Letter: A protest against Madeline Albright at Knox College
June 21, 2008
Substance:
I sent the following letter to local papers about the visit of Madeleine Albright to Knox College for the commencement last school year. (Letter to the editor on Madeleine Albrights Galesburg visit (Knox college commencement, etc.)
Dear Editor,
As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica 76-78, where they have no military, and therefore no wars, I would like to remind folks of a statement that Madeleine Albright once made. And since I once fasted (liquids only) with ten others in front of the United Nations for 20 days to protest the policy of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, resulting from the first Persian Gulf War, Desert Storm, when the first George Bush was commander in chief, I add that. George Bush Sr. was also once head of the CIA. The Sanctions were only hurting the innocent, and upwards of 1/2 million children from Iraq perished over this policy, if not for the lack of basic food stuffs and medicine. Besides being the cradle of civilization, Iraq once had an advanced medical system, with great doctors, and fine facilities.
Of course the UN fast was before President George W. Bush launched a second war against Iraq. Others including Nobel Peace prize nominee Kathy Kelly, a former Chicago teacher, fasted for 40 days. I felt that I had to return to work.
At the start of the US war against Iraq, Kathy sat down in the desert where troops from both sides were facing off, until she was swooped up and taken to Baghdad, where she witnessed the horrific bombing during the onset of the war, huddling with the masses of innocent civilians that she had met from having taken medicines there, in spite of the sanctions policy, risking imprisonment, while the terrifying US bombs and missiles destroyed the city for a second time.
It is no lie to say that “War is terrorism too.”
The question that we and other anti-war activists remember, when the name Madeleine Albright is mentioned is: when asked “Do you think the price is worth it?” in relation to the economic sanctions against Iraq which started after the first Mr. Bush’s war, and continued during the Clinton White House, when asked about the more than 500,000 Iraqi children that had died because of the sanctions policy, she stated:? “Yes, we think the price is worth it.”
While considering the question: Which candidate would be best on National Security, might we remember that other nations have national security concerns also.? Maybe we should ask?
the Vietnamese, and Nicaraguans which US candidate they feel would be best for their National Security. The “scare word” used to be “Communism”, which was declared dead after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now the “scare word” is “terrorism”. After 911, the US had ample support in the world if they only could do what was right. Remember that no “weapons of mass destruction” (now that was the scare word) were found in Iraq.
The ones that they did have were given to Iraq by the US during the Iraq-Iran war, when Saddam was “our man in Baghdad”. Even some that have worked in W’s white house have gone public with other truths like Iraq had no connections to Al-Qaida, or Bin Laden, nor did Saddam Hussein.
We have overstayed our welcome, needless to say, but since a humongous US embassy has been constructed in Baghdad, no wonder we didn’t leave after toppling Saddam, or after his execution. Oil anyone?
So now we must ask ourselves in consideration of the more than 4,000 US soldiers that have died, and tens of thousands more maimed and wounded, Do you think the price is worth it? And you can go to (iraqbodycount.org) to find out about Iraqi casualties. You will see estimates of between 84,663 and 92,354 deaths of civilians from the violence. Some University studies have gone ten times higher than that.
Those of us that remember the 58,000 soldiers that died in “Our War” in Viet Nam, the longest war in US History, remember how we felt back then. Can you imagine how the people of Iraq feel now? And then there was the more than two million Vietnamese that perished, that is so easily forgotten. Isn’t it time to wage peace?
John Whitfield
JWhitfi894@aol.com
