How to promote political unity in Iraq. 


Build them a capitol building. 




When I was at my dad's office today, battoning down all of the hatches opened by various computer glitches that have all decided to pop up during this, my final week of classes for the season, we watched a film on a famous architect named Louis Kahn. The film was a documentary made by Kahn's son, a man who was 11-years-old when his father died. My Architect was an excellently constructed film and was quite interesting for a documentary on one man's life. The final piece of work that Kahn finished was the capitol building for Bangladesh. In fact, he never lived to see the finished complex of buildings in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which were finished in 1974, shortly after his death in the same year. The complex's name is the Jātiyo Sangshad Bhaban.

Nathaniel Kahn, the son/filmmaker, interviewed a Bangladeshi architect inside of the massive parliamentary building. The man nearly broke down in tears when he was explaining how the mere presence of a building within which the different factions of the Bangladeshi political scene could gather to discuss matters of state was of monumental importance to the evolution of democracy in that country. I am not all that familiar with the current situation in Bangladesh and whether the democracy can be considered to be up to the 'ideal' calibre of those in the West, but I haven't heard anything about unrest in Bangladesh in the news--as much as that fact is worth--other than some provoking intrusions into India's airspace. The bottom line is that, just like the man said in the film, Bangladesh is now a better place than it was during the wars independence that took place last century.

So what of it? When I heard this man discussing the love that Kahn shared with the Bangladeshi people by designing their national treasure, I immediately thought of the fact that the Iraqi parliament currently meet inside of some modest hall inside some bureaucratic building in Baghdad. What if America, instead of building the largest and most expensive embassy in Baghdad, were to partially fund and assist the new Iraqi government in designing and constructing a capitol building of which all Iraqis--Shias, Sunnis, Kurds and everyone in between--could be proud? It would be a visible symbol to the Iraqi people, making it tangible for them to see the change that has taken place within their country since the fall of Saddam. Instead of seeing a massive, new and glamourous American Embassy, it would be nice to (also) see a fantastic capitol building of and for Iraqis.

Priorities must be set straight and although the United States surely has an interest in keeping Iraq stable and has made this interest clear through everything that it has been doing, our government might do well to consider helping to construct a symbol up to which Iraqis can look and feel proud, for, as the cliché saying goes, if you build it, they will come. 

Posted: Thu - May 5, 2005 at 03:21 PM          

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