{"id":36,"date":"2004-02-20T10:54:19","date_gmt":"2004-02-20T17:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=36"},"modified":"2004-02-20T10:54:19","modified_gmt":"2004-02-20T17:54:19","slug":"why-do-they-hate-us-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2004\/02\/20\/why-do-they-hate-us-part-iv\/","title":{"rendered":"“Why do they hate us?” (Part IV)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow. I sit before my laptop, ready to write about this really interesting Salon article<\/a> about life inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, and my iTunes playlist pulls up Percy Grainger’s Colonial Song at random. Heh. Even funnier is that this song, written by an Australian, is a slow, lyrical tune which seems to me to express longing and homage to his homeland — which I doubt is much how the CPA employees feel that Jen Banbury writes about.<\/p>\n

Anyway, let’s delve into this.<\/p>\n

Hunkered down in their weird security zone, the Americans who run Iraq have almost no contact with the country or its people.<\/i><\/p>\n

Great sub-hed. Obvious, but powerfully true. This summarizes just the attitude of most Americans, and particularly those in power. Here’s the thing. If we’re going to run the world (which I don’t think is our role, but whatever) — then we should at least do it right. We should at least make *some* attempt to integrate ourselves into societies that we, as Americans, find ourselves in. I’d imagine that part of the feeling that ranges from removed mystique to hatred about our country is that we do things like this — we create little isolated blocks for ourselves to exist in. A mini-America is exactly right. In Bamako (Mali), for example, the US Embassy is a complex that has its entire street blocked off, with lots of barbed wire fences and guards with big fuck-off guns. Is there anyone else in the world that has the audacity to demand this kind of situation? I’d really love Fiji or Surinam or the Gambia to demand the same kind of situation for their embassies in Washington DC.<\/p>\n

At one end of this faux-Versailles room, Pakistani workers in white uniforms preside over steam tables that serve up traditional American cafeteria food: sloppy joes, boiled hot dogs, canned peas and carrots. A cloth-covered banquet table bisects the center of the room, offering up plastic bowls with pieces of layer cake and syrupy pie. Over a hundred tables fill the rest of the room and even extend into adjoining hallways.<\/i><\/p>\n

I can completely imagine this scene. First of all, I think it’s fantastic that not only to the American CPA types have to eat American food, but they have to eat bad<\/i> American food. Sloppy joes and boiled hot dogs would not be high on my list. Can’t they get some Chicago pizza up in there? Or some Kentucky barbecue? How hard would that be? But again, this is part of the same American superiority complex that is perfectly encapsulated in this type of situation. I was astounded (but yet still thankful for the respite it provided from local foods) by the presence of cheap hamburgers and milkshakes that were available to Americans at the US Embassy in Bamako. But yet, it’s so wrong. I guarantee you that the best blue-collar cook in Baghdad would jump at the opportunity to work in the Green Zone — and that his food would be better and cheaper than anything the CPA or Halliburton could come up with.<\/p>\n

Oh man, and I love the kicker:<\/p>\n

As I was leaving the marketplace, an Iraqi man held a book up to a browsing soldier. “This is dictionary,” the Iraqi man said. The soldier wagged his head back and forth. “No, no, no,” he said. “I don’t want to ever speak the language.”<\/i><\/p>\n

I’ve been curious as to what the official number of Americans who hold passports are. I remember hearing once that it’s only 10%, but I wanted to check that with the State Department. I just called them, and they referred me to the National Passport Center, and after talking with them for nearly 10 minutes a woman told me:<\/p>\n

“There’s nowhere that I know of that they have this information and if they did, they would not release it to the public for security reasons.”<\/p>\n

And she couldn’t cite anything beyond “security” and “privacy” for as to why that statistic was so sensitive.<\/p>\n

When I pressed further, and she checked with her superiors, she said:<\/p>\n

“They do not release that information because it does not need to be known.”<\/p>\n

Hmmm\u00c9now I’m really curious. Maybe I’ll try their media line again later, this time as a journalist. <\/p>\n

As a complete and total non-sequitor, Accordion Guy<\/a> points out that HootersAir<\/a> is in business. Whoa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow. I sit before my laptop, ready to write about this really interesting Salon article about life inside the Green Zone in Baghdad, and my iTunes playlist pulls up Percy Grainger’s Colonial Song at random. Heh. Even funnier is that this song, written by an Australian, is a slow, lyrical tune which seems to me to express longing and homage to his homeland — which I doubt is much how the CPA employees feel that Jen Banbury writes about. Anyway,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-travels","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}