And you thought his ability to polarize the population only applied to his own country. Not so, it’s a multinational service now, as this story in the NY Times demonstrates:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 17 — Not long after the Americans occupied Iraq, strange things began happening in the family of Fatin Abdel Sattar, a Sunni Arab.
Her teenage son stopped giving his Sunni name in Shiite areas. Her sister’s marriage fell apart as her Shiite husband turned his anger over old wounds on his Sunni spouse.
“We’re concluding that it’s better not to marry those from another sect,” Ms. Abdel Sattar said, “to avoid problems in the future, to try to make our children’s lives a little easier.”
Of all of the changes that have swept Iraqi society since the American invasion almost three years ago, one of the quieter ones, yet also one of the most profound, has been the increased identification with one’s own sect. In the poisonous new mix of violence, sectarian politics and lawlessness, families are turning inward to protect themselves.
Sound familiar? You have to give it Bush, he really does have a talent for this sort of thing. Or maybe he’s just a demon of chaos, destroying unity and community feeling wherever he goes. One thing’s clear: whenever he’s put in charge of anything (and no, Republicans, he was never “in charge” of the Texas Rangers) it turns into an expletive commonly used to refer to feces.
Not that this is any consolation to ordinary Iraqis . . .
. . . left to deal with his amazingly effective powers of division and destruction:
At the same time, pent-up feelings that for years were kept hidden under Saddam Hussein’s government are now bursting into full view, in some cases dividing families. Shiite husbands jailed under Mr. Hussein turn their anger on their Sunni wives. Children come home asking if they are Sunni or Shiite.
Sectarian tensions in private lives are far from universal: Iraqis of different sects have mixed for decades and still do. But anecdotal evidence provided in interviews with lawyers, court clerks and social workers suggests that fault lines that have always existed are now becoming more distinct.
An analysis provided by one family court in central Baghdad showed that mixed marriages were rare to begin with, making up 3 to 5 percent of all unions in late 2002. But by late 2005 they had virtually stopped: the court did not record any in December, and last month registered only 2 out of 742 marriages.
I am a part of a “mixed marriage.” My wife is Nisei, a Japanese American whose parents immigrated to the U.S. after WWII. She grew up speaking both Japanese and English. I was brought up in the Lutheran Church; she as a Buddhist. Even though we have many things in common, there is often a vast cultural divide between us. It has taken patience and persistence to work through issues related to our differing cultural heritages. Fortunately, neither of us is terribly religious (spiritual, yes, religious no), but even so, my understanding her, and her — me, has often been a difficult undertaking.
Fortunately for us, we don’t belong to families that imposed significant barriers to our relationship, nor did they oppose our marriage (though prejudice exists in both families, if of the somewhat subtle variety). Nor do our racial differences mean as much in our society, at large, as opposed to marriages between blacks and whites, which still elicit uncomfortable reactions from many family members, friends and complete strangers. In that we have been lucky. Most of our issues have been driven by different ways of thinking that, over time, we have come to understand in each other and make allowances for.
Imagine if we had married in Iraq, however. Further imagine she had been raised as a Sunni, and I a Shi’a under a secular dictatorship which favored certain Sunni tribes and oppressed all other groups severely. Imagine the courage and commitment it would take to make such a marriage work, even among two people not especially religious. Then add George Bush and an American invasion/occupation to the mix.
This is why wars should always be a last resort. They have irrevocable and unintended consequences that those who begin them usually fail to foresee. Bush and the neocons went in to Iraq thinking they could convert this volatile mix of religious sects, tribes and ethnic groups into an instant secular democracy that, naturally, would become an American friend and ally in the region. Instead, they have ruined the lives of countless individuals and families, fanned the flames of sectarian violance and increased the risk of terrorism across the Islamic world, a terrorism that will be directed at Americans for decades to come.
And in many families in Iraq, Bush’s war has placed children in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between identifying with one parent over the other. It is not his greatest sin, perhaps, but, in oh so many ways, it is the one which is most emblematic of his character. Truly, he is a divider, not a uniter.