From: Patricia Lay-Dorsey
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 14:08:03 -0400
Subject: Why we must end the occupation of Iraq

Dear friends

I have received a number of emails from friends who have trouble with the slogan, "End the occupation: Bring the Troops Home Now!" They say that the United States can't leave now, that if they do they are, in essence, walking away from a burning building. Now maybe it's a fire that we set ourselves, but they say we can't just leave the people to fend for themselves in such a climate of chaos and danger.

I understand their concerns. Without the help of the international community, the U.S. cannot just walk away.

But why isn't the international community offering to help? One reason and one reason only: the U.S. insists on having total control over everything. Peacekeepers, governing, natural resources (oil), infrastructure, rebuilding, etc., etc. And control to these folks translates into privatization. It means corporate control held by U.S. companies, most of which have close ties to the Bush White House.

No wonder no one wants to help. This is not even to mention the costs involved ($$$ and lives).

So what to do?

It's really very simple. Give up U.S. control and take our place as one nation among the many in the world community. Ask for help and accept it. Show some humility. Rebuild our international friendships. Apologize for our mistakes and be willing to start over.

Will the Bush White House be willing to do this? What do YOU think?

So do we stand back and let this madness continue--and escalate--because we can't leave the Iraqi people to clean up the mess we've made? Look at Vietnam. Did staying there for all those years help their people? Did it stabilize the region? Did it bring peace? I think all of us would answer with a resounding "No!"

Today I read an article in the Independent/UK, a newspaper I've grown to trust. In it I saw evidence of what this occupation is doing, not just to the people of Iraq but to our soldiers as well.

I gather the mainstream media keeps careful track of every American life lost in Iraq. As well they should. And I know that those of us who get our news online read every day of Iraqi men, women and children who are being killed and wounded as well. We know that both the occupying forces and the Iraqi people are being put in situations that breed violence, fear and hatred. All are victims of this occupation.

But today's article was different. It showed a military that sounded too much like the Israeli military under Ariel Sharon, the military that is systematically destroying the land, crops, homes, jobs and lives of Palestinians on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I know that is a complex issue and that the Israeli people are also suffering from suicide bombings that kill the most vulnerable among them. However, the former is an institutionalized cruelty, while the latter is an individual or small group cruelty.

No cruelty is good. But whenever we are forced to be part of institutionalized cruelty, we suffer wounds that never heal. We learn to numb ourselves to the cries of our sisters and brothers. In so doing, we lose part of our own humanity.

The actions described in the article below show a cruelty that, unfortunately, has been a byproduct of occupying armies throughout history. These Iraqi farmers are not the only ones who suffered when their date palms, lemon and orange trees were bulldozed in Dhuluaya; our young U.S. troops were equally damaged. They had to become people they themselves would revile. They will carry these wounds the rest of their lives.

Please, let us do everything we can to protect our own soldiers from the lasting damage this work does to their souls, even as we protect the Iraqi people from the death and destruction this war and occupation is bringing to them and their land.

It cannot be allowed to continue.

In a hunger for peace
Patricia Lay-Dorsey
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Published on Sunday, October 12, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1012-01.htm

US Soldiers Bulldoze Farmers' Crops
Americans accused of brutal 'punishment' tactics against villagers

by Patrick Cockburn in Dhuluaya

 
US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: "They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons."

Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.

"They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees," said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us'." What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.

The destruction of the fruit trees took place in the second half of last month but, like much which happens in rural Iraq, word of what occurred has only slowly filtered out. The destruction of crops took place along a kilometer-long stretch of road just after it passes over a bridge.

Farmers say that 50 families lost their livelihoods, but a petition addressed to the coalition forces in Dhuluaya pleading in erratic English for compensation, lists only 32 people. The petition says: "Tens of poor families depend completely on earning their life on these orchards and now they became very poor and have nothing and waiting for hunger and death."

The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses who did not want to give their names. They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation. When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: "We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us."

Informing US troops about the identity of their attackers would be extremely dangerous in Iraqi villages, where most people are related and everyone knows each other. The farmers who lost their fruit trees all belong to the Khazraji tribe and are unlikely to give information about fellow tribesmen if they are, in fact, attacking US troops.

Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice: "It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were worth."

© 2003 lndependent Digital (UK) Ltd