"My good opinion once lost, is lost forever". That's not actually true, but it is a good quote, so very Darcy-esque. It is true that my opinions very rarely change, when I feel strongly about something. I experienced one such change last week.
On September 18th, I saw a large crowd of senior citizens dressed in old fashioned military uniforms, right next to the museum playground, where I had the kids play. I assumed it was some regiment reunion. There were WWII machines, tanks, engines everywhere, part of the museum perhaps. The day after, Saturday, there was a big party going on next to our house, bars, music, everyone seemed to be out on the street celebrating. I took the kids to that same playground and the place was packed with people. There was castle trampoline for the kids to jump in. Some of the kids had painted faces from the fair in town, and some kids wore army jackets, fighter pilot suits, or little army pins. I got a kick out of Micah and Ezra staring perplexed into some of the painted kids faces and giggling at them. As I parked my car, a woman in her early 40s, with her two kids slowed down to stare at it (quite common here as we drive perhaps the only Scion XB in Netherlands if not Europe). The older boy, looked at the license plate and said to his mom in Dutch that we were from India. I corrected him and said we were from Indiana, in the United States. The woman immediately started gushing about America. This surprised me. I thought that most Europeans hated Americans. She was wearing a sort of bomber jacket herself. I asked her what all the commotion and fuss was about and she said it was in celebration of Market Garden. I had seen the signs but didn't put two and two together (Ok, I thought it was advertising some Market for Gardening here, because they do love gardening). 65 years ago operation Market Garden liberated the Netherlands from the Nazis. It will actually be 65 years next year in Arnhem, but Eindhoven was liberated 9 months earlier than the rest of Netherlands on 18th of September and this fact is celebrated every year. I was surprised at the gratitude for this liberation apparent in this woman who clearly had not been part of the war generation. As I proceeded to the playground with my kids, I sat down and watched the many children who for the most part were supervised by their smiling grandparents. I imagined that many of them had seen, lived, and perhaps served in the war. What it must have meant for them to be liberated from Hitler's oppression. Here they were 65 years later, their own children grown, surrounded by the laughter of their grandchildren, speaking their own language, and playing happily, free from fear and want. It was watching them that suddenly made me revise the opinion I held against the war in Iraq. So far I've felt very strongly that President Bush was foolish to march into Iraq. I thought he might have learned through reading history books, that the middle east is best not messed with. It has never come to a good end. I thought it was an offensive strike, and that the evidence for attack was phony and didn't warrant such an action. I lamented the loss of so many American troops, and the loss their families had to bear. In short, I was against it, and as years have passed, and the middle-east-meddling-mess has gotten more pronounced, I felt my opinion only solidifying. But that day, when I heard that woman express her gratitude for the liberation, and saw the happy grandparents, I started to think that despite all the antagonism against the US (or the "Coalition Forces"?!) there might have been some Iraqis who felt like this woman, grateful to be free of a Hitler-like despot, a tyrant, a murderer. In addition to that, my mom recounted a comment from one of the members of our Church here in the Netherlands, that he happened to share that Sunday. He is from Iraq. He has no idea if his parents are still alive, or his other brothers. His parents had saved up money so they could arrange for at least one of their sons to flee the country, and grow up free from fear and oppression. Anyway, I'm not sure what you make of this post, I just wanted to write it down, because I wanted to remember that experience.
That's a very interesting point. I have never felt very strongly either way with regard to the war in Iraq, because I feel like I couldn't make an informed decision with so much information being classified. Even so, I never really considered the viewpoint of those who have been liberated. Hmm.
ReplyDeleteI feel kind of like your friend Mary, that I've never really been able to form much of an educated opinion because of the lack of real information. My brother served in Kuwait for a while, and when I asked him what he thought of it, he'll only say, "We started it, we finish it." My cousin is an arabic interpreter for the military and frankly, can't tell us what he does when he goes to Iraq. However, he did bring lots of slides home with pictures of some of the cities he was stationed and he told us how some of the people were ECSTATIC that Saddam Hussein was gone.
ReplyDeleteSo, I think you are right, that if nothing else, there are many citizens of Iraq who are grateful.
i'm not sure what i think about it - the Iraq thing - it changes all the time -- i've met some Iraqi's that are very against Bush - because there are quite a lot of them living here -- my neighbors are from Iraq - and I don't really know how they feel one way or the other but i decided not to hang my American flag this year on Independence day... afterall - this is the netherlands not America.
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