On Parades...

And the timeless, borderless stupidity of it all

It was, if you were in Baghdad in the early aughts, an obligatory photo stop, like the Rocky statue in Philadelphia or the Walk of Fame in Hollywood. I’m talking, of course, about what we called “Crossed Swords,” a massive parade ground accessible through the Green Zone, a highly fortified and significantly more secure section of the city that, by the time I got there, housed the US Embassy, the incipient Iraqi Government, and the several coalition bases.

Crossed Swords, known to the Baathist Regime as the Swords of Qadisiyyah (referencing a battle from the 7th century AD between Arab armies and a Persian kingdom), was garish, cheesy, and massive. It was built in 1989 by Saddam Hussein as a memorial to Iraq’s recently concluded 8 year war with Iran. The centerpiece of the grounds, where Saddam presided over numerous military parades, is a pair of bronze swords in an arch, the base of which are bronzed, muscular forearms and hands purported to be modeled on Saddam himself (please don’t tell certain other global leaders about this).

There were piles of helmets, fused, and taken from dead Iranian soldiers at the base of the swords (they also had used Iranian helmets, one of which I remember having a bullet hole in it, as speed bumps for vehicles in the entrance to the grounds).

There were a few reasons Crossed Swords was on the Baghdad version of “Maps to Movie Stars’ Homes.” It was recognizable for one, there wasn’t really any other place in Iraq that looked like it. It was also in a secure location, one in which you could take off your helmet and body armor and throw in a Skoal and walk around, marveling at the grounds and the sheer stupidity of it. It was a place to go for a chuckle and to shake your head at the decadence and idiocy of enemies you had bested in battle.

Because that was the overall feeling you got from going to Crossed Swords: we were better than this. It was kitschy, juvenile, and lame. It felt like an adolescent shrine to martial success, something to be laughed at and mocked. WE were better than this, after all. Part of that may have been our own biases, of course, but our own monuments at home: Arlington, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Vietnam Memorial, were tasteful, simple, and poignant. Crossed Swords, and the thought of thousands of Baathist security forces parading through in lock step while Saddam sipped cool drinks under hand-held umbrellas and Qusay pointed out girls in the crowd for his security entourage to bring to him was, for lack of a better expression, cheesy as fuck.

There’s not much that servicemembers in a war zone find more cringe than the idea that a dictator can force his troops to march around in step for his own pleasure. It was stupid, and if we had any serious discussion about the grounds amongst ourselves it was limited to what I remember my roommate (we shared a plywood hooch) saying, “if I get killed over here there better not be any gay-ass parade in my honor.” (Times have changed, and I don’t use words like that anymore, but that’s what how we talked back then). It was a universal sentiment in our platoon.

I wonder if, 30 years ago, some Iraqi soldier who had spent months in the trenches watching his friends get killed and maimed by Iranian bombs, had rolled his eyes and marched across Crossed Swords in front of Saddam Hussein, the most two bit of two bit dictators, and ground his teeth down to his chin. I wonder if he, as an actual combat veteran, wanted to smack some newbie “boot” in his unit who was actually excited to put on his fancy uniform and put on a show for the ascendant political power in his nation. I wonder if he had to get out to Crossed Swords 5 hours early, stand at parade rest in the heat, and never for one second sit down and risk messing up his uniform for the big show. I wonder if he resented being ordered around for entertainment after all he’d done for his country. I wonder if he saw red when Saddam made it clear no one with physical wounds be allowed in the parade, “because no one wants to see that.”

Actually, I don’t wonder all that much. I know that guy existed. For all of our differences, we share that.