By MARY K. MEYER - Special to The Star
Date: 09/16/99 22:00

Salaam is dying.

His life span -- only four months.

Mother won't look up.

On the eight-hour trek back to Baghdad from Basra, I found my thoughts sifting down to haiku. The doctor clearly wanted us to know that the baby's name was Salaam -- peace.

By this time, the little fellow is undoubtedly enjoying lasting peace, free from his struggle to breathe, resting in the heart of God.

I didn't see anything in Iraq that I hadn't read about: starving children, increased leukemia, homes destroyed by missiles this year, schools with no supplies -- not even water for the kids; helpless, frustrated doctors in hospitals without medicines and equipment; nonexistent sewage treatment, air pollution everywhere.

But the difference between reading about it and seeing, touching, tasting and breathing reality is vastly different. I hated breathing despair. It's hard on the soul.

Everywhere pain.

Lasting peace, the people cry.

Who is listening?

Sanctions -- today's weapons of mass destruction -- are slowly but surely squeezing the life and hope out of the Iraqi people. Nine years have just about broken them. Our leaders want to bring Saddam to his knees. All they have accomplished is to nearly crush a society -- a culture -- a civilization much older and richer than our own.

Deaf are the leaders

when whimpering children die.

Oil is worth the cost.

The cost: how better to destroy a nation than by starving the children -- not just physically but also to starve them of decent educational, cultural and familial experiences. One father said, "I have no energy for my children after I work two eight-hour jobs a day for our very existence." A young girl's comment: "We have heard of the Internet and the computers, but we do not have access to them." A teacher with 35 years' experience: "I see the quality of our educating going down every year."

"Why?" The people asked us everywhere we went. "Why is your government killing our children and destroying our nation? What have we done to deserve this?"

Answer, anyone?

When nations test might,

small children suffer slow death.

Only dust remains.

Mary K. Meyer was part of a six-member group from the Kansas City area that visited Iraq for two weeks last spring with a Voices in the Wilderness delegation. She lives and works at Shalom Catholic Worker House in Kansas City, Kan.

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