Dangers of an invasion of Iraq are real

By Coloradoan Elizabeth Roberts in Iraq

Rocky Mountain News

December 27, 2002

After two months in Iraq I have decided to return to Colorado sometime in the near future to share what I've seen and heard during my stay in Baghdad.

Every day here in Iraq there are new rumors that a U.S. invasion is imminent. The manager of the hotel where we are staying has bought a generator, and we are starting to store dry foods and water.

Yesterday, the Iraqi currency dropped another 20 percent in value. The eyes of our Iraqi friend, Sitar, teared up when he told us this. He simply cannot support his family anymore, despite his three jobs. There also has been a slowdown on trips out of Baghdad because of Iraqi military movements around the country.

We pray every day that more and more people are beginning to realize how dangerous an invasion of Iraq will be to the whole world: more terrorism, more violence in Israel/Palestine, a weakening of the United Nations, the growth of fundamentalists of all persuasions, higher risk of biological or nuclear war, a global economic depression, growing hubris and imperialistic notions in the U.S. and, of course, the unforeseen blowback this will all cause. Sometimes I feel like we are literally voices crying out in the wilderness.

Our days at this outpost are busy visiting families, schools, orphanages, hospitals, and small shops.

I asked Amal, an older, educated middle-class woman, "How are you preparing for the war?" Understandably, she responded with anger in her voice at President Bush. "I just don't understand how he can do this! How can he discredit the inspections, and still talk about attacking us? He will kill innocent people. He won't even leave us our hope! Does this man have no blood in his veins?" Amal's house was hit by an American bomb in 1991.

We have interviews almost every other day. The most recent one was with Said Al Mousawi, former Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations. He acknowledged that Iraq "has not been perfect, we have made mistakes, but we are coming out of 700 years of occupation. We have to learn about human rights and civil society. You could have helped us, instead of arming first our enemy and then us." He is referring here to the U.S. arms sales first to Iran and then to Iraq as we tried to pit each country against the other to keep both weak. He claimed that until 1990 no country in the Gulf of Arabia was as good on education, health and women's rights as Iraq. Of course, he avoided the facts of Iraq's 1980 attack on Iran, the gassing of the Kurds in northern Iraq and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. For him the "real human rights violation is the Iraqi sanctions." Yes, the sanctions are a human rights violation, but does this make Iraqi violations any less real? In truth, nobody has clean hands.

None of this is excusable. There is no higher moral ground for anyone to claim. Only the common sense of avoiding more war, death and human suffering. What I am certain of at my core is that more violence will only beget more violence. It is not possible, as some neo-liberals are arguing, for the U.S. to use violence "benignly" to clean up the world.

One person in our group asked Al Mousawi about the utility of our presence here. He has lived in the West and was genuinely positive. "You send the message to Iraqis and the world that all Americans do not submit to warmongering and that many of you are seeking peace. What more can you do?" What more indeed?

As I write this, the U.S. has declared Iraq in "material breach" of U.N. resolution 1441. The horizon darkens, and I am speechless. This is not the world I dreamed about.

Elizabeth Roberts lives in Boulder and is part of an Iraq "peace team" delegation sponsored by Voices in the Wilderness, an organization devoted to ending the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq.