The Armor Begins To Crack

This is a compelling read. A vehemently anti-Bush blogger goes to watch Iraqis in America vote, takes some pictures, listens to some life stories.

excerpt:

I’ve had a guilty taste in my mouth since the inaugural protest’s cocktail of adrenaline and pepper gas wore off. I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that while the right is wrong, the left might not be right either. I looked around those protests and saw legitimately angry people who were well-fed and intentionally scruffy. Not to be presumptuous, but I didn't detect sadness and suffering ringing the eyes of most protestors. People were angry, loudly vocal, and legitimate in the depth of their feeling...but I didn't see anyone from the middle East. While I would guess that many people there had travelled, I doubt any of them had an Iraqi stamp in their passports.

This is not to discount the suffering felt by thousand of families and friends connected to those lost in the war.

Ever since I got ready to leave America, I've felt the country wobbling out of balance, like world events have been spinning out of control and America is right there at the center pulling the levers. I’ve needed the comfort that comes from answers and been really jealous of the righteous sense of stability that the religious right and Bush supporters and other stupid white people seemed to have. I took refuge in a knee-jerk liberal identity for a long time, but now it's threadbare and not as comfortable as it once was.

Tash and I are both terrifically loudmouthed critics of the Bush administration, she from an Australian perspective and me from a disgruntled American's p.o.v. We are also both white, young, healthy, and from lands that enjoy a vast degree of privilege, thousands of miles away from true suffering. We knew we didn’t have the full story so we went out to the Iraqi Out-Of Country Voting poll on Sunday to get another truth and see ground-level democracy for ourselves.

...

You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total f------ moron.

I still am no Bush fan, and I know that America got lied to. I know we shouldn't have gone, and I think Rove is as evil as they come. But through all this deception and lying, through all this dismemberment and pain, America has wrought a beautiful, fantastic side effect: joy, freedom and a hope for peace. Does it take lies and misdirection to do this?? Is this what the other side of justice is? I feel like such a whiner and I don't know what to think anymore. Ultimately, in total defiance of my mother and grandmother’s teachings, two wrongs have made a right and my moral compass is tired and busted.

I can't tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, and I want a clear cut mandate, some lines to believe along. But there aren't any. There's just right and wrong and following your heart of hearts. And for the first time in my life, I can say that I was wrong to be compulsively critical of the current administration without seeking my own truth.

Read the whole thing. Also, look at the rest of his site. This guy is the genuine leftist article.