Jack Lessenberry: Detroit peace activists' difficult journey

December 5, 1999

FERNDALE, Mich. - Rudy Simons knows all too well that this is not the best time of year to take a long trip. He is past 70 and has a 3-year-old son. Yet tomorrow he and a dozen other Detroit-area peace activists leave for 10 days on an expedition that will be not only difficult, but technically quite illegal.

They are going to take medical supplies and humanitarian aid to Iraq. They are doing so in spite of - actually, because of - the U.S.-imposed sanctions against that country, sanctions in place since the 1991 Gulf war, when a U.S.-led coalition forced Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

"This policy is not only immoral, it doesn't work," Mr. Simons said.

Indeed, though the sanctions were meant to punish the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein for its aggression, he remains in power, apparently as strong as ever, possibly bolstered by a sense that his nation is under siege. But if the sanctions haven't weakened Hussein, they have, Mr. Simons said, resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent children every month, from starvation and disease.

"We could get 12 years in jail and have to pay a fine of $1 million each," Brad Van Guilder, a former physicist who knows his numbers, said with a trace of a twinkle in his eye. Dr. Van Guilder, 38, left academia to head Peace Action of Michigan, a group that evolved out of anti-nuclear movements going as far back as the 1950s.

Actually, they don't expect any reprisals at all. Other, similar groups have gone to Iraq in recent years, though this is the first all-Michigan one. The leader of their delegation, Thomas Gumbleton, a Roman Catholic bishop known for taking controversial political stands, went to Iraq last year.

"We've been very open about what we are doing," said Mr. Simons, who has been active in progressive causes in the Detroit area for decades. He personally informed the offices of six Michigan congressmen and both U.S. senators of the trip.

"The idea is to bring this issue to the forefront," Mr. Simons said, so that Americans, most of whom pay scant attention to the situation in Iraq these days, might be awakened to the "inherent inhumanity" of what Washington's policy is doing.

That doesn't mean, Dr. Van Guilder said, that they are supporters of Saddam or his regime. "There is no question that he has behaved brutally toward minorities in his own country." Yet that doesn't justify what we are doing, he said, as a fellow member of the delegation, Mary Carry, a longtime schoolteacher, looked at grim photos of emaciated and dying children.

"I cannot imagine having to live without clean drinking water," said Mrs. Carry, who with her husband, Bill, a retired Chrysler executive, began working to help the poor in various countries more than 30 years ago.

The actual amount of supplies the group is bringing in is fairly minimal; 910 pounds altogether, a figure dictated by the airlines' baggage limit. Nor will getting there be half the fun. First, they will fly to Amman, Jordan. But you can no more fly to Baghdad from there than you can from Toledo.

So the party will take a bus - nonair-conditioned and, perhaps, in dubious repair - for the 15 to 18-hour trip to Baghdad. There, they will stay in what Mrs. Carry whimsically described as a "class E" hotel. "All we know is that we were told to bring our own sheets," Dr. Van Guilder said gamely.

Part of the party will then go south, to visit Basra, or north, to Mosul. Both areas have occasionally been the targets of American bombing, and a congressional staffer pointedly told one member of the delegation they should not expect a bombing pause while they are in Iraq. "We may have to duck," one said.

It also seems unlikely that the United States will change its policy on sanctions against Iraq in the foreseeable future. Recently, Mr. Simons asked Bill Bradley, thought to be the least hawkish of the major presidential contenders, what his policy would be. "A Bradley White House will continue the sanctions," he told him.

That dismayed the peace activists, but didn't incline them to give up.

Last year a letter opposing sanctions was signed by only 43 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. This year, however, several more congressmen have come to oppose the sanctions, including, the peace activists said, U.S. Rep. Debbie Stabenow, next year's all-but-certain Democratic U.S. Senate nominee.

They have rather more support on Detroit's city council, which last month unanimously passed a resolution opposing the sanctions and praising the delegation, calling the sanctions a violation of the Geneva Convention.

While intellectually indignant, Mr. Simons, a veteran of many battles for many causes over the years, is also philosophical. "Our primary purpose is to try and issue a challenge to this policy," he said, then added. "I think a lot of us are going at least partly to collect a piece of our souls, a piece taken from us by our government."

Jack Lessenberry, The Blade's ombudsman, is a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit.