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BUZZFLASH
READER COMMENTARY
by Ryan Clancy
These are the comments of Ryan Clancy, who recently spoke to the press about his experience as a human shield in Iraq.
Sen. Lindsey Graham recently called our actions as Human Shields "treasonous" and hopes to see us punished for more than the ten years in jail and $1 million in fines that the law currently allows for. He said that we were "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." I was not comforting the enemy – I was comforting the Iraqi people. The only aid that I provided was construction paper and crayons for children, and I did so fairly confident that they would not be used to make weapons of mass destruction.
Opposing this war is not treasonous. When I made the decision to go to Iraq, I did so in part because of concern for my country, and the planet. In calling for war, and forcing other countries to choose whether to be "with us or against us," we have thrown away a century of diplomacy. We are losing allies because of this issue in a time when we need them the most. In calling for war, I am terrified, as an American, that our country will again become the victim of terrorist acts or hostilities from other countries.
If we attack Iraq, we lose any moral high ground that we once had, and I am terrified of the consequences. If we set the precedent that countries can be justifiably attacked because we don't agree with them and they have weapons of mass destruction, I am afraid that we will become the next target. We have weapons of mass destruction, and there are many countries out there that don't agree with us.
Saddam Hussein is a terrible and unjust ruler, and the idea that any Human Shield supports him is completely untrue. I traveled to Iraq to support the Iraqi people, not the leader that happens to be in power there. I do not support Saddam, and it would be a great thing for the country and the world if he was not in power. Likewise, though, I do not support Bush, but I would oppose any foreign effort to remove our President from power. Our country cannot continue to install and remove regimes when it is politically expedient for us to do so.
As I set foot back in the United States, a passport control officer said to me "You went to Iraq? Are you nuts? All those people hate us!"
I didn't know where to begin.
As Americans, we seem unable to differentiate between other cultures and the governments of other cultures. We are not going to war with the Iraqi people, just Saddam, and yet we are contemplating sending thousands of missiles into Baghdad, killing a massive amount of civilians.
The Iraqi people do not seem to have the same conceptual problem. When I was in Baghdad, I was thanked by people in tears, and welcomed into the homes of the people there. Even the families ravaged by sanctions and poverty would share the little food that they had with me, even knowing that I was from a country whose stated aim is to bomb them back into the stone age. It was humbling and overwhelming, and I can't help thinking that, if the situations were reversed, that we might not be so kind.
I am proud to be an American, but terribly afraid of what my country is about to do to the people of Iraq.
I went to Baghdad not with the certainty that our presence there would stop a war, but knowing that there was little else I could do to try, and that the alternative was to sit at home and do nothing. I had to meet the people that my country was about to bomb, and to humanize them when and if I got back home.
When I was in Iraq, I visited several schools. In one high-school classroom, I asked the students to write letters to students in American classrooms. Marwa Quism, age 13, wrote "Dear American student... I hope there will be no war between us, and I hope we will be friends. Governments want war between us... we want peace. I like you, and we don't know why you don't like us..."
The people in Iraq may hate our foreign policy, and what the sanctions have done to their country, but they do not hate us.
In elementary classrooms, I asked the children to draw their homes and families. An eight-year-old drew his family, his home, and a missile in the sky, aimed at his house. There is no proper response when a child shows you a picture like that; I complimented the drawing, apologized for my country, and cried, later, for the first time in many years.
It is much more difficult for people to bomb abstract enemies than it is to bomb 13 year-old Marwa, who wants to be our friend. It does not look as if Bush will allow this war to be stopped. If I can facilitate communication between Marwa in Iraq and Bill in America, though, perhaps we can avert a war a generation from now. If I can play some small part in dispelling the myth that "they" hate "us", then this movement was not a failure.
BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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