By Daniel Johnson-Kim, Sports Editor
A nameless Iraqi dentist opened my eyes to the daily tragedies of the Iraq War.
He doesn’t disclose his name, and his English isn’t perfect, but his blog,
“The Last of the Iraqis,” is an insightful and mindblowing account of a life surrounded by death.
In his blog, the dentist who lives in Baghdad, Iraq, describes his daily interactions, fears, hopes, desires and thoughts he encounters in the warravaged region. And whether he explains his daily fear of death or tells his account of a city flooded with AK-47s, his posts describe the horrid life this country has forced upon him.
Before the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003 to spread democracy and remove the “Axis of evil” our president declared a danger to America, this man was a prominent dentist in his mid-20s who enjoyed many of the same things we do here. He helped his patients in Baghdad and even went out to eat with his wife, but once our country entered, everything changed. He no longer has the freedom to walk to work without fear of death, and the concept of a normal life has been eroded by his personal encounters he describes to strangers on the Internet.
“On my way to the clinic, I amuse myself with the same routine thoughts,” he said in a post titled “Daily Life in Baghdad.” “Will this “misery ever end? Will Iraq be peaceful again? How long can we tolerate? When will I die? Will anyone find my dead body and be buried respectfully as I deserve?”
Sure, I’ve watched, read and ignored countless stories and specials about Americans and Iraqis dying daily in a war our country continues to disagree on. I’ve screamed my opinions in political discussions with friends and strangers. I’ve even slapped my head in frustration with an administration that is convinced this war is worth fighting. But before discovering the dentist’s blog, I never considered what it would be like to fear death on a daily basis.
“As I dress for work other questions assail me,” the dentist described in a post that was published in the Washington Post. “How will I die? Will it be a shot in the head? Will I be blown to pieces? Or be seized at a police checkpoint because of my sect, then tortured and killed and thrown out on the sidewalk?”
It’s too easy to slip into a routine and forget our country is fighting a war that never should have been waged. But this doesn’t change the fact that the Iraq war is a problem, and no matter how many news reports we ignore, this problem is a problem my generation will be defined by.
I don’t have a solution, and I don’t know if pulling out will fix anything. But I do know that no one deserves the life the Baghdad dentist lives.
