When the US invaded Iraq in 2003 Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of three, lost her home and her property, and was forced to flee to Jordan.
A decade later, Saleh is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against six key members of the Bush administration. They’re arguing that, since the war was not conducted in self-defense, and did not have the appropriate authorization by the United Nations, it constituted a “crime of aggression” under international law.
On August 20th the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in the case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law. We can’t accept this. We demand that these war criminals come forward and hold themselves accountable for the tragic consequences that the war had for Saleh’s family and countless other Iraqi civilians.
In our despair that justice is slow
we sit with heads bowed
wondering
how
even whether
we will ever be healed.
Perhaps it is a question
only the ravaged
the violated
seriously ask.
And is that not now
almost all of us?
But hope is on the way.
As usual Hope is a woman
herding her children
around her
all she retains of who
she was; as usual
except for her kids
she has lost almost everything.
Hope is a woman who has lost her fear.
Along with her home, her employment, her parents, her olive trees, her grapes. The peace of independence; the reassuring noises of ordinary
neighbors.
Hope rises, She always does,
did we fail to notice this in all the stories
they’ve tried to suppress?
Hope rises,
and she puts on her same
unfashionable threadbare coat
and, penniless, she flings herself
against the cold, polished, protective chain mail
of the very powerful
the very rich – chain mail that mimics
suspiciously silver coins
and lizard skin –
and all she has to fight with is the reality of what was done to her;
to her country; her people; her children;
her home.
All she has as armor is what she has learned
must never be done.
Not in the name of War
and especially never in the
name of Peace.
Hope is always the teacher
with the toughest homework.
Our assignment: to grasp
what has never been breathed in our stolen
Empire
on the hill:
Without justice, we will never
be healed.
The organization, Iraq Witness, has filed suit against the Bush Administration on behalf of an Iraqi single mother, Sundus Shaker Saleh. Saleh alleges that the Iraq War was a premeditated war against the Iraqi people — and now she is the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against six key members of the Bush administration.
For more information about this inspiring standing up of a mother of five, visit the CODEPINK website, www.codepink.org.
©2013 by Alice Walker
Good luck to her and her family. I bet there will be veteran support. All those injured soldiers who were sold the lie of regime change. Did the US really invade so that Iraq could become a satellite of Iran?
“Hope rises,
and she puts on her same
unfashionable threadbare coat”
Thanks Alice. I don’t know if you wrote the above lines since you know the meaning of the name Sundus, a very rare name of Arab women. Sundus means a coat made of fine silk. According to the Qura’an, Allah promises his worshipers to dress them with Sundus in the garden of perpetuity.
What an incredible and evocative poem! It embraces all of the many heroines, families, people who we have harmed so grievously………and murdered.
Thank you.
The Iraq war was/is a shameful act of aggression by the US! I believe it to be illegal, and dearly hope that this woman and her family get justice. I think that at the very least, those 6 US leaders should face charges of war crimes. Thank you Saleh, Iraq Witness, CODEPINK and Alice Walker.