During the final block of workshops at the Midwest Social Forum held last weekend in Milwaukee, George Paz Martin of Wisconsin Peace Action and United for Peace and Justice along with an Iraq veteran discussed the realities of the situation on the ground in Iraq and the question of how the antiwar movement can organize to end to the occupation. With polls in Iraq showing that 60% of Iraqis want the United States out of their country and 60% of the United States population wanting the country’s troops out of Iraq, it is clear that there is public support for ending the occupation. Among US soldiers stationed in Iraq this number is even higher, with 72% wanting to leave Iraq. Public sentiment is clearly aligned with the goals of the antiwar movement, although it would be probably be inaccurate to state that public supports and in anyway aligns itself with the antiwar movement. However, George Paz Martin argued that it has been the antiwar movement that brought this shift in public opinion, even going so far as to say that vigils on corners are responsible for changing the public’s view of the war.
Martin’s initial comments focused on his experiences visiting Iraq in January of 2004 as part of a United for Peace and Justice fact-finding mission. Upon arriving in Iraq, Martin was surprised to learn that the country was in a state that was “worse than what he expected.” He explained that less than half of the water is drinkable, that malnutrition for children is up by seven percent, that there are only three to four hours of electricity per day, that there are no land-based telephones, that school attendance is low (he reported that a school he visited had no books, desks, or plumbing and that aid agencies cannot meet the demand for books), and that gas lines are three to five hours long. Martin reminded the audience that all of this comes in light of sixteen billion dollars supposedly spent on “reconstruction.” He also shared his experience visiting a hospital that had three to four kids in each bed, no nurses, a lack of staff due to L. Paul Bremer’s expulsion of Baath Party members from the government, and limited access to functional machinery. After visiting the hospital, the UFPJ delegation went to the Ministry of Health to explain the situation in the hospital where the priorities of the United States occupation became quite clear to the delegation. Whereas the hospital workers were washing surgical instruments in the polluted Tigris River, the Ministry of Health was lavishly decorated and the Minister had a large air-conditioned office. He told the delegation that he knew about the open sewage in the operating room but there was nothing that he could do and that the health system did not need donations of medicine from the US delegation. Martin also related an experience in which an Iraqi person asked him “What are you [the antiwar movement] doing in America? We are dying over here” relating the importance of building a more effective movement. Most the Iraqis Martin encountered were open to talking with his delegation and separated the Bush administration from the United States’ citizens, but at the same time, they expect us to take responsibility for the United States government’s actions and to end the occupation.
After Martin spoke, an Iraq veteran who considered himself a peace activist before enlisting shared his insights into what is happening within the military serving in Iraq. He made the decision to enlist as a means of finding out what was happening in Iraq and educating the antiwar movement about what the military was doing. He explained that before entering Iraq his unit received a thirty-minute briefing on the history of Iraq, its culture, and the moral and ethical workings of Islam. This was followed by a thirty minute briefing outlining the “rules of engagement” during which the commanders implied that the Geneva Conventions differed from country-to-country and that the rules had changed for Iraq. They were then told that the Iraqi army was using human shields and that as long as there were no more than thirty civilians standing in front of an enemy soldier they were allowed to fire into the crowd. He explained that this policy was essentially saying that the lives of thirty Iraqis were equal the life of one United States citizen and explained that shooting crowds of more than thirty was not necessarily prohibited, it just required authorization from a commander. His unit commanders also claimed to have received intelligence stating that “insurgents” were placing children in the middle of roads to stop convoys and then ambushing them, so his commanders told his unit’s drivers that if they see children in the road they are to drive right into them and “won’t stop, won’t slow down, won’t swerve.” Once his unit arrived in Iraq, they built an Internet café, a base, a volleyball court, and a canal so that they could access water, but did nothing to reconstruct the country. He explained that brutality towards Iraqis was not explicitly encouraged but it was also not discouraged and was consequently not uncommon. He explained that many soldiers in his unit “wanted to kill” and were consequently abusive towards the Iraqi population and that such abuse motivated the insurgency as abuse at the hands of US soldiers is seen as unforgivable by Iraqis.
As for continued organizing, George Paz Martin outlined some upcoming events and strategies within the antiwar movement and began by explaining that it is racist to think that Iraqis cannot make the decision that they want the United States out of their country or that if the United States leaves that the Iraqis will not be able to control themselves and will kill each other. Martin stressed the importance of the upcoming midterm elections and encouraged people to get involved in making the war a major issue and campaigning for antiwar candidates. For those who did not want to work on individual candidate campaigns, he encouraged people to pass city resolutions calling for an end to the occupation and working on ballot initiatives in order to have votes on the United States’ presence in Iraq. He also emphasized the importance of continued protest against the war and cited upcoming events for Hiroshima and Nagasaki day, the upcoming September 23rd antiwar demonstrations and the possibility of “stepping things up” by then if Congress has not taken action on the war, and the importance of ongoing work to counter military recruiting. Martin also encouraged people to attend the United for Peace and Justice assembly in December as a way of participating in deciding the direction of the national antiwar movement.
