An enlightening taxi ride

The taxi arrived at 11 am yesterday to take Emily and me to the airport. We were lucky to have a great driver, Ahmad, who shares the taxi with his brother Amir. We'd gotten a ride home from Amir earlier this year, and he left us his card. We tried calling Amir first, as he was so great the first time, but he wasn't home, and so his wife told us to call Ahmad instead. The brothers are from Iraq, live in Dearborn, and are married to two sisters. They left Iraq during the first Gulf War, and they've been living in the United States since 1996. Ahmad works with an Arabic-speaking community theater group in Dearborn, and he's apparently in Kuwait right now looking for work as an actor.

Both Amir and Ahmad are generally very supportive of the U.S. intervention in Iraq. They hated Saddam and were glad to see him go. Amir attributed the surge in violence following the invasion to foreign terrorist fighters entering Iraq from Syria, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere. He emphasized, however, that the coalition authority had made some major mistakes early on, most notably dissolving the Iraqi army. Without the army, border control was nearly impossible, which made it easy for terrorists to enter Iraq. Once inside, there was no Iraqi army to stop them. And many disgruntled former soldiers and/or their weapons ended up supporting the insurrection. Besides this major mistake, Amir said that the Paul Bremer and the coalition authority really didn't understand Iraqi culture or history, which led to other blunders and bred distrust among the people.

Amir said that things have improved considerably since the low point in 2006. Violence is down, the economy is improving, people are learning how to make democracy work to improve the country, and the U.S. military is earning the respect of the people, partly due to the training they've received in Iraqi culture. Perhaps Iraq really will become a beacon of civil society and democracy in the Middle East. But could the disastrous events of 2003-2006 been avoided with better planning and advanced training?