Obama’s Cloak

A few days ago, Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s foreign minister before the occupation, conveyed a message to U.S. President Barack Obama from his prison cell. He implored Obama not to pull his forces out of Iraq, suggesting such an act would leave Iraq to be plundered by wolves.

This message shocked me greatly, not because it is the first message to filter from Aziz in prison, but rather because I don’t know to which wolves he is referring. Are they the wolves that ended the country’s peace and security, causing havoc through destruction and corruption, and who made Iraq (according to international research) the worst place to live on the entire planet? Or are they the wolves who benefited from returning Iraq to the Dark Ages?

Elsewhere, I came across a story familiar to me — American scientists are on the verge of producing a cloak that is able to conceal the objects beneath it: The objects become invisible, as if they do not exist. The original model from Duke University succeeded in cloaking short wave electromagnetic radiation. That suggests the possibility of developing a new technology, capable of completely hiding objects emitting visible light, so anyone wearing the technology would be concealed (that’s a good cloak!).

I do not think Obama will listen to the urging of Tariq Aziz. Instead, he will flee Iraq as soon as possible, leaving it to the wolves and other dogs, and he possibly intends to use the invisibility cloak tactic to cover up the defeat of his country in Iraq. But a risk will remain. Is this cloak, no matter how strong and precise its manufacture, able to hide the failure of the largest empire in the world in its unjust war? Will they be able to hide from the light of the truth?

What we see every day on our television screens, what we feel from the blood covering the streets after more than seven years of this barbaric invasion of a previously safe country, followed by its occupation and conversion into a site of death, forces us to ask about these shadows from which the Iraqis are about to escape into a glimmer of light: Are there greater shadows on the horizon than this carnage they are living now?

If Bush were still president and approaching defeat in Iraq, perhaps his superior wisdom, his unique genius and his well-tended mind would have led him to take a different strategy. He would not cover Iraq with his cloak; rather, he would he would use it to wrap around himself and his office, then cover his head with many layers of the fabulous cloak and have all the losses, blood and suffering that have devoured Iraq hidden from his mind.

Returning to that cloak, Mr. Obama, will that get you out of defeat in Iraq? A hundred wise men can’t dislodge a stone thrown by a fool down a deep well.