The Resolution
Sebastopol, USA and Baghdad, Iraq
by Robert Leverant
Dissident Voice
December 30, 2002
Editor’s
Note: The City Council of Sebastopol, a small town north of San Francisco, CA, recently
passed a resolution opposing a US attack on Iraq.
When the
Sebastopol City Council passed a resolution opposing an attack on Iraq, I
thought, 'How about getting off your
soapbox and doing your designated work like solving our traffic problems?'
But after five
days without power and water and taking back roads to avoid flooded roads, I
understood the wisdom of the Council's resolution.
We are linked to
the people of Iraq.
One stormy
night, while walking in the darkness of unlit streets and homes, I
"got" that in this moment the Iraqi people and the people of
Sebastopol shared outlines of the same struggles. However, ours were temporary,
minor, and the result of nature. Theirs had been going on for ten years, had
dire consequences, and were man-made.
In the Gulf War,
the first thing "our boys"
did, contrary to Article 54 of Additional Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention,
was to attack "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian
population." Power stations, water
supply stations and water tanks, hospitals, bridges, roads, and other
infrastructure were intentionally destroyed. This began an aerial bombardment
that was the heaviest in world history.
In the immediate
aftermath some 100,000 Iraqis died. By doing as leaders trained us to do, we
could see on TV without sympathy; watch without feeling for the fleeing Iraqis
running with their hands in the air in surrender and being mowed down by a U.S.
helicopter gunship; an act that our troops dubbed "a turkey shoot".
Our leaders taught us the trick of not feeling: to hold your breath and call
them "the enemy" … but they were just people …like us who wanted to
live in safety, have physical and mental happiness, and enjoy their lives.
Since then a million-and-a-half Iraqis have died as a result of the U.N.
sanctions on food and medical supplies and the
contamination of drinking water.
While American
casualties were first reported as being scant, ten years later in May 2002, according to the Veterans Administration, 8,306 veterans
of Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm had died as the result of
combat related injuries; and 159,705 were permanently injured or ill. This is a
casualty rate of 29.3% for combat related duties in Iraq between 1990 and 1991;
a staggering rate.
Gulf War 2, The
Sequel, made by the same team of directors, and now being previewed on TV is
due to open in late January of 2003. It is a far more ambitious project. It includes
regime change in Iraq and remapping the entire Middle East. It is estimated
that there will be a million refugees fleeing Iraq. We call them "the
enemy", but they are just people …like you and I who want to live and in a
safe place.
As a result of
its perpetual war economy, the U.S, one of the richest nations in the world,
now has Third World levels of child malnutrition, infant death mortality, and
child poverty. Every day more and more businesses are going belly up and more
and more people are out of work and without unemployment benefits. Women and
children and minorities are experiencing government sponsored and individual
violence against them. Our natural resources and social security are being
pillaged; and our civil liberties are under attack as is our constitution. Day
and night the plummeting of personal freedom is being merchandized to us by our
leaders as being an acceptable price for "homeland security".
Due to the more
ambitious aims of Gulf War 2, it is safe to say that there will also be more
American casualties, more violence at home, more poverty, etc. And we in Sonoma
County will be far more dramatically affected than just experiencing the
skyrocketing price of gas. Already the infrastructure of human services is
approaching shambles as the result of inadequate funding for schools, roads,
hospitals, fire department, police, parks, water resources, etc.
So the new war
has come back home to Sonoma County -- even before our grown daughters and sons
come back in black body bags or maimed or afflicted by chemical and biological
diseases (to be claimed by the Defense Department from unknown origins).
Gulf War 2 is described in the media in terms
of the Superbowl. However, when the
strengths of both sides are compared, the match is the equivalent of having the
San Francisco Forty-Niners play for keeps against the kindergartners at
Parkside School.
Also, the
football metaphor through which we describe combat does not fit today’s wars.
It describes ancient wars, like the Trojan War, where warriors actually faced
off against each other eyeball to eyeball. The main targets of today's warriors
are the helpless fans who are trapped in the stadium.
Eighty percent
of the causalities in war today are people like you and I who live in places
like Sebastopol or Santa Rosa or Windsor or Baghdad.
Every hour 3
billion dollars is spent worldwide on armaments designed to kill ordinary
people like you and I. And are designed to reduce once flourishing cities like
Baghdad to rubble, and advanced cultures like Iraq’s to the Stone Age. This is
what is called victory. This is what
"smart bombs" do. This is what nuclear bombs do plus kill masses of
people, some immediately and some slowly; and they strew the planet with
radioactive dust, a speck of which in my or your lungs or body, will produce
cancer and kill you.
The resolution
by the Sebastopol City Council is about taking out into the real world, where
peace is a necessity, the vision of the imaginal realm: that peace is possible
and a desirable alternative to war.
The resolution
recognizes that we are all connected; that it is one world and that all life
forms, are potential targets of the United States' war machine. It, like the
plant in the "Little Shop of Horrors", is exponentially reproducing
itself in the mind streams of Homo Sapiens and is cloning itself in nation
states the world over.
This is
collective madness and needs to be stopped before it is too late to stop it. We
and all life are at risk from human warring.
Forget about eradicating the West Nile mosquito and the Glassy Winged
Sharpshooter. Eradicate war.
Thank you
Sebastopol City Council for extending our boundaries to include Iraq.
Since we have a
Sister City in Japan, the only nation ever bombed with nuclear weapons, how
about making Baghdad, the next U.S. nuclear target, Sebastopol's Brother City.
Robert Leverant, MFT, is a founding member of Psychotherapists
Against the Collective Madness of War.