Soapbox: A Southerner’s experience leading up to the Iraq war
November 28, 2007 at 1:37 pm by Soapbox Editor in SoapboxBy Heather Gray
On Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington D.C. after arriving from Atlanta, Ga., the evening of Sept. 10. I was there for an agriculture meeting. On that fateful day I met colleagues from Arkansas and South Carolina for a breakfast meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. It was to be the start of a daylong session on sustainable agriculture with agriculture advocates and members of Congress. As we walked into Rayburn on the morning of 9/11, our world was transformed. It was a time when the best and worst in America rose to the surface.
Coming into Rayburn, we passed guards whose eyes were transfixed on the television. We asked what was happening. “A plane flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York,” they said. We thought it was a fluke–an error of some sort by a misguided plane. We looked briefly at the television and then continued to the cafeteria in the basement where we met two of our friends. There were not a lot of people in the cafeteria at the time, but those who were there already seemed rather bleak. People were on their cell phones and not looking directly at anyone. Then we heard that the second World Trade tower had been struck, and we knew that something orchestrated and sinister was at play.
Suddenly, there was an announcement in the cafeteria that Rayburn was being evacuated. We joined the throng of employees who rushed out of Rayburn and the surrounding buildings. A few hundred yards from Rayburn we heard what sounded like a bomb — everyone around me bolted and then ran faster from the scene. I looked back to see that the sound was likely from military jets that were already flying over the city and breaking the sound barrier as they flew close to the buildings.
The U.S. response began on Oct. 7, 2001, when the United States and Britain began their bombing attack against Afghanistan — everyone tragically abuses and victimizes Afghanistan, both the East and the West. Little did I think that within two years we would also witness the utter destruction of the beautiful, ancient Baghdad and the deaths of thousands of Iraqis (77,272 according to the independent Iraq Body Count) and of thousands of American youths (3,733 according to the Iraq Body Count). What a catastrophe of yet-untold proportions! Reliable figures of Iraqi losses are not available through U.S. records — as Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the U.S. invasion, said, “We don’t do body counts.” If we talk about American “hubris,” Franks’ comment, much less the policy itself, has to be front and center!
But never has there been found anything to link Iraq with the 9/11 incident. In a twisted fashion, Iraqis are now blamed by the United States for destabilization of their own country that was, in fact, caused by the U.S. invasion and historic manipulation by the West. What we are witnessing is a classic “blame the victim” scenario.
When Bush said he was going after terrorists, I thought, “Great — maybe he’ll consider going after the Ku Klux Klan.” It, in fact, has done far more ongoing damage to Americans since its founding after the Civil War in 1865 than any entity in the Middle East.
Then began the next phase of the post-9/11 period. For the first six months or so, there was that feel of oppressive stagnation that seems to envelope the very air we breathe prior to war. As the Bush administration began rattling its sabers against Iraq, and false accusations began to fly about weapons of mass destruction and other lies in much of 2002, people were afraid to speak out.
Then finally in the summer of 2002, in Atlanta’s rather sedate Druid Hills neighborhood, there was a sign that read, “Say NO to War” — it lasted for a week. It was the first public display I’d seen. In the latter part of 2002, thanks to the local Quaker meeting, we began to see signs stating, “War is Not the Answer,” around the cities of Atlanta and Decatur. One of my friends in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland area who insisted on keeping the sign in her yard replaced it about four times, as people kept destroying it while walking by her house. She was and remains determined.
On Feb. 5, 2003, Colin Powell made his infamous argument for war against Iraq in a sea of lies at the United Nations — lies that Iraq held caches of weapons of mass destruction. He later said the speech was a “blot” on his record. Indeed!
As the pressure kept building and while Bush was clearly preparing for pre-emptive war against Iraq — a country that did nothing to us — impressively large demonstrations against the likely invasion took place all over the world. In fact, on the weekend of Feb. 15 and 16, 2003, there were estimates of anywhere from 8 million to 30 million protesters against war in Iraq in about 800 cities. It was considered the largest anti-war rally in history. What amazed me is that Bush, his cohorts and the unquestioning and complicit major media in the United States didn’t seem to blink an eye to the millions of protesters at home and abroad.
In fact, in a March 13, 2003, editorial, the Black Commentator wrote, “White America sees the world through the eyes of the mass murderer and slaveholder. Were it not so, there would not exist the grotesque disconnect between white American public opinion and the opinions of mankind, shared generally by Black America. Bush would not be possible.”
A couple of days prior to the March 20, 2003, U.S. invasion of Iraq, I called the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the renowned civil rights leader and former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference here in Atlanta, to ask if he would send a last-minute letter to the Rev. Billy Graham, whom Bush does apparently listen to — or so we assumed. He agreed to it. So we did exactly that. We first called Graham’s assistant to see if he would deliver a letter to Graham, and he said he would. We then drafted a letter and faxed it.
During the Vietnam War, Lowery had contacted Graham to alert him about the increasing racism during that period. Sometime later, after his appeal to Graham, Lowery said Graham came to visit him because Lowery had criticized his lack of response. Nothing positive came out of the visit.
From my own experience, I’ve found that conservative Southern white pastors tend not to focus on the social gospel. There is a distinction to be drawn between being evangelical and applying the social gospel of seeking justice for the poor and the exploited. Even now, after centuries of slavery, the advent of Jim Crow in the South and racism as its legacy, these pastors will not rock the boat. Unfortunately, they also see the world “through the eyes of the mass murderer and slaveholder.”
Graham was not helpful during the Vietnam era, and Lowery was rather skeptical about anything he might do now. In any case, in the 2003 letter, Lowery essentially asked Graham to appeal to Bush to not go to war. He wrote that war would lead only to the senseless loss of life and a spiral of violence, and that serious and genuine diplomacy was needed. We assume Graham’s assistant gave the letter to him, but Lowery never heard back from Graham. So all of this was to no avail, but we tried.
Heather Gray produces “Just Peace” on WRFG-FM (89.3).
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