Posted on 03/17/2003 6:31:47 AM PST by Ryan C
Sen. Lindsey Graham recently called our actions as Human Shields "treasonous" and hopes to see us punished for more than the ten years in jail and $1 million in fines that the law currently allows for. He said that we were "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." I was not comforting the enemy – I was comforting the Iraqi people. The only aid that I provided was construction paper and crayons for children, and I did so fairly confident that they would not be used to make weapons of mass destruction.
Opposing this war is not treasonous. When I made the decision to go to Iraq, I did so in part because of concern for my country, and the planet. In calling for war, and forcing other countries to choose whether to be "with us or against us," we have thrown away a century of diplomacy. We are losing allies because of this issue in a time when we need them the most. In calling for war, I am terrified, as an American, that our country will again become the victim of terrorist acts or hostilities from other countries.
If we attack Iraq, we lose any moral high ground that we once had, and I am terrified of the consequences. If we set the precedent that countries can be justifiably attacked because we don't agree with them and they have weapons of mass destruction, I am afraid that we will become the next target. We have weapons of mass destruction, and there are many countries out there that don't agree with us.
Saddam Hussein is a terrible and unjust ruler, and the idea that any Human Shield supports him is completely untrue. I traveled to Iraq to support the Iraqi people, not the leader that happens to be in power there. I do not support Saddam, and it would be a great thing for the country and the world if he was not in power. Likewise, though, I do not support Bush, but I would oppose any foreign effort to remove our President from power. Our country cannot continue to install and remove regimes when it is politically expedient for us to do so.
As I set foot back in the United States, a passport control officer said to me "You went to Iraq? Are you nuts? All those people hate us!"
I didn't know where to begin.
As Americans, we seem unable to differentiate between other cultures and the governments of other cultures. We are not going to war with the Iraqi people, just Saddam, and yet we are contemplating sending thousands of missiles into Baghdad, killing a massive amount of civilians.
The Iraqi people do not seem to have the same conceptual problem. When I was in Baghdad, I was thanked by people in tears, and welcomed into the homes of the people there. Even the families ravaged by sanctions and poverty would share the little food that they had with me, even knowing that I was from a country whose stated aim is to bomb them back into the stone age. It was humbling and overwhelming, and I can't help thinking that, if the situations were reversed, that we might not be so kind.
I am proud to be an American, but terribly afraid of what my country is about to do to the people of Iraq.
I went to Baghdad not with the certainty that our presence there would stop a war, but knowing that there was little else I could do to try, and that the alternative was to sit at home and do nothing. I had to meet the people that my country was about to bomb, and to humanize them when and if I got back home.
When I was in Iraq, I visited several schools. In one high-school classroom, I asked the students to write letters to students in American classrooms. Marwa Quism, age 13, wrote "Dear American student... I hope there will be no war between us, and I hope we will be friends. Governments want war between us... we want peace. I like you, and we don't know why you don't like us..."
The people in Iraq may hate our foreign policy, and what the sanctions have done to their country, but they do not hate us.
In elementary classrooms, I asked the children to draw their homes and families. An eight-year-old drew his family, his home, and a missile in the sky, aimed at his house. There is no proper response when a child shows you a picture like that; I complimented the drawing, apologized for my country, and cried, later, for the first time in many years.
It is much more difficult for people to bomb abstract enemies than it is to bomb 13 year-old Marwa, who wants to be our friend. It does not look as if Bush will allow this war to be stopped. If I can facilitate communication between Marwa in Iraq and Bill in America, though, perhaps we can avert a war a generation from now. If I can play some small part in dispelling the myth that "they" hate "us", then this movement was not a failure.
ROTFL! That's perfect.
When Ryan Clancy went to Iraq to protest the war, he knew he was breaking the law. He thought the penalty was a $500 fine, a price he was willing to pay for the cause of peace.
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But when Clancy recently got a call from federal officials, he learned the stakes are much higher. Authorities have fined Clancy $10,000, and if he doesn't pay, he could spend up to 12 years in prison.
"I have no intention whatsoever of paying any money for having gone over there and worked with children," said Clancy, who has an education degree from Beloit College. "It's a bizarre and arbitrary charge."
Clancy, 26, of Milwaukee, is charged with violating sanctions the U.S. and other countries passed in the early 1990s prohibiting travel to and trade with Iraq. They were in effect in February, when Clancy arrived there as one of nearly 300 protesters from around the world who camped out near power plants, water treatment facilities and hospitals to act as "human shields" in hopes their presence would prevent American bombings.
Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department, said he could not comment specifically on Clancy's case. However, he did say fines were being issued against some of the human shields not because they were protesting but because they ignored the sanctions, which were partially lifted when the rebuilding process in Iraq began.
"Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the freedom to express one's views is a right afforded to all Americans," he said. "However, in a society governed by the rule of law such as ours, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone."
Federal authorities may be willing to negotiate the amount of the fine with Clancy, Griffin said.
At this point, Clancy has been presumed guilty and does not have the right to a hearing, said Arthur Heitzer, a Milwaukee attorney who is an expert on international travel sanctions and has worked with numerous clients charged with similar offenses for traveling to Cuba.
Clancy's research about Cuba is what led him to believe he would have to pay a $500 fine for going to Iraq.
Despite the fact that travel to Iraq had been prohibited for more than 10 years, as far as Heitzer can tell, officials just started enforcing the ban about six months ago. Neither he nor Griffin could say exactly how many people are facing penalties.
"The sanctions . . . are clearly designed to prevent people from going and seeing for themselves what's going on," Heitzer said. "The very government that says it's trying to protect our freedoms is saying, 'We get to tell you where you can travel and where you can't travel.' "
Griffin disagreed.
"Sanctions are an important foreign policy tool, but they have to be enforced to work," he said. "Those who violate them can expect that the law will be enforced fully and fairly."
Heitzer does not believe the government can seize Clancy's assets - including the inventory of Trounce, the Menomonee Valley record store he owns - without a court order. If federal authorities get such an order, Clancy can appeal through the federal courts.
The government also could pursue criminal charges, Griffin and Heitzer said.
"They're not differentiating between me and a uranium dealer, even though the only thing I brought over there was crayons and construction paper. I don't think they can make weapons of mass destruction with that," Clancy said. "I would love to have my day in court, but I'm afraid they're going to go after my assets, and I don't have a lot."
After seeing a CNN report on human shields, Clancy used frequent flier miles and $1,500 in savings to join the cause. He traveled to Milan, where he was picked up by a double-decker bus based in London. For weeks, the vehicle traveled through Europe, Turkey, Syria and then finally to Iraq.
"I went out of concern for our country, as well as the rest of the planet," said Clancy, a former Peace Corps volunteer. "The U.S. was interfering in an extremely destructive way, punishing Saddam's victims and breeding more terrorists."
Clancy spent most of his approximately three-week stay in Iraq working with children. Teenagers wrote letters to American youths, he said, one of which bore the message: "We like you, and we don't know why you don't like us."
He asked younger children to draw pictures about their lives. One 6-year-old drew a picture of her house with her family, smiling stick figures, standing outside. In the background, she drew a missile headed for the triangular roof.
"I had to show the Iraqi citizens it was not a matter of 'United We Stand,' " Clancy said.
Clancy left Iraq before bombing by the U.S. began. He crossed into Jordan to get cash he thought he'd need to make it home once the war started, and he was not allowed to re-enter Iraq.
On the trip home, he went 80 hours without sleep, and he was interrogated by officials at airports in both Israel and Minneapolis.
In Minnesota, he says he was ushered into a room with harsh overhead lighting and grilled as authorities photocopied every scrap of paper in his possession. He was given the third degree about a number for "Boo" in the electronic directory of his cell phone, which belonged to his 80-plus-year-old grandmother.
Once he made it home, he was temporarily banned from commercial air travel. About three weeks ago, he finally was allowed aboard a flight to Oklahoma to buy a truck.
"I thought it had all blown over," he said.
On the Bus to Baghdad
Beset by logistical crises and personality conflicts, but boosted by idealism, the human shields make their way slowly towards Iraq.
Stephan Faris
February 17, 2003
Had everything gone according to plan, Gordon Sloan would have already been in Baghdad, preparing to take up station as a 'human shield' protecting a hospital or mosque or other institution . Instead, the 30-year-old Australian architect found himself with about 35 other peace activists in a crush of Turkish journalists scrumming under the imposing presence of Istanbul's Hagia Sophia Mosque.
Every so often someone in the mass of bodies begins to make a speech, and cameras swing, crowd, and converge.
"You're stars," one observer tells Sloan, who was coordinating the group's activities while in Istanbul.
"Yeah, for one hour," Sloan answers, and steps into the red, double-decker bus that had been home to the peace activists since they left London two weeks earlier.
In fact, very little has gone according to plan for Sloan and the other human shields.
The group of about 30 peace activists left London on Jan. 25 in a convoy of three double-decker buses and a London taxi. Their plan: Drive the 3,000 miles to Baghdad, picking up volunteers along the route, and, once in Iraq, make an expected U.S.-led bombing campaign politically unpalatable by flooding the Iraqi capital with volunteers willing to station themselves at mosques, hospitals and water treatment plants,
These not-so-merry pranksters were quickly beset by personality conflicts and vehicular catastrophes. Soon after leaving London, the group split, unable to agree on which route to take. Veteran peace activits began griping about the firebrand, high-profile style of the group's leader, fiery former US marine Ken Nichols O'Keefe.
Sometimes, the problems have come in bunches, as when Sloan had to cross the alps in one of the double-decker buses to meet up with O'Keefe. Sloan thought the snow was the worst of his worries until a low bridge caved in the top of the bus.
"It got to the point where the bus driver had a nervous breakdown and actually couldn't drive anymore," Sloan says. "So I got in the driver's seat and that freaked him out even more, so he started driving again."
One of the group's other buses died in Rome, and the group split up again. Most of the activists piled in the remaining buses and departed via ferry for Greece. O'Keefe remained behind in the Italian capital, intending to fly to Istanbul.
The activists on the bus made it through Greece and into Turkey, arriving in Istanbul a week behind schedule. But O'Keefe was turned away by Turkish authorities at Istanbul's airport, sent back to Italy.
For the human shields, even something as mundane as boarding a bus can create conflict. Preparing for what was billed as a one-hour publicity tour through Istanbul, American activist John Ross -- said to be the first person to tear up his draft card during the Vietnam war -- clashes with the driver and disembarks in a huff.
Afterwards, Sloan drops into his seat muttering about "logistical concerns," and the bus swings off. The tour lasts three hours, and deposits the group on the Asian side of the Bosphorus Straits, a 40-minute ferry ride from where they began.
On most evenings, though, such logistical nightmares are easily forgotten. On the night they arrived in Istanbul, the activists celebrated, crowding into an Istanbul bar called Leb-i Derya, and dancing to the Squirrel Nut Zippers ("In the afterlife, you should be ready for some serious strife. Now you make the scene all day, but tomorrow there'll be hell to pay").
In the very likely case that their statement fails to stop a war, the dancers could soon be on the receiving end of what some analysts predict will be a barrage of 3,000 bombs in 48 hours. But most accept the risk -- knowing it is their strongest argument.
"If someone is afraid on our behalf, they should be afraid for the Iraqi people as well," says Peter Kofoe, 23, a Danish student of Political Science.
Still, there are some difficulties individual idealism cannot overcome. The group's deputy leader Christiaan Briggs, 26, figures it would take at least 5,000 to 10,000 volunteers to actually stop a war. The convoy that left Istanbul en route for Ankara and, ultimately, Syria and Iraq carried only 150 activists.
"There's one criticism I hear about this," says Briggs, an architectural draftsman from New Zealand. "People say, 'Hey it's a great idea. But it won't work.' So they don't come. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
On the day of the overlong Istanbul bus tour, O'Keefe was in Rome hoping to find 30 more to join him, while organizers in London were chartering planes in the expectation of flying another 200 human shields into Jordan this week.
And the difficulties may only grow if and when the human shield convoy reaches Iraq. The Baghdad regime had already become a source of friction within the group, with O'Keefe attracting the outrage of some activists by demanding that he intends to meet with Saddam Hussein. And, while the shields say they will not voluntarily protect military targets, one senior Iraqi official has reportedly said that the activists will be placed at "vital and strategic installations." In Ankara, the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Talib Abid Salih, made a show of handing out flowers to the peace activists before issuing 65 visas for entry into Iraq. It was a made-for-TV moment which the ambassador milked as best he could.
Still, despite the crises, despite the conflicts, despite the potential for disaster that seems to lurk around every bend, the human shields press on. The night before leaving for Ankara, Briggs sleeps on the floor of a stranger's apartment. The next morning, he pulls on a pair of torn pants he hadn't had time to replace while in Istanbul.
"You know, when you've overcome so many obstacles, you become sort of unconcerned," he says. "If they try to stop us at the Iraqi border, I won't worry. I'll say, yeah, I know it's hard now, but in a few hours, we'll be on the other side of that line."
Stephan Faris is a freelance journalists based in Istanbul.
...didn't you cut & run like the coward you really are?
You were. Get over it.
If you had waited until the shooting was stopped, I would praise your actions as humanitarian aid. Since you jumped the gun you were acting treasonous by aiding Iraq.
The difference between treason and patriotism is often a matter of timing.
I think Ann Coulter had you in mind when she refers to liberal Girly-Boyz!
North Korea needs a pansy-ass like you for their propaganda! You can take Jane Fonda with you!
Ah, Gwasshopper, you are wrong, for a Maxi-shield stays in place.....
But when Clancy recently got a call from federal officials, he learned the stakes are much higher. Authorities have fined Clancy $10,000, and if he doesn't pay, he could spend up to 12 years in prison.
"I have no intention whatsoever of paying any money having gone over there and worked with children," said Clancy, who has an education degree from Beloit College. "It's a bizarre and arbitrary charge."
...
Clancy's research about Cuba is what led him to believe he would have to pay a $500 fine for going to Iraq.
So from this article and Clancy's own words, the following is true:
Now that the fine has proven to be $10,000, Clancy is trying to claim that he is standing on principle, and that he will not pay any fine on moral grounds.
It seems to me that he screwed up and didn't find out what the real consequences might be, and now that he has to pay out 20 times what he thought he'd have to pay, he's scared $h!tless.
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Ryan Clancy
They're not differentiating between me and a uranium dealer, even though the only thing I brought over there was crayons and construction paper. I don't think they can make weapons of mass destruction with that. 