By Joan Chittister, OSB
[Program Note: Erie Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister has
accepted an invitation to be a panel member on the special Easter Sunday
edition of NBCs Meet the Press public affairs television
program. The program will air Sunday, April 16 at 10 a.m. (eastern time). The
Meet the Press Web site,
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608,
carries a video and written transcript of each program soon after
airing.]
The question to the group of women delegates from Iraq was
What would you like to see come out of this meeting?
I was not prepared either for the answer or for its explanation:
What we need now, one of the Iraqi woman said, is the end of
the blood-letting. Women are very necessary to this operation. Fifty-five to 60
percent of Iraqis are women. The minority is ruling ... Women must interfere in
the affairs of men. We should take over.
It was hardly a statement I expected to hear in this place from these
women. But I couldnt forget it.
The minority is ruling. Right. And not too well, it seems,
either here or there.
When men sit down to negotiate peace treaties -- when theres even
someone to negotiate with, which, given al-Qaeda, is not a luxury we seem to
have anymore -- they disband armies and guard borders and hold military
tribunals and form new governments and punish old ones. But they put no faces
on the victims.
When they tote up the cost of the war, they do not include the number of
women raped, the number of families displaced, the number of schools bombed, or
the number of babies without milk.
The victors take their spoils, monitor the guns, forget the defenseless
and leave the people to clean up the rubble. War becomes the daily dirge of the
anonymous victims.
But when you bring women together to discuss the effects of war, the
things that need to be changed, the real problems of a war-torn society, the
conversation takes a sudden turn.
At the first Iraqi-American dialogue convened by the Womens Global
Peace Initiative in New York on March 29, the differences were plain. The
womens first agenda did not concentrate on who did what or who profited
or lost by the doing of it. Take the oil. We dont care about the
oil, one woman called across the room. We never got any value from
it anyway, she went on. Never mind yesterday, another woman
said in answer to the Sunni- Shiite tensions. Forget who did what
to whom. We must turn the page now. We must rebuild the country.
And what is the first thing that must be done to rebuild the
country? we asked them. I sat with my hands over the keyboard, sure that
the list would be long and varied. I was wrong. To a woman, the call was clear:
Take care of our children.
It was a sobering moment. Take care of our children. Oh,
them, I thought. The tiny, the forgotten, targets of this
war.
Take care of the ones who now carry within themselves the sour taste of
fear that came as bombs dropped through the dark sky shaking their houses,
destroying their streets. Take care of the children, the ones who went cold as
stone at the loss of brothers and fathers and dead playmates.
Take care of the ones who felt the sweat of terror when the doors of the
homes in which they were sure they were safe broke down in the middle of the
night or the lights went out or their mothers wrapped their shawls around their
heads and cried. Take care of the ones who went into psychic paralysis at the
sight of blood and bodies. Take care of the ones who woke up one morning to
find their lives completely disrupted for no apparent reason.
Take care of the ones to whom then Secretary of State Colin Powell was
apparently referring when a reporter asked him how many Iraqis had been killed
or injured at that point in the war and his answer was, That is a number
in which I have absolutely no interest whatsoever.
But maybe he and we should all rethink that answer. Because these
children do not feel liberated by this war; in these children the
seeds of the next war have already been planted.
The Iraqi women were very clear: the most injured of all in this war are
the children of Iraq. The war has made deep wounds that have become part
of our souls, another woman said. They can never be forgotten. The
living conditions, the lack of security is affecting everything the children
do. They cannot even deliver newspapers anymore.
Their schooling has been interrupted. Even if the school buildings still
stand, there are no supplies for them. And there are few people in them anyway.
Teachers are dead. Classmates are gone from the area -- refugees somewhere or
dead themselves. Most of all, their parents are afraid to send them out of the
house even if the schools are undamaged.
Our childhood is killed in Iraq, a woman said. It is
killed.
The small jobs children once held to help with family expenses are gone
now. No one buys flowers on the street now. No one drives a car whose windows
they can wash.
Drugs are flooding the streets now and drugs are the best and quickest
way to ease the pain.
The number of street children -- children whose parents are dead, whose
extended families are fractured -- have multiplied beyond anything modern Iraq
has ever known.
Orphans are a commodity now in Iraq but orphanages are not. We are
taking care of the orphans, trying to give them love, the woman said.
But they are traumatized. They dont speak.
Recreational programs are a thing of the past, so children are restless
or rebellious or simply bored with life.
Fifty percent of the bodies in the hospital are women and
children, the doctor said. We are afraid that a large number of
children will be affected by the depression of their mothers and the loss of
their fathers and the poverty of their families.
The future of Iraq is at stake. But it is not the banking system the
women are concerned about. It is the treasure of the nation that is being
squandered, they know. It is their future. It is their children.
The U.S. budget for fiscal year 2007, according to The National
Priorities Project, earmarks 51 percent of all discretionary spending for
military use. Spending on the Iraq War in fiscal year 2006 alone will
reach $96 billion, the Project reports. (www.nationalpriorities.org)
The Bush budget calls for the elimination or reduction of 141 domestic
programs. Among other things, we cut the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program
for Women, Infants and Children by $200 million and the department of education
by 9 percent and eliminate vocational education. Level funding is
provided for other domestic programs.
The overall cost of the war in Iraq for the United States is already
being estimated at at least a trillion dollars. But so far not a penny of it is
specified for the children. Neither theirs nor ours.
We see the prisoners rights, another delegate said
sadly, but where are the rights of the children.
From where I stand, I cant help but wonder that if we sold some of
our weapons and used the money to buy crayons, food, houses and schools for
Iraqi children, we could stop worrying about being terrorized ourselves.
Indeed, the minority is ruling. Maybe the Iraqi womans idea about what to
do about it wouldnt be a bad one after all.
Editors Note: From Where I Stand is normally
posted to
NCRonline.org Thursday afternoons, but Sr. Joan Chittisters
heavier than usual schedule of speaking engagements in April has disrupted our
posting routines. We are sorry for the delays and ask your patience.
Comments or questions about this column may be sent to: Sr. Joan Chittister,
c/o NCR web coordinator at the address below.
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