A letter to an American G.I.

Layla Anwar

An Arab Woman Blues

When I watch pictures of your dead buddies on albasrah.net and I read some of your naive childlike poems, I feel sorry for you. I honestly do. I feel sorry for you yet at the same time I feel anger. It is a very confusing mix of ambivalent, contradictory emotions. On the one hand,I would love to strike you and on the other hand I say to myself, it is not really your fault.You chose it yet you did not choose it. From your perspective you are only "executing orders" . Yet hard facts on the battle ground tell me that you also enjoy the humiliation you inflict on these "alien" "evil " people-the Iraqis. Despite your own neediness and your being in "it" because "it" will give you a grant, a green card and maybe the famous passport with an embossed striped eagle , you still believe you are superior, a better race, a more advanced one, a purer one...

continua / continued