November 7, 2006
In mid-April, 2003, Baghdad skies were still heavy with fumes from the Shock and Awe bombing. The intersection immediately outside our hotel was filled with scores of newly arrived invading U.S. Marines. We began to grow acquainted with many of the Marines who stood guard next to bulldozers, Armored Personnel Carriers, tanks, and humvees. First there were mutually curious exchanges, then longer conversations over water and dates.
Within a few days, we realized that the Marines were protecting the Ministry of Oil building, but that numerous other places were vulnerable to looting and destruction. Alarmed by a rumor that people in Hilla faced an outbreak of cholera because of contaminated drinking water, we wondered if perhaps the Marines weren’t getting information about ways to deliver clean water. Were they having trouble locating various hospitals in critical need of protection? Were they aware that there had been no garbage collection for the past month? Did they need information about where to find humanitarian relief organizations? We sent two of our folks over to visit with the U.S. authorities at the Palestine Hotel. The response to our overture was polite, but unmistakable: “Get Lost.” You could read about this on E-Iraq’s archives (April 16, 2003, “Heavy-handed and hopeless, the U.S. military doesn’t know what it’s doing in Iraq,”) and see a picture that shows Marines setting up a makeshift sign banning Voices in the Wilderness from re-entry into their headquarters.
Now, we’ve gotten lost. The losses are staggering, and the U.S. government seems at a loss, — leaders still dare to talk about success while some of their own closest advisers write op-eds indicating that Iraq is a failed state.
Two weeks ago, the New York Times featured a chart it had obtained, dated October 20, in which the U.S. military used a color coded layout to chart variables that contributed, on a continuum, toward a dreaded total chaos in Iraq.
A slide titled “Iraq: Indications and Warnings of Civil Conflict” lists factors that are destabilizing Iraq. (United States Central Command)
Is it utterly naïve to think of again approaching the U.S. authorities, carrying an alternative chart? Volunteers here studied various recent reports about unmet human needs in Iraq posted on a digest we maintain called Iraq Health Care and Infrastructure. They created a chart offering key indicators for concern in Iraq based on the affliction caused by extreme poverty, hunger, lack of health care and displacement.
Now, even as some “neo-culpas” condemn the war in Iraq, they still issue a cautionary warning: don’t throw out the baby with the bath water, —the “baby” being the war on terror. It’s ok to declare the war in Iraq a failure, but don’t let go of the baby, the war on terror, — how, I wonder, will that “baby” grow?
U.S. and UK economic warfare against Iraq slaughtered hundreds of thousands of babies, causing rage, grief and agony, along with deep mistrust, across the Arab and Muslim world.
We and our children would not be so threatened by potential terrorist attacks if we had learned to study charts indicating why people would be so angry and enraged that they might consider waging insurgent warfare in the first place.
If we earnestly ask why people who undertake terrorist acts against the U.S. and its allies would be so angry, we find claims not so different from the ones that fueled the U.S. Revolutionary War: people don’t like to live under occupation; they don’t want to turn over their resources to a far away country; they don’t want foreign bases on their soil, — and they don’t want to carry their children, starved and diseased, to burial grounds.
The skies over Baghdad are still heavy with the fumes of war. Numerous Iraqis who’ve raised complaints about how they’ve been treated under U.S. occupation have been told to more or less “get lost.” Our best hope to help clear these skies and find an “exit strategy” is to bring the U.S. troops home and to pay generous reparation for the suffering caused, entrusting such funds to a neutral, third party group while recognizing that the U.S. is uniquely unqualified to undertake reconstruction in Iraq.
Yes, bring the troops home, but also spend time, in each of our homes, studying a question posed by Jonathan Woolman in 1764. This saintly founder of the Quaker faith urged people to uproot violence by paying attention to human needs. Toward that end he posed this question:
“The rising up of a desire to obtain wealth is the beginning;
this desire being cherished, moves to action; and riches
thus gotten please self; and while self has a life in them
it desires to have them defended. Wealth is attended with
Power, by which bargains and proceedings contrary to
Universal Righteousness are supported…. O that we who
declare against wars, and acknowledge our trust to be in God
only, may walk in the light, and therein examine our
foundation and motives in holding great estates!
May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our houses,
and our garments,
and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions.”
