Monday, June 27, 2005
Over and Over
I noticed today that some of my anti-war colleagues are helping promote the next nationally-coordinated public protest of the US crimes against humanity in Iraq, scheduled to take place, coincidentally, on my birthday--September 24. To my count, this will be the third sort of annual mobilization against the Bush Administration's war crimes (not counting the one at the 2004 RNC convention), and I'm a little curious just what kind of turnout they'll get.
With the international War Tribunal on Iraq scheduled to conclude its proceedings in Istanbul tomorrow, the facts surrounding America's most recent military impunity will have been thoroughly rehashed, and all that will remain is the reaction--if any--by the world to this fourteen year nightmare for the Iraqi people.
Which reminds me of the bewildered young Iraqi university coed who came to speak extemporaneously to a pre-war conference I attended as a presenter in November 2002. By my calculations, she would have been born around the start of the Iran-Iraq war that lasted roughly the first eight years of her life. Then, three years later, at age eleven, she would have begun to endure the twelve years of hardship, famine, and disease run rampant in her country as a result of the post-Gulf War sanctions.
So by the time I listened to her pleading that day with an American audience to stop America's rulers from doing any more harm to her homeland, she was understandably distraught, and likely wondering just what kind of people inhabit this land of plenty. Having chose to study here, I find it doubtful that she would describe us as heartless, but in the back of her mind she must have had a fairly clear notion of our self-absorption and lack of commitment to the principles we espouse.
I suppose by now, she has either completed her studies or returned home to be with her loved ones in their baffling struggle for self-determination, and I am again struck by the complacence of our citizenry as we send our children to kill their children over and over and over again. And I honestly wonder if there is anything too horrific for us to ignore.
With the international War Tribunal on Iraq scheduled to conclude its proceedings in Istanbul tomorrow, the facts surrounding America's most recent military impunity will have been thoroughly rehashed, and all that will remain is the reaction--if any--by the world to this fourteen year nightmare for the Iraqi people.
Which reminds me of the bewildered young Iraqi university coed who came to speak extemporaneously to a pre-war conference I attended as a presenter in November 2002. By my calculations, she would have been born around the start of the Iran-Iraq war that lasted roughly the first eight years of her life. Then, three years later, at age eleven, she would have begun to endure the twelve years of hardship, famine, and disease run rampant in her country as a result of the post-Gulf War sanctions.
So by the time I listened to her pleading that day with an American audience to stop America's rulers from doing any more harm to her homeland, she was understandably distraught, and likely wondering just what kind of people inhabit this land of plenty. Having chose to study here, I find it doubtful that she would describe us as heartless, but in the back of her mind she must have had a fairly clear notion of our self-absorption and lack of commitment to the principles we espouse.
I suppose by now, she has either completed her studies or returned home to be with her loved ones in their baffling struggle for self-determination, and I am again struck by the complacence of our citizenry as we send our children to kill their children over and over and over again. And I honestly wonder if there is anything too horrific for us to ignore.
