Bungler left a comment on my tagboard (zonkboard) which mentioned the name of Ken Nichols O'Keefe. To be frank, I hadn't heard of O'Keefe previously. Bungler mentioned that he was interviewed by Tim Sebastien on BBC's Hard Talk and came across as "totally commited, with integrity and belief in what he does". So, I read up on this guy who is called the Human Shield.

Ken Nichols O'Keefe is a Gulf War veteran who joined the US Marines Corps in 1989 as a nineteen year-old eager to serve his country. In 1991, he was sent to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He came to know that US ammunition in the war included the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) against civilian population. This meant that even the US troops using this deadly ammo were at risk. It was George Bush Sr. using the Gulf War as a testing ground for DU-based ammo, in the process, using the 'heroes' as mere guinea pigs.

In 1999, O'Keefe renounced his US citizenship citing the reason that it was done "in shame and disgust having arrived at the logical, albeit belated, conclusion that my government was not worthy of my funding - through taxes - and certainly not my allegiance. Paying for roads and schools is one thing, paying for "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to the point of insanity and nurturing global oppression is another thing all together. No moral being can be compelled to fund war, death and murder.".

You might say, what is it that makes this Ken Nichols O'Keefe so important. Well, he is an anti-war crusader who will go to Iraq (alongwith other like-minded peaceniks) and volunteer to act as human shield against the US-led attacks. He agrees that he and his fellow human shield volunteers might be maimed or killed. But that, he says, is not worse than the fate that innocent Iraqis will have to face. He points out that it is not about supporting Saddam Hussein (which, he points out, is what US did in the past). Instead it is about expressing solidarity for the Iraqi people and letting them know that not everybody in the Western world wants war with them. O'Keefe hits the nail right on the head when he argues that "...we will bring home to western public, the human cost of war because, unfortunately, the death and destruction faced daily by countless millions of our fellow human beings seems somehow an unfathomable abstraction unless western lives are at stake as well.". Well said, Mr. O'Keefe!

He also quotes Gandhi, "...peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.".

Sounds quite idealistic and full of rhetoric, doesn't it? Well, maybe! But this is better than the idealism touted by Bush and Blair in their claims to be the sole defenders of peace and democracy and their so-called rights to assert their will on the weaker nations of the world.

Well, what do you people think?