What if the real consequences of the US occupation of Iraq are still 10-20 years away? The damage of the invasion will always be the deepest wound no matter if we stay for 100 years or if we redeployed today. Troops or no troops, America has a lasting responsibility for the condition we created.
Iraq will have to struggle to find a balance of law, power and identity whether US troops are present or not. Our soldiers have provided a distraction for the aggression but at some point the Iraqis must deal with each other.
The future of Iraq is in the hands of a generation of youth who witnessed gore beyond most people's wildest imagination. A brutal occupation by foreign troops, merciless carnage imposed by other Muslims, an insurgency of the faithful not willing to let the ways of Saddam pass, and a solid mental branding of the Arab notion of retribution killings as the way to gain power, revenge and prominence.
No matter how the political struggle is waged, the world cannot allow the children of Iraq to fall out of favor. Their education and future must be a global priority. If not, the ideologies that brought us the Taliban and al Qaeda will have new footing in a generation of Iraqis that have very legitimate and real reasons to search for a mechanism to express their anger.
Some day the kids happy to swim in bomb craters will grow up and realize how their country was raped. Let's hope they don't feel it was also left for dead while being sucked dry of its oil.
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After posting this piece I came across these facts from a 2002 Afghanistan study at http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1122273
The lasting legacy of war: a lost generation?
The lasting impact of war on the psychological state of women and children is well described. Many have post-traumatic stress as a consequence of witnessing or experiencing parental loss in war. Political repression and state terror have also been shown to result in significant psychological sequelae. Recently, a study of internally displaced children from the war in Bosnia showed that 94% had features of post-traumatic stress.
A landmark survey by Unicef on the effect of war on children aged 8-18 years in Kabul indicated that 41% had lost one or more parents because of the conflict, and over half had witnessed torture or violent death. Over 90% of the children interviewed expressed the fear of dying in the conflict. A particularly gruesome practice of encouraging children to witness public amputations and executions has an enormous impact on impressionable minds. Over 80% of the children interviewed felt they could not cope with events and that life was not worth living.
While such events can lead to considerable psychological trauma and distress, they may also inure a young mind to violence. The average Taliban and Northern Alliance soldiers are a product of the same cycle of violence and social upheaval experienced from early childhood. Ignorance, isolation, and a daily ritual of violence greatly temper their vision of the world. This “lost generation” is likely to breed many more unless action is taken to bring the cycle of violence to an end.
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