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Sergeant Mohammed Omar Masry |
Right now the papers and TV stations across
America
are abuzz with skepticism and polls on American troops in Iraq
after a spate of bombings that took the lives of many Iraqis and some of my
fellow soldiers. Some in Congress question whether we can afford to rehabilitate
Iraq, and my fellow soldiers here in
Iraq
watch all the bickering with disappointment. The more important question is:
can we afford a failed Iraq? More Iraqis than those who will ever admit it in front of an Al Jazeera
reporter know that if we left, Iraq
would tear itself apart.
Nothing
scares the corrupt and autocratic rulers in Damascus, Riyadh and Tehran more
than an Iraq where the rule of law, not tyranny presides, an Iraq where the
government respects people’s faith instead of insulting it (like throwing
women out of colleges in Turkey for wearing a simple headscarf), instead of
giving carte blanche to close-minded clerics that consider any discourse as pure
blasphemy.
The
Iraqi people deserve it. They’ve suffered too long, and if we, the American
people, can work with Iraqis to make this happen, then we will have achieved
something never before done in the Middle East. We will have decimated the fear that has stagnated the Arab world for decades,
breathing new life into the birthplace of civilization.
We
can only get the job done by sticking to our ideals. Even Iraqis who hate
American foreign policy admire our lack of corruption, the rule of law where
even the little guy can win once in a while and the egalitarianism that lets an
African American Muslim once known as Casius Clay (a.k.a. Mohammed Ali) be
considered a part of our American Heritage. When we hire companies like Bechtel
and Halliburton who shroud their failures in secrecy and official non-disclosure
not only does it make it harder to win the hearts and minds as we rebuild
schools, hospitals and communities, it is un-American. Let’s get the job done.
We don’t need troops from neighboring nations (Iraqis are tired of foreign
interference.), we don’t need more troops (the Iraqi Police know the populace
and have risked their lives by a far greater degree while working with the
Coalition.), and we don’t need to saddle Iraq
with more loans. What we need are experts on rebuilding, not ex-Generals
running the Coalition Provisional Administration. What we also need is to export
the things that make our country great but the world doesn’t see – our
volunteers, our army of citizens that want a better world. They might not wear a
uniform; That founder of that PTA down on Main Street, that senior citizen that mentors small business entrepreneurs, or that pastor
who holds interfaith dialogues, can be just as crucial as the boots on the
ground. Much of the world, and sadly many Iraqis only think of American pop
culture when they look at what we export, and that isn’t the sum of the
American experience.
87
billion to begin forever changing America’s perception abroad. 87 billion to help convince societies around the world
to reject extremism and terrorism, making our nation safer in turn. A fraction
of what we spend on defense to build real bridges between the Arab and Muslim
worlds and strengthen our collective humanity. Let’s roll.
Mohammed
Omar Masry
Sergeant, US
Army
Baghdad, Republic
of
Iraq
Mohammed Omar Masry (a.k.a. Omar
Amin) is a 24-year-old
US Army Civil Affairs Sergeant in Baghdad. He is assigned to the 354th Civil Affairs Brigade, a Civil Affairs
Unit, out of
Maryland. His unit was activated in March for Operation Iraqi
Freedom and he expects to stay in Iraq
for a year. Omar was born and raised in California. His mother was born in Makkah,
Saudi Arabia
and his father was born in Nigeria
to a Lebanese father and an Armenian mother.
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