Back again

I've been out of Iraq for a while and am now back. I caught up with a lot of people who mean a lot to me in various places and had the best holiday I could have hoped for. While I was away I felt strangely detached from what was happening here, but maybe that was no bad thing. When you're here, the things those people are doing to each other start to grind you down so it's good to get out and have some normality for a while. Of course the Iraqis don't have that luxury. Being away made me really take stock of where I'm at and it was really hard to come back. I'm not sure I'll be here longer than another 12 months now, though circumstances on that ground may well mean I'm not even here that long. I have been sounded out for another job here which pays more and is doing something that would probably be more constructive for this country than what I have been doing so far, which has been a mixed bag. What I've been doing isn't counter-productive for Iraq, but I have always felt like I wasn't doing what I came here to do, or at least to the extent I'd like. So we will see. I should know in the next few days whether I will be changing.

So.... what's been going on the last few weeks? There was that horrific day in which a couple hundred Shiites met their maker courtesy of a series of car bombs, and a couple of days ago some more car bombs killed another 51. The number of horribly disfigured people must be at least 500. Religion's a strange old thing. The things people do to each other, and all in the name of this god they've been brainwashed into believing in since birth. A book I was reading on holiday had a quote that interested me, something along the lines of "the more a religion tends towards monotheism, the more barbaric it becomes". My own view is that religion is a problem full stop. On a small, personal scale it can help people in times of need and give them hope. On a large scale however it's a disaster for the human race. Look at history, and the present for that matter - when people stop thinking of themselves (and others) simply as people, and move towards narrower groups based on religion or race (which often overlap), their ideals start to conflict and all hell breaks loose. When you look at black and white clips of WWII and see human beings slaughtering each other you wonder what the hell was that all for. And on it goes. Religion is, for me, a way of the human race absolving ourselves of responsibility for our actions (the theory being that we'll all be judged by a higher power at the end of the day). Moral values such as not stealing exist totally independently of religion, so quite why anyone needs to have a god to adhere to those virtues is beyond me. If you're religious, then good luck to you. Just don't try and convert me.

Iraq's government is in a bit of a mess with Sadr's lot pulling out in protest about Maliki's meeting with Bush. I will try and get hold of a link to the press conference they held - I didn't see it as I was probably on a beach somewhere, but apparently Bush was just plain embarrassing. What's new, yeah I know, but apparently he was off the scale of muppetry. More later.