The Devil Unseen

Upon boarding my flight to Korea, I realized I was the only white woman. Singsong voices floated around me and I didn't understand a word. This is already the trip I craved.

I happened to befriend the small Filipino woman, a grandmother, sitting next to me. Going to visit her mother in Manila and has a daughter who practices medicine. Turns out she works for the UN. Her story unfolded.

In 2003, she was stationed in Baghdad with her boss whom she adored, Sergio Viera de Mello, a handsome Brazilian diplomat who maintained a good repoire with both US and foreign leaders. He was being primed to become the next Secretary General, she told me. There is a bust of him in Ipanema.

This was the beginning of the war and they were the first UN team to be stationed there. It was not long before they were bombed. My new friend, Lynn, had her face mangled, lost site in one eye and today has thin white scars creeping across half of her face. Sergio was killed, found barely breathing in rumple. She has tears in her eyes as she describes this loss and that of 22 of UN workers that day. She, herself, was reported dead to her family at home--a HUGE clerical error. Her family held a memorial service for her, said their goodbyes. Then she called home and her son answered. "This is Mom," she said. "Who?" he asked.

Working for the UN is exciting of course, she told me, but it is full of heartache and helplessness. She describes the Iraqi people under Saddam's rule when she visited in 1999. Then, there was gas, electricity and water in every home. Saddam ruled tightly but the country was prosperous. She herself walked through the town market alone after midnight and felt no fear. Upon her return in 2003, there was no more gas, no more electricity, no water. Children no longer have a shot of becoming educated. There is trouble providing rations because the terrorists intervene and maintain control. "It is the new Somalia."

She then tells me that the first of Saddam's bunkers we targeted with precision weaponry was actually full of 500 citizens. "They did not print this is any American publication."

"The Iraqi people are of the kindest. I cannot help but to feel for them constantly. We have fed them to the terrorists."

In undergrad, in a different life, I took courses entitled "War" and "Violence and Social Order" and "Power in American Society." Long ago I read Black Hawk Down which was made into a movie. Lynn told me the real story. In 1993 in Somalia, an American copper bombed civilians accidentally, killing 267 women and children. This is the root of the hatred that brought down the two American helicopters and dragged their bodies through the streets. "I would maybe do the same," she said. They left out these details when I studied this at my well-respected American university. US soldiers fled and the Pakistanis came to their rescue. The US soldiers felt that animosity directed towards them. Perhaps we need to take responsibility for our actions to avoid more horror.

"Daddy," Lynn told me referring to Bush Sr, "knew to let Saddam go but his son was not so smart. It is a case of a devil you can see and now it is the devil unseen." How do you save Iraq? Even Democracy has it's limits. She told me that only one US Senator has a son in Iraq who works a comfy desk job in Baghdad. It is not the sons of our leaders on the battlefield. I asked her about the UN's sentiment towards the administration. "I believe we are ready for leaders that are capable of compassion."