Lawrence (and anyone else interested)

here's what David Mcfadden, a Canadian poet, is trying. I admire it & sent
a note off to our PM. It's probably useless, but at least it's An Idea.

Doug

Saving Iraq's Children with a Humanitarian Airlift

Tell your friends, tell your political representatives, spread the word.
        We have to start airlifting children out of Iraq before the bombing
starts.
        We can't allow any more children to be blown up and torn to little
pieces because of adult political squabbles, resentments, greed, and
rivalries.
        We need to get organized, and secure the cooperation of beneficent
national governments, generous airlines and volunteer pilots around the
world. We need empty airliners from Canada, Europe, the U.S.A., Japan,
China, Australia, New Zealand - and any
other country that wishes to cooperate, to fly to Iraq, load up with
children, and bring them out of harm's way.
        Children need to be saved, they don't need to be incinerated.
        British children were evacuated from the cities and then to
Commonwealth countries when the Germans started bombing Britain, and
because of the evacuation many innocent lives were saved.
        Are the children of Iraq any less worthy of being saved?
        This morning at 4 a.m. I awoke with the bright idea of getting the
kids out of Iraq before the invasion starts. Unfortunately I had no idea
how to go about doing such a thing. I have a few ideas now, and I'm trying
to interest the Canadian government in
getting involved. It's been eight hours of emailing and I've got fairly
positive support from a few friends and business contacts, and more to
come, I'm sure. Maybe more than I know of are already trying to come up
with ideas etc. and writing letters.
        No answer yet from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, or
Progressive-Conservative leader Joe Clark, though a member of the PM's
office staff assured me the letter was being taken seriously and a copy had
been sent to the office of the minister of foreign
affairs, Bill Graham. A member of his office staff replied with a similar
comment to the effect the proposal made in the letter was being read,
discussed, and assessed.
        Friends too seem to be talking about the idea and have said they'd
be sending followup emails to the PMO and federal affairs, and wherever. I
still sense there's a possibility of huge support growing.

I feel no proprietary interest in the idea of a humanitarian airlift of
Iraqi children. The idea came to me freely and needless to say it’s free
for anyone who thinks they can do something with it.
        I just don't want to see any more cluster bombs blowing kids legs
off while daisy cutters are busy blowing their heads off.
To me that's not quite what being a kid is all about. Children are here for
nurture and education, not for fear and dismemberment.
        Yet at this stage I’m still searching for ideas on what further I
can do to get this dream out of the realm of the impossible. It seems like
a huge job, one requiring knowledge and organizational skills I don’t
possess. Obviously political activism is
not my field. I need a lot of help.
        I don't want to hear it can't be done. I want to hear that in spite
of the immense costs & difficulties involved it can be done and will be
done, either by Canada alone or in cooperation with other countries....
        At this stage it seems clear that:

1. We need a show of hands of Canadians and people in other countries as
well, who would be willing to house and feed the kids until the bombing
stops. (I keep thinking of the Newfoundlanders, for instance, with their
great open spaces and tremendous
reputation for acts of great generosity during crises.)
2. We’d need to get pilots and planes organized.
3. And we'd need to get the word out to the population of Iraq that we’re
offering this help, and advance information as to when and where we'll be
landing.

A humanitarian airlift of children from a foreign country about to be
militarily invaded is essentially a new idea. It's an idea that's too late
for the Afghans, the Panamanians, the Nicaraguans, the Cambodians, the
Vietnamese, the kids of Tokyo,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ad nauseam. But I’m praying it’s not too late for
the children of Iraq.
        During the early years of World War II, when Britain was under
heavy German bombardment, the countries of the British Commonwealth helped
evacuate British children. Unfortunately nobody stood up for the German
kids in the later years of the war, when
the tide of battle changed and Germany was under even heavier bombardment
by the British Commonwealth countries and the United States.
        Also left to die horrendous deaths were the Japanese kids in 1944
and 45, and the Vietnamese and Cambodian kids in the sixties and seventies.
The list goes on ad nauseam and includes, most recently, Afghanistan. It’s
so embarrassing to think that in the
high civilization of the New World Order nobody seems to have had the moral
integrity to think of standing up and saying if we’re going to bomb
Afghanistan let’s get the kids out first.
        When Oliver Cromwell in his burn-em-alive rampage thru Ireland in
the seventeenth century was asked to spare the Irish children, he refused,
saying "nits will be gnats" (or was it "gnats will be nits"?) - and I'm
afraid most people today, after all we
should have learned, are still stuck in that deadly and demonic mentality.
        When Martin Amis came out with his famous essay on 911 last
October, the one about the need for the human race to develop "species
consciousness," I thought a lot of us would immediately wish to take it to
heart and to begin to see beyond outdated,
small-minded, us-and-them ethnic rivalries. But it appears that "species
consciousness" had not captured the imagination of the world at large,
especially of anyone in the business of waging war over the past year or
so.
        It appears many of us bear a shameful streak of Malthusianism in
our hearts. In other words the attack on Iraq, if it comes, will be about
revenge and oil and rearranging power balances - but also about cutting
down the population in the area. How else
to explain our reluctance to clean up the clusterbomb and landmine menace
even after the cessation of hostilities.
        Meanwhile, I still can't bear to consider the impossibilities and
am still hoping for support from the Canadian government or from any other
sources with help to offer. It's miracles I'm after, like any foolish
poet....

David W. McFadden
Toronto, Canada

Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm

        I do not limit myself: I imitate
        many fancy things such as the dull red
        cloth of literature, its mumbled griefs

                        Lisa Robertson