I was deeply moved by the article "A Correspondent Comes Home" by Dahr Jamail that appeared in AlterNet on June 2, 2005. He had been back in this country for three months, but his heart and mind were still in Iraq, where he had witnessed real people undergoing real hardship on a daily basis. Our relative ease and removal from the situation seemed surreal to him. He said, "I keep wondering how long so many people in my home country will continue to ignore it, to be complicit, whether they know it or not, in our brutal occupation - so long after it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that this war was illegal and based on nothing but lies. I can't help wondering as well how long they will be complicit as their tax dollars continue to be spent on a war machine that is eating their children and loved ones, along with innocent Iraqis; complicit as social programs and benefits, civil rights and liberties are stripped from them - a little more with each passing day.

"Even a debate among anti-war groups about whether the United States should withdraw immediately or propose a phased withdrawal on a timetable was capable of sending me off the rails. All I could think was: Silly debate. As though either view of how "we" should proceed mattered, as though their opinions carry the slightest weight with the no-timetable Bush administration." Jamail traveled the U.S. giving presentations and trying to get us to see the truth and feel the truth in our hearts. He wondered why there were not throngs of people in the streets every day expressing their outrage.

One of the people who had attended his presentation about the realities of the war wrote to Jamail's habibi (translator and dear friend) Abu Talat to express the remorse felt by thinking Americans for what our power elite had done to his country. Abu Talat answered the man with eloquent and reasoned protest of the situation, but with unconditional acceptance of the man, and I realized how very different things would be if the situation were reversed and this barbaric country of ours had been ravaged by a foreign power and then "reconstructed" in a manner totally alien to us. Would we be so quick to accept and forgive? How long did it take us to forgive Japan and Germany (who never set foot on American soil), even though international sanctions were brought against them? Abu Talat returned the following response:

"Thank you Americans (those who believe that American troops are destroying Iraq). Those who believe that facts cannot be hidden with chicken mesh. Who believe they have no right to put ideas in the minds of people of a civilized country, a country in which civilization began before the United States existed. Those people who know that democracy is not given, it is obtained. Who know that Iraqis are people who have to live just like any nation. Who believe that we are no different in the ability of our minds because God made us all so you cannot force us to have the ideas of others unless we accept it after we are fully contented. Those people of the world who raise their voices against colonialism, control, force, the invading of other countries. I thank them, I encourage them, and I ask God to save them.

"Other people of the world who are not on these ethics, who don't implement those ideas, I call them to look around themselves, to awaken themselves, to put themselves in our position. To face what we face, to remember that they don't accept in any way to be insulted, nor to be threatened or killed like what is happening in my country by the invaders. I ask God to spare any difficulty from their country rather than being invaded.

"Is there anyone in the world who can accept to be killed? Or detained for no reason? Is there any of you who can accept to be put in the situation we are facing, to see their houses crashed or demolished, ended, to see your people treated with no respect, to have guns aimed at them wherever they go, to live without electricity when you used to have it, to see roads closed"¦.

"So please tell your friends and people to raise their voices to pull the troops out from invaded Iraq."

The horror of this war reaches across the ocean. The most obvious effects are in Iraq; an ancient civilization lies in ruins, families have been torn apart, survivors are worse off than their beloved dead - and all of this was done in the name of my country. That two-year-old garishly adorned with the blood of her slain parents who was driven from their side by an armed invader could easily and rightfully grow up hating all of us. This gives rise to a secondary effect here in this country, on the part of our disillusioned troops as they return, on the part of those of us who care, who consider those Iraqi families as our own distant relatives, who view their nation as a neighbor. My heart broke as I felt the guilt and remorse that comes with a wrong unrectified, a responsibility abdicated by me - or at least in my name - and my compatriots. What can we do? What dare we do?

By means of a Comment to Jamail's article, I thanked AlterNet for publishing the article, and I thanked Jamail for coming out of his darkness long enough to write his highly personal account. Then I addressed myself to Abu Talat and expressed my feelings of deep remorse and hope for a better future for us all, and having done so, I felt a little better. At least one Iraqi knows that at least three Americans - Jamail, the other person who wrote to him, and I - are aware of the enormous injury they have endured and deeply regret that there was nothing we could do to prevent it or stop it once it had begun. And I got an idea that made me feel better still. "I'm feeling blue in a red state, and I'm sure I'm not alone."

I know that there is nothing I can do about the inequities in the federal budget, but I have hopes that the DoP will be able to address that issue. However, I also know that there are others who feel that deep personal remorse, who want to reach out to the Iraqis and let them know that we know they are not our enemies and hope that we are not theirs, who want the Iraqis to know that we do not support the self-serving deception of those who have perpetrated and perpetuated this illegal and immoral war in the name of our country. So today I am writing to Jamail himself to try to find out if there are other Iraqis with access to the internet who would accept e-pals from among those of us in this country who want to reach across the ocean and try to touch the hearts of those we have wronged with the healing energy of our own hearts. When (if) I get an answer, further information will be found on the SC DoP Campaign pages.