DisasterPhilosophy

Collateral Damage: Bethena
Cindy Sheehan from
Amman, Jordan


Last month when Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Ray McGovern and
I took over 300 people and a petition with over a
million signatures to Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi,
Chair House Judiciary Committee) demanding
impeachment, we believed we were morally correct then.
Despite Rep. Conyers' long record of public service to
our nation and several private meetings that went
absolutely nowhere, and despite the mild to severe
criticism we have received, we believed then and still
believe now that impeaching BushCo is a
Constitutionally mandated requirement and a necessary
tool to reclaim our representative republic, end the
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan ("The troops
aren't coming home while I'm preznit," GWB), and to
hold the monsters accountable who have wreaked havoc
on our planet.

I believe what we did on July 23rd was the right thing
to do because we are all required to be active
participants in our democracy. One of the reasons that
all branches of our government are so out of control,
Dems or Repugs, is that we have been passive voters
who have allowed our elected officials to get away
literally with murder for generations. The human
element of "We the People" has been suppressed by the
fascist elite and all but forgotten by an American
public that has been lulled into an uncomfortable
apathy by the "vast wasteland" of TV and its
byproduct: a seductive, yet destructive consumerism
that has us constantly striving not only to "keep up
with the Joneses," but "smash the Joneses" in our
quest for more, more, more. We have thousands, if not
millions of Susie Soccer moms in their huge SUVs to
NASCAR dad Nick watching high performing, gas guzzling
cars go round and round in circles wasting precious
oil for our dubious entertainment, while people are
dying, being injured and displaced and while our
troops receive no more support than a yellow magnetic
ribbon on Susie's SUV.

The Rev and I had another dose of reality the other
day and our actions in Conyers' office were confirmed
for both of us when we visited Bethena in al Jazeera
hospital in Amman.

An American fired mortar shell hit twenty-eight year
old, former Baghdad resident, Bethena on June 1st of
this year. Her husband was also injured in the
abhorrent attack and her mother-in-law and
sister-in-law were killed. Due to lack of medical care
at first, Bethena still has a large hole in her
stomach. She was allowed to stay in an American
hospital for 7 days, and then told she had to leave.
With a smashed arm, broken leg, and another leg
amputated above the knee, Bethena had to make her way
to Amman for medical help with her sister. She laid in
her bed gazing at us with pain-filled, yet very aware
eyes and she graciously allowed us to look at her
wounds and record them on film. The entire time we
visited with her, I couldn't help but reflect that
Casey would have been the same age as Bethena just
three days before she was mortared, if he hadn't
already been killed not too far from where Bethena and
her family were hit.

Besides the incontrovertible fact that Bethena was no
threat to the USA and we are occupying her country
illegally and immorally, her hospital bills are
costing the family 750.00 to 1000.00 a day and she
still requires two more surgeries. The family had to
sell their home in Baghdad and is rapidly going
through their savings. Bethena's sister told us that a
woman who suffered a heart attack from fright in the
same mortar attack had her bills covered by the US,
but we won't cover Bethena's bills because she was hit
by an American bomb!

We are going to the American Embassy here in Jordan to
ask the same simple question: "Why?" Why is the
government who harmed her not paying her bills?" and
she is just one of thousands. As the war crimes
compound in Iraq, the resistance heightens and no one
wins in "lose-lose" land.

My campaign for Congress' slogan "People Before
Politics" is the exact opposite of what John Conyers
told me and my staff in a meeting prior to the July
23rd sit-in: "It is more important to me (Conyers) to
put a Democrat back in the White House in '08 than to
end the war!" (Even if it is Hillary "If Saddam won't
disarm, will we disarm him" Clinton") I can guarantee
him that it is not what's most important to Bethena,
the people of Iraq and the thousands of mothers in our
own country who can't sleep at night, concentrate, eat
or do much else for worry of their son or daughter in
Iraq for the lies of BushCo and the criminal
complicity of Congress, Inc.

I wept in John Conyers' office that day as I wept over
Bethena and her plight.

We the People have also failed our soldiers and
Bethena and rest of the innocent citizens of Iraq by
allowing the partisan politics of greed and
destruction to hijack our country. I wish every
American could peer into Bethena's eyes and have an
epiphany that there are many things more important
than partisan politics as usual. I wish news cameras
would show an American mother falling on the ground
screaming in agony for her needlessly killed child. We
see the devastation on Jordanian TV caused in Northern
Iraq where over 500 people were slaughtered yesterday:
we need to see that on our TVs.

Then maybe, just maybe, this monstrosity would end.

View Photos of Bethena

http://www.flickr.com/photos/travlnauntie/show/

To help Bethena please go to www.electroniciraq.net
and donate at the "Direct Assistance Initiative."

Please donate
https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizations/gsfp/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=864