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January
15, 2002
Jack McCarthy
Follow
the Pretzel
William
Blum
Atta
and the Times:
Follow the Changing Story
Edward
Said
Emerging
Alternatives
in Palestine
January
14, 2002
David
Vest
Open
Bag. Eat Pretzels.
Patrick
Cockburn
Collapse
of Georgia
Ignored by the World
Mokhiber/Weissman
Enron's
Accountants:
When In Doubt, Shred It
January
13, 2002
C.G. Estabrook
Why
We Kill People
January
12, 2002
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Forbidden
Truths
January
11, 2002
Lee Balllinger/Dave
Marsh
Neil
Young's Duet with Ashcroft
January
10, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Bush,
Enron, UNOCAL
and the Taliban
St. Clair/Cockburn
Greenpeace
to Greenwash?
Hans von
Sponek
Iraq:
Is There an Alternative
to Military Action?
Jim Lobe
Israeli
Human Rights Group Assails Army
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Five
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Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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January
15, 2002
An Open Letter to Richard Perle
chairman, Defense
Advisory Board
From Kathy Kelly
director
Voices in the Wilderness
Dear Mr. Perle,
I am writing to you from a faraway land,
Iraq, and yet I sense we are not remote from one another. Perhaps
you are thinking every day of the cities I've visited this last
month: Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. Be assured that I am thinking,
every day, about the recommendations that you and your colleagues
make as you urge President Bush to show strength, courage, and
vitality by intensifying U.S. warfare in Iraq.
I recently watched children dance and
sing and play at the Baghdad school for Music and Ballet. One
little girl played the piano, another the violin. Young Ibrahim
sang an Arabic translation of a song you may know, based on
a melody composed by Jean Sibelius. The lyrics were written
in the 1930s during the brief outbreak of peace between world
war. "This Is My Song" expresses hopes for peace among
people who hold in common a deep, true love of their homeland.
Another little boy showed me a drawing he made of 9-11, twin
pillars of fire and smoke. He said he felt bad about the attacks,
but added that he doesn't think Americans understand what happens
to other people when they're hit by American bombs.
After Christmas, you wrote a rosy scenario
for the New York Times entitled "The U.S. Must Strike at
Saddam Hussein," (12/28). In it, the U.S. attacks Iraq
with extraordinary precision. In the cross hairs of a gunsight
appears the only Iraqi who seems to matter to American policymakers,
Saddam Hussein. After U.S. forces for good eliminate the evil
leader, Iraqis take to the streets, dancing, and we all rejoice
the outbreak of peace.
However, the fantasy reveals more about
America than it does about Iraq. It's easy to imagine the crowds
that would tear down pictures of Hussein or topple statues of
him. Reporters in Kabul found some Afghans dancing when the
Taliban fell, and shaving their beards or removing their burkas.
But what about the Afghans who huddle now in fear of Northern
Alliance warlords, or who quietly starve due to the physical
and social chaos war has brought? Survivors who've seen their
villages obliterated by U.S. bombs aren't joyous. Beyond the
fanfare of the media, refugee families are even now dying in
the snow.
Mr. Perle, you work with complex issues
and must know the pitfalls of over-simplifying the realities
of other peoples. Your plea for war ignores the future horrors
the horror of war may bring. If Iraq collapses in civil war,
where would the bloodletting stop?
Increased belligerence does not address
a solution to the complex and lethal problems that have already
arisen because of current U.S. policy. Whatever the future,
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children will never celebrate
it. They are already dead. Economic warfare, waged through sanctions,
claimed the lives of these innocents.
Will their parents blithely overcome
the sorrow they felt when they couldn't obtain the medicines
they needed? Will the liberation you envision erase the pain
they felt when they gave their children poisoned water and watched
them succumb to sicknesses? Will the doctors who struggled vainly
to heal them jump for joy if Iraq is again attacked?
Teachers, writers, engineers and civil
servants who've lost their savings, sold their belongings, and
eked out a living on paltry wages aren't likely to rejoice if
the U.S. again bombs the debilitated infrastructure they've
tried mightily to restore.
Across Iraq, people ask us why Americans
want to punish them even more. For 11 years they've been told
sanctions were a "peaceful" alternative to war, and
now they're told war is the solution to the suffering of sanctions.
In a twisted way the message is at least consistent: to please
remember that they're better off dead.
Remarkably, children here seem very ready
to believe that Americans can be kind and just. Like children
everywhere they are full of curiosity and show easy affection.
In their laughter and hopes rest my hopes for a peaceful world.
Please, Mr. Perle, when you preach that
no war against terrorism will be successful without Saddam Hussein's
removal, try also to remember other terrors inflicted on these
people over the last 11 years of our "assistance."
I feel sure that you care deeply about
America's national security. Placing our trust in developing,
stockpiling and using overpowering and costly weapons has not
enhanced that security. We must open our hearts to the cries
of people across the world who feel we treat them as dust beneath
our feet.
At its core, war is impoverishment. War's
genesis and ultimate end is in the poverty of our hearts. If
we can realize that the world's liberation begins within those
troubled hearts, then we may yet find peace, and a renewal
of the courage and vitality you so passionately desire.
Kathy Kelly
is director of Voices
in the Wilderness, the first U.S. grassroots organization
to bring activists into Iraq to witness the effect of sanctions,
to violate the sanctions by bringing medicine and toys into
Iraq, and to educate the U.S. public upon their return.
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