Stop the War in Iraq Before 'Shock and Awe'
Voices in the Wilderness/Iraq Peace Team
March 4, 2002

We, the undersigned 20 members of the Iraq Peace Team in Baghdad, write you from the brink of tragedy – a flesh and blood tragedy for the people of Iraq, a moral tragedy for the people of the U.S.

We write you as the U.S. has assembled one of the mightiest war machines ever to plague this fragile and bloodied planet. This war machine is poised to attack Iraq – a comparatively defenseless nation already crippled by years of UN sanctions. A nation whose misfortune, it has been said, is that "our" oil is beneath its sands.

The attack - its Pentagon architects proudly call it "shock and awe" - may happen any day now. It’s aimed at the cradle of much of the world’s civilization. Land of the Tigris and Euphrates, land of Sumer and Babylon, land of Abraham and the Garden of Eden, Iraq is also the land of 24 million human beings - most of whom would be too young to vote or enlist if they were in the U.S.

We were immensely heartened by the marches in the U.S. and all over the world on February 15. We are aware that many in the U.S. will hit the streets the very day "shock and awe" commences.

Given its unimaginable scale, its unthinkable carnage, however, "shock and awe" must be stopped BEFORE it happens.

Our Call, then, is for PRE-EMPTIVE nonviolent civil disobedience action in every village and city and capitol in the U.S.

Please join us. We must all mobilize all of our networks. We must all use our collective resourcefulness. We must find ways to throw sand in the gears of the war machine. The precise date of the U.S. attack is unknown, but there is reason to believe it may be very soon.

The time to act is now.

The Iraq Peace Team:

Cynthia Banas, Michael Birmingham, Cathy Breen, Chris Doucot, Kathy Kelly, Scott Kerr, Edward Kinane, Cliff Kindy, Ramzi Kysia, Michael Ferner, Doug Johnson, Charlie Litekey, Lisa Martens, Elaine Martinez, Lisa Ndejuru, Bettejo Passalaqua, Mary Burton, Risely Trisch Schuh, Neville Watson, Jerry Zawada

Iraq Peace Team is a project of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the sanctions on Iraq. The goal is to place hundreds of international activists in major Iraqi cities before and during another attack. Activists will document and report on the humanitarian consequences a new war would have on ordinary people living in Iraq.