Bread: essential / indulgent

Baghdad, 2003

Ensconced as I am in comfort, I might be tempted to argue that goreously buttery pastry (as in the lower photo of Bohemian Bakery) qualifies as one of the essentials of a good life. But really, get a grip!

Top: Weeks before the 2003 US invasion, a Baghdadi merchant weighs flour for a rationed "basket" of basics that supplemented the national diet and fostered popular support for Saddam's regime. The US invasion—aimed at protecting oil interests, ousting Saddam, and stopping a non-existent threat of proliferation—installed its own rule, which dismantled this Public Distribution System.

In the 1980s, Iraq had been a middle-income, fast developing country, with a reasonably good health system and arts scene. Much as US invasions did decades before in Vietnam, and would do years later in Afghanistan, the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq precipitated social, economic, and humanitarian debacles. The US, as is its wont, then washed its hands of the mess.

That same recklessness and lack of targeting an endgame—other than domination and wholesale killing opf civilians—marks the Irsaeli invasion of Gaza. Which is not to defend the the Hammas attack, but to put it in context. When you oppress people certain results are likley to follow.