This is a few weeks old now, but probably because Iraq’s elections are coming up, a column written by TownHall columnist Jeff Jacoby sticks with me. And I wonder where I’ll be able to watch the documentary he talks about called “Voices of Iraq”.
This is a documentary made in Iraq by Iraqis, essentially, just last year. Some American producers who worked for MTV and a former Marine and Gulf War vet distributed 150 digital video recorders to ordinary Iraqis and asked them to film anyone or anything they thought important—and then pass the cameras on to someone else.
In the film, a young Kurdish mother tells her daughter, who is wielding the camcorder, how she would burn herself with cigarettes to prepare for the torture she knew was coming. A policeman recalls what it was like to arrest a member of the Ba’ath Party. “You’d be scared,” he says. “You’d shake with fear.” One man explains that Saddam’s son Uday “used to come often to Ravad Street—every Thursday for the market—to choose a girl to rape.” A few brief clips are shown from a captured Fedayeen Saddam videotape: A blindfolded man thrown to his death from a rooftop, a man’s hand getting severed, someone’s tongue being cut out.
It isn’t hard to understand the emotions of the man who answers, when asked how he reacted to the news of Saddam’s capture, “I danced like this! I kept dancing. Then I cried.”
[…] Yet for all they have been through, Iraqis come across as incredibly optimistic, hopeful, and enthusiastic. Above all, perhaps, *normal.* In “Voices of Iraq” they film themselves flying on rides in an amusement park, dancing the night away at a graduation party, taking their kids to a playground, shopping for cell phones. A police officer mugs for the camera. Shoppers throng the streets of Suleimaniyah. A scrawny kid pumps iron with a makeshift barbell—and makes a request of Arnold Schwarzenegger. (“I like your movies. You’re a good actor. Can you please send me some real weights?”)
Iraqis haven’t had much experience with democracy, but we see the delight they take in the new opportunities Saddam’s defeat is making possible. Two women celebrate the freedom to get a passport. An artist talks proudly about work for which he went to prison. A young woman says her dream is to be a lawyer. And one rough-looking fellow says simply, “I wish for a government elected by the Iraqi people.”
It’s hard to imagine how Michael Moore and all liberals missed all of this.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- Wow what a shock: a Big Government project’s cost estimate has DOUBLED — in only a few months - Tuesday April 30, 2024 at 4:50 pm
- UPDATED: State-Funding of Sports Boondoggles Need To Be Sent To The Penalty Box - Wednesday March 13, 2024 at 4:44 pm
- I’m from the government and I’m here to help you become barely mediocre like us. - Tuesday March 5, 2024 at 11:53 am
