Iraq war

It’s a shame that the Iraq war is covered so much in the media. This might seem like a strange comment for the president of the Campus Antiwar Network here at VCU to make, but the fact is that the bulk of the coverage that most Americans flip past or scan in the newspaper only seems to desensitize people further, a fact that is nothing short of tragic to those of us who have even the slightest idea of what effect the American occupation of Iraq is having on the people of that country. This week two events were held on the VCU campus that made me all the more convinced that for the American people to allow this war to continue is nothing short of condoning a fascist and genocidal regime.

On Monday, March 27, a panel discussion organized by the Richmond Peace Education Center was held entitled “Iraq: Untold Stories” wherein four people who have firsthand experience of the war gave their personal accounts. Included in the panel was Charlie Anderson, an Iraq Veteran Against the War who was in the first wave of Marines to cross the border into Iraq in March of 2003. He made it clear that those who claim to “support our troops” would be doing a much better job of it to actively call for their redeployment from Iraq rather than slapping a magnet on the back of their SUVs. Also in the panel: Tia Steele, a mother who lost her stepson in the Iraq war who counted herself lucky that they at least had a recognizable body to grieve over; Pat Ruble, a member of a Christian Peacemaker Team that went over in 2004 to document detainee abuses; and Dr. Hamid al-Abdulla, an Iraqi-American who has visited family in Iraq twice since the start of the war.

Though all of these firsthand accounts were compelling, an even more disturbing presentation on the war was made the following night by Aman Khamas, a native Iraqi and truly inspiring woman who has devoted the past three years of her life to ending the occupation of her homeland. The stories she related, backed up with documentation, pictures and eyewitness accounts, brought the war to a personal level that most refuse to consider. It is so easy for people to believe what makes them most comfortable (or overlook what makes them uncomfortable), especially in this great nation of systemized disinformation and an encouraged shallow self-interest, but if people would only stop and take two minutes to put themselves in the shoes of the peoples whose entire lives are being destroyed, maybe the apathy would not be so prevalent.

Among the examples Ms. Khamas recounted, one of the most striking was of a woman whose entire family was murdered when they were driving home from her mother’s house. The overhead light popped, and American troops instantly opened fire on the car, killing her husband and two children. And it would be one thing if this was an isolated event, but it is far from it. Ms. Khamas estimated that the 30,000 Iraqi body count that Bushites claim is really much closer to 200,000 to 300,000.

There were stories of hospitals, mosques and even entire villages being burned to the ground just on suspicion of harboring terrorists, before even a cursory investigation – not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqis being “detained,” or to skip the euphemisms, imprisoned without being given a reason for their arrest, tortured in ways that make Abu Ghraib look like humane treatment and, in the majority of cases, either killed in the process or released after losing months or years of their lives. Ms. Khamas showed the photograph of one man who was held for two full years before being released without the slightest apology or compensation.

So yes, Saddam Hussein was horrible and Iraqis were glad for his overthrow, but things have changed drastically in the past three years. In their policies and treatment of Iraqi peoples, American occupying forces have proved to have a racist and arrogant “cowboy” attitude that is ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. And that is what we need to remember, Iraqis are PEOPLE – living, loving, laughing human beings that want to live in peace just like the rest of us. As panel member Mr. Anderson said, as much as so many of us hate the current administration, we would still be outraged to have another nation to come in and tell us exactly how to change it. This is especially compounded for a nation with 8,000 years of history being overtaken by a nation that is 200 years old.

It has been all but unequivocally proven that our reasons for entering into the war in the first place were either exaggerated or outright lies, and yet no one is being held accountable. The continuing occupation of Iraq has only made us more vulnerable in the War on Terror, strengthening not only the Middle East’s but also the entire world’s cause and conviction to hate us. It is time that people stop living in their apathetic little bubbles and wake up to the atrocities our government is committing in our name. When asked by an audience member what we can do to help her cause, Ms. Khamas’ first response was to “educate whoever will listen” and I am hoping that in some small way this letter will help to do so. We need to put pressure on the Bush administration to at least name a date for our withdrawal from Iraq, and as Charlie Anderson said, it cannot be “an assertive request, but a demand.”

– Tess von Geczy