The TroopsHomeFast! begins today in Washington, D.C. and “the fasters will stay in front of the White House every day until August 14th, when they move the hunger strike to Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas.”
They demand the following:
* The withdrawal of all U.S. from Iraq;
* No permanent bases in Iraq;
* A commitment to fund a massive reconstruction effort but with funds going to Iraqi, not U.S., contractors.
They ask people to consider fasting in solidarity from their homes and communities, even for one day, if going to D.C. or Crawford is impossible. They also ask supporters “to sign the Voters Pledge that says you will only vote for candidates who call for a speedy withdrawal from Iraq, and to sign the Declaration of Peace, saying that if we do not have such a plan by September 21, you will participate in a week of nonviolent actions against the war.”
They intend to prioritise bills over the course of the fast and to ask for help in pressuring Congress to pass them.
Fasting and hunger strikes conjure vivid memories. I’d question anyone participating in this strike who says with any conviction they’re willing to go only so far to make a point, because it’s impossible to know what events will transpire between now and then, the only certainty being, there is a point of no return.
I fasted once for 28 days, inspired by Arnold Ehret’s book, Rational Fasting. The first few days were miserable, a mix of jangled nerves and lightheadedness, a dreary obsession with food and the people eating it. With practice I learned that rising more slowly dashed the dizziness, the stomach grumbled less, not more, as days past multiplied, a heady serenity replaced the nagging fixation on plates overflowing with steamy temptation and those who indulged, endlessly it seemed.
Living without food was a liberating experience. The curl of lips as words passed over them, the colour of cheeks turning in and out of judgement, no longer aroused my defences. As I required less to live, I demanded less of others, and the living took on dimensions more intricately compelling but less threatening than any I’ve experienced before or since.
When fatigue set in and skeletal parts jutted out, feeling more like a lobotomy victim than a contemplative participant, I ended the fast. Lucky me, I had a choice, thanks to a limitless supply of water. Healthy people in optimal conditions wouldn’t survive two weeks without it. The very young or old, or those in failing health, could perish in less than twenty-four hours, and are critically vulnerable if exposed to high temperatures, as the residents of Gaza are today.
I learned that the line between necessity and greed is blurred far too often and much too easily, it should be an icy fjord, and that death by starvation would be an agonisingly slow torture the living should never be forced to endure.
Two years later, in 1981, I sent a telegram to then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a naive and urgent appeal to revere life (unaware of the depths of her contempt), to bury false pride, and allow Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers to live as political prisoners. That Thatcher was allowed to murder ten men in such a manner, by ignoring delegates interdicting to broker a resolution that included a papal emissary, and stubbornly refusing to grant the prisoners’ legitimate and entirely reasonable demands, was a great injustice. On May 5, 1981, Bobby Sands died, sixty-six days after he began his strike, twenty-six days after he’d been elected to Britain’s Parliament in a by-election held when the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone suffered a fatal heart attack. The Thatcher government’s “response to Sands’ victory was to change the law so as to prevent prisoners from standing for Parliament.”
When news of Sands’ death hit the streets so did protestors worldwide, from “Western Europe to Australia to India to Iran,” and in U.S. cities “from New York to Boston to Chicago to San Francisco.” Resolutions were passed in national parliaments and several U.S. states condemning Britain’s continuing maltreatment of political prisoners, a crime for which the European Commission on Human Rights had already found it guilty of in 1977, and in response, then-Prime Minister John Callaghan had “vowed that it would never happen again.” Despite this massive outpouring of support, nine more political prisoners followed Sands to a calculatingly cruel and painful death, as Britain lavishly celebrated the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana. The Five Demands were eventually granted later that same year, restoring status taken in 1976, “when the British Government decided arbitrarily to end what was known as ‘Special Category Status’ and implement a policy of ‘Criminalisation’.”
Those who say these men had a choice either weren’t born into a concrete set of circumstances over which they had no control, or were but the terms suit them, so enforce them willingly. They torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere then claim they have no choice, they needed money for school, were protecting their brothers, were just following orders. These damaged, anxiety-ridden vessels rape and murder children and claim to be protecting “our” way of life. They are not protecting mine.
If TroopsHomeFast! manages to drive an icy fjord between what Americans need and think they need to survive, it will be an accomplishment of historic proportions. But as America celebrates independence today, it is involved in more occupations than it can morally explain or financially afford, and it is maintaining at least 725 foreign bases in 38 countries. America’s insatiable appetite, and pathological crush on itself, may have already taken it past the point of no return.