Sen. Lindsey Graham recently called our
actions as Human Shields "treasonous" and hopes to see
us punished for more than the ten years in jail and $1 million in
fines that the law currently allows for. He said that we were
"giving aid and comfort to the enemy." I was not
comforting the enemy – I was comforting the Iraqi people. The
only aid that I provided was construction paper and crayons for
children, and I did so fairly confident that they would not be
used to make weapons of mass destruction.
Opposing this war is not treasonous. When
I made the decision to go to Iraq, I did so in part because of
concern for my country, and the planet. In calling for war, and
forcing other countries to choose whether to be "with us or
against us," we have thrown away a century of diplomacy. We
are losing allies because of this issue in a time when we need
them the most. In calling for war, I am terrified, as an American,
that our country will again become the victim of terrorist acts or
hostilities from other countries.
If we attack Iraq, we lose any moral high
ground that we once had, and I am terrified of the consequences.
If we set the precedent that countries can be justifiably attacked
because we don't agree with them and they have weapons of mass
destruction, I am afraid that we will become the next target. We
have weapons of mass destruction, and there are many countries out
there that don't agree with us.
Saddam Hussein is a terrible and unjust
ruler, and the idea that any Human Shield supports him is
completely untrue. I traveled to Iraq to support the Iraqi people,
not the leader that happens to be in power there. I do not support
Saddam, and it would be a great thing for the country and the
world if he was not in power. Likewise, though, I do not support
Bush, but I would oppose any foreign effort to remove our
President from power. Our country cannot continue to install and
remove regimes when it is politically expedient for us to do so.
As I set foot back in the United States,
a passport control officer said to me "You went to Iraq? Are
you nuts? All those people hate us!"
I didn't know where to begin.
As Americans, we seem unable to
differentiate between other cultures and the governments of other
cultures. We are not going to war with the Iraqi people, just
Saddam, and yet we are contemplating sending thousands of missiles
into Baghdad, killing a massive amount of civilians.
The Iraqi people do not seem to have the
same conceptual problem. When I was in Baghdad, I was thanked by
people in tears, and welcomed into the homes of the people there.
Even the families ravaged by sanctions and poverty would share the
little food that they had with me, even knowing that I was from a
country whose stated aim is to bomb them back into the stone age.
It was humbling and overwhelming, and I can't help thinking that,
if the situations were reversed, that we might not be so kind.
I am proud to be an American, but
terribly afraid of what my country is about to do to the people of
Iraq.
I went to Baghdad not with the certainty
that our presence there would stop a war, but knowing that there
was little else I could do to try, and that the alternative was to
sit at home and do nothing. I had to meet the people that my
country was about to bomb, and to humanize them when and if I got
back home.
When I was in Iraq, I visited several
schools. In one high-school classroom, I asked the students to
write letters to students in American classrooms. Marwa Quism, age
13, wrote "Dear American student... I hope there will be no
war between us, and I hope we will be friends. Governments want
war between us... we want peace. I like you, and we don't know why
you don't like us..."
The people in Iraq may hate our foreign
policy, and what the sanctions have done to their country, but
they do not hate us.
In elementary classrooms, I asked the
children to draw their homes and families. An eight-year-old drew
his family, his home, and a missile in the sky, aimed at his
house. There is no proper response when a child shows you a
picture like that; I complimented the drawing, apologized for my
country, and cried, later, for the first time in many years.
It is much more difficult for people to
bomb abstract enemies than it is to bomb 13 year-old Marwa, who
wants to be our friend. It does not look as if Bush will allow
this war to be stopped. If I can facilitate communication between
Marwa in Iraq and Bill in America, though, perhaps we can avert a
war a generation from now. If I can play some small part in
dispelling the myth that "they" hate "us",
then this movement was not a failure.
BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY