On Armies and Palm Sunday

Hi everyone,

It does feel like I'm counting the weeks until the end of my time here,
but at the same time, I'm floating right along in the midst of things.
It's been a good week. The delegation is here and I tried to attune them
to the culture and lay of the land. I also tried to cook biryani, which
is the Iraqi national dish, for their first night here. It didn't turn
out quite right, so I called it 'yani', which in Arabic means, 'whatever.'
They still liked it.

It is Palm Sunday today and I am hoping that the church will have a
processional. They didn't have a separate Ash Wednesday service, which
was disappointing for me. They have plenty of palm trees around here
anyway though, so I am hopeful.

This next week promises to be tough. After hearing increasing stories of
Iraqi women being sexually abused by U.S. troops in prisons and around the
country, I am trying to follow up and collect testimonies. I half don't
expect people to agree to be interviewed, not because I don't believe
these things are happening, but because so much shame is attached,
particularly in this culture. One lead is a woman impregnated in prison
and since released. There is certainly no such thing as a consensual sex
act when you are in prison. The other lead is a teenage boy who was
gang-raped by several soldiers and is quite out of his head since then. I
am working through friends of the families to arrange the interviews. I
don't have much else to say at this point except that I hope to see truth
and justice prevail whatever the stories' details.

I am writing the team updates right now and the stuff we are seeing and
hearing is just stunning. I will try to forward some of these to you so
you see what I mean. I guess what I have recently been reflecting on is
that soldiers are soldiers no matter what the nationality and no matter
Injustice, secrecy, and abuse of power are endemic to the systems of
militarism. It is never a matter of 'a few bad eggs.' Having lived in
two war zones for so long and having seen such breadth and depth of human
rights abuses, and having researched other conflicts in the past century,
no, I will never be able to believe that again. I think rather it is a
matter of a few good souls struggling to do good in the larger mechanisms
which in their very nature produce suffering and death.

Late one night then last week, I wrote the following poem. I don't claim
that it is a good poem, but it expresses what I needed to say. Maybe I'll
add more to it later.

In the meantime, team life has been wonderful. We're pretty small right
now, but it's beautiful to get to really know a few other people so well.
As a team we have spent much time talking about how to celebrate life in
the midst of so much death. Ritual becomes so important in marking the
hours in the midst of cycles of destruction. We are learning to set aside
time to be together and have fun. It is so easily lost working here, when
everything seems so urgent and the work never stops. But you can become
death like the death around you, or you can choose life and hope others
around you will follow.

We finished our vigils in Tahrir Square and will now spend the next three
days 'on the road' in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison
camp, and in Kerbala between the twin shrines to the Shi'a martyrs Ali and
Hussein. On Saturday, we hope to vigil at the children's prison here in
Baghdad. It also seems to be the senior citizens' prison as well.
According to lists from the CPA, some 400 Iraqis between ages 85-95 are in
the U.S. detention system. Stewart has been pretty amazing with crunching
statistics out of the information we can get. Either the number
represents a colossal problem with accurate recordkeeping, or they are
going after far more than terrorists and Baathists.

I think I will try to squeeze in a Sunday afternoon nap, and get the
laundry done as well.

Peace,

Le Anne
----

What is an army?

It is all the dignity and refinement of a high school locker room, dressed
in brown uniforms and given weapons and authority over the populace of a
small, demonized country.

And that is why Iraqi women are being raped and impregnated in the prison
camps.

And that is why children are blown to pieces while riding in their cars or
sleeping in their homes.

And that is why young men are beaten and drowned,

And old men are suffocated with plastic sandbags pulled over their heads

Dying in their pleading sons’ arms

And the system feels no remorse nor need to explain.

Because all our good American fathers and sons and brothers and nephews
and boyfriends

Couldn’t possibly ever do a thing like that

The things which happen every day

Here in Iraq

Now and thirteen years ago

There in Viet Nam,

Korea, Japan,

There in Germany

Where we also fought to ‘liberate’ the masses

“Allies” is such a deceptively friendly term

when we bombed the churches

and rained fire on innocents

When will we ever come to terms with all that we have done?