Four years after the invasion, we should, more then ever, be ashamed. Who are “we”? All of us. European and American, in all our differences. Why? Because all we can say is “right or wrong”, and we can still not sincerely ask ourselves “how”.

While Bush plays his last cards in the American congress avoiding Patty Murray’s (Democrat Senator) approval of the returning of all American troops (starting in four months), hundreds of Spanish activists fill the streets to listen to Saramago (Portuguese Nobel prize) and protest against the war, demanding the end of Guantanamo and celebrate the anti-american way of life. Meanwhile, the French PM (Dominique de Villepin) speaks in Harvard and says that USA are responsible for all the current situation. In an empty speech (he is also playing his last cards) Villepin recommends that American troops go home within a year, working with Europe and Iraqi neighbours to solve the “problem”.

Unfortunately, four years after the first big “womb”, West is still not prepared to solve any problem at all. Public opinion is still, either divided or tired of the subject. The modern problem is the conflicts within EU, the American Elections (Al Gore scores every day, even in MTV) and…Iran (how fashion-victims are our international affairs opinion makers?).

Among the activists (victims of the anti-fashion bible), most people will never go back in their passion to assume that Iraq is a common problem and the reason belongs, probably, to none of the parts. Or, to both. Not even American activists who, also celebrating the 4th anniversary of the Iraq invasion (and 40th anniversary of the “anti-Vietnam march”) got together demanding the end of the war, claiming that 3.200 soldiers have died and calling Bush a Hitler’s style tyrant. American’s can also celebrate the anti-american way of life. That is one of the most remarkable qualities of the American people – the passion about their convictions and the self-regulation mechanisms (the French are the same, aren’t they?). We (West) are really not that divided anymore. There are the scars, of course, but mostly among public opinion (politics change and they, even Bush, understood that West must be a team, even if a cynical one). So, what is the problem, the real one? We are, I believe. All of us – together in our passions and prejudices. Even if going to Iraq in the first place was wrong, the truth is we are already there. People are dying. Insurrection is a reality. The government asked international community not to leave. Many sunits claim they also want peace. There is too much work yet to be done. And….we (public opinion) want to leave. The real problem is that (like Zizek wrote) the public opinion is divided in left (we must leave Iraq, even if that means a total humanitarian disaster) and right (neoconservateurs, totalitarists and “Bush friends”). Well, were is the left who believes that, even if we had no right to go there in the first place, we also have no right to leave now? Were are the European marches claiming for the right intervention in Iraq? Where are the European think tanks producing well funded solutions for the Iraq problem? Where are the professional and organized lobbies of the global thinking? It’s not even questionable that most European countries are facing huge internal problems (like USA, also). However, we (We West and we, public opinion) are loosing fast the one thing we always had: our credibility – moral (our values) and effective (our practical ability to make things happen). We are still not developing the thought that internal problems must be solved in order to promote “good practices” in international level. Instead, we look desperately for an “OTHER” inside our homes, and we allow our values to become nothing more than old books and empty words. And, some (few of us) forget they personal problems, and go on the streets, marching, passionately , screaming empty words (empty because, no matter the propose, the result is also catastrophic).

In the Bagdad conference, peace and stability were the main points of the discussion. However, the invited where: the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- and Arab countries (Iraq neighbors). And even if France and Britain were there, the EU had no formal representation. And that’s a shame. And we don’t even talk about it. And we don’t event think about it, anymore (or, hopefully, yet). However, if we don’t move fast, Iraq will become, in History, as the most shameless proof of the West failure. And we, Europeans, will fail twice: once because we fought our own family, twice because we betrayed our own values.

There is some much to be done. There is so much to talk about. There is so much to apply. There are so many simple (perfect words) and values wasted in terrible practices. We are all so ignorant, so partials, so insecure. We all try to defend ourselves and ours from… what? We all try to find a place to rest our reasons. We all fight something else; keeping the other “us” locked inside. We are all afraid to question everything, deeply, with no prejudices. We all have something to prove.
Yesterday, I was reading the Iraq Constitution (http://www.iraqigovernment.org/Content/Biography/English/consitution.htm). Isn’t it perfect? Yes, it is. And then, I tried to find an Iraqi young person to change opinions with. I couldn’t…yet.
“Why? Why are you so obsessed?” – My friends ask me. I live in the middle of nowhere, far away from Iraq. I’m not a saint – I’m a vicious western person – not a scout girl. I’m bohemian, not a robot. I’m not a Christian, I’m tend more to Maquiavel. I’m not a dreamer and I don’t trust simple things – all things are ironic and complex – the sun is complex, the sea is complex, music is complex, love is complex, even poetry has strict and complex rules – and how we use them as an example, as a “dream”.
I have no patience for idealists or naives, the world is full of good ideas - what we need is people capable of “doing” things. We need to push our ideas harder, find new solutions, connect facts, improve our brain cells, and take future in our own hands – knowing, always, that life is an ironic joke that will kill us tomorrow, if we love it, and many years from now, if we despise it.
The more I study, the more I understand how ignorant I am. However, I don’t want to study in order to improve my social value as a person. I don’t want to quote the past. I want to use it and improve it. I don’t want to be a fascinating person. A respected person. A recognized person. That’s a trap. I don’t want the “right” empty words. And I don’t want the wrong (but full of intense passions) words either (like hate, intolerance, selfishness, nationalism, realism, etc). There is something else. There is a place with no hope (no utopia) were good ideas can become practices, where dialogue is possible, where life can be a good joke. Where we control the things we really can (our responsibility as citizens, our ego, our fears) and we don’t try to control the one’s we can’t – time, hurt, the others, our passions, our fragility. Where we don’t always need to be right. Where ignorance can be assumed, not as right (I’m not sure if we have the right to be stupid) but as a human condition, we fight together. There is a world where we, as conscientious individuals, know that is not all about us.
And somehow, no matter what I study, there are childish questions coming to my head. When a very bright, western, informed friend tells me her complicated, historical, well funded, fashion opinion about Israel (and why we should support Palestinian) something brakes inside of me, in deep hurt – the knowledge that I could have been born an Israeli child. And no matter how much I can agree or disagree about politics, this feeling of recognizing human nature and its potential is always stronger. In every conflict, the perception that victims can easily become oppressors, keeps me from joining an opinion group.
People tell me I should step forward to other theories (I should understand the reasons why, that’s the most important thing). But a child’s question it’s not simple – it’s always complex. If an informed, well funded, intellectually developed western person could decide to “change the world” by helping Palestine against Israel (it’s very fashion for an intellectual, to provoke the politics by saying that Israel is doing to Palestine the same Hitler did to Jews), what would happen to me, if I was born an Israeli child? What good would all the EU and USA perfect convictions and words do for me?

Every time I sit in a European coffeshop, reading some “very important book” and talking to very intelligent people, there’s something inside me that breaks. I don’t want to be “right” – don’t we tend to join groups who accept us, and don’t we, in group, try to forget the “other us”, starting by not questioning the group in the first place? No, I really don’t need to be right. I need to fight for a world where I could have been born anywhere, safe, free, loved and respected. For me, that’s the only reason why the complex sun raises everyday. For everyone. I’m obsessed with Iraq because I could have been born an Iraqi child. Everything else, all my theories, come from that irrational (simple?) feeling.