August 2nd 1990 - 16 years ago. Iraqi troops invade Kuwait - eventually leading to the Gulf War.
I remember that day far too clearly - I was 12 years old then. About 6 a.m. my dream was getting a bit loud and i woke up and found the noise was was real. a funny noise and the floor was somewhat shuddery.. I had these great big windows and i leaned out and what did i see..( well i don”t have my own pictures anymore so this will have to do to give you an idea)
We were supposed to be going on holiday at 10. a.m. Seeing as the airport was the first thing that was bombed - that obviously wasn”t going to happen. What was going on ? i remember the unreality feeling being the strongest during those early moments. is this really happening? this can”t be happening! we had to listen to the BBC and Voice of America broadcasts on the radio announcing that Iraq had invaded Kuwait before it started to sink in. Well it didn”t really sink in for a bit - not till later on in the day when we stepped outside to see lots of soldiers with rifles milling about, and later later on all the casualties of the morning”s shelling strewn about the highways and roads. of course there was no one left to clear up the wreckages. one of the things that most stuck in my mind was the image of a car wrapped around and melted into a traffic lampost, and you could see the hole where the bomb had landed. Years later obviously no car anymore but the warped lampost remained..
anyways. i hope never to wake up to something like that again - but you never know. taking safety for granted is something i try not to do anymore.
–There”s not much interest on the net about this day and memorials etc. - i did a google search to see if anyone else had noted that some of us might be marking this date - ha not much - everything is either about the Gulf War - or as is to be expected - stick in invasion and iraq and kuwait and the 2003 events come up) But hey. I know there are a lot of people out there - spread across the world ( Kuwait was and still is mostly full of “expatriates”) who went through this ( who”re still alive that is..) and whether or not they are sitting there consciously remembering this day 16 years ago - here”s to life.
I haven”t ever really written anything much about my experiences and I may do some day. There”s too much to go into here and now anyways. Later on in life when i read the Diary of Anne Frank a couple of things really resonated with me. The waiting the not knowing and Anne was writing about her 14th birthday in hiding, and that made me think about my 13th birthday. i”m a virgo so i turned 13 that September, still under “Occupation”. Some fun that was! Being a year younger than the others in my class had always made me eager to be a bit older. and as a 12 year old i couldn”t wait to become a teenager. all my mates” had had their 13th birthday parties and i had been so looking forward to mine. Alas..
–Still i”ve lived to tell my tale if i so choose but unfortunately Anne - and a million other people across the world in different conflicts - didn”t. So i”m pretty thankful and lucky.
On a lighter note : - in 1967 on this day the second Blackwall Tunnel opened in Greenwich.
By posting your “emotional” story of a personal experiance during the Iraq-Kuwait war, your are being guilty of trying to circumvent the real issue.
When a crime has been committed, then the criminals must be prosecuted and those who come in the way of prosecution will suffer some sort of collateral damage.
You were the collateral damage during the Kuwait war. But if US had not intervened, the fate of people like you would have been still worse.
Similarly in present day Lebnon war, there is such a hue and cry in the “leftist media” about the so called civilian caualities. But who is to be blamed for the death of civilians. Certainly not Israel. Isreal is only defending its borders, it is the Hizboolah who started the war by kidnapping Israeli soilders.
And if Israel does not defend itself then the terrorists will only grow stronger and they will turn the whole world into a war zone. More than 300 people have died in the Bombay blasts, and we know that the blasts were the handiwork of groups affliated to the Hezboolah. And all of them were civilians. I didnt get to hear a squeak from you (or from your leftist friends in the Guardian) about the Bombay blasts. Why?
I think there is lots of confusion in lots of minds in the world. We have to understand that only capitalism can bring peace to the world.
In 1990 when Kuwait was occupied I joined a solidarity group in Germany for Freedom of Kuwait. They were surprised and thankful of a Jewish guy joining them. Soon after the US let invasion i went to a peace demonstration, and it was my last since a long time. There were lots of people that went on the demo to bash USA. The Kuwait and Israel supporters had a different idea of peace, that was more directed against Saddam Hussein, who only recently at that time had committed his crimes against the Kurds…
Some of the Left on the demonstration even felt that Iraq should continue to rule over Kuwait…
yes its funny how things are always used as a platform for something or other. especially by people who have very little real idea of what those things actually are. interesting what you say. i’ve a little example of that -
when we managed to get out of Kuwait ( via Iraq) and eventually found our way to Dhaka bangladesh, by then the january 91 bombardment of baghdad had started. which was awful for all the innocent civilians sitting in Iraq who’d actually helped us so much and were sympathetic. {in any case my situation taught me its easy to support war when its not your own head likely to be bombed upon..- and that taking up arms should always be your last resort - a sacrifice - and certainly not indiscriminate slaughter. the other thing was that i felt terrible for some of the soldiers in Kuwait who were conscripts and not much older than me - 14 year old boys. it certainly taught me there’s no simple 2 sides)
Still the point i’m making here is in dhaka, lots of people had taken the stance that it was the USA vs. Iraq so it was a West vs. East and West vs. Islam/Arabs.. And people said to me all sorts of things about that and i was like yeah how can you say that to me - do you not realize i’ve actually come out of that situation - and that Kuwait and Iraq are both Arab Muslim countries, and you really think that it i s supposed to make a difference in a war situation? so like hiya soldier - i hear you is a muslim, and so is i, and you ain’t supposed to be doing this. so don’t shoot me please? right. and are you implying that people who were killed by iraqi soldiers are somehow supposed to feel better about it because they’re like fellow Muslims or sth. violence is violence. regardless of who’s doing what to whom. And in any case lots of the people who died were from all over the world. the whole thing was much more mixed up and not easily reducable to this side vs. that side. .!
ANyways.. people will interpret things how they like so i just ignored all that stuff. the reality of war is far more complex than arm-chair theorists imagine ( ha!) and unpleasant and that’s pretty much what i got out of the whole thing. avoid where possible, at all costs -unless your life literally depends on it and in that case it should be a sacrifice you’ve had to make and you realize that you would not choose to be in the same situation again. similar to the principle of self-defence for an individual. after all, its such a fallacy that soldiers/or people in war who’ve been put in a position where they have to kill emerge ‘unscathed’ mentally and emotionally - that soldiers take off their uniform and that’s it. nope no way - no such luck - its a terrible thing to have to kill people and you don’t come away from it unchanged. It should be obvious from all the vietnam movies anyway if nothing else one would think!
Wow, that’s quite an eye opener to read it described by someone who was actually there. I remember it fairly well from news reports (I was 14 about to turn 15), I had a similar feeling I got on Sept 11; a sinking feeling that things were about to get very bad…
Well sometimes soldiers do recognice the other. When I was in school in Israel, our youth worker Akiva told us how in the 1973 War he was fighting in the Golan area. He said all over sudden he was facing a Syrian soldier 10 meters in front of him, same age same fear with the weapon loaded against him. Akiva said how they could both see each others faces and in split second decided not to shoot at each other. He said when I faced him I thought he must have a mother and a wife maybe children, why should I end things for all of them here when I can choose not to. It is likely that the Syrian soldier thought likewise as he did ot shoot. Of course such thoughts may get one killed, as the delay may give the other time to in this case it saved both! Wars are usually not the game of the ordinary people who are most affected, but by those who have the power to send them!
you’re absolutely right Daniel - when you say - “Wars are usually not the game of the ordinary people who are most affected, but by those who have the power to send them!’
i’m interested in hearing more such soldier stories. it was kind of like that in my encounters with these iraqi ‘boy’ soldier conscr ipts - there they were, standing under the fierce hot sun, with these heavy old crooked looking rifles, rather terrified of the situation they’d found themselves in, asking for water. they were very grateful for the water and it was clear what a silly horrible situation this we all were stuck in - in different ways - but a detrimental one all the same.
of course some people like to take advantage of such violent situations where one can get away with all sorts.
hello indian capitalist! fascinating points you make on a post that was about a memory and a commemoration - obviously a personal anecdote and thereby automatically emotional.
ah you didn’t hear a peep? http://shorno.net/2006/07/11/blasts-hit-mumbai-trains/
Thanks for writing this, sonia. If the political is not intrinsically connected to people’s lives, then what is the point of it all?
(Possible answers include: money; power; sheer love of killing people; whatever kool-aid Amrevis/his online persona is drinking).
Plus, it was nice to read that someone’s still older than me (if only by three months :p )
Peace.
I remember this time for another reason. One of my best friends had just died of cancer and I had just started work in the hospital that would change my life for ever. I was working on intensive care at the time learning all about intubation while watching some stranger die of cancer. I was never the same again.
“eventually leading to the Gulf War.”
some would argue that war has never stopped.
I don’t have memories of the gulf war, but all I can remember was there were questions everywhere about were you supporting saddam or bush. And somehow it appeared to me that saddam was the heroe without knowing anything about war.
I remember that day vividly too….