[Peace-discuss] Where the billions should be spent

[Morton K. Brussel]

Kathy Kelly humane perspective.



     Wrapped Around a Bullet

     By Kathy Kelly

     t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

     Thursday 04 January 2007

     An Iraqi friend whom I've known for ten years looked worn and  
very weary Monday when he came to visit me in my apartment here in  
Amman, Jordan. He hadn't slept the night before because he'd been on  
the phone with his wife who, throughout the night, was terrified by  
cross-fire taking place over the Iraqi village where she stays with  
their four small children. My friend longs to soothe and protect his  
wife and kids. But now he lives apart from them, in another country.

     His life was completely changed when a piece of paper was tossed  
into his kitchen in Baghdad. It read: "Leave now or you will die like  
a dog." Many Iraqis have been receiving notes like this. This piece  
of paper was sent to him with a bit of extra emphasis. It was wrapped  
around a bullet.

     Weeks later, assailants killed his younger brother, who was  
returning home from University studies. My friend moved his family to  
a village outside Baghdad and then ran for his life.

     Here in Amman, where the UN cites a figure of 700,000 Iraqis  
who've fled their country, he feels trapped. Like other Iraqis, he  
lives without legal protections: he is not allowed to work, he is  
unable to obtain proper documentation to settle here, and each  
Embassy to which he has applied for resettlement has given him the  
cold shoulder. He may walk the sunburst streets of Amman, ride in  
taxis and eat in kabob shops, but he lives a shadowy, underground  
existence. Every day, Iraqis in Jordan are arrested (for working, for  
overstaying their visas, etc.) and deported. This, too, is a death  
threat of sorts. Meanwhile, in Iraq, his family lives in a  
battlefield, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?

     Still, my friend's case is hardly unique. Relative to other  
stories we've heard, he is somewhat fortunate. He was not captured  
and tortured before fleeing Iraq. His wife has not been raped. His  
children are still alive.

     Anyone listening to my friend's experience of loss and tragedy  
would surely understand his feelings of cynicism, even bitterness,  
when he thinks about how the Bush administration has sold this  
ongoing war. Turn the page back to May of 2006, when sectarian  
violence had already begun to consume Iraq, and here is how President  
Bush depicted what the US had done for Iraq, following Iraqi elections:

     "For the people across the broader Middle East, a free Iraq will  
be an inspiration ... [Iraqis] have proved that the desire for  
liberty in the heart of the Middle East is for real. They have shown  
diverse people can come together and work out their differences.  
Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity  
government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a  
moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the  
forces of terror began their long retreat."

     The speechwriter who equipped President Bush with these lines  
should be burning with shame. President Bush indulged in a fantasy at  
a time when thousands of Iraqi civilians were fleeing abroad every  
month, to escape worsening violence, and tens of thousands more were  
being displaced internally - nearly half a million in the last ten  
months, according to UNHCR.

     In reality, there were no encouraging signs of the US troop  
presence stabilizing the situation in Iraq. Today, even President  
Bush acknowledges that news from Iraq is "unsettling," as daily  
headlines report battles, kidnappings, torture, and murder.

     Nevertheless, the President will likely ask the Congress to  
approve 97.7 billion dollars in supplemental spending for the wars in  
Iraq and Afghanistan, which will be in addition to the Pentagon's 560  
billion dollar budget. According to some estimates, US taxpayers will  
pay close to 2 trillion dollars for a doomed war in Iraq.

     A New York Times article called "Heady Days for Makers of  
Weapons" notes that military contractors are profiting more than ever  
as Pentagon spending has reached record levels. Nobody expects the  
Democrats, now in charge of the Senate and House Armed Services  
Committees, to interfere with the lucrative deal-making. With an eye  
toward 2008 elections, Democrats want to establish their cooperation  
with the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill, the "defense" lobby. "I  
think the Democrats will be on good behavior," commented an analyst  
with JSA Securities in Newport, Rhode Island, "... as long as the war  
continues and we have 150,000 troops in Iraq." (New York Times,  
December 26, 2006).

     Ultimately, this means that US taxpayers will have to be "on  
good behavior" and pouring billions more dollars into weapons-making  
giants like Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.

     No one asks us to behave accountably on behalf of the 100,000  
Iraqi refugees who, every month, according to UN estimates, flee from  
Iraq.

     We have yet to see a proposal for a generous package of  
reparations intended to help rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure.

     The US should never cut and run away from our responsibility to  
pay very generously for reparations in Iraq. We should be committed  
to finding the most viable, practical means to help Iraqis rebuild  
their shattered infrastructure. We should seek negotiations with  
Iraq's neighbors, not for purposes of being the "kingmaker" and  
deciding which country will emerge as the strongest, but rather for  
purposes of seeking an end to any foreign support for armed struggle  
within Iraq.

     There are no simple solutions. Problems with corruption within  
Iraqi governing structures, retaliatory violence fueling a civil war,  
and the lack of protection for any nongovernmental involvement in  
distributing support for reconstruction seem nearly insurmountable.  
But this doesn't lessen the US responsibility to direct US wealth,  
ingenuity, and productivity toward just reparations for the enormous  
suffering our invasion and occupation has caused. Every effort should  
be made, within the US, to build public support for a US financial  
commitment to help rebuild Iraq. Equivalent effort should be made to  
stop stuffing the portfolios of major weapons manufacturers.

     Lawmakers should have at least enough integrity to acknowledge  
that current plans to support ongoing troop presence in Iraq at a  
cost of billions of dollars show very little promise for lessening  
the violence, displacement and signs of civil war that afflict Iraqis  
today.

     Beginning in February 2007, when lawmakers will discuss the  
administration's proposed supplemental budget, Voices for Creative  
Nonviolence will launch "the Occupation Project."

     Although we have paltry financial means compared to the weapons  
makers who wield so much influence on Capitol Hill, we do have  
resources. We have our bodies. We have our determination. We have our  
compassion for Iraqi people and for US soldiers. We have our concern  
for future generations, who will not only have to live with the  
consequences of this violence, but who will also live on a planet  
spoiled by global warming, in no small part because we spent our  
resources on war instead of on developing clean energy sources. These  
are the grains of sand that will stop the cogs of war from turning.

     Now is the time for seriously strategizing about the best ways,  
in our hometowns, to engage in sustained civil disobedience at the  
offices of elected representatives, demanding that they vote against  
the supplemental spending bill.

     A polite refusal to leave an elected representative's office may  
entail some hours spent in jail. Some will receive minor misdemeanor  
charges from federal or local police, for "disorderly conduct," or  
"trespassing" or "failure to comply." We'll prepare for a day in  
court; we'll discuss how to handle any fines imposed on us. These are  
slight inconveniences and discomforts when I think of Iraqi friends,  
so wearied by war, and of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and the  
thousands of Americans whose lives are forever altered by the cruelty  
and senselessness of war and of those who prolong it.

     Much more grave is the risk of growing adjusted to a warlike  
culture that feeds the multi-billion dollar weapons industry.

     I shudder still, thinking of the note that landed in my friend's  
kitchen, ugly paper wrapping a tiny yet terrible weapon. Who pens  
such a letter? Who delivers it? Who authorizes these threats? What  
kind of organization thrives on sundering families, on death and  
torture, on driving whole societies into flight and chaos and  
despair? The answers are murky and unclear ...

     But we should all shudder with disgust at the clear fact that US  
budget priorities are more devoted to protecting the profits of arms  
peddlers and military contractors than to seeking a better future for  
Iraqis.

     It's hard to put your foot down over something called a  
"supplemental spending bill" - over a piece of paper, a bit of  
writing that you didn't write yourself but are perhaps helping to  
deliver. My friend's life was ruined by such a piece of paper. Iraqis  
are leaving their homes in Iraq by the thousands every day, and  
prolonging this war will cause more to flee.

     That's why many of us will be occupying our representatives'  
offices this winter. We don't want to help deliver a death threat to  
people all across Iraq. This bill, this message of continued US  
commitment to spending for war, isn't just a piece of paper to them.

     It's a death threat, and it's wrapped around a bullet.

     ---------

     Kathy Kelly co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence. 
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