I had this dream.

Before I tell this dream, I have to say a word about my friend, Cliff Kindy. Cliff is in Iraq right now as part of a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation. He is there to stand with the Iraqi people in the face of the unthinkable violence being contemplated by our country. He travels around as a witness to the destruction the first Persian Gulf War wrought, much of the infrastructure still in chaos due to sanctions placed upon Iraq. He listens to people's stories and sends them back to us here in the states so that we have an understanding of what the Iraqi people are experiencing. And that we may work for peace.

So last night I dreamed about Cliff. I dreamed that I talked to him all night long. I told him to send me pictures and names of the Iraqi people he meets so that I might put their pictures and names up on billboards around the country with slogans like "We are not your enemies." This way I would get our people to understand that this is not about "those Muslims" against us. This is about imposing suffering, death and chaos upon our very sisters and brothers. The dream ended before the billboards went up.

In the car, on the way to school, I thought about the dream. What if Oprah, our trusted Oprah, put some Iraqi women and children on her show and asked them their plans for when the bombs fall? What if newspapers published articles about individual Iraqis, telling about their lives, triumphs and challenges? What if my class became penpals with a class in Iraq? We have to take this down to the level of individual human beings, for it is innocent human beings who will suffer the most. What if we named the enemy? Once we name these people as the good individuals they are, we share in their humanity, and they cease to be enemies.