Sadaam Battered?

Christopher Allen-Doucot

When the United States once again began attacking Iraq with cruise missiles this past December the headline of one Connecticut paper read: Sadaam Battered. I recently returned from Iraq having spent time with many ordinary people; none of whom were named Sadaam.

       I visited the Al Jamhouriya neighborhood in the southern city of Basra. On January 25 of this year this neighborhood was hit by one or more American missiles. Thirty-six houses were destroyed, seven people were killed and many were wounded. I met seven year old Hasham Ali. He is a cute little boy; small for his age. The large scar on his calf was an incongruous marking on his innocent body. The grim, expression on his face didn't fit well with his youthful features. A face that grave should have wrinkles and whiskers- his didn't even have peach fuzz. His look pierced me as he lifted his garment to reveal his wound. Next he handed me the chunk of contorted metal that had torn his flesh. This American export was stained with Hasham's blood. His age and innocence did not protect him from our vengeance.

    The smart bomb that leveled his home at 9:30 A.M. that day was an idiot savant capable of

traveling hundreds of miles to a proscribed target (usually), but unable to show mercy to a little boy who reminded me of my older son. I said to Hasham, his father and the crowd of

hundreds that were pressed against my companions and I: asif, asif, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. To wit his father replied: You say you are sorry but still your government kills civilians.

       As we returned to our hotel a photo exhibit was just being put on display. I walked past a few photos and came upon images that shouldn't exist. The first was of a 6 year old girl, her hair tied back by a still visible bow. The girl is dead, her body partially covered in debris. Her name was Non. She and her little sisters, Daha (3 1/2 y.o.) and Zeanah (2 y.o.) were killed in the attack that had wounded Hasham. A fourth photo shows their mother dressed in black sobbing while another black clad woman in mourning tries to comfort her. Seeing these photos of dead children, their ashen faces coated with the concrete dust, their limbs buried beneath the remnants of their home which was built to protect them from the dangers of the world, I

realized that I had just left the scene of a crime. These photos, along with the testimony of the people of Al Jamhouriya, and the shrapnel that lacerated Hasham's leg were damning pieces of evidence in one of a string of child massacres carried out by Americans. 

    As I write our nation is compassionately grieving the horrific murder of 15 young people in Colorado. Are the murders of Non, Daha, and Zeanah less horrific? Were their lives less valuable? Were they less precious in God's eyes? We don't grieve their deaths because we don't know they were killed, not because we are not compassionate.  The papers today are filled with stories and images of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. The collective American heart

aches for justice even as our government's misguided machinations exacerbate the exodus and add to the killing. The American public has clearly repudiated the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing; at least when the victims are European. (Whither Rwanda?) Yet absent from today's pages are the stories and photos of the innocent victims of the genocide in Iraq.

    According to UNICEF at least 5,000 children under the age of 5 die every month in Iraq as a result of the sanctions which remain in place at the behest of the United States. The cliché "ignorance is no defense" is here apt. The sanctions and bombings of Iraq are being done in our name. The missile(s) that destroyed Non, her sisters, and their neighborhood was delivered by American soldiers, built by American workers, and paid for by you the American taxpayer. The tribunal in Nuremberg declared complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity... is a crime under international law. How can we honestly condemn genocide while participating in it? Why are we shocked when our children settle scores with guns and bombs when we do the same?

Sisters and brothers, let us stop the killing.