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"Kuwait
Series" - by Gaylan King
Contents:
The food is excellent, served by the kind of superb staff found only in very rich countries. The Indian staff is perfect, as is the food. They dominate that service role in this town. They also are the majority of the workforce on Camp Doha and everywhere I look. There appears to be two distinct classes of Indians here: one does all of the manual labor while the other professional class manages and staffs every kind of store and business in Kuwait. My friend Gilda is taking Dee and Zoran, who are Hungarian, out of South Africa, their son and me out for this fine meal. They were among the first people Gilda met when she came here 3 years ago from Lebanon. Zorin is an Information Technology Manager with a large Arab company; their son, Ljuba (silent "j") is off to the University of Indiana. He is very handsome, well spoken (in at least two languages) and a teriffic young man. Dee is merely lovely on this evening. The ensuing conversation leaves few stones unturned and I enjoy the absence of provinciality that's become so prevalent in America. (I've never cared about crabgrass!) We toss around subjects from continent to continent, not from gripe to accusation, some of the bits and pieces in several languages. The war in Iraq usually comes up, however briefly, and even among good friends, I feel an undertow of misunderstanding at times. I believe it worries them that the U.S. is powerful enough to dominate the world if we so choose; most choose to ignore the fact that we have not chosen that path. I was working with the U.S. Marines when Hezbollah murdered 200 of our finest in the cowardly Beirut barracks attack. I've recently heard admiration expressed for that organization's leadership;" they're just a bunch of misunderstood, good guys." And, so it goes: "you just don't understand their plight, etc., etc." It would be wonderful to overcome the perception of the U. S. as a bothersome bully who does whatever it wants but, regardless of our largess in victory, past and present, they will not have it. Our history as a superpower is filled with episodes of pious pygmies demanding we bend down to their level to show fairness, even with our lives and fortune at stake. However, American history is writ large for all to see; yet, they prefer to doubt us. Such has it always been with have-nots. Hatred and jealousy cloud their reason; their passion, unbridled by reason, continues to destroy their future. I talk to young troops almost daily who have just returned from the ongoing mission in Iraq. The current talk is about letters from parents and loved ones terribly worried about a vastly exaggerated but still dangerous situation in post war Iraq, about the Iraqis not wanting us there and the continued killing. These bright kids express amazement at the differences between their real-life experiences and that reported by the world press. Of course, they must be alert to danger but their overall experiences are gratifying; they feel good about the results of the war and their heartfelt welcome by the vast majority of Iraqis. The bottom line is that our liberal press and much of the Arab press is furious at our success in Iraq and report the worst of everything, ad nauseum! The Clerics are worriedly running their prayer beads as the virus of freedom spreads into a waiting Iran. The charges of no weapons of mass destruction are political and ludicrous. Every major intelligence service agreed that the evidence was indisputable. Saddam had years to hide WMD in a very large country or move them elsewhere. Give it time, a year or more, and that issue will embarrass those howling the loudest, the Democrat Party candidates and Tony Blair's political enemies in the U. K. Hallas! (Enough! In Arabic.) Now the dessert arrives. Trying to be sensible, I had ordered fresh fruit slices. What came to me was just that, but covering the most delicious Mango ice cream imaginable. I ate it all while remembering a great young man I'd met in the chow line the day before. Dressed in a desert-colored, nomex flight suit, dusty and whippet-thin, he was straining to calmly tolerate the wait to pass through to the food. He was a Crew Chief who had been in the desert camps or Iraq for months with an Apache unit; he was doing everything but licking his lips in anticipation of this real meal to come. "I ain't had real food since January!" he said, and proceeded to take several large helpings of everything and disappear into the crowd. Like excellent food, you have to love these kids, who are our strength and our future.
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Iraq
6 - July 7,
2003 -
We sat in a Thai restaurant on the 19th
floor of a very fine hotel, The Safir, and looked out
over Kuwait City's skyline. We could have been in
Miami, New York or any other large American city. I
smiled as I thought about some of my friends stateside
who, no matter what, will always see Kuwait as a dusty
desert crossroads with sleepy camels about. 