Editor’s Note: Mike Ferner spent the month of February 2003 in Baghdad and Basra, with Voices in the Wilderness. He is Communications Coordinator for the Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy and a member of Veterans for Peace. His articles have appeared in CounterPunch, truthout.org and Common Dreams. He served two terms on the Toledo City Council.

PA: From your experiences, what threat did Iraq pose?

MF: We certainly didn’t feel threatened as US citizens walking around the streets of Baghdad and Basra. We were welcomed warmly by everybody we met. As for any threat Iraq may have been to the US, I think that’s been pretty clearly been put into the “Bush lies” category.

PA: Do you sense that Americans are starting to question the seemingly easy victory claimed by the Bush administration?

MF: Bush’s poll numbers are one measure of public dissatisfaction with his policies in Iraq. And although not as scientific as a poll, I can tell you that the responses that we get on our Sunday peace picket lines in Toledo have improved. They have improved considerably just from passersby.

PA: We know the cost of this war in lives. What are some of the other costs for those of us living in the United States?

MF: The cost is impossible to estimate when you consider the various ways this war is going to cost us in lives lost, in lives ruined, of young men and women coming back in pieces, the incredible amount of money, and all of the good that could have been done with that money. I see tens of billions of dollars for this war, and I see national health care going down the toilet. It’s not just the direct dollars that are being spent on an immoral war, it’s also all of the things that aren’t going to be able to be done because that money has been thrown away. PA: Can you comment on the toll the war, has had on Iraq?

MF: It’s hard to believe how resilient the people of Iraq and the humanspirit are. It’s amazing. Prior to the US bombing and invasion, what I witnessed was an incredible spirit among the people there even though they suffered gravely from the 1991 war and 12 years of sanctions. You could tell even before the US bombing that life had been really stretched. It’s amazing to me how people in Iraq are living with any degree of humanity at this point. Their situation is desperate and their suffering will continue for generations because of what we’ve done. The depleted uranium munitions we fired has damned who knows how many hundreds of thousands, even millions of people to birth defects and illness. What our government has done is an international crime of an immense magnitude.

PA: Recently, Donald Rumsfeld implied that people who criticize Bush strengthen “the enemy.” What kind of effect does that comment have on people in the peace movement?

MF: It’s not made a bit of difference among the people I know in the peace movement, myself included. If anything it’s encouraged us to speak out louder than before. It’s the same comment that was made during the Johnson and Nixon administrations about protesters against the Vietnam War. It’s the same comment members of the Roman Senate probably made during the heyday of the Roman empire. There’s nothing new about it, and I hope it’s not scaring anybody today. It’s certainly not scaring members of the peace movement.

PA: Where do you see the peace movement heading, especially as we get closer to the 2004 elections?

MF: I hope the peace movement is committed to the long haul, a complete reordering of the country’s priorities and an effort to create a democracy here that we’ve never had. What I would like to see happen is for the peace movement to get really serious in its tactics and strategies. By that I mean digging in for the long haul, making presentations in every city, town and hamlet, talking to all sorts of groups, not just the already committed, and taking our message to literally everybody who will listen. And explaining how the lack of a democracy in this country has caused us to do the things that we’ve done, in this particular instance with the Iraq war, and of course many other things beyond that.

I’ll give you an example of one way that I think it would be good to frame this discussion. When I was in Iraq, a couple of us, who happen to be members of Veterans for Peace, took a statement to the UN officials that were guarding the buffer zone between Iraq and Kuwait. Our group, Voices in the Wilderness, had camped out for four days and fasted right at the border. Part of what we wanted to do was take a message to US troops. We did that as best we could by giving it to the UN officials asking them to pass it along their contacts to the US troop commanders in Northern Kuwait. Part of that statement said that we felt a responsibility for these young men and women being in the situation full of danger and anxiety because of our lack of democracy back home. What we’ve got is minority rule that looks out for the interests of the few rather than the interests of the many in this country. That has gotten us into quagmires and tragedies in the past and it will continue to do so, and it will keep us mired in this one much longer than we should be.

So our message to the troops is similar to the message that I hope the peace movement will very thoughtfully consider and take to our fellow citizens here. Unless we focus on the lack of democracy, we are fated to committing the same errors over and over again. It is not enough to have a movement that can respond to threats of war by getting out into the streets. It’s not enough even if that movement can put millions of people into the street and perhaps sway the hand of an administration that is hell bent on going to war. Because what we need to do is to look at the roots of war. Those roots are in the ability of corporations to run this government, make decisions and set policy that benefit a tiny portion of the population at the expense of everyone else.

That’s the message I think the peace movement needs to get across. It’s a message I think will resonate with people far beyond the ranks of the peace movement. I really hope that this terrible tragedy can be an opportunity for the peace movement to direct its message in a more fundamental way than it’s ever done before.