Posted on 03/09/2003 9:50:24 AM PST by jwalburg
It's refreshing to be able to go for a walk - even in the cold - and not have to worry that your every move is being reported to the secret police.
It is comfortable knowing that when you chat with a friend over coffee, your friend won't suddenly disappear the next day or end up in pieces on your doorstep.
Peace is such a warm, delightful thing.
Imagine being blindfolded, stripped and hung from a pole by your wrists for hours. According to Amnesty International, that happens to political prisoners in Iraq.
Or think what it must be like to have electric shocks applied to your tongue, ears, genitals and fingers.
Peace is so very cozy.
Some Iraqi torture survivors have mentioned being pounded with pipes, whipped with rods and slashed with whips. They have been fastened to poles, contorted into painful positions and then given electric shocks.
I like a peaceful night's sleep. Don't you?
It would not be terribly entertaining to be forced - like many Iraqis - to watch family members undergo torture in front of you.
I prefer reading quietly in a recliner.
In Iraq, some victims have had their hands mutilated by electric drills. Others watch as burning cigarettes are applied to their various body parts.
Here, we might enjoy a spa treatment or a manicure at a local salon. All the time, someone in Iraq is enduring the slow, agonizing extraction of their fingernails and toenails.
Peace is such a lovely thing.
We don't know much about what happens when government correction officers use broken bottles to scar up sensitive body parts. Iraqis know all about it, and that's why people such as Iraqi nuclear scientists aren't about to tell inspectors anything they may know. Even if they tell them in secret, miles from Baghdad, their daughters, sons and nieces are in line for one such treatment or another.
We don't much think about what it's like to listen to the screams of torture victims for hours. Iraqis have heard them often.
We can calmly sit at a table and write letters to the editor or to congressmen about the need to pursue peace, without ever being bothered by fear of a midnight knock.
In Iraq, it is not uncommon for someone's tongue to be sliced off if they speak out against Saddam.
When we open the door to retrieve our newspaper in the morning, rarely do we find a box containing the eyeballs and fingertips of our husband.
When people disappear in Iraq, that is sometimes how they reappear. According to Jennifer Trahan of Human Rights Watch, more than 290,000 people have disappeared in Iraq since the late 1970s. More than 10 times the population of Aberdeen.
Innocents are sometimes dragged naked across burning hot concrete courtyards until their skin is scraped off.
But at least it's not war.
In Iraq, as victims are dangled out windows, weights are tied to their genitals.
But at least it's not war.
In Iraq, your sister can disappear without a trace and without warning.
But at least it's not war.
In Iraq, a mother can have her hair pulled back and her throat slashed until she is decapitated, in the middle of the street, in front of her neighbors or children.
But at least it's not war.
In Iraq, fear has become a decades-old way of life for a great many people.
But at least it's not war.
" War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decay and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stewart Mill
Donna Marmorstein writes and lives in Aberdeen. You can contact her at donnamarmorstein@hotmail.com.
Absolutely!
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