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T A B L E_T A L K

Does your child hate going to the dentist? Discuss ways to deal in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Second Thoughts: Rolling out the years
By Sallie Tisdale
No one has time to bake cookies. That's why you need to
(12/17/98)

Marriage among the mullahs
By Cynthia Joyce
The directors of "Divorce Iranian Style" speak out about unhappy marriages, Islamic law and the rights of women
(12/16/98)

The devil in your family room
By Fiona Morgan
A Texas group is offering "Marilyn Manson awareness training" for parents who fear for their subculture-adopting teens
(12/15/98)

The prisoner of Pennsylvania Avenue
By Margaret Talbot
The many ordeals of Hillary Clinton should make us ask: Is it time to retire the concept of the first lady?
(12/14/98)

My Advent adventure
By Anne Lamott
Trying to find the patience and faith of the season when all of God's spokespeople are in bad moods
(12/10/98)

BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK HOT FLASH ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

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BY GERALDINE BROOKS | SYDNEY, Australia -- Until the Gulf War, I had always been on the pacifist side of the argument in all the conflicts of my lifetime. Vietnam, Panama, the Falklands -- I protested them all. And then in 1988, on a searing summer day, I stepped off a plane in Baghdad and began my acquaintance with a regime of such unfathomable cruelty that it changed my views on the use of force.

I learned from Iraqi dissidents about mothers, under interrogation, tortured by the cries of their own starving infants whom they weren't allowed to breast-feed; about thalium, the slow-acting rat poison Saddam Hussein used on his enemies; about Iraqi government employees whose official job description was "violator of women's honor" -- i.e., prison rapist.

One bright spring day during the Kurdish uprising, I followed Kurds into the security prison they'd just liberated in northern Iraq. It was dim in the underground cells, so my face was only inches from the wall before I was sure what I was looking at. Long, rusty nails had been driven into the plaster. Around them curled small pieces of human flesh. One withered curve of cartilage looked like part of an ear.

I'm home now in my own liberal, pacifist country, Australia. Within a couple of hours of the news of the latest Baghdad bombings, people in Sydney were in the streets, demonstrating against them. Friends were on the phone, upset: "Terrible, isn't it? And at this time of the year! Whatever happened to peace on earth, goodwill to men?" Local pundits argued on the television, decrying American bully-boy tactics against a small and defanged Arab country. I agreed with almost everything they said: Yes, the slaughter and injury of Iraqi civilians is tragic. And yes, the timing of the bombing is the worst kind of political cynicism. And yes, it is questionable what effect this new onslaught will have on Iraq's weapons capability. And yet I disagreed with their conclusion: that this bombing is therefore wrong.

If Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, he will use them. We know that, because he already has. For two years I've studied a haunting photograph of two of his victims: a young Kurdish father prone on a dusty street in Halabja and his infant, still tenderly cradeled in his arms.

N E X T_ P A G E: The West's real crimes in Iraq