ERBIL, IRAQ – A Western journalist I met in Erbil, who has been in Iraq for some time, told me the place challenges almost every liberal idea he has ever had in his head. I don’t know what he was like, ideologically speaking, before he got there. But he certainly doesn’t have orthodox left-wing opinions today. (Some right-wingers, especially those who think of the entire Islamic religion as a totalitarian death cult, would likewise get a crash-course in reality if they ever bothered to hang out in Iraq and meet actual Muslims.)
I was only in Iraq for two days before I had to face the sort of thing my journalist friend was talking about.
Omar and Mohammad, the two brothers from Baghdad who write at Iraq the Model, were supposed to meet me in the “Sheraton” hotel lobby.
They emailed me from Kirkuk and said they would be there in a few hours. I waited. And waited. And they never showed up. Considering this was Iraq, I was worried. What if they were killed on their way to meet me? They would not have been on their way to Erbil if I had not invited them.
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