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Citizenship

June 22, 2007 11:13 PM

I stood in a U.S. federal court house in downtown Los Angeles and raised my right hand, along with 10 other men and women, to take the oath of allegiance and become a U.S. citizen. It was a big day for me -- 22 years after I first traveled to the U.S. from Ireland where I was brought up, seven years since I moved to Los Angeles from my last residence in Shanghai, China, and about a year since I have been commuting regularly between Los Angeles and Baghdad.

Interestingly, all the other new citizens in that courthouse were members of the U.S. military. The ceremony had been organized for service members who had earned citizenship by joining the armed forces and who wanted to go through the naturalization process before being deployed overseas -- a number of them to Iraq. The immigration officials drafted me into the same ceremony because they knew I had to fly back to Iraq next week too for my job. The judge who swore us in asked each person to come up and receive the naturalization certificate individually -- he shook each of our hands and said "good luck out there.

America anguishes over the war in Iraq. But one thing that has remained rock solid, and that never fails to move me deeply, is the level of support throughout the nation for the men and women who have been asked to fight this war. Americans have widely differing opinions about the decision to get into this war, but they need no tutorials on recognizing bravery and dedication by young men and women following orders in the field. When I spend time with U.S. troops in Iraq, they sometimes ask me about this -- "Do the folks back home understand what we are trying to do? Do they support us?" They are not asking about support for the decision to invade Iraq, but support for the mission of their individual platoon -- and the many like them -- fighting to clear some dangerous neighborhood of militants and make it safer for the ordinary people to live near-to normal lives. Most U.S. soldiers want to help the Iraqi people they meet -- I meet very few who express animosity towards Iraqis in general.

At the same time I don’t meet many Iraqis who express animosity to Americans in general. It is simply not true that Arabs in general or Iraqis in particular "hate America," as some of the more fanatic figures in the region seem to suggest. There are plenty who are critical of the way the U.S. has waged the war in Iraq, but at a personal level Iraqis will sit down with Americans, drink tea, and try to make sense of this mess they, we, all of us are in now.

Over 3,500 US troops have died in Iraq -- some of them doubtless naturalized citizens like the men and women who stood beside me in the L.A. courthouse, who were not born in the U.S. and signed up to fight for a country they were still just getting to know. There is a reason they, and I, came to America and chose to become American citizens. It is because this country, despite all its flaws, offers opportunity to those who have the drive to take it. When I came to the U.S. after university in Dublin, Ireland had over 20% unemployment. Finding a job in that depressed economy was next to impossible. I had the name of just one contact in the U.S., Jim Toland, then the features editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. I didn’t expect him to give me more than the time of day when I called him up with my madcap plan to fly down to Central America and write about the civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua. But he took me out for a few beers on the Mission and after a while he said to me: "Send me some stories from down there and we will see what you can do." I will never forget those words. Since he opened that door for me back in 1985 that is what I have been doing -- ‘sending stories from down there’, traveling around the world, learning now it is not perfect here -- but it is still better than where we came from. We were all very proud, honored, and grateful to be accepted into this great nation.

The war in Iraq has tarnished the image of Americans in the eyes of many people across the globe, that is no secret. But America is a country that is built on the concept of renewal, of constantly seeking a better future, of learning from its mistakes. And when America gets it right, the rest of the world benefits. That is why I and 10 other men and women stood up in that courthouse to become citizens of this country. We know it is not perfect here -- but it is still better than where we came from. We were all very proud, honored, and grateful to be accepted into this great nation.

June 22, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

THE CIRCLES OF HELL

June 02, 2007 2:48 PM

Is Baghdad hell on earth?  It is a recurring metaphor in what is written about this city.  The gates of hell have swung open, people here are trapped in hell, hell calls the dead. ... I find myself resorting to similar images.

In a story I wrote for the Washington Post I found myself describing Baghdad as a city like Dante’s Inferno, where people step from one circle of hell into the next, each one getting worse:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060101860.html?nav=rss_print/outlook

There are times when I think that it cannot get worse here.  Our friend Dr Jamal came by yesterday and told us how he had just operated on three girls, the youngest 3 years old, who had been shot by snipers.  Some young man in a tall building with a sniper rifle, blinded by hatred, scoping out children on the street because he knows that will outrage people all the more and make this country even harder to bring back from ... Hell.  Surely it cannot get worse. 

But then a friend who had spent time in Cambodia back in the 70’s reminded me, “It can always get worse.”  Phnom Penh, 1975, cleared of its entire population by the Khmer Rouge, who then killed 1.7 million people in the countryside.  Iraq is bad, but not that bad ... yet.

In Dante’s version, the gates of hell had this sign above them: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”  In my conversations with Iraqis of all political and religious backgrounds in Baghdad, I don’t hear a lot of hope these days.  I take that as a bad sign.

June 2, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (24) | TrackBack (0)