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Jane,
There is not one person alive in the west who wants
war. But I think stories like you have posted and all anti war rallies are
doing more harm to the cause than the good that is intended. The focus is
wrong. I mean antiwar. In my humble opinion, people power ought
to be used to convince the world that Saddam needs to go along with all his
regime. For some insane reason, the powers that be believe it is better to
kill millions of kids like the writer spoke of in your post rather than be
accused of being politically incorrect by accidentally killing one or two or a
dozen or two of Saddams "innocent" relatives, as apparently happened in Cuba or
somewhere many years ago.
If you oppose something someone more powerful wants
so he can achieve his goal, he'll take no notice and operate against
you. Show him there is another way, certainly not, in this case by
suggesting SH can be trusted not to use weapons of mass detruction as France
China and Russia seem to be doing backed by Germany. That is absolutely
rediculous. People power needs to be used to back the permanent
elimination of SH and his henchmen. And for the US to suggest they can't
is rediculous. They just don't want to because of the political fall out
they perceive hppening. Let's show them that it is more politically
unbeneficial to make war than to risk a bad political reputation by
dealing with SH.
The other sad thing is that our little girl as
true and horrific as her story is, is, unwittingly hopefully, just a tool
in the hand of SH so he can continue to
live to wreak far more damage on her own people than the Allies will ever do in
any war. Let's hear her talk about that, and the very fact that she will
have no chance in her own country of getting people to oust SH. As evil as
war is, there are greater evils as the free west can attest to. Where
would we be with our freedoms if the wars of last century had not happened, if
Hiroshima and Nagasaki hadn't happened? And where would the oppressed
peoples of Europe and Japan be if it hadn't happened just as it
did.
Do you really honestly believe people like Hitler,
Stalin, Amin, Pol Pot, Mugabe can be convinced by dialogue?
Just my opinions but I believe millions upon
millions share them or similar ones.
Keith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: 26 February, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: FW: [globalnews] Iraq: a 12-year
old's powerful statement
12 Year Old
speaker
Presque Isle, Maine Peace Rally
Speech
Before 150 Aroostook county residents from around the
County
February 15, 2003 - St. Mary's
Church
by Charlotte Aldebron
When people
think about bombing Iraq, they see a
picture in their heads of
Saddam Hussein in a military
uniform, or maybe soldiers with
big black mustaches
carrying guns, or the mosaic of George Bush
Sr. on the
lobby floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel with the
word
criminal. But guess what? More than half of Iraq's
24
million people are children under the age of 15.
That's
12 million kids. Kids like me. Well, I'm almost 13,
so
some are a little older, and some a lot younger,
some
boys instead of girls, some with brown hair, not
red.
But kids who are pretty much like me just the same.
So
take a look at me, a good long look. Because I am
what
you should see in your head when you think
about
bombing Iraq. I am what you are going to
destroy.
If I am lucky, I will be killed
instantly, like the
three hundred children murdered by your
smart bombs in
a Baghdad bomb shelter on February 16, 1991. The
blast
caused a fire so intense that it flash-burned
outlines
of those children and their mothers on the walls;
you
can still peel strips of blackened skin souvenirs
of
your victory from the
stones.
But maybe I won't be lucky and I'll die
slowly, like
14-year-old Ali Faisal, who right now is on the
death
ward of the Baghdad children's hospital. He
has
malignant lymphoma cancer caused by the
depleted
uranium in your Gulf War missiles. Or maybe I will
die
painfully and needlessly like 18-month-old
Mustafa,
whose vital organs are being devoured by sand
fly
parasites. I know it's hard to believe, but
Mustafa
could be totally cured with just $25 worth of
medicine,
but there is none of this medicine because of
your
sanctions.
Or maybe I won't
die at all but will live for years
with the psychological
damage that you can't see from
the outside, like Salman
Mohammed, who even now can't
forget the terror he lived through
with his little
sisters when you bombed Iraq in 1991. Salman's
father
made the whole family sleep in the same room so
that
they would all survive together, or die together.
He
still has nightmares about the air raid
sirens.
Or maybe I will be orphaned like Ali,
who was three
when you killed his father in the Gulf War. Ali
scraped
at the dirt covering his fathers grave every day
for
three years calling out to him, It's all right
Daddy,
you can come out now, the men who put you here
have
gone away. Well, Ali, you're wrong. It looks like
those
men are coming back.
Or I
maybe I will make it in one piece, like Luay
Majed, who
remembers that the Gulf War meant he didn't
have to go to
school and could stay up as late as he
wanted. But today, with
no education, he tries to live
by selling newspapers on the
street.
Imagine that these are your children or
nieces or
nephews or neighbors. Imagine your son screaming
from
the agony of a severed limb, but you can't do
anything
to ease the pain or comfort him. Imagine your
daughter
crying out from under the rubble of a
collapsed
building, but you can't get to her. Imagine
your
children wandering the streets, hungry and alone,
after
having watched you die before their
eyes.
This is not an adventure movie or a
fantasy or a video
game. This is reality for children in Iraq.
Recently,
an international group of researchers went to Iraq
to
find out how children there are being affected by
the
possibility of war. Half the children they talked
to
said they saw no point in living any more. Even
really
young kids knew about war and worried about it.
One
5-year-old, Assem, described it as guns and bombs
and
the air will be cold and hot and we will burn
very
much. Ten-year-old Aesar had a message for
President
Bush: he wanted him to know that a lot of
Iraqi
children will die. You will see it on TV and then
you
will regret.
Back in
elementary school I was taught to solve
problems with other
kids not by hitting or
name-calling, but by talking and using I
messages. The
idea of an I message was to make the other
person
understand how bad his or her actions made you feel,
so
that the person would sympathize with you and stop
it.
Now I am going to give you an "I message." Only
it's
going to be a We message. We as in all the children
in
Iraq who are waiting helplessly for something bad
to
happen. We as in the children of the world who
don't
make any of the decisions but have to suffer all
the
consequences. We as in those whose voices are too
small
and too far away to be
heard.
We feel scared when we don't know if
we'll live another
day. We feel angry when people want to kill
us or
injure us or steal our future. We feel sad because
all
we want is a mom and a dad who we know will be
there
the next day. And, finally, we feel confused
because
we don't even know what we did
wrong.
Charlotte Aldebron, 12, attends
Cunningham Middle
School in Presque Isle, Maine. Comments may
be sent to
her mom, Jillian Aldebron:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Charlotte has been a busy girl since September
11. A
search of her name will bring up other speeches and
papers
she has written for class.
Tanya Barber
International Outreach
Coordinator
Global Village
School
http://www.globalvillageschool.org
--
"All truth passes through three
stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently
opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being
self-evident."
-- Arthur
Schopenhauer
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