"Baghdad Burning" Main Theme

Throughout “Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq” the author, Riverbend, keeps going back to a particular theme over and over again, the extremely different views of Iraq and of the Iraqi people from the Iraqis themselves and the American people. In the beginning of her blog she gets an e-mail from someone who is suspecting her of not being Iraqi.  Their reasoning is “…because, a. I have internet access (Iraqis have no internet), b. I know how to use the internet (Iraqis don’t know what computers are), and c. Iraqis don’t know how to speak English (I must be a liberal)” (pg. 6). It seems to Riverbend that Americans also believe that:

 “…Iraqis, prior to occupation, lived in little beige tents set up on the side of little dirt roads all over Baghdad. The men and boys would ride to school on their camels, donkeys and goats. These schools were larger versions of the home units and for every 100 students, there was one turban-wearing teacher who taught the boys rudimentary math (to count the flock) and reading.” (pg. 34)

However, throughout Riverbend’s blog you learn so much about Iraq that completely contradicts these supposed “facts” from the American perspective. First of all, Iraqis aren’t living in complete darkness without electricity or modern homes. On the contrary, “Iraqis lived in houses with running water and electricity. Thousands of them own computers. Millions own VCRs and VCDs” (pg. 34). Another thing that Riverbend sets straight for the Americans is that the Iraqi people are in fact an intelligent population of people. Her example of just a small group of thriving individuals before the war was those men and women who were engineers. She said, “Something you should know about Iraq: we have over 130,000 engineers… The majority of them are more than proficient --- some of them are brilliant” (pg. 35). One of the most daring things Riverbend brought up in her blog to help the Americans to understand is that Iraqis don’t hate Americans nor do they want them to die for them. When she said, “Someone wrote that I was naïve and probably spoiled, etc. and that ‘not one single American soldier deserves to die for you’. I completely agree. No one deserves to die for me or anyone else.” (pg. 15) I thought she was so bold to say this. Tons of Americans, or at least the ones around me that I’ve talked to, believe that the Iraqi people are ungrateful and that they don’t deserve our help over there. The one thing I’ve learned reading what I have of the book so far is that the Iraqis don’t need us over there, not because they are ungrateful and don’t deserve it, but because we caused the mess in the beginning. Why would they trust us to fix what we messed up?