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A Letter to Iraqi civilians on the eve of war
by Robert Fay
February 25, 2003
As I write this it seems all but inevitable that war
will be coming to your country in a matter of weeks.
The Turkish government has agreed to host U.S. troops
(despite 90% of the population objecting), in Eastern
Turkey which will means the U.S. generals have gotten
their coveted two-front war.
Between the obvious repression of free speech in your
country and the U.S. media's unwillingness to dig for
popular Iraqi sentiment, we in America know little
about how you feel concerning a U.S. invasion-we can
only guess that you are terrified now and busy
planning for the survival of your family.
We know that you have been oppressed and brutalized by
Saddam Hussein and his tyrants, and that your hatred
for him has never been in question, but whether you
want Americans to invade your country, topple the
government, occupy the nation and manufacture a new
regime for you based largely on what U.S. officials
consider appropriate, remains to be seen.
Although the Bush administration says its coming war
will be directed against Saddam Hussein and his
military supporters only, you know as well as I, that
your friends and neighbors will suffer just as much,
if not more, than members of the Republican Guard or
Baath Party loyalists-bombs are not smart and never
will be; they only kill and destroy.
People of course are the nation, and any war on a
nation will inevitably result in the killing, maiming,
starving and brutalizing of its people no matter how
moral or "democratic' the invading soldiers consider
their mission.
From your experience in the Gulf War, you know that
war unleashes rockets and bombs on apartment
buildings, radio stations and hospitals just often as
its does on command-and-control structures and
military bases-to admit anything else would be to
insult you and the memory of those innocent civilians
who died in 1991.
I was sickened to learn that my government plans to
start this new war by sending thousands of missiles
into Baghdad over a 48 hour period as a way of
"shocking and awing" you with the U.S.'s military
might.
Will you be awed as missiles smash through the roof?
Will you be impressed as your water supply is
destroyed and contaminated? Will you be shocked as
your daughter is decapitated by shrapnel? If you are
not dead yourself, my guess is that you will simply be
ravaged by grief and hatred; hatred toward Saddam,
hatred toward America, hatred toward the state of the
world for allowing such a slaughter-and I wouldn't
blame you one bit for such feelings.
I know because I am filled with hatred as well; hatred
toward my own government which continues to treat
civilian casualties (like in Afghanistan) as minor
technological glitches, instead of the massacres they
are.
There is also a component of self hatred in all of
this, as I try to understand my own relative silence
and cowardice.
Although I have marched against the war and written
countless letters to my representatives, I have done
so at my leisure and in a calculated manner so as to
not threaten my economic or material existence.
I have debated the militarists in their own idiom of
corporate-military speak, and by doing so have allowed
Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rumsfeld to shape the rules
and language of the debate, minimizing my own
democracy and deluding myself that I was some brave
dissenter or alternative voice in the national debate.
I was neither. I was just as necessary to the war
plans as the as hawks. I was part of the "rational"
opposition that has talked about sanctions and
multilateralism and NATO and such other important
ideas when I should have been saying, "No to war. No
to this one, no to all of them. Period."
The violence that will be unleashed in your country
does not deserve a measured debate. It deserves only
abolition.
The random death of your daughters or husbands is not
a TV event or a opinion poll-but simply pointless
suffering that no politician can ever romanticize.
When you see American troops fighting in the streets
of Baghdad and Basra, they will have an American flag
on their sleeves, but please forgive me if I can't
explain its connection to any thing anymore. Know
however, that in some small way it does represent me,
not as a war proponent certainly, but as an American
who failed to make democracy work for him-as someone
who let the angry, fearful individuals of this country
take control.
Although my wife and I aren't Christians or Muslims of
Jews, we will pray for us all, and we will speak out
against what is happening. We are undoubtedly weak,
but
There are still many Americans who see themselves in
all others no matter how different their appearance
may be. I remind myself that I am you. I am the mother
crouched down in a bomb shelter, and the U.S. Marine
shooting in the streets and also the leaders driving
us toward so much violence and hatred, yet I am also
this man writing you as letter as afternoon rain pelts
against my office window.
Stay safe.
Sincerely,
Robert Fay
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