Re-Entry: "It's in God's Hands"

By Kelly Hayes-Raitt

The Columbia explosion occurred right after I'd arrived in Baghdad. I felt guilty: one is supposed to be home to share tragedies. I was half a world away and helpless.

I can't shake the faces and the voices of the people who touched me during my 10 days in Iraq. There's a national tragedy occurring there, and I'm half a world away and helpless.

I find myself praying more. When I asked Iraqis what they were doing to prepare for war, they cupped their hands, looked skyward and said "Insha'allah." ("It's in God's hands.") I was struck by both their helplessness and their strength of faith.

I thought I'd be numb watching Wednesday's bombings, but it didn't take me long to move from despair to fury. Listening to President Bush's attempt to justify his own unleashing of weapons on unarmed civilians, I was incensed by his insistence in invoking God's blessing for his very ungodly acts.

Given that nearly every major Christian religious leader (including the Pope) has denounced this war, the President's piety feels blasphemous.

I am livid that the President insists on invoking the memory of firefighters and other emergency workers who died at the Twin Towers as justification for terrorizing Iraqi children, women and men. Of all his explanations for initiating this war, fighting terrorism is by far the weakest.

In fact, by his aggression, President Bush has made the United States more vulnerable to extremist anti-American attacks and may alienate Arab allies in joining us in fighting terrorism.

One of my scariest moments in Baghdad was when North Korea threatened to launch a first strike against the United States if we launched a first strike against Iraq. Here I was, standing at Ground Zero in Baghdad, preparing to go home to Ground Zero in Los Angeles.

The President's language infuriated me. He throws around terms like "collateral damage" which divorce us from the impact of our actions. Collateral damage means dead moms and dads.

I'm incensed by his platitudes to the families of our soldiers. The greatest support he can give our young men and women in the Gulf is to bring them home -- unharmed and immediately.

While watching the first wave of bombings, I called Amira Matsuda, our Iraqi guide who now lives outside Dallas. I hadn't spoken with her since our return. We had visited her family in Babylon. She reached a brother Tuesday morning, but was not able to get through after that.

Phones are down; she's very worried about her mother, who is old and in ill health. If hospitals are overwhelmed with civilian casualties and injuries, who will care about an old woman with bad circulation?

Amira reported that schools and offices were closed after President Bush's speech Monday night and people were encouraged to stay indoors. People in Baghdad are reluctant to leave; they remember the looting that occurred during the Gulf War. After 12 years of sanctions, there's not much left to defend, but it's all they have.

In 1991, we dropped 90,000 tons of explosives over 42 days. Between 50 percent and 70 percent of our bombs missed their military targets and hit instead roads, bridges, food transportation routes, sewage treatment facilities and drinking water plants. The President's current plan is to drop ten times that amount to fulfill his shock and awe strategy.

I am shocked. I feel an acute responsibility to the generous people I befriended to do everything I can to lessen the impact of our bombing - and then to do a little more.

Iraqis we met wouldn't let us leave our Baghdad hotel. Waiters came out for one last photo, our government minders lingered to pose for pictures, the bread guy going by on the street asked for a photo -- even the police officers stationed on the corner wanted pictures.

I realized we were their lifeline: they had so much faith in our ability to come home and stop the bombing. One of the waiters picked me a bouquet of dusty marigolds.

On Flight Day 15, a message was sent by the astronauts of the Columbia: "From our orbital vantage point, we observe an earth without borders, full of peace, beauty and magnificence. And we pray that humanity as a whole can imagine a borderless world, as we see it, and strive to live as one in peace."

Insha'allah.