Death Before Dying: A Retired Lebanese Officer Tells Why He Is Going to Iraq

MWU!

The following account of a retired Lebanese officer who has volunteered to go to Iraq was translated from the March 31 issue of Lebanese daily newspaper As-Safir. The account was printed as part of a newspaper column by the man's cousin, Talal Salman. Accounts of volunteers going to fight with Iraq have been published in numerous Arabic newspapers since the beginning of the war.

I could no longer take sitting around for hours as if drugged, or like an idiot, in font of the satellite TV channels, watching my people being killed by bombing raids, or under the rubble of their destroyed homes.

I couldn’t take the conversations with my neighbors about the various types of mass killing weapons, or the range of cruise missiles, or the latest models of jet fighters being used, or the legendary capabilities of Apache helicopters. All the speeches about resistance and heroism were no longer enough to placate me. As for the demonstrations, they will remain in my opinion, emotional expressions, or perhaps political statements by their organizers and participants, but they will not quiet the rage I feel.

I need to be the one killed, not the one watching.

In all honesty, I see impact and power in the protests occurring in Europe and America that I can’t achieve here. I don’t understand politics, but over there they are acting according to their conviction that this aggression is against their national interests and against the honor of their people. They reject American dominance, and they reject the unipolar (i.e. American) world.

My problem is very simple—I can’t just sit around and watch. Didn’t the Prophet, or Imam Ali, I can’t remember, say the person who is silent in the face of truth is like a dumb devil. What can I do! I thought about it. I have pretty good experience in explosives—I have in fact taken apart many explosives that were supposed to kill people in Beirut and around Lebanon. I have disarmed mines, and discovered car bombs. So I said to myself, ‘may be I can be of some benefit there.’

I heard that some young people are volunteering to go to Iraq. They are not more patriotic than I, I thought. Some of them barely know how to fire a weapon. I value their patriotism, but I can help our people in Iraq at least as much as they can.

I asked around about how to do it, so I registered, and now I am preparing my affairs so as not to leave any problems for my family. If I don’t return, I will not leave them much, but each member of my family will get their right in accordance with the law.

I am now waiting for all the details of my trip.

You want to know the truth? I feel so much more at peace with myself since I made the decision. Nothing is worse than the feeling we have that we are dead before dying. How long will I turn my eyes away from the eyes of the Iraqi children gazing at me, over the TV screens, frozen by terror. How long will I cover my ears from the screams of Iraqi mothers as they weep for their husbands and children, whose bodies have been so mangled that they have become unrecognizable, except by a loving wife or mother.

I tell you the truth. I didn’t make this decision quickly. I had wanted to go to Palestine, but I couldn’t find my way there, even though Palestine inhabits me. So I said to myself, It is the same battle. Now there is just a wider front. A defeat in Iraq will kill our future. The enemy is the same. Israel is fighting us with American weapons and American financial aid and American political protection. And now here comes America itself, with its own army, to Iraq fighting us in our own land. And Iraqis are fighting back.

As long as the road to Iraq is open, thanks to Syria, which has taken a courageous stand, then why not move. The other day, I saw pictures of Syrian volunteers in Mosul (Northern Iraq), and I have been hearing the news about all the volunteers from Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan who are now in Baghdad, or on their way. My cousin, do you want me to be less patriotic, or less willing to sacrifice my own life, than these people who have traveled so far from their homes? And we are so much closer?

Whenever I look at the faces of the people of Basra, Nasiriyya, Najaf, and Karbala, I feel like I know them. They are like our fathers and uncles. I have seen the face of my own mother in the faces of many Iraqi women. And sadness overcame me as I saw them standing at the metal barriers of US and British military checkpoints, begging for some food and water to bring back to their families under siege.

If I stay here, I will die out of sheer depression. But there, may be I will save a child or an old man or a woman by disarming an explosive meant to kill them. May be I can disassemble an unexploded missile, thereby protecting the life of some people who have been visited by death from faraway. People will die on their appointed day, and you know that death will come to us, no matter where we happen to be. I am tired of sitting around and crying; it humiliates me.