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Speech by Dr Carmen Lawrence MHR, Sydney Palm Sunday Rally, 2003We are here to speak for peace. To argue that organised mass murder is not the civilised way to solve our problems; that an empire founded on weapons of mass destruction and preventive war is not how the world should be run. We argue for peace, having just gazed into the maw of death, the charnel house of war. We have seen the all-too-familiar face of modern warfare and we know what is to come. We have Â- at a distance Â- seen the smashed bodies, the mutilated children and glimpsed broken lives visited by random, indiscriminate destruction; how many is not certain Â- but we can be certain that it is too many. We have heard the predictable excuses and discounting of these lives as necessary sacrifices: "some deaths are unavoidable"; "we have been precise in our targeting",and the morally repugnant "Saddam would kill more". So we add to the brutality? We have seen, albeit dimly, the terror of bombardment Â- as well as the videogame images Â- and we know from the last war that some of the witnesses quivering in fear will never recover their sanity; others will be permanently scarred. We have been amazed at the perverse fastidiousness that refuses to show the reality of killing on the grounds that it might offend us. We know but little of the tens of thousands of Iraqi conscripts unburied and unmourned under the merciless bombardment of the United States' war machine. We have heard the triumphal roar of the victors in the most one-sided contest the world has ever seen; their celebrations of the monstrous cluster bombs designed carefully to slice human flesh. We stand helplessly by while Iraq's great cities and ancient culture are looted and burned in Rumsfeld's "untidy" freedom; while Shia is set against Sunni; as the invading forces stoke ethnic hatred by their inactivity; while vigilantes kill to protect themselves and their property and settle old scores Â- blood washes blood; while hospital equipment is carried away and beds pulled from under the blood soaked wounded. We watch as people struggle in darkness, without enough food and water, strangled by their invading armies. We hear voices that just days ago were raised in joy at the removal of Saddam, now shrieking in despair and anger at the chaos and the mayhem the "liberation" has become. We understand that it is not yet over; nor will it be when the bombs stop falling. That depleted uranium will blow in the desert winds for generations to come with its legacy of birth defects and cancers. That unexploded cluster bombs will continue to kill and maim as they did a crawling babe yesterday in Baghdad. We know that unless order is restored there will be no spring plantings and the Iraqis will be even more dependent on handouts for their survival. We know there is fall-out for the victors too Â- the young, dead soldiers and those whose lives are changed forever; the marine who killed two children at point blank range at the checkpoint; the nightmares; the drug abuse; the ruined marriages Â- and their government will forget them. We know Â- or we should Â- that our leaders who chose this war above peaceful means lied to us about their real intentions; that the weapons of mass destruction have provided elusive, necessitating the shift to regime change. Why kill so many to remove one man? We know that the same countries supported, funded and encouraged the same brute whose removal they now use as justification for killing the people he oppressed and persecuted. We know that many of the U.S. soldiers were encouraged by their own cynical government to believe they were taking revenge for the murders in their country on September 11; it was not accident that the flag placed on the face of the fallen statute of Saddam Hussein was the one flying at the Pentagon that day. We fear that this war will give great heart to those who see violence and killing as legitimate instruments of foreign policy; that the U.S. will be even less likely to co-operate with others to achieve world peace and disarmament. "The problem after war is with the victor. He thinks he has proved that war and violence pay. Who will teach him a lesson?" We understand deep in our hearts that war represents the total failure of the human spirit. We have seen the face of war and we want peace. |
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© Walk Against the War Coalition 2003. |
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