go on in the city at night. The remaining vendors stalls are nearly empty and no one laughs in the streets. This is the legacy our tax dollars have bought.
They tell me freedom isn't free and I believe it. We've paid dearly in blood and treasure in its name. But when we count up the cost, let's include the Iraqi people's loss in the price. It's been significant.
Update: Armed Liberal mocks my empathy and accuses me of romanticizing Saddam's regime. Spare me the horror stories. I suppose I could spend a half an hour assembling links in response but what would be the point? The warmongers lost any ground to argue about Saddam's brutality the day our government became a state sponsor of torture.
These pictures speak for themselves. The millions of displaced Iraqis who lost their homes and livelihoods and the families of the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed suffered a great loss. No matter how you feel about the occupation, it's only common decency to acknowledge it and hiding behind Saddam's atrocities to excuse our own mistakes is pure cowardice.
[cross-posted to The Reaction]
I think about Iraq a lot. Sometimes when I'm reading about the occupation, which I do for hours every week, I'm struck by a profound sadness that I never traveled there before the invasion. I always wanted to see the antiquities of Baghdad but many of its ancient treasures have been destroyed or ruined in the "liberation" so even if peace ever inflicts itself again on that city, it won't ever the same.
Not having a guidebook handy, I decided I wanted to see what it looked like before our bombs arrived. I discovered it's not that easy to find photos of Baghdad before the invasion. These were the best I could find. As you can see it was once a green and beautiful place.
Now, not so much. It's a broken city. [Click on the photos to enlarge them. I can't copy them full size.]
There's more shots from this photograher at this album and others have posted more. Iraq was beautiful before the 'war.' None of this will ever be the same.
I think a lot about the people of Iraq. I look at the shots at the last link, of ordinary people smiling, the kids with innocence still intact in their eyes and it breaks my heart. I haven't been able to get through the whole nine minutes yet. I find it physically painful to think of all those normal comfortable lives forever disrupted for the crass ambition of politicians.
Two weeks before the invasion Bahgdad was a happy place. The people smiled on the lighted streets, filled with sidewalk vendors and laughing party goers. An American traveler was safe to wander them at will. Now you need a flack vest and an armed guard to leave the Green Zone.
Two weeks before the invasion, the Tigris river was blue. Today it's a different color. The lights don't go on in the city at night. The remaining vendors stalls are nearly empty and no one laughs in the streets. This is the legacy our tax dollars have bought.
They tell me freedom isn't free and I believe it. We've paid dearly in blood and treasure in its name. But when we count up the cost, let's include the Iraqi people's loss in the price. It's been significant.
Update: Armed Liberal mocks my empathy and accuses me of romanticizing Saddam's regime. Spare me the horror stories. I suppose I could spend a half an hour assembling links in response but what would be the point? The warmongers lost any ground to argue about Saddam's brutality the day our government became a state sponsor of torture.
These pictures speak for themselves. The millions of displaced Iraqis who lost their homes and livelihoods and the families of the hundreds of thousands of dead and maimed suffered a great loss. No matter how you feel about the occupation, it's only common decency to acknowledge it and hiding behind Saddam's atrocities to excuse our own mistakes is pure cowardice.
[cross-posted to The Reaction]
Labels: Bush Administration, Iraq
posted by Libby Spencer at 6:56 PM
18 Comments:
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html
Good post, Libby. I don't think freedom has anything to do with this war. It certainly hasn't brought anything but a loss of whatever freedoms the Iraqi people enjoyed before we arrived. And we at home have paid a price, not only in an obscene amount of money wasted, but in giving up our liberties as well.
The only freedoms are those realized by the arms manufacturers, contractors, civilian mercenaries and oil companies to make more money.
We may be able to rebuild our ruined economy, and maybe even our reputation. But you're right about Iraq. Much of what they had is gone forever.
Libby,
We may be able to regain our buildings, streets and treasures but the thing we can't get back and I think it is bigger than all your losings is that the damage that has affected our society.
It is something we have not seen before: the Shiite hates his Sunni neighbor and vice versa and the Sunni man can't marry a Shiite woman and vice versa.
"It is something we have not seen before..."
Where did the bodies in the mass graves come from?
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html
mr. forward,
this was something had nothing to do with the sectarian violence Iraq has witnessed since 2003.
It was something relating to Saddam's barbaric behavior, killing anyone who against him.
There were Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians inside these mass graves and they were killed when they were seen against Saddam and they were not killed by other rival sect.
the kurds were not happy when they were gassed and the shia were not to happy either. reportedly saddam hussein was quite happy. He had several nice houses.
"It is something we have not seen before: the Shiite hates his Sunni neighbor and vice versa."
Wouldn't disarming the militias be a good start?
"Wouldn't disarming the militias be a good start?"
they are one of the occupation's results....
"they are one of the occupation's results...."
As is the disarming, and the elections, and the appearance of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and the defeat of the same, and all things good and bad that happen in Iraq from here on and ever after.
Saddam left Iraq in a mess, Libby's attempt to put lipstick on that pig is risible.
Well if we are going to laugh at any made up assertions here, we should start with the idea that since Saddam Hussein was a vicious tyrant, all that ensued from our aggression is Saddams' fault.
You don't really think that's a logical conclusion, do you? For that pig to be salable as bacon you would have to assume that we had no other option than to invade and to invade and occupy so ineptly as to make Ghengis Khan look like a diplomat.
If the Khassakhoun is saying that in pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall, we have demolished not only the wall but the city it used to protect, I have to agree.
Kassakhoon, let me apologize for what my country has done to yours. I did everything I could to prevent it and have been working relentlessly to end it. Pay no attention to those smug self-involved warmongers who seek to excuse the destruction we wrought by hiding behind Saddam's atrocities.
RVA, I'm surprised and disappointed that you show such a lack of awareness. I expected better from you.
As for Mr. Forward, I suggest that yellow bellied idiot take his cowardly ass to Baghdad immediately and disarm the militias himself if he thinks it's so damn easy.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b98_1199055052
Argumentum ad website?
LOL Fogg. I was thinking ad naseum.
"The warmongers lost any ground to argue about Saddam's brutality the day our government became a state sponsor of torture."
Mom swatted kid's butt for running into the street.
Hitler killed millions in death camps.
Both used violence.
QED: Mom = Hitler.
"There were Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and Christians inside these mass graves and they were killed when they were seen against Saddam and they were not killed by other rival sect."
I'm sure it was a great comfort and relief to the dead and their families that they were tortured and killed for reasons other than sectarianism.
"These pictures speak for themselves."
Pictures never speak for themselves, except as propaganda. Context is everything. You could find many pictures of happy Germans in the years 1938-1942, and our invasion of Germany ruined far more historical and cultural artifacts than were damaged in Iraq in 2003, but neither is a valid criticism of the U.S.'s conduct in that war.
There is much valid criticism that can be made of the 'competence' of this invasion and occupation (although that is true of any invasion and occupation), but if you really believe that everything was hunky-dory in Iraq in 2002, and the U.S. destroyed an idyllic paradise, you're delusional. If you don't really believe that, then you are dishonest. Either way, so far I'm not finding you very lovable.
Wow - a veritable smorgasbord of fallacies. Is this like some kind of assignment for logic 101 or something?
The only person talking about "veritable paradises" is you and the only one creating false and completely inapposite straw stuffed syllogisms is you, and the only one putting this the shitload of hyperbole into someone else's mouth in order to have something to refute is you.
Who cares who you love? You're an asshole if you think this country has any claim to any kind of moral high ground in this matter and a dishonest person even if you don't.
Capt. Fogg, maybe you should read Libby's original post, to which I was responding in my reference to paradise.
She is one who describes Iraq before the invasion as "a happy place" with smiling people, laughing partygoers, children with "the innocence still intact in their eyes," and folks living "normal, comfortable lives." That sounds pretty idyllic to me.
Look, if you think withdrawing our forces from Iraq will result in a better life for Iraqis, or that preventing the likely genocidal sectarian violence that would result is not worth the cost in money and U.S. casualties, or that another demonstration of American distractibility and lack of will, a la Vietnam, would be good for our national soul, or that Al Qaeda needs Sunni Iraq in which to rebuild its forces, or because Allah wills it, or whatever, go ahead and say so.
It isn't necessary to re-write history to make Saddam out to be a harmless and benign victim.
As between Saddam and the U.S., I surely do think this country has a claim to the moral high ground.
Iraq invaded Kuwait (not the first neighboring country he invaded). With widespread international support, the U.S. forced Iraq out of Kuwait and granted a ceasefire on specified conditions. Iraq persistently refused to comply with them.
Sanctions to enforce compliance led to wide-spread corruption of the U.N. and other international organizations, enrichment of Saddam, and suffering of the Iraqi civilian population (allegedly, just among children under 5 years old, 50,000 deaths per year).
Saddam was widely believed (and probably believed himself) to be advancing programs of weapons of mass destruction, even though that belief turned out to be false. If Bush lied about anything in the run-up to 2003, then so did virtually everyone else, including Clinton and Gore, whose eight-year administration produced the intelligence system on which those beliefs were based.
The vast majority of Iraqi civilian casualties are not being inflicted by coalition forces, but by our enemies. You can say that is our fault, but only if you would also blame your local police for all the crime in your town, because they aren't able to prevent it despite their best efforts. Even then, I suspect you don't argue for getting rid of the police and letting the criminals have free rein.
As it happens, I was among the 20% of Americans who had major reservations about the wisdom of an invasion in 2003, but whether it was wise to begin with has long since become irrelevant. If your doctor misdiagnoses appendicitis, that doesn't demand that she walk away from the operating table the minute she discovers she was wrong.
Calling me "an asshole" isn't much of an argument.
P.S. It's a mystery to me why you would care whom I love, but your blog's side bar implies you do - it urges people to "Stick around. You'll learn to love us." I am fond of a lot of people I disagree with, but they offer reasoned arguments, listen to those they disagree with, fairly respond, and don't rant. You might consider that approach.
It's not my blog so the sidebar doesn't apply to me, but yes, the asshole comment was over the top. I apologize, but I'm so used to war loving, truth hating trolls and their specious arguments, that the epithet sometimes comes out before it's fully earned.
"Happy" is a very relative term. Treating it as an absolute is the the false fulcrum or your argument. Were Jews happy in 1938 Germany? No,of course not, but those in Auschwitz in '44 made them very much so in comparison.
I think the situation in Iraq has most Iraqis (and I think the polls back me up solidly) looking back with something approaching nostalgia whether that's rational or not. 4 million homeless or in exile? No power, no heat, no jobs, no schools and hundreds of thousands (at least) dead? Nobody is talking about paradise lost: it's about civilization lost.
They are nearly unanimous in wanting us out today.
As to the "widely believed" scenario, widely is unqualified. "By whom" is the question begging in the corner like a Greek Chorus.
The answer is widely believed by a bombastic, pugnacious minority, perhaps, but no minority so pig-headed and intransigent as the Bush White House. His father was quite right and so was the UN and so were the French and most of Europe. They absolutely knew the speech they had Colin Powell give at the UN was totally fabricated because the British told them those "chemical labs" were British weather balloon launchers with nothing worse than helium in them. They absolutely knew the Niger Uranium gambit was a damned lie and the aluminum tubes weren't for refining uranium.Only the Bush neo-cons trusted Chalabi and trying to blame it all on Clinton is a flim-flam ploy not worthy of countering.
There was never one piece of physical evidence, only a lot of flag-waving psychochauvinism and totally unfounded accusations about the Democrat pansies and traitors who wanted to appease "the terrorists." Sorry, there isn't going to be any consideration given to them or to this "innocent mistake" argument.
I think the evidence demands recognition that the war was promoted by people who knew quite well there was no threat, and that's more egregious because they ignored the real threat and the real source of international terrorism and they continue to do so.
Can you not be aware that Bush actively punished those who were right and steadfastly ignored or fired the advisers and generals who were absolutely accurate in their assessments and predictions? Why do you think blame is irrelevant?
8 more killed today by US bombs and I see no justification in your argument that others are dong most of the killing. We are the ones who made it possible; accessories before during and after the fact. We are the ones who opened the borders, allowed militias to form, allowed them to acquire weapons by our total incompetence and corruption. Did anyone consider how many people were being blown to bits while Wolf Blitzer was blitzing about "the shockinaw?"
Shooting unarmed civilians by the thousands, invading homes, raping looting and killing, torturing and yes, terrorizing people is terrorism by definition and terrorism in the opinion of the Iraqis.
I don't think the foul origins of the war are irrelevant at all, any more than my occupation of someone else's house would be irrelevant to my illegal entry thereof. Having destroyed a culture and civilization doesn't convey the right to it. It's not the Pottery Barn and it's not pottery we're talking about - it's human beings.
"Mom swatted kid's butt for running into the street.
Hitler killed millions in death camps.
Both used violence.
QED: Mom = Hitler."
That's what really got my goat and would have got my sheep and cows if I had any. It's not even a real fake syllogism, but worse, it's a straw man set up for you to burn and has nothing to do with any statements made here. I may withdraw the rectal reference, but this ludicrous thing remains disingenuous and offensive.
If I may be so bold in summation, regardless of what you think Libby was saying, I'm saying that our invasion and destruction of Iraq was criminal recklessness at best and even if it had been an innocent mistake, continuing to force an American puppet government on these people at the cost of their lives, while strutting about like roosters in a barnyard crowing about "freedom," remains criminal.
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