Prince of Persia

I am watching Seymour Hersh author of the article on the New Yorker about Bush's intention to bomb Iran) live on CNN and I cant help myself from blogging about an eventual war.

It is interesting to see how living in the Middle East completely changes your mindset and your way of understanding this western/arab world duality.

When the Iraq war started I was one of the millions who was veemently against it. A vague idea of a "war over oil" was clearly in my head and nothing I could hear from the US/UK side actually justified something else. However, and being very honest, I still thought about Iraq as a black space with green flash laser lights (bombs) falling over (just like you saw it on CNN throughout Gulf War I) killing all the bad guys. It was like a "small" place full with Saddam Hussein and other bad guys and maybe a little bit of bombing wasnt a bad idea.

However, today I look at Iraq the same same way I look at Iran. A country just like mine, with good and bad people, with an heritage, with history, with REAL people and not only green laser lights on the night skies.

I think about Iran being bombed and I imagine my friends being killed, their family being exterminated by a misplaced bombing and innocents being tortured.

See, I dont like Iran's president. It made me sick to listen to his speech about Israel anihilition and I dont like the fact that many people in this region dont even admit that Israel and Israeli people exist. But you should never judge a nation by its leader. History has proved us wrong.

See, now when I think about Iran I think about its people kindness and smile, I think about its beautiful architechture and mosaics, I think about Prince of Persia and all those tales that once took place in the country now called Iran.

See, now I have heard both sides of the Palestinian/Israelian conflict and I know they are both right and wrong. Right in the sense that both sides have something to "complaint about" but wrong in a sense that it has now become a vicious cycle and everything that happens in one side is now justified by something else that happened on the other side and it just goes on an on. (Obviously, I dont pretend to explain years of conflict and despair in a simple sentence.. )

So many things that were my "truth" while in Portugal are now so misplaced that they can almost be called lies.

But, in the end, all I want to say is that once you start blaming and punishing a country for its leader then you almost start justifying the bombings in Madrid, in NY, in London... The only difference is that when "we" bomb a city in the Middle East "we" dont call them terrorist attacks but a war for freedom.