Wednesday's New York Times ran a full color photo of an unsettling communion. Sitting stiffly at a table was former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a man for whom the word "quagmire" -- a word recently resurrected by war pundits -- has a deep and unforgiving meaning. Reaching over his left shoulder to shake his hand was current Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. There were smiles all around. Divorced from its context, the picture suggested that all is well.
The American writer Robert Bly wrote a poem during the Vietnam War condemning the indifference with which American war makers -- like McNamara during the Vietnam War and Rumsfeld today -- went about the business of war. Men like these "are not men," Bly wrote, "they are bombs waiting to be loaded in a darkened hanger."
But really, the war makers in Washington are no more bombs than they are men (or women). Unlike a bomb, the hawks in the Bush Administration will never be any closer to the battlefield than the television or a stack of briefings and newspaper clippings can bring them. They do not smell the corpses rotting in the desert sun. They do not hear the explosions and the screams. They go home each night to their loved ones, their kitchen tables and their beds. And they probably sleep.
Meanwhile, millions of Iraqis and hundreds of thousands of soldiers thrust deep inside a complex and far away land cannot walk away from the war each night at dinner time.
We didn't hear from our people in Baghdad today. We hope the lapse in communication is temporary. But we know that the fighting drags on in Iraq and the bombs continue to fall and explode and kill.
More than 50 civilians were killed today when bombs fell on a market in Baghdad's Shula neighborhood. Earlier, an exploding bomb fell so close to the Palestine hotel -- which houses most of the foreign journalists reporting from Baghdad -- that the entire building shook violently. The Palestine is just across a narrow road from two of the three IPT hotels.
Still, as IPT member Martin Edwards wrote earlier this week, "there does not seem much cause for alarm. The bombing has been increasing gradually since the first strikes several days ago, around 5:30 am. We have set up a system of 2 hour watches from 10 pm to 6 am so at least some of us (those, like me, who can relax and sleep through almost anything, particularly if we can relax because we know the individual(s) on watch, will wake us if we need to take further action to protect ourselves) can catch a few ours of much valued sleep. Our biggest danger, at present, is from random pieces of shrapnel falling on the neighborhood from anti-aircraft shells exploding periodically overhead. But many of us, instead of sensibly seeking cover, are out under the stars, watching the fiery spectacle unfold around and above us.
"The most amazing aspect of this is that as we walk the streets of the neighborhood, in groups of two to ten, even during periods when American bombs are falling in the distance, with American led forces advancing on their city, the local residents continue a pattern of heartfelt/heart-melting friendliness and hospitality toward us."
Though we have not connected with IPT today, we know they are out seeing what they can see and preparing reports and reflections to send back home. But IPT member Neville Watson from Australia reminds us:
"It must not be thought ... that the Peace Team is simply about on-site reporting. There are all too many of those kind of reporters around. Their task is to report what they see so that their corporate masters can decide what others should see. With a few exceptions they are interested only in sound bites and superficial selective reporting. It is left to the 'little ones' like Voices in the Wilderness and the Iraq Peace Team to report it as it is. War remains for us the prime cause of human suffering, not only in acts done but in budgets spent. The initial cost of waging this war was set yesterday at 74 billion dollars and this is the down payment. We see war as stupid. There is nothing on this planet that does more to create human misery than war."
We will be in touch again as soon as there is any news from our people in Baghdad.
Thanks, as always, for all that you are doing to create a more just and compassionate world.
