Very nice little article in the New Yorker magazine.
In late April, a group of Americans serving in Iraq sent a letter to John Kerry, appealing to the candidate as both an ex-soldier and a peace seeker. It read, in part, “Put bluntly: we believe you need to get over here, suck in some sand and sweat a bit in the desert heat while talking to, among others, U.S. soldiers, Iraqi technocrats, Coalition officials, private sector reconstruction contractors, and tribal leaders. Perhaps only then will you begin to get a real sense of the real Iraq, for Iraq cannot be understood from the halls of Washington or via briefing papers alone.” The letter concluded, “As our next Commander-in-Chief, the sooner you get over here, the better,” and it was signed, “Donkeys in the Desert.”
The Donkeys in the Desert are a small but increasingly vocal minority of Democrats working under the auspices of the Coalition Provisional Authority. They now number about two dozen, up from an original eight, last fall, and most of them are based in Baghdad, although satellite members can be found on the front lines in places like Baqubah and Ramadi. Roughly a third of the Donkeys are soldiers (from sergeants to colonels), and the rest are civilians working in various C.P.A. divisions—force protection, trade, foreign affairs—through private contractors or assorted government agencies. The group meets weekly, on Monday nights at eight o’clock, at an old Republican Guard swimming pool within Baghdad’s comfort area, the Green Zone. They eat pizza, drink beer, and discuss voter education and outreach.
Kael Weston, a State Department adviser in Baghdad, is the founder of Donkeys in the Desert. He recently returned to the United States for a three-week break, before another planned stint abroad, possibly in Falluja, and on Memorial Day he stepped briefly out of the midtown drizzle to grab a cup of coffee. “I kind of like the rain,” he said. “I wish it would rain more over there, in the desert.”
Weston, who is in his early thirties, and whose father, uncle, brother-in-law, and grandfather are all veterans, has served eight months in Baghdad, working mostly with trucking unions—“like the Teamsters of Iraq,” he said. “I’ve kind of become the Jimmy Hoffa of the C.P.A.” He had never been a political organizer before his Iraq experience. “This has been my first political action,” he said of organizing the Donkeys. “In that environment, it forces you to think more deeply about why you are where you are.”
There is no shortage of politicization within Coalition circles in Iraq, to be sure. In the middle of the marble palace that serves as C.P.A. headquarters (and that will serve, at least temporarily, as part of the U.S. Embassy, beginning next month), there is a painting of the World Trade Center towers—whose relevance to Operation Iraqi Freedom remains a matter of bitter contention. Stratcom, the Coalition press office, is staffed by a number of former Bush campaign workers. One Donkey reports chafing at a colleague’s remark, “I’m not here for the Iraqis, I’m here for George W. Bush.”
“A lot of Republicans walk around talking Republican stuff,” Weston said. “We call them Palace Pachyderms.”
more at link:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040614ta_talk_mcgrath
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