By Sean Penn June 2, 2003
In early October of 2002 – when the radio sputtered and whined with accusations by the Bush Administration declaring a direct link between the terrorist activity of Al Qaeda and the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein; I was sitting beside my 11-year old daughter in a car. It continued, with charges that Hussein's Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in violation of U.N. resolutions.
"It's a sunny afternoon in Northern California," the weatherman interrupted, "puffy white clouds resting upon a beautiful blue sky." We sat in the car eating french fries in the parking lot of our local burger joint. President George W. Bush had just rebuffed the United Nations' push to re-introduce weapons inspection teams into an Iraq where even a deservedly humiliated Saddam Hussein had expressed willingness to accept them. Tightening in my gut, on this otherwise fab day, were troubling questions about our nation's understanding of this pending conflict. Its most accessible information sources were the corporately sponsored and largely conservative media outlets. Indeed, in my gut, were my own troubling questions, not only about our Administration's unilateral military posturing, but also, what effect U.S. decisions today might have on my children's tomorrow.
Since September 11, 2001, when Kilroy left his mark, I had been, of course, concerned for the physical safety of my children, and those of the nation. More urgently though, for the food of their spirit, their sense of right and wrong, and of their will to be individuals of character and true patriotism in a media environment largely exemplified by mistrust, dishonesty, censorship and national policies fostering division, death, and arbitrary consumerism.
Saint Augustine said that "Hope has two beautiful daughters: anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to change them." Beside me, my little girl tugged at the blue ribbon in her blond hair, her eyes forward, gentle but unblinking; her front teeth nipped at a french fry, one slow bite at a time. As I started the car, I wondered if her future and my son's would befriend or be vanquished by Saint Augustine's daughters of hope. And I had to ask myself, "What remaining hope did I have? What example was I to them?" I carried my troubling questions to the President of the United States, in a public letter printed October 18, 2002, in the Washington Post.
I'm neither a peace activist nor a partisan politico and the letter I printed did not represent the platform of any movement, or speak with determination against any necessity. My letter spoke to questions of an American man and father, protected and encouraged by our Constitution, and obliged by my own individual sense of democracy and civic responsibility. I had been inspired to speak up by my love of my children, which recalled my admiration for our founding fathers, and the tradition of thousands of engaged men and women before me. In my own way, I sought to join all of them in waving the American flag. Following the printing of that letter, my public flag, I was hit by a tidal wave of media misrepresentation, and even accusations of treason. I experienced firsthand the repressive condition of public debate in our country, as it prepared for war. I was beginning to feel the price to be paid by a citizen exercising a position of dissent.
If my hope as an American was not dwindling, it was certainly under siege. Hope though, like truth, is a stubborn creature. In early December 2002, I was invited by Norman Solomon of the Institute for Public Accuracy to join him on his journalistic tour of Baghdad. I met with Norman and did some due diligence on the IPA. Norman is a softspoken gentleman, and a relentless author of books, essays, and articles exposing media truth and fiction. He is a scholar of media truth bending and breaking, and his IPA is an American non-profit mobilizer dedicated to that journalistic mission. There was no question in my gut on this one. I accepted Norman's invitation and was going to Iraq.
I acknowledged the concerns of my wife and children for my safety and they acknowledged my need to replace television images with a real sense of place and people (if only the kind one gets visiting anywhere for the first time). You search for a taste, a smell, a piece of truth, something to attach to the questions of conscience that gnaw at many of us.
It was very clear that my trip, like my letter, would be misrepresented both in the United States and by the Iraqi press. But my view is unchanged, that as a weapon of propaganda, it would only be the most popular American media that could do myself and eventually our increasingly deployed troops any real harm. The United States had all the cards. We have the greatest military might on the planet. The Iraq I visited was the most decimated, starved, diseased and polluted place I had ever witnessed. Much of this, the result of sanctions imposed upon its people by a United States-led coalition, and exacerbated by the willful exploitation of them by their own leadership. Saddam Hussein's three-page hokey mailer of a newspaper, promoting my visit as support for his leadership, would be no match for the positions taken by our own global networks in willful false depiction of my intentions and statements. I made no comments in Baghdad against our government. Not one. I did, however, declare an acceptance of some personal accountability for my government's actions, those then, and now, paid for in part by my tax dollars.
In short, we deserve the government we allow, and none more than those of us who have experienced economic and personal privilege. In Iraq, I made no expert assertions and came to no absolute conclusions. Prior to, during, and since visiting Iraq,I have consulted over 100 experts in our Middle Eastern affairs, military and civilian, with a primary focus on U.N. weapons inspection capabilities. These consultations measurably increased my doubt at the factuality or the wisdom of the Administration's assertions and proposed remedies. I spoke at length with wary war correspondents whose repeated attempts to bring deeper understanding to the American public were consistently thwarted by editorial staffs, networks, and superiors, both Iraqi and American.
While in Baghdad, I visited a Pediatric hospital, schools, people on the streets, Iraqi officials, their Christian Deputy Prime Minister Aziz, and Minister of Health Mubarek. I met with humanitarian aides, U.N. officials, the local director of UNICEF (a Dutchman), and an 8-year-old Iraqi boy who had been maimed by a cruise missile in Basra while his older brother perished in the Clinton administration bombings of 1998. I returned to the United States with a view to be digested, something I would have to be very careful and thoughtful in sharing publicly, and discerning in acceptance of a venue to do so. I waited out the first series of rabid attacks on my character, profession, intelligence, experience, agenda, ego, effectiveness, and patriotism. I chose to appear on Larry King's show, followed by an interview on The Active Opposition, a World Link TV political show hosted by my friend, Peter Coyote. This had been the extent of my public commentary on this issue in the United States, when on March 20, 2003, our President ordered our military into war with Iraq.
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