No one likes to see the English language perverted through misuse. It makes things confusing. Occasionally it becomes necessary to reinforce the meaning of a word that is in the process of being corrupted. Today’s review word is “liberation.”
According to the American Heritage College Dictionary liberation is defined as, “to set free, as from oppression, confinement or foreign control.”
Why is word like liberation important? Because that’s what America is doing in Iraq, at least that’s what the people who started the war want us to believe.
Dick Cheney made his case on Meet the Press. “My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators,” he said on the eve of the American invasion.
Former chief of staff Andrew Card was more effusive, claiming the “Iraqi people would welcome freedom with jubilation.”
Perhaps the most trenchant observation was uttered by our commander in chief, “I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.” Bush’s legacy will undoubtedly be based on his mastery of the oxymoron.
When U.S. troops liberated France and the low countries of Europe in WWII, the troops were greeted with a parade-like atmosphere in nearly every town they passed through. Soldiers were practically drowned in schnapps and wine thrust upon them by ecstatic natives. It wasn’t your ordinary peaceful welcome. It was a regular hoedown.
Are the GIs in Iraq being feted with the same enthusiasm as their WWII predecessors? Are grateful Iraqis thrusting chilled cups of licorice-flavored arak into the dusty hands of U.S. troopers?
You could ask Marine 2nd Lt. Brian Wilson, but you’ll have to keep up if you want to hear the answer. “If you stand still, you WILL get shot at,” he said in an interview with CNN.
Marine 1st Lt. Carlos Goetz provided a little more detail. “We try to stay mobile, so snipers can’t aim in on us. If we walk, then it gives them more time to aim in on your head,” he said.
It’s not just the GI that needs to move fast. Just ask U.S. House Representative Jim Marshall. He and fellow representative Tim Murphy were injured when their car flipped traveling between green zones in Baghdad.
You would think the politicians responsible for liberating so many Iraqis would want to meet a few of them. Not American politicians. According to Marshall, when they’re not in the green zone, visitors are speeding down the middle of the street, ignoring all traffic regulations. The breakneck strategy may be reckless, but it’s the only thing that keeps them safe.
Wait a second. Aren’t liberators supposed to be greeted like heroes? Didn’t Bush say the mission was accomplished three years ago?
If Bush’s new version of liberation seems confusing to us, imagine the difficulty experienced by the average Iraqi thumbing through an Arab-English dictionary. What is their perspective on American liberation?
In the first days following the U.S. invasion, a few Iraqis celebrated, but most video footage featured civilians coolly regarding the situation with cautious and ambivalent stares. Perhaps they were asking the same question that creeps into the mind of anyone who pays a tiny bit of attention to what is going on. It’s a question most people don’t want to face. Are the American forces in Iraq to liberate or appropriate?
It didn’t take long for the Iraqis to figure out which was the case and ditch their dictionaries.
In Blitzkrieg fashion, Exxon’s (forgive me, America’s) armed forces moved to secure the Iraqi Oil Ministry, while completely ignoring the National Museum of Iraq, leaving it vulnerable to the avarice of looters.
Several thousand artifacts, some dating to the earliest roots of Mesopotamian culture, disappeared.
It’s all been downhill from there. According to Kurdish Media News Service, “Iraqis are suffering from unprecedented violence and misery … Violent crime, including kidnapping, rape and armed robbery, is at record levels … As much as half of the labor force is unemployed, and the cost of living has skyrocketed.”
According to the UN World Food Program the civilians of Iraq are suffering “significant countrywide shortages of rice, sugar, milk, and infant formula.”
Kurdish Media also reports “50,000 Iraqis have been imprisoned by U.S. forces since the invasion, but only 1.5 percent of them have been convicted of any crime. U.S. forces hold 15,000 to 18,000 Iraqi prisoners, more than were imprisoned under Saddam Hussein.”
We don’t need Kurdish Media to tell us how several of those abductees were treated.
There’s no doubt that stubborn supporters of Iraq war, who possess the faith but not the perspicuity necessary to create a successful democracy, still believe that America is in Iraq for the noble purpose of liberating its people. Perhaps it’s time for those people to visit Iraq and take a jog with Lt. Wilson.
While you’re double timing it outside the green zone, you can try asking a civilian how it feels to be liberated.

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