Revised 10/26/02

The Dalai Lama - On War
An Israeli Bereaved Mother's Universal Plea
All you need is love: how the terrorists stopped terrorism
Volunteers in Iraq on American terrorism

The Dalai Lama - On War
Someone asked the Dalai Lama, "Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese?"
The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, "Well, war is obsolete, you know. " Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, "Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back... but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you."

From Jean Hudon: The Light Series #9: Courageous People Taking a Stand www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000/LightSeries9.htm

An Israeli Bereaved Mother's Universal Plea

This was sent by the minister of St. Andrew's,
Jerusalem. It was told by a Jewish woman, one whose
daughter had been killed in a suicide bombing,
at a meeting in which a Palestinian also shared her
story.

By Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan

Thank you for inviting me to share with you the
struggle for peace in my country. I say My country but
I don't even know if this term is correct anymore.
What exactly is mine in this country depends very much
on what I identify with, and today it is a very
difficult for me to answer that, for it is very hard
to identify with anything in a place that has let Death
have dominion over it. And in the place that I come
from Death has dominion. And it is Death that has
created a new identity for me and has given me a new
voice, a new voice that is as ancient as the world
itself the voice of our biblical mother Rachel,
weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for
they are not. This new identity and this new voice
transcend nationalities and religions and even time
and overshadows all other identities and is deafening
all the other voices I have been given by life.

My little girl was killed just because she was born
Israeli, by a young man who felt hopeless to the point
of murder and suicide just because he was born a
Palestinian.

After her death a reporter asked me how I can accept
condolences from the other side. I said to her very
spontaneously, that I do not accept condolences from
the other side. And when the mayor of Jerusalem came
to offer his condolences, I went to my room because I
didn't want to speak to him or shake his hand. Because
for me, the other side is not the Palestinians, and I
believe that dividing the population into two enemy
sides, Palestinians and Israelis, is a wrong and a
murderous division. For me the whole population of
the area, and of the world has always been divided
into two other distinct groups: peace lovers and war
lovers.

But today I know that there is yet another division in
Israel: On the face of the earth there rules the
kingdom of evil, where for the last 34 years,
people who call themselves leaders have earned,
through democratic means, the right to kill and
destroy and be as vile and corrupt as they please, to
have young boys become expert killers, whether in the
name of God, of the good of the nation, or in the name
of honour and of courage. But these evil people have
created yet another kingdom, a glorious kingdom that
flourishes and grows larger and larger every day -a
kingdom that lives and breathes under our feet, under
the earth we walk on. There is where my little
daughter dwells, side by side with Palestinian
children, and where I dwell side by side with
Palestinian parents who, for the most part, have
never held a gun and have never obeyed orders to kill
anyone. There she dwells, alongside her murderer,
whose blood is mingled with hers on the stones
of Jerusalem that have long grown indifferent to human
blood. There they lie, both of them, deceived.

He is deceived, because his act of murder and suicide
did not change anything, did not end the Israeli cruel
occupation, did not bring him to heaven, and the
people who promised him that his act would be
meaningful carry on as if he had never existed. My
little girl is deceived because she believed that her
life was safe, that her parents and her country were
protecting her from evil and that no harm can come to
little girls who are good and gentle, and go through
the streets of their own cities, to a dance class.

And they are both deceived because the world is going
on living as if their blood has never been shed. Both
of them are the victims of their so-called
leaders. And those so-called leaders keep on enjoying
playing their murderous games, using our children as
their puppets, and our grief as an incentive to go on
with their vindictive tricks. For them children are
abstract entities, numbers and grief is a political
tool. They know that all they have to do in order to
draw more and more young and enthusiastic little
soldiers into their units is to find a God that would
ordain this killing. And each of them finds Him in
their own bible, in their own mythologies. They commit
their crimes in the name of the Jewish God and
in the name of the Muslim God, while in Ireland and in
Eastern Europe people kill each other for different
versions of their Christian God. And now the
enlightened leaders of the west kill in the name of
the God of Freedom. But in fact they all recruit
man-made gods to their sides -the God of racism
and the God of greed and megalomania.

This is not new in the history of man. People have
always used God as an excuse for their crimes. Our
children, from a very tender age learn about
Joshua, the glorified leader who murdered the whole
population of Jericho in the name of God. Then they
learn about the prophet Eliyahu who killed the 450
priests of the Baal because they practised a different
religion and then they learn about Eliyahu's disciple,
Elisha, who brought death, with the help of God, upon
42 children who mocked him by calling him bald.
Not to mention the adored king David and his terrible
deeds. In our culture that allows killing as a means
of solving social and religious problems, and where
people identify themselves with biblical heroes and see
themselves as their descendants all these stories are
glorified and overshadow the story about the God who
said "Lay not thy hand upon the child".

But children can also learn about the God who said "I
will have mercy upon her who have not obtained mercy
and I will say to them who were not my people 'Thou
art my people'". I believe very strongly that only by
educating our children that killing the innocent,
starving the innocent, humiliating the innocent are
unforgivable crimes, can we save them from joining the
evil forces that are luring them into their lines. The
evil forces of Israel and the evil forces of the
Palestinians. The only difference is that Israel
through long and cruel occupation, is making
it very easy for young Palestinians to turn to the way
of terrorism. But terrorism dominates both forces. An
organised army, which terrorises a whole population,
is no less and even more criminal than any guerrilla
group. An enlightened first world government which
ordains the killing of the innocent is just as evil as
any third world guerrilla leader who is hardly known
and never seen.

There is no enlightened killing and barbaric killing,
there is only criminal killing. For me Sadam Hussein
and Ariel Sharon and George Bush, father and son, are
all the same, for they have all inflicted pain and
death upon innocent populations. If we don't tell our
children these are unscrupulous murderers, we shall
never have people who rule out killing from the outset
as a solution to social and political problems.

Today, when there is no opposition in Israel, there is
no more meaning to left or right for they all give
their consent to the atrocities that go on
in this country. Therefore I believe that the European
condemnation of those deeds and of their doers is
highly important. It is time to tell the world that
words like heroism, courage, and manhood can kill and
that the death of one child, any child, be it a
Serbian or an Albanian an Iraqi or a Jewish child is
the death of the whole world, its past and its future.

That there is no vengeance for the death of a child
because after the death of a child there is no other
death - for there is no more life. And where
there is no more life there are no more words left to
love or hate with, and the only sound that
reverberates in this arena of death is the helpless
cry of dying children and of bereaved mothers.

This is the cry that has never, never been heard by
politicians and generals, especially not in Jerusalem
that everybody thinks is made of gold but that is
really made of stones and iron and lead. It is time
this cry is heard above all others, for this is the
only voice that remains after the violence, and that
really understands the meaning of the end of all
things, including wars. This is the voice that
understands what today is understood only in the
underground kingdom of our murdered children, namely
that all bloods are equal and that it takes so little
to kill a child and so much to keep her alive. It
understands that ending the war means to adopt a
dialogic approach to negotiation and not a smart
dealer approach, to understand that people should talk
not in order to bring the others to their knees and
win the argument but in order to come to terms. Ending

the war means that I don't care what flag is put on
which mountain, it means that I don't care who looks
where when they pray, it means that nothing is more
important than to secure a little girl's way to her
dance class.

I would like to call all the parents who have not yet
lost their children, and all those who are about to,
if we don't stand up to the politicians by
teaching our children not to follow their murderous
ways, if we don't listen to the voice of peace coming
from underneath, very soon there will be nothing left
to say, nothing left to write or read or listen to
except for the perpetual cry of mourning. Please, save
the children.

Taken from: The Rising Phoenix Files #3: Agents of Change at Work
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000/RisingPhoenix3.htm


All you need is love: how the terrorists stopped terrorism
By Bruce Hoffman
The Atlantic Monthly - December 2001

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/12/hoffman.htm

"Do you want to know how to eliminate terrorism? I'll tell you. In fact,
I'll tell you about something that no one else knows. Something that has
never been written about. You will be amazed, but it is true. Listen."

The speaker knew what he was talking about. Just a few years before, he had
been a terrorist -- a senior commander of al-Fatah, the largest constituent
element of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the group that was
founded, in 1959, and has been led ever since by Yasir Arafat, the chairman
of the PLO. The speaker was now a brigadier general in one of the Palestine
Authority's myriad security and intelligence services. He was an Arafat
loyalist: his fidelity as much as his competence led to his appointment to
this critically important post. We spoke when an uneasy peace still reigned
between Israel and the Palestinians, and in fact there was a degree of
cooperation between the Israeli intelligence and security agencies and their
Palestinian counterparts, which was superintended by the CIA.

Ironically, the general's job was hunting down and rooting out terrorists.
He was the archetypal poacher turned gamekeeper. His nemeses were neither
the Jews nor their Zionist benefactors but his brother Palestinians: men
who, unlike him, had refused to swear allegiance to al Rais ("the head," as
Arafat is often known among Palestinians) and the governing Palestine
Authority. These men, moreover, were imbued with religious fervor and the
unswerving belief that armed struggle was decreed by Allah and justified by
the Koran. They belonged to a new generation of Palestinians, who had joined
more-recently established terrorist groups such as Hamas (the Arabic acronym
for the Islamic Resistance Movement) and the Palestine Islamic Jihad, and
whose struggles were directed as much against what they saw as the corrupt
and reprobate Palestine Authority as against their most reviled enemy,
Israel.

We had been sitting in the general's office, above a sweltering prison in
Gaza City, talking and drinking sweet coffee. The general was in mufti. He
wore a blue suit, a light-blue shirt, and a blue-and-gold necktie. He looked
like a middle-class businessman or an avuncular pharmacist. His office was
sparsely decorated. On the wall behind his desk was a photograph of Arafat
with his familiar stubble, attired in green military fatigues and wearing
his trademark black-and-white kuffiyeh (Arab head scarf). On the desk was a
picture of the general himself, standing beside Arafat and looking very
serious. Along the wall, on a side table, were framed photographs of each of
the general's children, greeting or being hugged by Arafat, who appeared the
kindly, elderly patron paying a surprise visit to commemorate a birthday or
celebrate some other noteworthy family event.

"Arafat and the PLO," the general said, "had a big problem in the 1970s. We
had a group called the Black September Organization. It was the most elite
unit we had. The members were suicidal -- not in the sense of religious
terrorists who surrender their lives to ascend to heaven but in the sense
that we could send them anywhere to do anything and they were prepared to
lay down their lives to do it. No question. No hesitation. They were
absolutely dedicated and absolutely ruthless."

Black September was at the time among the most feared terrorist
organizations in the world. It had been formed as a deniable and completely
covert special-operations unit of al-Fatah by Arafat and his closest
lieutenants following the brutal expulsion of the Palestinians from Jordan
in September of 1970 -- the event from which the group's name was derived.
Black September's mission, however, was not simply to exact retribution on
Jordan but to catapult the Palestinians and their cause onto the world's
agenda.

Black September's first operation was the assassination, in November of
1971, of Jordan's Prime Minister Wasfi al-Tal, who was gunned down as he
entered the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Cairo. While Tal lay dying, one
of the assassins knelt and lapped with his tongue the blood flowing across
the marble floor. That grisly scene, reported in The Times of London and
other major newspapers, created an image of uncompromising violence and
determination that was exactly what Arafat both wanted and needed.

He doubtless succeeded beyond his expectations in September of 1972, when
Black September perpetrated one of the most audacious acts of terrorism in
history: the seizure of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. That
incident is widely credited as the premier example of terrorism's power to
rocket a cause from obscurity to renown. The operation's purpose was to
capture the world's attention by striking at a target of inestimable value
(in this case a country's star athletes) in a setting calculated to provide
the terrorists with unparalleled exposure and publicity. According to Abu
Iyad, the PLO's intelligence and security chief, a longtime Arafat
confidant, and a co-founder of al-Fatah, the Black September terrorists
"didn't bring about the liberation of any of their comrades imprisoned in
Israel as they had hoped, but they did attain the operation's other two
objectives: World opinion was forced to take note of the Palestinian drama,
and the Palestinian people imposed their presence on an international
gathering that had sought to exclude them." Just over two years later Arafat
was invited to address the UN General Assembly, and shortly afterward the
PLO was granted special observer status in that international body.

The problem, however, was that Black September had served its purpose. The
PLO and its chairman had the recognition and acceptance they craved.
Indeed,any continuation of these terrorist activities, ironically, now
threatened to undermine all that had been achieved. In short, Black
September was, suddenly, not a deniable asset but a potential liability.
Thus, according to my host, Arafat ordered Abu Iyad "to turn Black September
off." My host, who was one of Abu Iyad's most trusted deputies, was charged
with devising a solution. For months both men thought of various ways to
solve the Black September problem, discussing and debating what they could
possibly do, short of killing all these young men, to stop them from
committing further acts of terror.

Finally they hit upon an idea. Why not simply marry them off? In other
words, why not find a way to give these men -- the most dedicated,
competent, and implacable fighters in the entire PLO -- a reason to live
rather than to die? Having failed to come up with any viable alternatives,
the two men put their plan in motion.

They traveled to Palestinian refugee camps, to PLO offices and associated
organizations, and to the capitals of all Middle Eastern countries with
large Palestinian communities. Systematically identifying the most
attractive young Palestinian women they could find, they put before these
women what they hoped would be an irresistible proposition: Your fatherland
needs you. Will you accept a critical mission of the utmost importance to
the Palestinian people? Will you come to Beirut, for a reason to be
disclosed upon your arrival, but one decreed by no higher authority than
Chairman Arafat himself? How could a true patriot refuse?

So approximately a hundred of these beautiful young women were brought to
Beirut. There, in a sort of PLO version of a college mixer, boy met girl,
boy fell in love with girl, boy would, it was hoped, marry girl. There was
an additional incentive, designed to facilitate not just amorous connections
but long-lasting relationships. The hundred or so Black Septemberists were
told that if they married these women, they would be paid $3,000; given an
apartment in Beirut with a gas stove, a refrigerator, and a television; and
employed by the PLO in some nonviolent capacity. Any of these couples that
had a baby within a year would be rewarded with an additional $5,000.

Both Abu Iyad and the future general worried that their scheme would never
work. But, as the general recounted, without exception the Black
Septemberists fell in love, got married, settled down, and in most cases
started a family. To make sure that none ever strayed, the two men devised a
test. Periodically, the former terrorists would be handed legitimate
passports and asked to go to the organization's offices in Geneva or Paris
or some other city on genuine nonviolent PLO business. But, the general
explained, not one of them would agree to travel abroad, for fear of being
arrested and losing all that they had -- that is, being deprived of their
wives and children. "And so," my host told me, "that is how we shut down
Black September and eliminated terrorism. It is the only successful case
that I know of."

In the years since, as terrorism has itself become more egregiously lethal
and destructive, seemingly more intractable and unrelenting, I have thought
often of that story, and I suspect that it is a less far-fetched plan for
combating terrorism than it at first seems. The authorities in Northern
Ireland, for example, pursued a somewhat similar strategy during the years
before the current cease-fire. Hard-core IRA and Loyalist terrorists serving
long prison sentences were often given brief furloughs during holiday
periods. The men to whom this privilege was accorded were carefully
selected. They were mostly in their thirties, and therefore at a time in
their lives when the perceived immortality of youth has been superseded by
the dawning realization of death's inevitability, if not for themselves,
then certainly for their parents.

Once at home with their families, these men, as the authorities had
correctly calculated, developed a keen appreciation of elderly parents whom
they might never see again once they were returned to prison, and also of
children growing up too fast and of still young and attractive wives wasting
their lives waiting. When the men returned to prison, they were asked if
they would be interested in an expedited release. The Northern Ireland
Office relied on a combination of factors to wean these men from terrorism:
family pressure to forsake violence and secure an early release and the
men's having seen with their own eyes how much the province had changed. To
qualify for this form of parole, the men were required to move out of
segregated prison wings (where they lived with only fellow IRA or Loyalist
prisoners) and into fully integrated cell blocks, where Protestants and
Catholics mixed freely -- and nonviolently. This was a critical first step
on the road to parole, followed by vocational training (not provided in
segregated wings), counseling, and more-frequent family visits and
furloughs. No one who had taken advantage of this opportunity for early
parole ever returned to violence or to prison. The program was so successful
that the option could be offered to only a limited number of prisoners, lest
the terrorist organizations, fearing the loss of too many senior veterans
and commanders, forbid their members to participate in the program. To a
great extent, accordingly, the climate of peace that emerged in Northern
Ireland in the mid-1990s may have owed as much to the creativity and
foresight of the Northern Ireland Prison Service as to the political
dexterity and visions of Gerry Adams and David Trimble or Martin McGuinness
and Senator George Mitchell.

The lesson here is not that the United States should host a series of mixers
in the Arab world in hopes of encouraging the young men of al Qaeda or other
terrorist organizations to forsake violence and embrace family life. Rather,
the lesson is that clever, creative thinking can sometimes achieve
unimaginable ends. Indeed, rather than concentrating on eliminating
organizations, as we mostly do in our approach to countering terrorism, we
should perhaps focus at least some of our attention on weaning individuals
from violence. It could hardly be any less effective than many of the
countermeasures that have long been applied to terrorism -- with ephemeral,
if not often nugatory, results.


[Note: nugatory means "of little importance or validity"]

_ _ _ _ _ _ _


Commentary by Tom Atlee:

Such an intriguing perspective! I want to explore around it for a bit.

Bruce Hoffman, the author, poses the question: "Why not find a way to give
these men -- the most dedicated, competent, and implacable fighters... -- a
reason to live rather than to die?" Then he suggests that we should "foucs
at least some of our attention on weaning individuals from violence."

This approach is valid and important, and many people are already
undertaking such efforts. For example, I did a Google.com search for
"peacemakers conflict resolution training teachers children schools
curriculum" and discovered hundreds of programs that wean children from
violence.

But I wonder if Hoffman and the rest of us could use some weaning of our
own -- from our focus on individual terrorists and individual violence. In
particular, I wonder if we need to extend our vision beyond efforts to
recruit individual terrorists out of their despair so that we can be safe
again. I say this because it seems to me that our WORLD is not safe, and I
wonder (with no small trepidation) what role our own search for safety plays
in that.

When we achieve our own safety without ensuring the world's safety -- or
worse, at the expense of the world's safety -- we short-circuit a critical
feedback system that goads us towards creating a healthy society. Our
natural urge to provide safety for ourselves (individually and nationally)
in the midst of widespread threat can blind us from information and stimulus
we need to serve life in larger ways. It can be like numbing a pain that's
telling us we need an operation or a lifestyle change. We can only safely
seek comfort if we proceed with the operation or the lifestyle change
anyway.

So I wish the author had extended his dream -- giving people a reason to
live -- to every person on earth -- not only to those in physical extremity
like those who are impoverished, abused or under the gun, but also those in
psychological, social or spiritual extremity, among them the many suicidal
or homicidal youth in our own, so called "developed countries". No one in
the world should need to find meaning or peace through dying or killing. I
would like to suggest that such acts are -- MOST IMPORTANTLY -- signs that
we need to heal and transform our world. After all, why shouldn't every
person on the earth have good reason to live?

Of course to apply Hoffman's vision to all who need a reason to live --
since there are billions of people -- would require that we raise our
sights beyond individual solutions to systemic solutions. It would require
significant changes in our policies (such as in the Middle East), our
cultures (such as our materialism), our politics (such as our inability to
make wise choices) and our economics (which reduces everything to money). It would require building a meaningful, life-affirming world that is a delight to be part of. And that so often seems impossible. Even the smallish steps seem huge.

And at that point, Hoffman's article becomes interesting again. Because
Hoffman claims his major point is that "clever, creative thinking can
sometimes achieve unimaginable ends."

And I agree with him: This could be our salvation. However, my agreement
is qualified, because that clever thinking could also be our devastation.
Not all clever, creative thinking and unimaginable ends are benign. I think
we need to inquire about what kind of clever, creative thinking would
generate the POSITIVE leaps we need to survive, thrive, and grow into our
full potential as a global civilization?

My own explorations have led me to believe that we need "clever, creative
thinking" that is collaborative, collective, and connected to "the big
picture" and to the greater-than-human intelligences in and around us --
what I've come to call co-intelligence. The political agenda of this
co-intelligence vision is expressed in such articles as "A Call to Move
Beyond Public Opinion to Public Judgment"
http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_publicjudgment.html and "The
Innovations in Democracy Draft Platform"
http://www.co-intelligence.org/draftPlatform.html . I invite you to
explore them newly.

There is no doubt about it: We need leaders like those described in the
article above, who are clever, creative thinkers. But we need more than
that, for leaders come and go. We need the capacity to generate creative
wisdom from amongst ourselves, in our communities, in our national politics
-- and to empower that wisdom to actually lead us, to shape our lives and
policies. And, I believe, we need to institutionalize that capacity.
Because we need to be able to generate such empowered wisdom whenever we
need it to guide our collective lives.

And lately, that seems to be every day, doesn't it?
________________________________

Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * PO Box 493 * Eugene, OR 97440
http://www.co-intelligence.org * http://www.democracyinnovations.org

Volunteers in Iraq on American Terrorism
From: http://www.counterpunch.org/kysia1016.html
THE IRAQ PEACE TEAM
Good Americans in Baghdad
by RAMZI KYSIA
You get what you pay for in life. What are you willing to pay for peace?
With George Bush as president, it doesn't seem to be a problem any of us will ever have to face again, but you can't be a pacifist only in peacetime. You can't be a pacifist by yelling at your tv set, or forwarding a million emails to everyone you know. Pacifism isn't that passive, it isn't that easy. It is, and always has been, by definition, a radical challenge to every element of worldly power and violence.

I'm in Iraq with a handful of other Americans: Eric Edgin, an Indiana college student; Nathan Mauger, a recent journalism graduate from Washington State; Farah Mokhtareizadeh, a Pennsylvania college student; Jon Rice, a history teacher from Chicago; Henry Williamson, a paramedic from South Carolina; and Joe Quandt, a writer from New York. More are joining us. By the end of October, we'll have over 30 people on our team. By December, our numbers will be over 100. We're here to tell the stories of the Iraqi people; to put our lives on the line to stop this war.

Living in Baghdad, you wouldn't know there was a war. The streets bustle with people on their way to work or school. In the evenings the parks are full of kids playing soccer, people visiting with family and friends. There are no tanks in the streets, no soldiers marching, no civil defense drills, and--other than foreigners like us--no one here seems to be stocking up on food or water. Is it denial? Disbelief? Some inner despair? I honestly don't know.

It's painful that Baghdad is so beautiful. There's a unique and striking blend of traditional and modern architecture. I love the city's parks, it's wide, tree-lined boulevards--each avenue sprouting date palms and poplars. This is truly a green city. I told a cab driver that Baghdad was a beautiful city. He just looked hard at me. "No," he said, "Baghdad is not beautiful. Baghdad is tired."

We hear it over and over again--just below the surface--a melody of melancholy, resignation, and fear. People quietly complain, "What more can America do to us?" We visit a high school, and the kids want to make absolutely sure we really understand that they're not natural-born killers or terrorists. A teacher lets us know that his 8-year-old asks him every day if today's the day he's going to die.

Ask an Iraqi about "liberation," and they'll laugh at you. It's bitter mirth. If the U.S. doesn't bomb the civilian infrastructure again, and if the government falls fast, and if the army doesn't break-up along ethnic and religious lines--then only a few thousand innocent people will be killed when George Bush starts his war. But if Bush bombs the water and power systems like his dad did in '91--tens of thousands will die from the resulting epidemics. If the army falls apart, there could be a civil war that makes past conflicts in Lebanon or Bosnia look like schoolyard brawls. And if food aid distributed by the Iraqi government under the Oil-for-Food program is disrupted for more than a few weeks, UNICEF is warning there will be country-wide famine.

When will Americans wake up to the fact that we are not the only real people on this planet; that our security cannot depend on the insecurity of everyone else?

George Bush seems to be living out some comicbook fantasy, never sure of whether he's really the President, or just Alfred E. Neumann doing a poor impersonation. Donald Rumsfeld angrily denounces Iraq for having an "insatiable appetite" for weapons. This from a man whose budget for war is over 50 times the size of Iraq's entire economy. And Colin Powell criticizes the UN for forging an agreement to return weapons inspectors--4 days after Bush demanded that the UN do it or become "irrelevant."
Have we failed to notice that the inmates are now running the asylum?
Some accuse us of being "fools" or "apologists" for the Iraqi government. We don't often have the opportunity to speak with officials here, but when we do we always raise concerns about prisons, extrajudicial killings, and state-directed violence.

That isn't to toot our own horn. Our status as Americans gives us this luxury, in a way that Iraqis do not have for themselves. That's uncomfortable and troubling, and if it strikes some as hypocritical for us to be here as pacifists, I can understand that. But it strikes me as much more hypocritical to speak out against a foreign government for killing innocents--while facilitating the killing of countless more by our own government through our silence and our tax dollars. We apologize for no one but ourselves.

According to Human Rights Watch, Iraq has roughly 3,000 extrajudicial killings a year. According to UNICEF, U.S. policy kills over 50,000 Iraqi children every year. Both are terrible. They aren't equivalent.
My government may not care, they may be intent on war no matter what--but I refuse to be "irrelevant." I'm here. I choose to believe that if Americans knew what was being done in our names, we wouldn't allow it. The alternative is madness.

It's disgusting that millions of people being threatened with massive destruction isn't "news," and Americans joining them is. But if the only way to get anyone to pay attention is to be in Baghdad when the bombs fall, so be it. We're here.

Our hotel isn't fancy, but at least it isn't close to anything "strategic." Our risks are the same as the other 5 million people in Baghdad, the other 24 million people in Iraq. As our team's numbers grow, we'll turn the hotel into our own hostel--living 5 or 6 to a room.

We're volunteering with NGOs already working in Iraq, and we're doing regular writing and journaling. Some of that writing will be carried in alternate media and small-town papers, and, even after the U.S. destroys the electricity and phone lines, we'll get reports out through the local press center on a satellite phone. We won't let folks back home forget the human consequences of what they do here. Milan Kundera once wrote, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." We're here to be part of that struggle.

Mohammed Ghani Hekmat is perhaps the most prominent artist in Iraq, and one of the kindest men I've ever met. His sculptures decorate the country. He's proud to be the first Muslim artist ever commissioned by the Vatican. In 1991, he was working on a series of life-size reliefs of the Stations of the Cross, when the Gulf War happened. The windows in his studio were blown out by the explosions. We asked him what he thought of the American people, and his voice filled with anger: "They're innocent," he accused, "Innocent! Like children."

We're here because we know we're not innocent. Being here is our part in the war against terrorism: humanizing Iraqis in the eyes of Americans, humanizing Americans in the eyes of Iraqis--taking direct responsibility for what's done in our names.

Our government, our country--our people--have killed hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq since 1990. We're about to compound that atrocity with another war that, if it goes badly, will likely kill hundreds of thousands more.

In 1945, when the Allies liberated the death camps, the entire Western world was absolutely shocked. We asked, "how could this have happened? How could the German people have allowed this? Where were the 'good' Germans?"

Today, I know where the good Americans are: they're in Iraq, and they're organizing in the streets of America--laying their entire lives on the line to prevent the mass destruction of human life.

We get what we pay for in this life. I don't want to die. I am scared for my life. But this storm is fast upon on us. This is the moment when we all must ask--what are we willing to risk for peace?

Ramzi Kysia is a Muslim-American peace activist, working with the Education for Peace in Iraq Center - http://www.epic-usa.org/ . He is co-coordinator of the Voices in the Wilderness http://www.vitw.org/ ' Iraq Peace Team http://www.iraqpeaceteam.org/, a group of American peaceworkers pledged to stay in Iraq before, during, and after any future U.S. attack. The Iraq Peace Team can be reached at ivoices@uruklink.net