How Do We Know What We Know?

Iraq viewed through an armored vehicle. (Photo: Benjamin Lowy / The New York Times)

How do we know what we know is a deep philosophical question, yes, but on the more practical level it can be applied to how we make sense of our present world. For instance on the issue of Iraq, this question is a deeply fascinating one to ask Americans. How do Americans know what they know about Iraq, a country that is far away yet deeply connected to our own. The avenues for receiving information on what is happening in Iraq include:

- Reading the news from reporters who are stationed there or from news agencies who have Iraqi contacts in the region.
- Hearing the President or Generals report on the situation.
- Hearing scholars and analysts sum up the situation as they see it.
- Possibly directly hearing about it from service members when they return.

A recent piece from the Washington Post, "What We Don't Know About Iraq," brings up a source of information that often doesn't reach Americans ears:

The view from Iraqis themselves.

Americans have an interest in understanding the way Iraqi's view the war, especially since they are partners in securing their country so that foreign forces can leave them be (or that's what the US military says will happen).

In his piece, Phillip Bennet writes about the names Iraqis have used over the past six years to describe the situation, as told to him by the Washington Post's Baghdad correspondent, Anthony Shadid: "ghazu or 'invasion'; sometimes 'the events'; occasionally 'sectarian war'; and most often, and most hauntingly, suqut -- simply 'the collapse.'"

The above is an interesting to me because we don't often see news articles framed or informed by the average Iraqi perspective.

Bennet cites the 2008 book "The Forever War," by Dexter Filkins, as a strong account of how and why information from Iraqis is not entering the American consciousness. Filkins writes, "there were always two conversations in Iraq, the one Iraqis were having with the Americans and the one they were having with themselves."

Sometimes what we know is not easy to find out and is hidden by cultural or power relation barriers. What would happen if Americans had access to the thoughts and feelings of Iraqis regarding the US war in Iraq?