No shit, there I was again, standing with the rest of humankind on the brink of another imperialist war, this time on a pretext even flimsier than all the others.

I wonder what they would have done – the people I most admire: Mandela, Gandhi, Emma Goldman, Joe Hill, Rosa Parks, Sylvia Pankhurst, Vaclav Havel, and all the thousands upon thousands of unnamed others: the Iranian revolutionaries, the Zapatistas.

And beyond them: what about the storybook heroes? Where would Gandalf, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas have been now? Is there no Millennium Falcon steaming through space as we speak to give the evil empire a kick up the arse? No wizards with wands, no Supermen and Wonderwomen, nipping into their superhero outfits in a BT phonebox, no mutant X-Men with superhuman powers?

I’m being flippant. I apologise – it’s the way I am. But my point is serious: we’re not living in stories / books / films / history, but we can take inspiration from them: who would you be? Would you be the one who took it on or the one who turned back, the one who ignored the problem and hoped it would go away, until it overwhelmed everything?

By definition, heroes are not like us. They are greater, stronger, braver than we are and we cannot, therefore, do the things they do. Indeed we are more or less obligated not to try: to attempt to be heroic and fail is to be a fool.

The truth is that there are no heroes, only ordinary people who responded as best they could to extraordinary situations; which isn’t a very good truth, because I like heroes and I want there to be lots of them.

I like heroes because they’re bigger and harder than I am and can be relied on to pop up when it all goes horribly wrong and sort it all out for me; like my mum, fearlessly driving out the monsters in the wardrobe with a skilful flick of the light switch. Now that the monsters have outgrown the wardrobe and are marauding unchecked about the globe, I’d very much like a handy hero to do them in.

Instead, I have the right to cast a vote every five years, thereby to hold politicians to account and to exchange the government of the country for the other government of the country, thus earning myself the right to shut up for the next half-decade. A wizard, on the other hand, would change the government into a bunch of warty toads – broadly similar in appearance but less damaging on a global scale.

But alas there are no heroes – only ordinary people who take it on, take responsibility for fighting the injustices around them. No-one starts out brave.

Even Gandhi didn’t start out brave – he was so nervous as a young barrister that he was unable to speak in court and had to give his first brief to a colleague. But the injustice of South Africa’s apartheid regime inflamed him; the struggle against it brought the best out of him and he devoted his life to non-violent opposition to violence and racism.

Nelson Mandela didn’t set out to be brave. He set out to overturn an appalling situation, avoided jail as long as he could and then, when he was on trial for his life, he made the best speech he could in court and was jailed for 27 years instead of being executed. But surely when the cell door was slammed on him his first night in jail he felt the same isolation, fear and self doubt anyone else does. Given little choice, he then dealt with jail and came out a peacemaker.

Caoimhe (Queeva) Butterly didn’t set out to be a hero. She went to Palestine to do what she could to defend the human rights of Palestinian people. Out of love, she’s lived for month upon month in the Jenin refugee camp, protecting people by her presence. She’s been shot carrying children to safety and they love her for it, because she and others like her have done more for them than the entire international political community.

Last year I met Kelly Campbell and Ryan Amundsen, the sister-in-law and brother, respectively, of a man killed on September 11th in the Pentagon. His family were among the founders of a peace group for victims’ families, some of whose members, including Kelly, went to Afghanistan to meet families of the victims of the US bombing there. Their determination not to allow their grief to be hijacked for the US’s warmongering was enormously powerful: out of love, they had chosen to take responsibility for all those other lives, threatened by the global military industrial machine. They didn’t set out to be heroes, but they’re amazing.

We are all responsible for our own actions and for each other. We are responsible for electing government, and the system we have enables us to delegate much of the decision-making responsibility to that government. But we must keep this in mind: that we have merely delegated our decision-making responsibility to them. They remain our representatives, not our rulers: we are not mere slaves, nor children who have to be controlled and ordered; we are still responsible for what they do with the power we give them: for taking it off them if they abuse it.

If, at any point, those representatives cease to represent us, cease to enact the will of the people, consent is already, by implication, withdrawn, because our consent never reached to committing acts against the will of the people.

So how does that help me decide what to do? Maybe it doesn’t, but I’m going to Iraq. There’s comes a time when you know too much and you can’t say "It’s not my problem" anymore because you know it’s your responsibility. Perhaps you can’t quite see what power you have to challenge the wrong that you see being done, but you know that people are suffering and, if you can’t stop that, the human instinct is to go to them and hold them and say "You are not alone."

I want to break the sanctions again because they’re wrong and they’re killing people in their thousands month by month and if I can’t save those thousands with a wave of my magic wand then I’ll do what I can with vitamins and Aspirins and medical textbooks and the rest will be a symbol: "You are not alone."

I want to set up twinning so people can be writing to each other, building links, humanising, seeing one another’s lives, faces, loves, knowing that people are people. "We know that people are not the same as governments," we were told by Iraqi people, who bore us no resentment for the suffering inflicted on them by our government, in punishing them for the acts of theirs, which they have no power to change. Our children and theirs are going to have to share the world. Our children and theirs are going to have to make the peace that must follow the war that we create for them.

I want to document the likely consequences of war: the civilian catastrophe that will follow disaster if the warmongers are not stopped. More than 60% of the population – 16 million people - are completely dependent on the monthly food ration, which will not be distributed at all during intensive bombing. Drinkable water, sewage disposal and power generation are already severely limited, and will collapse altogether during bombing. Knowing this, the war planners will be in grave breach of the Geneva Conventions – those Phoenix-like documents filled with faith in humanity’s ability to learn from its mistakes.

I want to show the world that the Iraqi people are likely to be worse off still after a war. Doubtless the sanctions will be dropped, and with them may be removed the only social security the people have – the food ration. Iraq’s debt will remain, however, crippling its economy for decades to come. Multinational companies, not just oil-related, will take over Iraq’s resources, public services and industries, siphoning away the wealth which once belonged to the people, condemning them to poverty unmitigated by investment in their wellbeing as anything other than a native workforce.

I want people to understand that the United Nations is not an organisation with headquarters in Geneva and New York and formation flying squads of men in suits; it is us – we the people of the united nations, of no nation but the humanation. People are not the same as governments and, while they and their corporate doppelgangers squabble like orcs over innocent flesh, it is for us to protect one another, to say she is my sister and my responsibility and, if I must, I will try to protect her.

I’m not afraid because I can’t picture war. I can see Baghdad ablaze with sunshine, not the chaotic inferno of missiles and rubble. I can see Ahmed smiling, Mohammed’s eyes twinkling over his harmonica, Muna’s arms open in welcome, Jassim’s toothless grin over a sneaky beer, Nadra’s desolate tears framed by her bright pink scarf as she cradles her dying daughter.

In fact a Canadian peace campaigner was killed in January 2003 on the way from Basra to Baghdad. How ironic to go through all this, all the questions about the dangers, all the reassurances to family and friends and then to die in something so mundane as a car accident: something which could have happened anywhere. Yet in Iraq they happen very frequently, for lack of safe tyres. The pain is the same for every family. None of those lives is worth less than any other.

I’m not going as a martyr, nor do I believe for a moment that I’ll be hurt; nor am I going as any kind of human shield. Fair play to anyone who does choose to be that. For me, I don’t feel that my being there won’t stop the bombs being sent but there are other things I do feel I can do. I know all I can influence is my immediate environment – the people I meet there; the people back here to whom I tell their stories.

But this is wrong on an inordinate scale, perhaps the wrongest thing of my generation and, if I can only do a little, let me at least tell the ordinary people of Iraq: "You are not alone."