Criminalizing an Act of Love
by
Doreen Miller
Dissident Voice
March 1, 2003
According
to a recent Fox News report, U.S. leaders are considering prosecuting for war
crimes any U.S. citizen who travels to Iraq to be a human shield in an effort
to protect the Iraqi people. Yes, the United States now intends to make it a
crime to protect innocent people from being killed. In other words, the United
States' right to invade Iraq and kill its citizenry supersedes Iraqi civilians'
right to life.
In fact, if the current
administration had its way, the confidentially and quietly drafted Domestic
Security Enhancement Act of 2003, dubbed Patriot Act II, would already be the
supreme law of the land. Under this law, U.S. citizens acting as human shields
in Iraq could be stripped of their U.S. citizenship, denied their
Constitutional rights, be held indefinitely, and tried secretly as "enemy
combatants" based on the allegedly treasonous "intent" of their
actions as "aiding and abetting the enemy." The underlying intent of
their actions would be judged solely on the interpretation of U.S. leaders
caught in an overly simplistic, dichotomous worldview, where U.S. leaders
represent all that is righteous, morally superior and good, and any others who
believe and behave differently, everything that is unrighteous, morally
bankrupt and evil.
If anyone has been paying
close attention to all the pro-war rhetoric spewing out of Washington, it would
not be difficult to see the absurd contradiction this new announcement for
litigation underscores. According to the convoluted logic of the Bush
administration, human shields attempting to stop the war, thus sparing the
lives of innocent Iraqis, will be prosecuted for giving aid to "the
enemy," the Iraqi people, who, by reason of countless declarations by
Bush, are not our enemy; after all, our president has made it very clear over
the past several months that it's just Saddam who is our enemy, not the Iraqi
people.
The Fox News report included
several calls from full-blooded, patriotic Americans voicing their support of
the president in his condemnation of human shields and ridiculing their actions
to protect the Iraqis. What they fail to see is that those opting to act as
human shields are there to protect against the reckless loss of civilian lives;
they are not "choosing sides," eg. declaring their unconditional
support for Saddam and his regime.
Instead of being mocked and
threatened with litigation, these people who are putting their lives on the
line ought to be admired for their courage and selflessness in remaining true
to and living out their most profound convictions. Able to see beyond the
myopic world of blind patriotic allegiance, or us/good versus them/evil, they
are operating outside the severely restricting and disjointed realm of
nationalism.
Answering to a deeper
spiritual calling of truth that bids each and everyone of us to uphold the
sanctity of all life against violence and murder, they are genuine warriors and
heroes who dare to defy the status quo, as dictated by their governments, and
are acting to help us all see the greater holistic picture of our shared,
common humanity spread out across this fragile earth. They recognize that, just
like ourselves, people of other nations have names, faces, families, loved
ones, goals, aspirations, and the whole wonderful range of human emotions that
accompany life.
They refuse to view our
brothers and sisters in Iraq as irrelevant "collateral damage" or
expendable numbers in the aggressive, depersonalized war games that military
strategists play out in the sterile and morally disconnected atmosphere of
their well-protected bunkers, heavily insulated and far removed from the
gut-wrenching realities and bloody carnage of war.
In contemplating the actions
of these human shields, I am reminded of the countless civilians who selflessly
risked their own lives in their attempts to hide, protect and save the lives of
innocent Jews from most certain death during the time of Hitler's "Final
Solution." Those who were ultimately caught suffered the same fate as that
of the Jews: deportment to concentration camps, forced labor, starvation, and
murder.
In utter disbelief, the
world watches as the pendulum swings 'round once again with frenetic U.S.
leaders taking on a role mimicking that of the fascist Nazis in their rush to
judge, condemn and prosecute as enemies of the state unarmed citizens who are
risking their own lives to protect and shield innocent Iraqi civilians from the
unprovoked, violent, military aggressions of the United States.
Not only does our current
leadership deride the peaceful intentions of these human shields, it also has
made a mockery of the United Nations, whose noble purpose is to spare future
generations from the horrors of war by seeking peaceful, diplomatic solutions
to international disputes. While going through the prerequisite motions of
pretending to cooperate with the Security Council, the U.S. has been
simultaneously and overtly escalating a full military build-up of troops in the
Middle East with the obvious intention of invading Iraq no matter what the
council decides.
U.S. leaders have also
engaged in the disgraceful act of bullying and trying to discredit the U.N.
Security Council by accusing it of "having no backbone" because it refuses
to bow to the desires and interests of the U.S. in its plan for war and regime
change in Iraq. I would counter, however, that members of the U.N. Security
Council have thus far been exhibiting the greatest backbone by not caving in to
the militaristic and imperialistic wishes of the world's only superpower. It
takes tremendous courage to stand up for the profound principles of diplomatic
and peaceful conflict resolution and not be bullied, bribed or blackmailed into
supporting the U.S. position and paradigm of how the world and individual
countries ought to be run.
As for the U.S. argument of
wanting to "bring democracy" to the Middle East, I, frankly, would
not trust a country that over the years has secretly backed the overthrow of
countless democratically elected leaders around the world and has tolerated, if
not outright supported, the blood-thirsty escapades of such ruthless dictators
as the Shah of Iran, General Augusto Pinochet, "Papa Doc" Duvalier,
General Suharto, General Castelo Branco, Mobutu Sese Seko, Hugo Banzer, and
others, including the infamous Saddam Hussein.
Have we learned nothing from
history? Has our sense of morality really become so corrupt that we believe it
is right to prosecute human shields, carrying out an act of unconditional love
for our Iraqi neighbors, for "war crimes"? Are we to believe that the
same God who vowed to Abraham to spare a whole country if a mere ten righteous
people were to be found in the city of Sodom now blesses George Bush's rush to
destroy a whole country in his hunt for and vendetta against just one man?
Verily, we are living under
a dark veil of moral perversion when those who open their arms and hearts and
risk their own lives to protect the lives of the good people of Iraq are to be
tried for "war crimes," while a rich and powerful nation is allowed
to bomb a whole country with impunity, snuffing out the lives of hundreds of
thousands of innocents, and is neither questioned for its contempt of the
sanctity of human life nor prosecuted for its war crimes against humanity.
Doreen Miller, mother, musician and poet, is currently a Senior Lecturer and
educator of international students. She dedicates part of her time to serving
the elderly and Alzheimer patients. This article first appeared at Yellow Times.org. She
encourages your comments: dmiller@YellowTimes.org