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DEMILITARIZED ZONE PEACE TENT STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
Iraq Peace Team
Baghdad, Iraq
February 22, 2003
We, the Iraq Peace Team (IPT), assembled here in Baghdad, recognize that we are indeed half-past the eleventh hour for preserving peace and averting unimaginable suffering. Because the time remaining is so short and the stakes are so high, we are impelled to take uncommon measures. We ask people of goodwill, particularly our colleagues in the U.S. peace movement, to take uncommon measures as well.
On Monday, February 24, we will travel into the Demilitarized Zone along the Iraq—Kuwait border, across which 90,000 U.S. troops are ready to advance. There, we will pitch a tent and conduct a four-day, water-only fast to focus the eyes of the world on our message directed to U.S. military personnel and to U.S. citizens.
First, to U.S. soldiers and sailors: our prayer for every one of you is for a quick return to families and loved ones without having to participate in the horrors of war. We recognize that you have been placed in a position full of anxiety and danger, and we share in the responsibility for you being here. We recognize you are in this position because back home we do not truly govern ourselves—but are instead ruled by a minority who decide questions of war and peace in the interests of the few instead of the many. Our inadequate democracy has led us into deadly quagmires in the past, and now to the brink of another conflict that can only be described as a tragic war of empire.
That tragedy, now within sight, will be all encompassing. The decisions we make in the next few days and weeks will forever change the lives of millions of people. Not only will you, our American brothers and sisters suffer greatly if war is waged, but so will the family we have come to know over many months here in Iraq—the common, decent, ordinary people who populate this country’s cities and villages; who work in its shops and restaurants; go to school; practice their religion; celebrate birthdays and weddings and funerals; who, like the innocents in every war will bear the greatest suffering—-and who are virtually indistinguishable from our families back home, especially in their desire for peace. Indeed, it was General and President Dwight Eisenhower who told us, “Remember that all people of all nations want peace. Only their governments want war.” We ask you, our fellow citizens, to think with your head and your heart and do the right thing.
And secondly, to those of you who marched in New York and San Francisco and Houston and Detroit and Peoria and a thousand other communities on February 15, we say this: our historic day of protest was not the end of our efforts, but only the beginning. With the hour terribly late and our leaders still ignoring us, the only thing that can avert war and a humanitarian disaster in Iraq is for people of conscience all over the United States to conduct a massive, preemptive sit-down for peace. It is time once again to use this non-violent, powerful, American-as-apple-pie recipe for justice that won unions for workers in the 1930’s, civil rights for African-Americans in the 50’s and 60’s, and human rights for millions more.
This is our call, our appeal, our prayer from here in Baghdad to our friends and compatriots in the United States. Peace can still be preserved. Devastation can still be avoided. But you must go beyond what you think you can do. You must up the ante. With cataclysm hanging over our heads you must refuse to conduct business as usual. You must individually and collectively throw a giant wrench into the machinery of war. As Daniel Berrigan advised us, “the peace movement will only achieve success when it shows the same courage for peace as soldiers do for war.”
We are capable of such courage. We must use it now.
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