The cab driver was from South Africa, usually of an optimistic frame of mind. To my question regarding the war between Israel and Hezbollah, he answered in a subdued voice, “They’re killing people.” Twice he repeated his assessment in the same words, as though any embellishment would detract from his meaning: “They’re killing people.”

No Yale scholar, he, but wise beyond those who insist on a military victory before a cease-fire and negotiations. It might be advantageous if President Bush and his entire staff would spend a week supervising a grammar school playground, where white-anger fights are treated with cooling-off periods, followed by discussions of differences, and concluded with some symbol of friendship – shaking hands, high-fives, whatever.

Why so? Because teachers know violence has consequences, and the sooner the intervention, the fewer the chances are for broken bones, bloody noses or thousand-dollar orthodontist bills for parents. Teachers understand that anger and hatred wound children’s spirits. Without guidance in seeking solutions absent exchanges of blows, the children will have been deprived of a life lesson in negotiating for peace, before returning to multiplication tables or the intricacies of personal pronouns.

Two pictures in living color on the front page of the July 28th issue of The New York Times, remind us of the price others are paying for Israel’s short-sighted policy, and our unquestioning support for it, as of this day, July 28th.

Lynsey Addaario’s photo shows Israeli soldiers, standing together, weeping and overcome by grief at a funeral for one of their own.

Just below, we find the poignant picture by Suhaib Salem, of an eight-month old Palestinian infant, wrapped in a white sheet, but whose face is exposed. “A real baby in a real war,” the photographer seems to be telling us.

It is the same message we find repeated again and again by twenty-seven-year-old reporter for Pacifica Radio, Aaron Glantz, in his book, How America Lost Iraq.

When the war broke out with Iraq, Aaron chose not to be embedded with other reporters in the media, but to free-lance among the ordinary people, who were seeing their lives destroyed bit by bit in bombed-out homes, then bombed-out shelters. He leads us down side streets and alleys, into basements and to park benches, wherever he might find little people, anxious to speak of the unspeakable in their lives, in a vain effort to make sense of them.

When Iraq fell, the U.S. Army had allowed mobs to loot Iraq’s arms caches, with 380 tons of powerful explosives. Kalshnikovs and RPGs were plentiful and thieves were numerous.

Unbelievable disregard for the Iraqi people could be seen by the indifference on the part of the 100,000 American troops, who stood idly by while looters burned the National Museum and National Library, robbing the nation of its most precious antiquities from Ancient Mesopotamia.

Furthermore, Aaron tells us that American authorities had also allowed the universities to be looted – which meant no libraries for the students, no science labs, no desks, no chairs, and no respect for the intellectual and spiritual hunger of a people struggling to build a better tomorrow, beyond the despair stemming from 70% unemployment today.

In Jordan, Aaron met up with James Langley, a filmmaker, and a French colleague, Raphael Krafit, he of a quick wit and warm smile, also a reporter for Pacifica. On April 29, 2003, the three crossed Iraq’s western desert from Amman, toward Baghdad; James in a white, air-conditioned General Motors SUV, outfitted with an extra-large gas tank, which allowed drivers to cross the desert without stopping for a fill-up.

Raphael and Aaron rented the services of a cab driver with a 1970 Chevrolet station wagon, and a full tank of gas strapped to its top, along with 1,000 cans of Pepsi, a luxury Saddam had not allowed in the country.

Amazingly, no American tanks or humvees were on the highway as they passed Ramadi and Fallajah into Baghdad, with no checkpoints. It wasn’t until they reached central Baghdad that they ran into a belligerent American soldier, described by Aaron:

“Turn the car around!” the soldier, not more than twenty years, yelled in English. His helmet, which reached to his ears, appeared too big for his head.

“Turn the car around!” he yelled again. The cab driver and Aaron got out of the car to talk with the soldier.

“Hello, soldier, I’m American” Aaron announced, but the soldier wasn’t listening. All he heard was Aaron’s Arabic accent in his English, developed over a few months in the Middle East. He had grown a mustache in the Arabic style to blend in with regular Iraqis, and now he was in big trouble for looking like one.

As he reached into his pocket for his passport, the soldier yelled again and aimed his gun in Aaron’s direction, then decided he wanted to talk to blond Raphael in the back seat, whom he told to remind his translator to show his documents, not just walk around.

The men were amazed to find most of the buildings in Baghdad still standing. However, when they visited the bombed Turkish village of Ozverin, more than 800 miles from Baghdad and 200 miles from the Iraqi border, the farmers weren’t surprised that their fields had been bombed. An elderly resident, Burhan Yucal, spoke for the villagers: “Bush is bombing all the civilians. The hospitals, the mosques, the shops and the bazaars. If a war begins in a country, this means destruction for all the people there. In a war only an army should be bombed, but war is destruction all the time.”

When American soldiers were sent to clean up the mess, the people surrounded the jeep and pelted it with eggs. Apparently, the art of diplomacy had left something to be desired in Ozverin.

Since almost all the reporters had been embedded or confined to their hotels, Aaron felt there were many more bombs that had gone astray, but the civilian casualties had not been reported.

On April 7th, an American tank fired into Baghdad’s hospital’s maternity ward and the medical staff fled. A week later, the doctors found 26 patients dead in the emergency room. The doctors first buried the dead in a mass grave in a lawn on the hospital grounds before cremating them and sending their ashes away.

However, the doctors didn’t blame the Marines entirely, for a Syrian fighter had been firing his machine gun at the tank, which fired back its canon. Nothing is simple in war time.

Fallujah would experience her turn at real war in real time. On April 29, 2003, U.S. troops opened fire and killed more than a dozen demonstrators, who had gathered to celebrate Saddam’s 66th birthday. This was a Sunni city of 200,000 on the banks of the Euphrates River, which had developed a comfortable way of life under Saddam, making it a likely place for armed resistance.

On May 1, 2003, Raphael and Aaron left Baghdad early to take a cab 30 miles east to Fallujah to inspect the situation first-hand. It was the same day President Bush piloted a fighter jet onto the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego and declared Iraq “one victory in the war on terror” in front of the banner reading MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Aaron’s group asked where they might find a special sermon for Friday prayers, and learned that the al-Kabir Mosque would be a good choice, presided over by Imam Shakur, where they heard him preach:

“The United States has killed innocent women and children and is guilty of crimes against humanity.” Then, he went on to remind them that, “Islam is a religion of peace. Do not confront the Americans and do not turn out to protest.”

“If I were George Bush,” Aaron told James, “I would be putting every cent into fixing the electric grid and the telephone grid. If Americans could get this country to function again, people might love them enough that they would elect a pro-American government.

At another time, Aaron questioned the lack of money put into civil affairs: “Is it because the Bush Administration doesn’t care about the reconstruction of Iraq, or is it because all the money is going to big companies like Bechtel or Halliburton?”

He explained that the two companies had been given giant “cost plus indefinite quantity” contract to reconstruct Iraq. That meant all their costs of doing business would be paid by the American taxpayer, plus a tidy profit for their shareholders. It also means they would get taxpayers’ money whether they fixed anything or not. (Italics, mine)

Initially, San Francisco-based Bechtel was given $1 billion to repair and refurbish the country’s electric, sewage, water, and school systems. Houston-based Halliburton, meantime, was given $2 billion to rebuild the oil industry and provide logistical support to the Army, including meal service, laundry, communications, and housing. Both numbers would climb as the occupation dragged on, but little would be fixed.

In today’s joint news conference with Tony Blair, President Bush mentioned the suffering of the people in Lebanon, and assured them their homes would be rebuilt. No doubt, the ink has already dried on the Halliburton/Bechtel no-bid contracts to rebuild Lebanon. For a healthy dose of skepticism, we must be forgiven.

What do you think it would take to pry those two companies out of the bidding and hire some honest labor managers to go into Iraq and Lebanon, and hire thousands of native workers to haul away the debris, build the houses, cook the meals, put in new roads, whatever it takes to rebuild what our war material has destroyed?

Along the way, we just might win some friends in the bargain.

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