At the hospital there, a sonogram showed Zina to be pregnant with a boy. A boy! Overjoyed, the couple chose to visit a relative before returning home. But half an hour later, on a remote stretch of road, a bomb from a U.S. fighter plane landed near their truck, instantly killing Zina, Jamal and their unborn child and ending their dream.
Four days afterward, as part of a Voices in the Wilderness delegation, I visited Najaf, stopping first at the hospital to speak with survivors. Among the wounded was a young man, to be married the following week, now paralyzed and mute with shrapnel in his brain. Across the room lay a seven year-old boy whose right arm was severed by the explosion. What do you say to a child who has just had his arm amputated, victim of a missile attack? How does a child make sense of sudden, random violence and its effects; of a foreign menace unleashing hatred from the sky?
The personal meanings of some experiences, like slumbering beasts, lie in wait. As people who long for peace, however, standing in the hospital among the wounded, the meanings for us were clear enough: In the very desert where Isaiah preached an end to war, where Muhammed urged righteousness and where Jesus cured the lame and bid people of all ages be like children, U.S. bombs are crippling people and destroying childhood.
After visiting the hospital, we drove to the bomb site. A crowd of roughly 200 people, a turbulent sea of faces and gesturing arms, shortly surrounded us. In chaotic fashion, people pointed out blood stains on the road, took off their shirts or rolled up their pant legs to show us bandaged wounds. They brought us over thirty separate bomb parts and repeatedly tried to direct us to houses in the community where other injured people lay recovering. Eventually, the sea parted and a spokesperson emerged to address us. He asked the same question we had heard expressed, angrily or wearily, at every bedside in the hospital: "Why is your government doing this to us? Why are they killing innocent people?"
Before traveling to Iraq I spoke with people who were concerned for my safety. "Life there is cheap," some of them said. Still, never once while in Iraq did I feel physically threatened. "Hospitality," a businessman told me, "is in our bones." But standing in the hot sun in Najaf, with a mounting pile of bomb parts nearby and surrounded by evidence of a recent missile strike, I did indeed feel expendableÑa small creature standing in the shadow of a monster.
U.S. and British war planes, in violation of international treaties, prowl the airspace over roughly two-thirds of Iraq daily, frequently dropping bombs. During the first seven and a half months of 1999, there were more than 115 strikes, over 40% of which resulted in civilian casualties, an assault on the people of Iraq which only rarely flares in the American consciousness.
The no-fly zones exist, our government tells us, to protect the minority Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south, communities which have suffered greatly at the hands of the current Iraqi regime. However, if we are concerned with violations of human rights within Iraq, as well we should be, policing the skies is a contradictory and counterproductive policy. It rains terror on the very people it is supposed to protect and seeds deeply in their lives the anti-Western sentiments we claim arise from radical and fundamentalist sources. Effects on ordinary people should be a part of our foreign policy considerations; compassionÑalong with intelligence, courage, and respectÑshould be part of what motivates us.
While I was in Iraq a religious leader said to me: "The West must stop seeing the Middle East as a problem. It is a region with much to offerÑculturally, artistically, spiritually." But as long as we persist in making war on Iraq and in profiting from the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey, and insofar as we consider Middle Eastern oil a U.S. commodity, we will find it necessary to view the Middle East as a problem.
David Smith-Ferri (467-0468) is a poet who lives in Ukiah.
* Help spread the word. Contact the author to arrange a slide show and discussion of his trip to Iraq.
* Stop by the MEC and sign the Declaration in Opposition to the Economic Sanctions Against the People of Iraq, at the MEC office.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited