Posted on Sun, Jun. 06, 2004

Now Michael Berg has an audience

The father of Nick Berg, beheaded in Iraq, has been protesting war for years; lately, more listen.

By Lini S. Kadaba

Inquirer Staff Writer

WASHINGTON - Over the years, Michael Berg has demonstrated against war: Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and Iraq. But not many people noticed.

Yesterday, Berg, the father of Nick Berg, the 26-year-old West Chester contractor who was beheaded in Iraq, demonstrated again, and this time he had a substantial audience.

As thousands listened during a passion-filled rally, followed by a march from the White House to the home of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Berg said in a strong voice that while he blamed the executioners, the Bush administration ultimately was responsible for his son's death.

He said he had promised his daughter, Sara, 31, a Virginia lawyer, that he would address publicly his feelings about "the men who killed my son. She said that people don't think I blame the men who murdered my son... . Sara, I do. They should be arrested and subject to trial in a court of law, and if found guilty, never again be allowed to practice the brutality that cost my son his life... . These men purposely sped up their hate train when they saw Nick lying on the track."

But as he has done in the past, he continued to lash out at the Bush administration for detaining his son for 13 days, for its "callous behavior" that "in effect tied him to the track until it was no longer possible to escape that speeding hate train."

U.S. officials have maintained that Iraqi police - not the FBI - held his son for questioning.

Berg has found himself in a sudden, unwanted media spotlight because of the brutal execution of his son that was videotaped and posted on an Islamic Web site. He has used his higher profile to speak for peace and against the war in Iraq and Bush administration policies, views he has long held but now has a ready platform on which to express them.

"I would do anything in the world to take back what happened to Nick that got people to listen to me," he said while riding from East Goshen to Washington with about 20 others in a bus hired by the Chester County Peace Movement. The march and rally were organized by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), an antiwar coalition allied with the Communist Workers World Party.

"If people do listen, I feel an obligation to speak."

So he spoke yesterday as the rain fell on Lafayette Park, across from the White House, and the crowd, initially several hundred and later unofficially estimated at 2,000, cheered and chanted, "Bring the troops home now." It was his first speech before such a large crowd, said Berg, who as a member of ANSWER has attended other protests.

He spoke of the necessity for "nonviolent, direct action now." He also spoke of a news media that "invaded my family at time when we most needed our privacy," referring to the horde that camped outside his West Whiteland home in the days after news broke of his son's killing. He spoke of the outpouring of support from soldiers of this war and ones before, back to World War II, and of the handful of "negative cards or e-mails" that "used the language of bigotry."

And he spoke of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The retired high school teacher imagined a conversation with the civil rights leader who had a dream. "The people of America and the world have told me," he said, "that they have a dream and a vision now, too, and that that dream is a dream of peace, a vision of all nations living together in harmony and love.

"I am here to answer those many, many, many people who contacted me and my family and offered to do anything they could to help. My answer is: 'Don't let what happened to my son and my family happen again. Stand up for peace now!... Let's act now to stop war and end racism, and let's keep acting until we can raise a banner of peace that says, 'Mission Accomplished.' "

Berg was one of two dozen or more speakers, including Cheri Honkala, founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and South Philadelphia's Al Zappala, father of Sherwood Baker, a Pennsylvania National Guardsman who was killed in Baghdad in April.

This ANSWER march, like others, drew protesters from several causes.

The crowd - with Berg and others carrying a banner proclaiming "Stop the Torture, Stop the War! End Colonial Occupation in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti and Everywhere" - marched to Rumsfeld's house, chanting: "No blood for oil; U.S. off the Iraqi soil," and, "Money for jobs and education; not for war and occupation."

Earlier, Berg spoke about how his views differed from his son's when it came to politics, the Iraq war, and "just about everything but rock climbing and kayaking."

"We long ago agreed to disagree," he said. But even then, Nick Berg would touch his father's shoulder and ask him how the latest rally went.

Yesterday, Berg wore a brown polo shirt. It belonged to his son, a way of keeping him close, he said.

"We respected each other," Berg said, for acting on our beliefs."