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Return to Baghdad

7 comments on Return to Baghdad

Return to Baghdad
: I started reading Sean Penn’s story of his return to Baghdad, a year and a war later, with trepidation (a reader sent me a warning shot). But I was surprised to find a more balanced and open view than I’d expected:

For Iraqis, there was no pro-war or anti-war movement last spring when the United States invaded their country. That, in their view, was a predominantly Western debate. They’re used to war; they’re used to gunshots. What’s new is this tiny seed and taste of freedom. It is a compelling experience to have been in Baghdad just one year ago, where not a single Iraqi expressed to me opinions outside Baathist party lines, and just one year later, when so many express their opinions and so many opinions compete for attention. Where the debate is similar to that in the United States is over the way in which the business of war will administer the opportunity for peace and freedom, and the reasonable expectation of Iraqi self-rule.

Even Sean Penn sees that it’s not as simple as war=bad.

: Andrew Sullivan had a similar reaction. He says: “But it is good to see the left regain some of its moral bearings and also see the good that we have done.”

7 responses to “Return to Baghdad”

  1. Dan Avatar
    Dan

    I’m glad you could read it, Jeff — it took me three tries, because I found his navel-gazing to be so insufferable as to successfully induce me to resume actually working.

  2. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    > “But it is good to see the left regain some of its moral bearings and also see the good that we have done.”
    It would be equally as good to see the right regain some of its moral bearings by seeing and admitting to all the bad that they have done. I won’t be holding my breath for that day to come though.

  3. ct Avatar
    ct

    Complimenting Penn on the point you are complimenting him on, though, makes us all sort of have to pretend that these Penn-like types aren’t rather astonishingly dumb. No?
    And aside: to me the most surprising thing is that Penn can hold his attention on one thing long enough to put down so many words. Recall his essay in the NYTimes? This may be evidence of some genetic trait that explains why so many novelists, for instance, can write so many words carrying so much drivel where a person without this genetic trait just stops himself and says, “No. This is crap.”

  4. Andrea Harris Avatar
    Andrea Harris

    Sam: it will never happen, because we have taken all the dissidents in our ranks and had them shot. Moron.

  5. hen Avatar
    hen

    Sean Penn realizes (sort of) months after the fact what a tool he is – color me unimpressed. There’s a reason why actors are given script and told to just read the damn lines.

  6. Bwanablue Avatar
    Bwanablue

    “I will later witness this warm, broadly mustachioed man cradling a leukemia-ridden infant Iraqi boy, addressing him boisterously as “Cabron!” In my mind I am taken back 20 years, imagining this man lifting his own infant and addressing him as “Cabron!””
    Interesting.
    “Cabron” translates as: 1) goat, 2) cuckold, 3) bastard.
    I wonder which one he meant.

  7. Doctor Slack Avatar
    Doctor Slack

    It would be equally as good to see the right regain some of its moral bearings by seeing and admitting to all the bad that they have done. I won’t be holding my breath for that day to come though.
    Pro-war and anti-war was not a question of left vs. right, though the hardcore constituencies of each side were undoubtedly extremists of one or the other persuasion (e.g. some pro-wars would have supported any war, and some anti-wars would have been opposed regardless of context).
    A bad habit on either side was to cherry pick the extreme constituents of one’s opponents and pretend they were generally representative. It’s a good tactic for rallying the troops — I saw anti-war humour depicting prowars as borderlines Klansmen hepped up about killing sandn*ggers — but it’s not good for debate.
    Andrew Sullivan is usually doing this when yapping about “the left” — a subject on which he used up his credibility as a commentator long, long ago. Jeff is doing it, IMO, in putting about the phrase “war=bad” as though it has a thing to do with any truly widespread anti-war position (though I didn’t pay much attention to Penn, so I don’t know about him). Those who support the war supposedly out of their appreciation of the complexities of the issues would be wise to notice that it could be opposed on similar grounds. That’s what I’m holding my breath for.