Commentary : Perspectives On The New Anti-War Movement : We Who Object Must Be Heard : As citizens, we have a duty to question U.S. actions. Otherwise, we’ll have only ourselves to blame later.

I am 15 years old and live in the desert near the Salton Sea, in the small town of Niland. My mother and I have formed an organization called Peace Now! (it currently consists of two people).

We want peaceful negotiation in the Middle East, not war, and we want immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. We feel that the presence of 250,000 or more troops will sooner or later bring about war. We believe that the ordinary person in Iraq and America does not want war.

Last month I put up a peace sign in a field near my town, but someone tore it down. Now “Peace Now!” has a 20-by-40-foot billboard on Highway 86 near El Centro--the billboard company donated the space to us when we told them what we wanted to do. We hope to put up our billboards on other highways, so people everywhere will know a peace movement exists, and start to ask questions instead of being told what to think.

Television and newspapers ignore the peace movement or say we are “insignificant.” They say the American people “overwhelmingly support” President Bush’s Middle East policy. But no one asks the people, and those who object are not often allowed to be heard.

I have heard many people here, including World War II veterans, express doubts about what our country is doing. People seem worried. They feel something is wrong, but they can’t put their fingers on it or put it into words. Our country seems to be sliding into a war, and there is no direction nor any words of wisdom or caution. President Bush talks one day about peace, the next day about war. He has “had it” with Saddam Hussein. In major newspapers I see headlines like “We’re Going In!” and “Fighter Pilots in Gulf Ready to Play Real ‘Top Gun’!”--as if U.S. soldiers killing their fellow human beings is a game. Why are headlines like these allowed in the newspapers, and so little news about the peace movement?

On Sunday morning TV “discussion shows” I hear supposedly thoughtful commentators talking about Saddam Hussein, using phrases like “bully and butcher of Baghdad.” These are wild, irresponsible words, and they are worse when “educated” people use them.

Words like these make me ask where our media and our thinkers and policy-makers are leading us. Do they know? We don’t seem to have a coherent foreign policy, only an unthinking rush to a war we will regret when we see American men and women coming home in body bags and dead Iraqi men, women and children on TV.

In years to come, I fear we will face hatred for America in the Middle East, and more conflicts--not the “new world order” President Bush wants. I don’t think war brings “order,” only destruction.

We like to think of ourselves as a moral country, but is it more moral for us to bomb the civilian population of Baghdad than for Saddam Hussein to gas Iraq’s Kurdish minority? We call him a monster for doing that. Is our first act of post-Cold War leadership going to be an offensive war in the Middle East?

I think we as citizens have a duty to think about these questions, and make our voices heard, not blindly “support our President” in a course that will lead to disaster. If we do not act now, we will have only ourselves to blame, when it is too late.