[Peace] (no subject)

[Jay Mittenthal]

Here is a letter forwarded to me through Quaker channels.  What response 
can we make?

Jay Mittenthal


Subj:

     letter from Iraq


   Date:

     Thu, 8 Aug 2002 10:27:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time


   From:

     SEIDEL AM



Dear Friends,



We just left Iraq and I am writing to you from Amman, Jordan.  I wanted to

share with you the first thoughts of whom we met and what we saw there.  The

situation is very grave.



The trip was incredible.  The Iraqis we met are funny, strong, faithful,

patient, generous, passionate and professional.  How can anyone understand

what they've been through and believe that they've survived with such faith,

humanity and humor?



Most Iraqis are not even thinking of war, though they know that it's looming.

How can they? They've been struggling to survive for the last twelve years;

they've finally stabilized their skyrocketing childhood and maternal

mortality rates; they've finally stabilized their skyrocketing malnutrition

rates; they still have not made any dent in childhood cancer mortality rates

- which remains at 90-95%, or have they been able to prevent the incidences

from continuing to increase.  Cancer rates are now 600% higher than pre-Gulf

War rates.  How can they think about a war smashing down on all of this and

destroying it?  It's unthinkable.  So they pray that it will not come,

knowing full well that they have no power to prevent it.



In poor areas (and there are hundreds and hundreds of them, housing millions

of people), conditions are still atrocious, and the whole country is

absolutely on the edge.  Water, sanitation and food are hanging by a thread.

If there is war, there will be no food, clean water or sanitation for

millions, and inadequate supplies of these for all but a few of Iraq's 23

million people.



Nearly the whole population is totally dependent upon a food ration

distributed by the Iraqi Government and the UN through the Oil for Food

Program.  If this is interrupted, which an invasion will certainly do, there

is good reason to believe that there will be famine in parts of Iraq, as well

as uncontrolled epidemics of disease.  One worker for UNICEF suggested this

possibility to us and no one in the UN that we talked to denied it.    There

is no cushion in Iraq to take a military blow.  It will land directly on bone

and shatter the country.



The truth is the people of Iraq depend upon their government for food, water,

sanitation, health care, education and communication.  If we destroy the

government of Iraq, we destroy the link of the whole people to life.  We

cannot wage war on the President of Iraq.  We can only wage war on Iraq.  If

we kill Saddam Hussein or destroy his rule, it will only be with the deaths

of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people, who have done nothing

to harm us; it will only be with the destruction of the Iraqi people and

their future.



Yet, at every turn, we made friends.  We received lavish hospitality from the

poorest people.  They never brought the subject of war up - except in the

leukemia wards where we visited the bedsides of children and their families

who knew full well that there was no hope for them.   When they did speak

with us, they wondered why, with terribly hurt and angry eyes, we are doing

this to them, why we are intent to do it again, but deeper this time, more

devastatingly.  Mothers pointed to their wasted, exhausted children and

wondered what they did against the United States of America to deserve death.




I hate to lay this on you.  Please pass this information on to everyone that

you can, War, famine, pestilence and death.  These are not figures of speech

or apocalyptic symbols.  They are very real phenomena looming on the horizon

for the Iraqi people and it all depends on what we do and say (or fail to do

and fail to say) in the next few months.  We Americans have a very short

amount of time to conclude decisively whether these are the horses that we

want to ride.



I am eager to get home.  There is so much work that must be done and there is

so very little time.  And the consequences of failure are really beyond

reckoning.  I won't be able to stop thinking about Sattar and his daughters,

Umm Haider and her family, Akhmed, Rami, Sa'ed, Wadah, and the dozens of

other friends that I have in Iraq, whom I have left, perhaps to die in

bombing, perhaps to die in the aftermath.


There are some intense weeks ahead.  I will be glad to be nearer to your

friendship and support.



See you soon,



Phil