Live from Baghdad, It's Wednesday Night!
Last night a friend and I were, like, I am sure, many of you watching the
barrage of news coverage of the countdown to war in Iraq. All of the stations
seemed to be utilizing a feed from this one particular camera which was focused
where the news media thought they could get the best pictures of fiery
destruction raining from the sky. The scene depicted was, well, disturbing.
When someone says "Baghdad" I always think of genies and the
Arabian nights and an ancient city of roughly hewn mud walls and camels
walking along cobbled streets. The Baghdad on TV was quite different. There were streetlights,
several large multilane roads, and a lot of modern architecture. It could have
been any modern city anywhere.
Just before dawn in Baghdad, you could hear some loud explosions and see
flashes reflecting off the buildings but the expected "shock and awe"
never came. As the sun shed its light on the city, it looked like early morning
anywhere. You could tell the city, which is normally home to five million
people, had pretty much been deserted yet a few cars were traveling down the
streets and, amazingly enough, a few pedestrians walked by seemingly concerned
about nothing more than getting to work on time.
"I wonder if that guy knows that like 200,000 people are watching
him," my friend said, "Waiting for him to get blown to bits. This is
morbid." She was right. Here we were, along with most of the country, watching
this serene street scene with people going about their business waiting, in some
cases hoping, that we would see their obliteration from planet Earth.
Why were these people out there? Why were they driving and walking along as
if the day were no more notable than any other? They had to have heard the air
raid sirens and the explosions earlier in the day. Even if they bought the lies
of their evil leader, those detonations had to make them realize that war was
both real and near. Those people had to know that they were possibly
moments away from being swatted like flies by the laser guided bombs and super
intelligent high explosive kamikaze robots of the most powerful nation in the
history of the world. So how could they act like it was just another day?
She was right. It was positively morbid to be watching what could have
been the last moments of this ancient city. So, like everyone else, we kept
watching and went to bed disappointed that nothing had happened.