I’m going to Iraq. What else can I do?
By Shane Mulligan

I’m going to Iraq. And it scares me a bit. I decided for sure only a few days ago, bought my ticket and started packing: two wool blankets, a first aid manual, a book of “games for the road”. It’s a long way to Baghdad.

I’m not going as a soldier, armed and ready to do my government’s bidding. I’ll not be carrying a gun at all, nor am I under anyone’s command. I’m going in peace, as what some would call a “human shield”. I would sooner call myself a visitor, curious and concerned and hoping I can help some people who have, through no fault of their own, suffered far more than I can imagine. I want to see for myself who the Iraqi people are, for I’ve heard good things about them. Among other things, I want to see how 23 million people survive under the modern siege warfare we euphemistically call “sanctions”.

Most of my friends are supportive, some a bit shocked, some even say they’re envious. I haven’t told my mother yet. I imagine she’ll feel as any mother does when her son goes off to war. And I am going to war, though not to fight in any army. I’m going to resist the war itself. I’m going to wage peace.

But I am aware it is not only warriors who die and suffer in wartime. The UN estimates half a million casualties if Iraq is invaded. I could be among them. What’s one more? In fact, I doubt the public outcry will increase as the estimates rise. So it’s 600,000 Iraqi casualties. So it’s a million. Surely authorities will still tell us, coolly, it’s ‘worth it’.

I confess I don’t see it that way. But to be sure, statistics make humanity invisible. So I’m going to Iraq to meet some people. I’ll likely become friends with some of them. And then I will know a little better what it means when we tabulate casualties. One is a local beggar, a taxi driver, or a neighbor’s baby girl. Five is the entire family. Five hundred, a school full of children. But a million…?

A million. That’s almost the whole of Essex. Knowing only a few people in Essex, maybe I wouldn’t feel it so much. It would be worse if it was Cambridgeshire, even though it’s half the size, as I know and care about people here. And I would be one.

Then again, of a million Iraqi casualties, I could also be one. So why in God’s name am I going?

I can’t imagine anyone would choose to go to war, if not for a feeling that what they were doing was, somehow, right. I think I’m right to go, for it is as strong a statement of opposition to this tragedy as I can make.

Surely the soldiers think they’re right to go as well. The thing is, I can’t quite understand how they see the situation. They can’t really believe the claims made by Tony and George … can they? I guess propaganda is effective precisely because we don’t see it as such.

But I don’t want to instruct them. I don’t want to talk about why I oppose the war. I know why, and you know why. And I think George and Tony know, damn well, why.

Effective propaganda breeds consent. Combined with democracy as we know it, acquiescence has become a political virtue. And it seems we are allowing this ‘virtue’ over all others, including compassion, prudence, and decency. Sure, we may ‘freely’ criticize and complain about our leaders in print and the pub. We can be fairly confident the state won’t abuse us under its monopoly on ‘legitimate’ violence. The leaders won’t listen to us, of course… but that’s just part of the deal.

I can’t keep doing it like that. Not now. The stakes are too high, the threat too ominous, the deed too gross. I will not ‘follow the leader’ down this contemptible path. It is remarkable how many wise people have said, in one way or another, that inaction in the face of injustice is a form of complicity. Something must be done.

And in terms of action, I think there are few things the government wants me to do less than visit Iraq. (For US citizens, it is in fact a crime.) That’s encouraging. Maybe they’re worried I’ll realize the Iraqis are real people, nice people, and I’ll be less willing to finance their mass murder. Maybe Tony fears it will be a political liability to bomb his own people. Maybe they, the big they, just don’t like that I’m going to see for myself, that I’m not taking anyone’s word for it, that I withdraw my acquiescence, which they have so long assumed as my consent.

Of course, Iraq has its own propaganda, and some say my actions will be used to serve Saddam’s interests. That may be so. And if I stay, quietly loathing the news, my silence will be used for somebody’s politics. I’m not doing this for the benefit of any government. I don’t support the state of Iraq any more than I do the British or American regimes. Humanity deserves better than to be subject to politics.

But I accept that many have more faith in George and Tony and their politics than I have. And one of those true believers may be ordered to shoot me, or drop a bomb on me, and it may go poorly for me. I guess that’s what one gets for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All I know is I won’t be alone. Some 23 million innocent Iraqis, and at least a few westerners, will be there with me.

XXX

Shane Mulligan is a doctoral candidate in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is going to Iraq with the Human Shield Action organized by Ken Nichols O’Keefe. For more information see www.uksociety.org.