A small band of demonstrators
stood opposite the US Mission Thursday, day
11 of a 40-day fast, protesting US sanctions
against Iraq..
Members
of Voices in the Wilderness, an NGO based in
Chicago, stood on East 45th Street and First
Avenue, with posters of Iraqi children and passing
out flyers that called for a fast, "to end
the siege of Iraq." The flyer asked the
rhetorical question, "What about 'Smart
Sanctions?' " on top of a long quote from
former Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq Denis
Halliday and Hans von Sponeck as written to the
Baghdad Observer.
"Consequently, any continued suffering
by the Iraqi people will be perceived as being
caused by the government in Baghdad," an
excerpt reads. "This is not only false but
malicious."
Jefferey Mueller, who said he just returned
to the US after spending three weeks in Iraq
with delegates from the US and the UK, called
on the US to break the sanctions imposed after
the Gulf War.
"The
delegates principal reason for going was to
gather information
and to officially break
the sanctions and break the US law that bans
people from traveling in Iraq and transporting
goods."
Goods, Mueller said, included medicine and food
which they brought to area hospitals that they
didn't have access to because of US sanctions
against their country. In return, Mueller and
the delegates brought back Iraqi art and Iraqi
food like lentil. He and his co-delegates could
have received 12 years in prison and more than
$1 million in fines, he said.
Mueller
said they snuck supplies in to Iraq because
the
US sanctions kill 5,000 children
per month and that the US is "hypocritical" in
thinking it's on a higher moral ground than Iraq.
"The principle for going (to Iraq) is not
in relief," he said. "It is very political."
They are so political that when some of their
members attempted to voice their concerns to
the US Mission, they were arrested for trespassing.
Mueller said they only wanted to invite US Mission
staff to an Iraqi meal.
No one at the US Mission returned a request
for a statement.
Voices sees itself as an NGO crying out against
world injustice. The American people, Mueller
said, don't realize how much injustice the rest
of the world suffers because America is a wealthy
country.
"It is the indifference that allows these
things," Mueller said. "The tax dollars
that get lost and being a half a world away makes
it easy to ignore other people."
Mueller
said that the US government tries to manipulate
the UN into doing its bidding by threatening
to withhold monies from them. He said the US
had to "create" another enemy after
Russia no longer was perceived as a threat. The
reason America needs a perpetual bad-guy to fight
against, Mueller said, is at the behest of the
wealthy weapons manufacturers that want to stay
wealthy by their weapon sales.
"Boeing, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin are
the three largest weapons producers in the world," he
said, "they're in our country, they're propping
up our stock market, and they are selling these
weapons."
But the US, Mueller said, is being taken advantage
of.
"The
weapons being used in Israel against the Palestinians
are made in the US, the weapons
being used in the Gulf War in Iraq were made
in the US."
The Gulf War, Mueller said, is just another
in the line of useless wars. Voices claimed to
be pacifists and Mueller cited various atrocities
that the US has inflicted on its own soldiers
in the name of a useless war.
"Think of Agent Orange in Vietnam," Mueller
said.
He then said that Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh
might not have turned out the way he did if he
was not turned away from a Veteran's hospital
after fighting in the Gulf War.
"He was taught to kill Iraqis and bury
them alive with the Bradley tank that he drove," Mueller
said. "And then we he said he was sick,
he was turned away."
America's
hypocrisy, according to Mueller, continues.
He said he
witnessed bombing constantly during
his stay in Iraq. "I wonder if that was
happening in Western Europe, I don't think how
easily acceptable it would be taken by people
in this country."
"Go
up sixty blocks and look at the schools and
tell me
there isn't something people in New
York should be focusing on."
Mueller said he taught Alternatives to Violence
at JHS 43 in Harlem, where young boys either
ended up in jail or the military. In 1998, when
the US was bombing Iraq again, Mueller said he
felt compelled to do something about their lack
of options.
"But
when you stop for 40 days and you have this
ability
to say, 'How does sanctions
effect our society? How does it make it easier
to accept things like the death penalty, to accept
killing, how does it make it easier to accept
this overwhelming consumerism?'
"Everybody
needs a car and for that car you need oil and
well we're going to get that
oil at any price, even if it's at the price of
5,000 children."
Mueller,
said he thinks Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
is a "horrible" and "ruthless" dictator
who, because of the sanctions, has only gotten
stronger because the middle class of Iraq is
concerned about feeding their families and not
concerned with changing their government.
He said he doesn't advocate supplying his army,
but it's too difficult for him to separate that
from the ruthlessness of the American army. He
and the rest of Voices in the Wilderness say
they just want a day when there won't be any
army anymore.
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