by George Capaccio

The President sits at his desk in the Oval Office. In front of him is the speech he will present to the American public in less than an hour. The TV crews are on their way. The door is locked. For now at least, he is alone. He feels the weight of the presidency pressing down on him. He imagines his father there in the room, slowly lowering his hand on the shoulder of his son and whispering, “What is to be done must be done.”

In the Karada neighborhood of Baghdad a boy runs from his home to the market. He buys a few kilos of bread–freshly baked, warm, steaming up the plastic bag he carries them in. The boy’s name is Amir. He loves soccer and has received a medallion from his school in recognition of his skill. Amir races home, kicking a few stones along the way. It is still early but already the streets are rippling with heat.

By George Capaccio

During a recent visit to Iraq, friends and I closely followed the news from home. Would Iraq be next in Washington’s war on terrorism? Now that I am home, such an attack seems increasingly imminent. The drums are rolling. The pundits have fallen into line. The word goes forth: Iraq is a deadly menace that must be “stamped out” once and for all.

The United States has crushed an already devastated and defenseless Afghanistan. We may never know how many civilians died from our weapons of mass destruction. We can be reasonably sure their number exceeds the number of people who died in the World Trade Center. Even more appalling is the number of Afghan people who have already starved to death this winter or were forced to flee their homes and seek shelter in miserable refugee camps. How many of the Afghan dead might have survived the winter had there been no bombing? How many are on the verge of starvation, subsisting, as various witnesses report, on wild grasses? Will those who are responsible for the death and suffering of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians ever be brought to justice? No way. Not in this world.

by George Capaccio

Dear Mr. President,

Now that you have met your objectives in Afghanistan, I understand that you are wrestling with the question of which country to attack next. It appears that Iraq is somewhere near the top of your list of potential targets. Despite the U.S. ban on traveling to Iraq, I have gone there many times in the past five years, and have developed close and lasting friendships with families in Baghdad and Basra.

When you consider whether to bomb Iraq in your pursuit of “justice” for the events of September 11, I want you to understand something about the people who live there, ordinary individuals whose lives are not terribly different from those of their American counterparts.

by George Capaccio

This January (2002), on my way home from Iraq, I met an old friend in Jordan’s Queen Alia airport. She is Palestinian and had been visiting her family in Amman. I had spent the previous three weeks living with families in Baghdad and Basra as a member of a Voices in the Wilderness delegation. It was my eighth visit to Iraq in nearly five years. My friend and I were returning on the same flight to Boston. As we waited for the boarding call, she told me stories about life on the West Bank. The one I found most compelling concerned a Palestinian couple attempting to pass a checkpoint. The woman held her child in her arms and explained to the soldiers that the little girl was very ill. They needed to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible. The Israeli soldiers told the couple they would have to come back in the morning.

They argued, they pleaded. But the soldiers were steadfast. The man and woman walked back to their home about a mile away. During that long night, their little girl died. She died in her mother’s arms. The woman would not surrender her child. In the morning she returned, with her husband, to the same checkpoint. This time, they explained to the soldiers, theywanted to bury their child in the cemetery that lay a short distance away. The soldiers told them to wait. When the husband asked for a reason, one of the men pointed his gun at him and ordered him to shut up.