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CounterPunch
March 20,
2003
Waiting for
the Sky to Crack
The Illness of Victors
by KATHY KELLY
I suppose I'm more prepared than most of my companions
for the grueling roar of warplanes, the thuds that threaten eardrums,
the noise of antiaircraft and exploding "massive ordnance."
Compared to average Iraqis my age, I've tasted only a small
portion of war, but I'm not a complete stranger, having spent
nights under bombardment here in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War,
in Sarajevo in 1992, in the 1998 Desert Fox bombing, and last
spring in the Jenin camp on the West Bank. I feel passionately
prepared to insist that war is never an answer. But nothing
can prepare me or anyone else for what we could possibly say
to the children who will suffer in the days and nights ahead.
What can you say to a child who is traumatized, or maimed, or
orphaned, or dying? Perhaps only the words we've murmured over
and over at the bedsides of dying children in Iraqi hospitals.
"I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry."
One of my fondest childhood memories
is that of holding my baby brother, Jerry, and pointing his gaze
toward a beautiful sunset. I wanted him to feel the awe I felt.
I was a pious child, capable of great awe when genuflecting
before the candle lit altar in our neighborhood church. Now
the world's greatest killing machine perversely appropriates
the preserve of sacred awe as a sick smokescreen for inflicting
terror.
Readying for the "Shock and Awe"
coming our way, I've turned to David Dellinger's accounts of
travel in North Viet Nam when the US was strafing villages, mutilating
civilians, and burning the earth. My beloved Karl says that
Dellinger may be one of the finest human beings that has ever
walked on our planet. I agree. Dellinger hated to see "just
normal people" suffering from the illness of getting "pleasure"
by harming people. It isn't just the suffering of the victims
that upsets him, but also the illness of the victors. We must
labor to cure that illness.
It's a sad and tragic irony that on the eve of warfare we can
presume that today may be the last day of the cruel, perverse
sanctions regime. We had to starve you so that we could stop
bombing you. Now we'll bomb you so that we can stop starving
you. Was that the logic of nearly thirteen years of an abysmally
failed policy?
"Embedded media" traveling
with US troops will no doubt show footage of Iraqis celebrating
release from a brutally repressive regime, of horrible weapons
caches discovered by advancing US troops. Years of murderous
suffering preceding and following the "Shock and Awe"
operation aren't likely to preoccupy the victors whose illness
goes undiagnosed in their antiseptic think tank settings.
But the momentum, globally, for curing
the warlords, has grown substantially during this dramatic and
critical time. "Ring the bell that still can ring. Forget
your perfect offering," croons Leonard Cohen in his song,
"Anthem." "There is a crack in everything. That's
how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in."
Kathy Kelly
is co-coordinator of Voices
in the Wilderness and the Iraq
Peace Team, a group of international peaceworkers pledging
to remain in Iraq through a US bombing and invasion, in order
to be a voice for the Iraqi people in the West. The Iraq Peace
Team can be reached at info@vitw.org
Yesterday's
Features
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream (Interview)
Jason Leopold
Rumsfeld and Bush Sr. Opposed 1989 UN Investigation of Saddam
for Human Rights Violations
Josh Ruebner
An
Open Letter to My Former Dean, Paul Wolfowitz (and Other "Court"
Jews)
Mitchel Cohen
The
Gulf War 12 Years Later: Why Class Matters
Carlos Fuentes
The Insulting Insinuations of the Bush Regime
Fareed Marjaee
The Road to Jerusalem Goes Through Baghdad
Rick Giombetti
The Savagely Soft Underbelly
of the Anti-War Movement: Misquided Faith in the UN
Rich Procter
Rove Memo: How to Launch a War
Ritt Goldstein
Oil
War: the Smoking Guns
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War a Chance: the Anti-Peace Anthem
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