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HUMAN SHIELD SEARCHES FOR MEANING AFTER IRAQ
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BERKELEY, CA – Barb Geiger walks the streets of this famed college town, haunted by what she has experienced and fearful of what the future brings. Like so many human shields who traveled to Iraq to protest what she calls “The War of American Aggression, Yet Again” she struggles to understand what the world has become, and more specifically, her place in it.
“Everything was so clear in the 60’s man,” she bemoans while scratching the head of one of her twenty-five cats. “Back when I was doing dropping acid and listening to Jimi Hendrix, it all made sense. Now I drink acid-free Dasani and watch American Idol, and it’s all fucked up.”
Ms. Geiger’s disillusionment took a turn for the worse in February when she answered an ad for human shields in the back of the Berkeley Voice.
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An Iraqi soldier inspects a new group of American human shield volunteers
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“The pay wasn’t all that great,” she remembers while savoring her third double-latte expresso made from coffee beans harvested by starving peasants in Chile. “And they warned that I’d be uncomfortable waking around a war zone in my Birkenstocks. But the chance to go stick it to that pompous-ass Bush was too good to pass up. Of course, I would have jumped at the chance to protest against Gore too. Talk about a total right-wing wacko! That whole beard thing didn’t fool me for a minute.”
The first inkling things might not go as expected occurred on the flight to Baghdad. “They tossed all my clothes and replaced them with a bunch of burkas,” the 60 year-old former hippie pouted while taking a long drag on a doobie that would put Snoop Dogg to shame. “Some of those tie-dyes were priceless.”
After a long trip, Geiger was hustled off by the Iraqi military to strangest baby milk processing plant she’d ever seen.
“I’m no expert on dairy farms,” she giggled while firing up a righteous two-stage bong, “but I’d be begging for my momma’s tits if they were trying to nurse me on that yellow ooze-like crap. I don’t ever remember the milk at the Seven-Eleven requiring a bio-hazard suit, if you get my drift.”
Geiger recalls the last straw only days before the war.
“I remember it vividly, like it was yesterday,” she says while pausing every few sentences to complain of the munchies and suggest the interview move to the nearest In-N-Out Burger. “I think it was morning, or maybe early afternoon. Anyhow, if I’m not mistaken, this guy, or perhaps two, came over and said I had to stand guard in a new area. I grew suspicious when I saw I would be standing in a small reddish circle, with what looked like larger concentric circles moving outward. But what finally pushed me over the edge was when they moved another thirty Americans into the small circle and asked us all to stand real still.”
It has been a long period of self-reflection for Geiger since returning to the States. “I used to think the U.S. was evil and wanted to take over the world,” she explains, “but now I understand that there are people out there who are almost as bad. I need to find a kind-hearted despot who can restore my faith in the evil of American Imperialism. I’ve been reading a lot recently about this populist leader, Kim Jong Il of North Korea. I’m thinking he may be the one.” |
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