Iraqi Vacation
I had a very odd dream last night, one I remember in perfect detail which is odd. In the dream I took a vacation to pre-war Iraq - methinks I’ve been watching too much Daily Show. Anyways there was a mall attached to the airport (which at times looked suspiciously like the airport in Edmonton) so before going to the hotel I wandered around this mall when I realized I left the Canadian flag I normally have on my backpack at home and I get a little worried that I might be mistaken for an American. I shrug it off realizing there’s little I can do about it now and begin to wander the mall. After looking in various stores and petting a cat with tons of sand in it’s fur I realize my backpack is missing, either I left it somewhere or it’s been stolen. As I search for my backpack I discover the mall is run by the same company that runs West Edmonton Mall. Anyways eventually I realize that were this mall actually in Iraq and attached to an airport it would’ve been bombed to hell by now and I wake up. Weird.
Perhaps this was motivated by my annoyance at all the people calling for us to pull out of Afghanistan. I mean, their government supported a group that attacked an ally - and remember a core principle of NATO is “an attack against one is an attack against all”. I think the response was appropriate and now we’re trying to help things become stabilized before leaving, it’s sound like the responsible thing to do to me. I think if we left now out of some visceral knee-jerk reaction things would get far worse for the people living there. I admit I’m completely against the Iraq war but that’s not the same thing at all. I’m anti-war in general but there are times when it’s the only appropriate course of action. As Sisko once said “we’re losing the peace so a war may be our only hope”
How this all relates to my Iraqi Vacation dream is anybody’s guess.
