by Derek Farwell
Columnist

I find it really interesting the way that different cultures react similarly to violence within their society. In America, we tend to be a bit judgmental and criticize other cultures that we consider to be condoning of violence. Sometimes we forget that America wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for violence. If you ask anyone around the world who has the most violent culture you’ll almost unanimously hear the United States because of the amount of violent crimes, and the way that violence is glorified in movies and on television. Having recently seen the newest Die Hard movie it’s kind of difficult to deny this, yet we still scoff when we see violence in other countries and wonder why they aren’t more like us.

Iraq is a one of those places that people think of as accepting of violence. Firstly, I don’t really think the Iraq conflict is exactly a fair measuring stick for this because a large percentage of the people committing violence in Iraq aren’t even Iraqi citizens, and secondly it’s just plain not true. To combat this, people take up arms to try to fight the terrorists. Unfortunately and tragically, the bad guys have bigger guns and better fighters. They come from all over the world to join with terrorist organizations and partake in violence against innocent people. Being armed with the knowledge of being outgunned can have a devastating effect on people. For instance, the few months that I spent in Baghdad were not at all peaceful, but while in Baghdad there was less violence portrayed against us than the other two locations we spent time at, but it was far from free of violence. There was an unbelievable amount of violence between Al-Qaida and the general population, and we were just occasionally caught in the cross fire. We dealt with the aftermath of hundreds of murders. An occurrence that sticks out to me came on a day when we were in the middle of the city doing foot and vehicle patrols. We heard a couple of gun shots from about 2 blocks away. When we went over to try to intervene in whatever was happening we saw that a young boy about 9 or 10 had been shot in the head and killed. People around there were obviously very upset and basically begging us to do something about it. As it turned out there wasn’t anything we could do about it either because nobody knew who did it. While we saw hundreds more murders than this particular one, some were grisly and some against younger people, we stayed there for a while as we tried to figure out what had happened. As I was standing outside my vehicle which was parked right next to the kid while the interpreters talked to the people, I looked for quite a while at what was going on around him. His friends had run away but were still in the area watching. Crying adults were walking around him with their kids, and despite the language barrier, every one of them had the same unmistakable look of helplessness. It was almost more disturbing to see that look in so many living people than seeing the one dead child. People wanted something to be done, people were outraged, and people wanted to know who to blame, the same as it is here. People talked and people cried and screamed, but it solved nothing.

In a roundabout kind of way, the point that I’m trying to make is that the response to this incident by the Iraqi civilians was largely the same as the response that can be seen in the States when something this horrific happens. People get upset and demand that something be done about it, but in the end very little actually changes. Either the guilty person is caught or they aren’t, and everyone eventually goes on with their lives. No sane person actually likes violence but it’s something that we’ve all come to tolerate as an unpleasant part of life. Good people in Iraq are the same as good people in America and good people in China. I believe the overwhelming majority of people in the world are good but I think that before pointing out the faults of others and measuring others according to ourselves that we should all realize that our own society has major faults of its own and that we should focus on those rather than the faults of others.

drfarwell@hotmail.com