Punish Hussein, not Iraqis

By LEWIS W. DIUGUID
The Kansas City Star
Date: 06/08/00 22:00
Susan Lee remembered seeing a little girl watch her and other protesters
carrying coffins on the Plaza.
"What are they doing?" the girl asked her mother.
The mother said, "I think they're trying to tell us something."
Similar cries occur the first Sunday each month as a committed few
protest the bombings and nine years of sanctions against Iraq over the
Persian Gulf War. The Task Force for Iraq last month demonstrated
outside a Shawnee post office because sanctions prevented members from
mailing such supplies as blankets and baby food to people in the
war-ravaged nation.
They also interrupted last month's Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award
luncheon honoring retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Five members stood
among the 600 guests and peacefully recited lines as Schwarzkopf got up
to give his acceptance speech.
One person said, "Are not the children of Iraq our neighbors, too?"
Others asked God's forgiveness for the sanctions that kill hundreds of
children each month and for Americans being so comfortable with death.
Police escorted them out, and the press labeled the five as "hecklers."
But they were polite, reasonable people who were just trying to tell the
public of the suffering America is causing. Mary K. Meyer understands
now why some Vietnam War protesters set themselves on fire.
"You get desperate to get attention," said Meyer, director of Shalom
House in Kansas City, Kan., who went to Iraq last year to help people in
need. "We've been unsuccessful in getting people to even look at it.
"Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. But if a country has a bad ruler, do you
ignore the populous forever?"
Rep. Ike Skelton, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services
Committee, told the Editorial Board of The Kansas City Star that Iraq
continues to fire on U.S. planes. "We have to keep doing what we're
doing -- keep the sanctions on," he said.
"I don't know what else to do," Skelton said. Hussein is a "rogue
leader."
"The population is very unhappy, and it's his fault. There'll be an end
to what he's doing one day. There will be a payday. But I don't know
when."
Meyer said, however, that the continuing bombing and sanctions amounted
to genocide.
The continuing protests are unpopular, but I think people like Meyer,
Lee and others are players in what I've called this community's jam
session for peace. They're trying to end the violence of war and promote
global harmony.
Ahmed El-Sherif, who has been on four aid missions to Iraq, gave me one
of his cards. It says, If anyone saves a single person, it is as if he
or she saves the life of all people.
As Iraq suffers, so does America.
"You know our souls are dying," said Lee, who's with Holy Family
Catholic Worker House. "It's the death of who we are as people."
El-Sherif said Iraq had devolved from an emerging nation to a pre-Third
World state. He, Meyer and Lee described babies dying of dehydration and
disease.
Hospitals have no antibiotics or medication. They said people were
suffering tuberculosis and that depleted uranium -- from U.S. weaponry
-- was causing an epidemic of leukemia.
"There is no hope in people's faces," El-Sherif said. "You see anger."
Lee witnessed the horror and devastation in Iraq last year. People
wanted the suffering to end.
Children also aren't being educated because paper, pens, rulers and
other school supplies are on a long list that sanctions keep out of
Iraq. Children have no clue of what computers and the Internet can do.
Meyer wrote in an essay: "We were in Iraq when the Columbine tragedy
took place, and we heard President Clinton say, `We must teach our
children to resolve their differences with words, not weapons.´
"I thought, `Bill Clinton, do you hear what you are saying? Where do you
think they get these ideas that violence is the answer?´ "
Americans have become so desensitized to the violence and suffering U.S.
actions cause, Lee said.
Yet, El-Sherif thinks Clinton is the only hope for an end to the
sanctions and bombings. Rebuilding the decimated nation could be the
president's legacy.
Lee thinks the answer lies in peace activists taking more risks to alert
the public to the atrocities America is causing. "We must do this in the
spirit of nonviolence," she said of protesters even putting themselves
in the path of bombs.
I hope the sanctions and the bombings end long before people are forced
to surrender their own lives to save others.
--
Lewis W. Diuguid is a member of the Editorial Board. His column appears
on Wednesdays and Fridays. To reach him, call (816) 889-7827 and enter
1134 or send e-mail to Ldiuguid@kcstar.com.