What will it take to move me?

I followed Saddam Hussein’s trial as it happened. I saw the contempt he showed towards the whole trial and as everything unravelled I wondered when he would break. He never did. Right to the time when he walked up to his hanging he did so with dignity like a man sure of his strength to face his own destiny. Whatever a man has done in his life it is how he faces his own certain death that you know what he really is made of. To me Saddam did not let himself down. Can you figure out how Bush would have faced the gallows if the tables were turned?

 

Let me make it clear that I do not at any time condone what Sadam has done during his rule of Iraq but to watch America’s shock and awe annihilation of Iraq is totally surreal. Its use of overwhelming power and spectacular display of force so mesmerised me that I forgot that the targets they were hitting were also the people of Bagdad. But of course the reassurances that “ we do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties in all of our operations” made what the Americans were doing in Baghdad okay for most of the western world.

 

The ability of civilized powers to inflict death and destruction upon its own never ceases to amaze me. The Vietnam Conflict saw over three million Vietnamese dead on both sides – North and South. About 60,000 Americans died – mostly young people.

Hiroshima 135,000 dead. Nagasaki 64,000 dead. And 95% of these deaths were from burns – a horrible and painful death.

 

I watch in horror not understanding how it is possible for Africans to hack another human being without mercy and then turn on his wife and children to do the same again and again. Closer to home in East Timor in October 1999 Up to 400 people perished in a brutal massacre at Suai as a result of a brutal and destructible military operation by the Indonesian Army.

At what point does an intolerable wrong within a sovereign state’s borders require forming a UN posse to aid victims and punish wrongdoers?

 

At what point does the world stop depending on posses and institutionalize a system of international law enforcement? “Peace on Earth, by Posse,” New York Times editorial, 28 December 1992.

I really do not know at what point we human recoil from too much suffering and too many deaths so as to start clamoring for something to be done. What happened in Serbia, in Sudan, Palestine – all these terrible conflicts never moved me to do more then stop and think when would all this stop? Maybe for a few minutes I will ponder  - and when I am confronted by images of children suffering – I will ponder harder and my heart will be still for the suffering that those innocent children had to endure for the follies of others who should know better. But that is all that I do.

 

Always it is the innocent and the weak that suffers. The madness of war and conflicts makes orphans of these children and widows of their mother. And yet how can it be stopped if even I was not moved to do anything more then ponder. Why would anyone else do anything? 

How indeed? Sometimes I wish I could engage in conversation with those people who have taken the effort to commit themselves to organizations that try to make a difference to those that suffer from these conflicts. Maybe they could explain why they do what they do. I am not ashamed or embarrass that I do nothing – but I do wonder why my heart is heavy with sadness at images of children sufferings, at the suffering of the weak, at the way that women bear the brunt of the suffering. But not enough to want to do anything. Dear God what will it take to move me?