-Caveat Lector-
http://www.counterpunch.org/kellyperle.html
January 15, 2002
An Open Letter to Richard Perle
chairman, Defense Advisory Board
>From Kathy Kelly
director
Voices in the Wilderness
Dear Mr. Perle,
I am writing to you from a faraway land, Iraq, and yet I sense we are
not remote from one another. Perhaps you are thinking every day of
the cities I've visited this last month: Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul.
Be assured that I am thinking, every day, about the recommendations
that you and your colleagues make as you urge President Bush to show
strength, courage, and vitality by intensifying U.S. warfare in Iraq.
I recently watched children dance and sing and play at the Baghdad
school for Music and Ballet. One little girl played the piano,
another the violin. Young Ibrahim sang an Arabic translation of a
song you may know, based on a melody composed by Jean Sibelius. The
lyrics were written in the 1930s during the brief outbreak of peace
between world war. "This Is My Song" expresses hopes for peace among
people who hold in common a deep, true love of their homeland.
Another little boy showed me a drawing he made of 9- 11, twin pillars
of fire and smoke. He said he felt bad about the attacks, but added
that he doesn't think Americans understand what happens to other
people when they're hit by American bombs.
After Christmas, you wrote a rosy scenario for the New York Times
entitled "The U.S. Must Strike at Saddam Hussein," (12/28). In it,
the U.S. attacks Iraq with extraordinary precision. In the cross
hairs of a gunsight appears the only Iraqi who seems to matter to
American policymakers, Saddam Hussein. After U.S. forces for good
eliminate the evil leader, Iraqis take to the streets, dancing, and
we all rejoice the outbreak of peace.
However, the fantasy reveals more about America than it does about
Iraq. It's easy to imagine the crowds that would tear down pictures
of Hussein or topple statues of him. Reporters in Kabul found some
Afghans dancing when the Taliban fell, and shaving their beards or
removing their burkas. But what about the Afghans who huddle now in
fear of Northern Alliance warlords, or who quietly starve due to the
physical and social chaos war has brought? Survivors who've seen
their villages obliterated by U.S. bombs aren't joyous. Beyond the
fanfare of the media, refugee families are even now dying in the
snow.
Mr. Perle, you work with complex issues and must know the pitfalls of
over-simplifying the realities of other peoples. Your plea for war
ignores the future horrors the horror of war may bring. If Iraq
collapses in civil war, where would the bloodletting stop?
Increased belligerence does not address a solution to the complex and
lethal problems that have already arisen because of current U.S.
policy. Whatever the future, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children
will never celebrate it. They are already dead. Economic warfare,
waged through sanctions, claimed the lives of these innocents.
Will their parents blithely overcome the sorrow they felt when they
couldn't obtain the medicines they needed? Will the liberation you
envision erase the pain they felt when they gave their children
poisoned water and watched them succumb to sicknesses? Will the
doctors who struggled vainly to heal them jump for joy if Iraq is
again attacked?
Teachers, writers, engineers and civil servants who've lost their
savings, sold their belongings, and eked out a living on paltry wages
aren't likely to rejoice if the U.S. again bombs the debilitated
infrastructure they've tried mightily to restore.
Across Iraq, people ask us why Americans want to punish them even
more. For 11 years they've been told sanctions were a "peaceful"
alternative to war, and now they're told war is the solution to the
suffering of sanctions. In a twisted way the message is at least
consistent: to please remember that they're better off dead.
Remarkably, children here seem very ready to believe that Americans
can be kind and just. Like children everywhere they are full of
curiosity and show easy affection. In their laughter and hopes rest
my hopes for a peaceful world.
Please, Mr. Perle, when you preach that no war against terrorism will
be successful without Saddam Hussein's removal, try also to remember
other terrors inflicted on these people over the last 11 years of our
"assistance."
I feel sure that you care deeply about America's national security.
Placing our trust in developing, stockpiling and using overpowering
and costly weapons has not enhanced that security. We must open our
hearts to the cries of people across the world who feel we treat them
as dust beneath our feet.
At its core, war is impoverishment. War's genesis and ultimate end is
in the poverty of our hearts. If we can realize that the world's
liberation begins within those troubled hearts, then we may yet find
peace, and a renewal of the courage and vitality you so passionately
desire.
Kathy Kelly is director of Voices in the Wilderness, the first U.S.
grassroots organization to bring activists into Iraq to witness the
effect of sanctions, to violate the sanctions by bringing medicine
and toys into Iraq, and to educate the U.S. public upon their return.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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