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A Call to Arms By an Enemy of War Against Iraq<br>By Courtland Milloy<br><br>(The Washington Post) - Wednesday, November 13, 2002<br>Scott Ritter, the ex-Marine and former U.N. arms inspector, peppered<br>his Veterans Day talk at the University of Maryland with the kinds of<br>questions and challenges that are known to fire up an audience.<br><br>"The average age of a lance corporal is 20," Ritter said. "The average<br>age of a college student is 20." Calling the students in the audience<br>"just kids," he asked who among them could wake up the next morning, look<br>in the mirror and honestly say that "what's going on in Iraq is worthy of my<br>life."<br><br>At the same time, did the students really know enough about Iraq to<br>sit back silently while others go off to die for them? And did they<br>really understand that war is not the Nintendo game that we see on<br>television, that it is, in fact, about "terminating life" and nothing more?<br><br>Hundreds of people had filled a ballroom inside the Stamp Student<br>Union to hear Ritter, a military man turned anti-war advocate who has been<br>denounced by hawks as unpatriotic for his views. He was invited to speak by<br>a<br>campus organization, and his appearance drew a wide range of students from<br>dozens of countries.<br><br>Ritter contended that it was ridiculous for an uninformed Congress to<br>give President Bush sole power to wage war: "It's like going to a doctor<br>who says you have a brain tumor and that he needs to chop off your head<br>so he can dig it out. You say, 'Wait, that's kind of extreme. May I see the<br>X-rays?' And the doctor says, 'Don't worry about X-rays. Just trust<br>me on this.'"<br><br>The students laughed, but Ritter cut them off, saying: "Don't blame<br>Congress or Bush. You are the government. They just represent you.<br>What they are doing is happening in your name."<br><br>Drawing on his experience as an intelligence officer during the<br>Persian Gulf War and on his seven years as a U.N weapons inspector in Iraq,<br>Ritter painted a disturbing picture of wat has been happening in that<br>country since the Gulf War and the imposition of economic sanctions.<br><br>He talked about babies drinking water contaminated by sewage because<br>purification plants have been bombed. Mothers carry them to doctors<br>and are told that nothing can be done. Medicines have gone bad because<br>refrigerators don't work; bombs have knocked out electric power<br>plants as well.<br><br>"Keep this in the back of your head: About 3,000 Iraqi children are<br>starving to death each month -- outside the view of American<br>heartstrings," Ritter said. "Suppose every month 3,000 Iraqi children were<br>lined up<br>and we threatened to shoot them if Saddam Hussein didn't do what we wanted.<br>Suppose we gave orders for the Marines to shoot them. Well, nothing<br>would happen because Marines don't shoot kids. But that doesn't mean<br>America doesn't kill children. We just starve them to death.<br><br>"But we're only talking about dead brown people," Ritter added<br>sarcastically. "Don't let that little fact get in the way. If 250,000<br>white babies were going to starve to death, this sanctions policy wouldn't<br>last long at all. But somehow a child's death doesn't hurt brown mothers<br>as much as it hurts white mothers."<br><br>Ritter made the case that America is hellbent on war with Iraq no<br>matter what U.N. arms inspectors find if readmitted to that country. Why?<br>We<br>want to control Mideast oil.<br><br>"We see the world as one big grocery store," he said. When the United<br>States needs another country's natural resource, he said, we will<br>make friends with oppressive regimes to get it, steal it or take it by<br>>force.<br><br>Ritter said we obtain copper "by propping up African dictators who<br>send their people into copper mines where they die by the thousands just<br>so our lives can be made more comfortable."<br><br>Instead of hunting down terrorists with Predator drones, only to see<br>them replaced by more terrorists, better to ask why and how people become<br>terrorists in the first place, Ritter said.<br><br>"The anti-American sentiment is out there, and it's not because<br>people are jealous of us," he said. "People don't like us because we're a<br>bunch<br>of obnoxious, ignorant lies."<br><br>He closed by asking the students whether they really wanted such<br>oppressive, undemocratic practices carried out in their names.<br><br>"Hell no!" came the response.<br><br>"Then it's not too late to send a message that this is not a war that<br>we will stand for," he said, bringing many students to their feet in<br>applause.<br> <b off></b>
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