“One might expect [her] to consult [her] conscience...But, since it’s a matter of moral conclusions...there is, unfortunately, no cause for optimism.” -- Carl G. Jung

Baltimore, MD - August 3, 2007, was the ninth consecutive Friday afternoon, when pro-Peace activists gathered in front of the luxurious Hi Rise residence of Maryland’s senior U.S. Senator--Barbara Mikulski. They insisted on bearing witness to her complicity with the violence-breeding War, Death & Mayhem Machine of the Bush-Cheney Gang. Sen. Mikulski has regularly voted to fund the illegal and immoral Iraqi War to the tune of $450 billion. She is also a big supporter of President George W. Bush’s “Surge” scheme. As of today’s date, 3,669 U.S. troops have died in the conflict, 68 of those heroes have been from the state of Maryland, and 17 called Baltimore City home. Meanwhile, the civilian fatalities in Iraq are approaching one million. (1) Sen. Mikulski’s mantra is: “I support the troops!” Yet, the brave soldiers who have actually been doing the fighting in Iraq insist otherwise. They say: “Funding the war is ‘killing’ the troops--and delaying further any prospects for real diplomacy, reconciliation and peace.” (2)

One of the demonstrators on the sidewalk outside of Mikulski’s fancy penthouse was Dean Pappas. He’s an activist whose strong antiwar views were honed during the Vietnam War era, when he stood, often shoulder to shoulder, with the late, great Phil Berrigan, the “Dissenter Emeritus,” in opposing the evils of the American Empire. Pappas said: “I have actually known [Sen.] Barbara Mikulski for over 40 years. We worked together. I was really proud of what she did in standing up to U.S. imperialism in Central America. I don’t know what happened. Maybe, she got kidnapped by aliens! But, she has no business being this meek. She needs to stand up. There are people dying, up to 3,700 Americans, and we can do something about that. The international community can work on Iraq, that is another issue, but the U.S. is only harming Iraq. We know that the sooner we bring them [the troops] home, the sooner we can end the American fatalities. And, that is what is motivating the American people right now. They are sick of this!” (3)

On Nov. 7, 2006, the American electorate gave the Democratic Party a ringing mandate to end the Iraqi War and to bring the troops home. Tragically, the Democrats chickened out and have miserably failed their duty. Since they took control of the U.S. Congress, in Jan., 2007, 666 U.S. troops have died in the Iraqi War. It is fair to say that the Democrats are complicit in the wrongdoings of the warmongering Bush-Cheney Gang, who deliberately lied the nation into a war of aggression. (4) It is a War Crime, a “Crime against Humanity” under the UN Charter, and also an impeachable offense, to engage in a war of aggression. (5)

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH), the author of H Res 333, which demands the impeachment of V. P. Dick Cheney, has charged that Cheney: “Fabricated” the intelligence process to mislead the country into the Iraqi conflict. (1) Sen. Mikulski knows that to be true, since she is a member of the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence and had access to the true facts. As I write, Iraq a nation of 27 million souls, is a basket case. Its major city, Baghdad, with a population of over six million has been off and on without electricity, sewage treatment facilities, running water, adequate food and medical supplies. Iraq, today, represents a humanitarian crisis of the highest order. (6) Sen. Mikulski, like so many other War Hawks, refuses to see the horrific consequences of her own baleful actions. The demonstrators were there, in front of her expensive condominium, to remind her of those lethal connections. Carl G. Jung put it this way: “The evil in man...is of gigantic proportions...[Nevertheless], man is ‘an enigma’ to himself...None of us stands outside humanity’s black collective shadow.” (7)

Maria Allwine, another anti-Sen. Mikulski activist, also shared her views with me about why she was protesting. “Mikulski makes a lot of noise about being against the war...She is doing nothing to get us out of there...The bottom line is [that she] votes to continue funding the war...We are here to tell [Sen.] Mikulski, at her home, that she needs to stop voting to fund the war...She lives in comfort...while Iraqi children have no water, no electricity, no health care and they live in a country that has been destroyed by our country. And for which, I am deeply ashamed...When [Sen. Mikulski] stops voting to fund the war. We’ll go away!” (3)

Incidentally, the temperature in Baghdad reached 113 degrees last week. Oxfam, a group that works to alleviate human suffering around the globe, said: “There are eight million people in Iraq in need of ‘emergency’ care!” (6) They will, of course, never get that “emergency care,” if Sen. Mikulski, and other Democrats, remain willing accomplices and/or stooges of the Bush-Cheney Gang.

Anti-Mikulski protester, Jay Gillen, made this telling comment to me: “Sen. Mikulski is one of the most ‘powerful’ people in the world, along with the other U.S. Senators...When a Senator in the U.S. acts helpless, we have to do everything we can to remind that person [Sen. Mikulski] that they aren’t helpless...and that they can make something happen and end this war.” (3) Dr. Larry Egbert said he was there, across the street from the Hi Rise, demonstrating because Sen. Mikulski supports “the killing” in Iraq. He wanted to know: “Why” more people weren’t with him protesting Sen. Mikulski’s ongoing role in this tragic debacle. (3) Matt Chalkley, another advocate for Peace, told me: There are a lot of things we could be doing with the taxpayers’ money that we are wasting in the Iraqi War; like “fixing the infrastructure, as we saw [with the bridge collapse] in Minneapolis...It’s [also] a waste of [lives of] a generation of young people.” (3)

I leave the final word on this shining example of the importance of individuals, like these five demonstrators, to object on moral and legal grounds, to Sen. Mikulski’s complicity in the evil that is the Iraqi War to Mr. Pappas. He said: “[Sen. Mikulski] is ‘selling us out’ by being so timid. If, indeed, it is timidity!”

Notes:

1. www.youtube.com/watch
2. www.ivaw.org/
3. www.youtube.com/watch
4. www.afterdowningstreet.org/
5. www.counterpunch.org/boyle07252003.html
6. news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6921623.stm
7. Carl G. Jung’s “The Undiscovered Self.”

©2007, William Hughes.

William Hughes is an author and commentator. His videos can be found at: www.youtube.com/profile.
Email Contact: liamhughes-AT-comcast.net.