After Last Tuesday

To the editor,

After last Tuesday’s talk at the Walpole Library by Dr. Nabeel Khudairi, my first response to the audience was to ask “Where’s the outrage!?” Dr. Khudairi gave a very informative talk on Iraq that showed it to be a major center of education and culture in the Middle East. Even during Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the majority of the people in Iraq were living a relatively comfortable lifestyle in it’s very modern cities.

As the talk started to focus on the impact of the first Gulf War, the 12 years of UN sanctions and the current war, the effect on everyone was truly gut wrenching. We saw images of young children with arms burnt down to the elbow, without legs, severe body burns, infants born with the most grotesque birth defects imaginable. We saw peoples’ homes destroyed by bombs as well as whole blocks of homes just leveled to rubble from U.S. attacks. Dr. Khudairi described how the U.S. basically destroyed Iraq’s entire infrastructure – water treatment plants, bridges, roads, etc., and how this caused 10’s of thousands of civilian deaths, mostly young children and the elderly.

What has been happening in Iraq can only be described as a horrific nightmare that has as it’s source a long list of war crimes that the U.S. is responsible for. The list starts with a war of aggression that the Bush administration started against Iraq by lying to the American public about WMD and al Qaida connections. The Nuremberg Tribunal called the waging of aggressive war “essentially an evil thing… to initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Then there is the use of such illegal weapons as cluster bombs, white phosphorus, depleted uranium, etc. (One of the effects of depleted uranium is the aforementioned birth defects.)

Then there is the collective punishment against the civilian population as is evidenced in cities such as Baghdad and Fallujah. The “Shock and Awe” bombing of Baghdad was probably the cause of many of the destroyed homes that we saw pictures of. Eight weeks of bombing Fallujah caused the destruction of 36,000 homes, 60 schools, 65 mosques and untold civilian casualties.

Then there is the widespread use of torture that is in direct violation of of the Geneva Accords. The list goes on and on, but for the sake of brevity I want to make my point that we as U.S. citizens need to take action and vigorously oppose what the Bush administration is doing in Iraq. We need to demand that the U.S. set a goal of getting out of Iraq as soon as possible – hopefully by the end of the year. We also need to demand that those who are responsible for these war crimes are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And I’m not talking about just a few bad apples at the lower levels of service, but as far up the chain of command as needed.

One of the most outrageous aspects of this war is the silence of the American people. Silence in such important matters as this can only be described as complicity. I feel that the mainstream, corporate media is mainly responsible for this. They didn’t challenge the manipulated intelligence that the Bush administration gave them and they haven’t shown the carnage taking place in Iraq that we saw on Tuesday night. I firmly believe that most Americans will want to take a stand against such injustices if they really know the truth.

So what can people in Walpole do about this? You can start by getting informed. Get your information from alternative news sources, such as The Nation Magazine, Z Magazine, truthout.org, alternet.org, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International (or Amnesty International USA), etc. Make donations to organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Sign the Declaration of Peace. Take part in our (Walpole Peace and Justice Group) meetings and demonstrations. (It would be great if we had 100’s of people at our demonstrations on the common.) You can contact us at walpole_peace@verizon.net

Paul Peckham 6/12/06