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Filed under: Afghanistan and Pakistan, War and Poverty | Tags: Afghanistan, anti American, conscience, Muslim, pacifism, peace
Major Nader Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter was caught in an impossible matrix of shame. As a Muslim he was asked to support the killing his fellow religionists. Islam forbids the killing of other Muslims. As a military man he was belittled and perhaps harassed for his growing Muslim convictions. Good soldiers do not identify with the enemy. Every day as a counselor and psychiatrist he was reminded of his impossible dilemma as he listened to the dreadful stories of broken soldiers caught in the vise of post traumatic stress syndrome disorder (PTSD). Their stories of fatalism, guilt, suicide and other life changing experience in combat killing reminded him that he was a part of the system that kills other Muslims. He was caught between two shaming systems and there was no place to turn for help.
The military does not allow for selective conscientious objection.* Soldiers, including officers of all religious and secular persuasions who try to extricate themselves from previous military commitments are belittled. And the bureaucratic path leads through months and even years of lonely and tortured hearings, appeals, reviews and rejections. Some go absent without leave (AWOL) only to grow exhausted over time with their semi underground life and loss of hope for a normal life. They may turn themselves in or even join the ranks of the homeless. In previous wars they were welcomed in countries like Canada where they took up new lives. Canada is no longer welcoming to objectors.
Objectors who are in uniform tend to act out of the deepest instincts of conscience that is available to them, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or humanist. Major Nader Hasan is one in a long line of soldiers whose deep inner conviction led them to refuse to cooperate. He did it in a more destructive and dramatic form. If you want to meet other objectors you can visit Under the Hood Café outside of Fort Hood where G Is with objections to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan congregate. I met six of them in a recent trip to Austin. All of them described thoughts of suicide, anguish over their desire to get their lives back, frustration at the way the military refused to believe them when they objected, and counselling sessions with people like Major Hasan that helped little. In our conversations the group of objectors thoughtfully contemplated various versions of objection, selective conscientious objection (not recognized by the military), complete pacifism (recognized by the military) or continuing to run. However in the confusion of their stress, I was not sure if one or more of them could turn to violence directed at their families or even aimed at the military.
Like Major Hasan the non Muslim objectors were people who believed what the military recruiters who are required to meet quota, told them. They thought they would get money for advanced education. They believed that they were going to fight and kill persons who may terrorize America. They believed what they would do was right, good, honourable and even heroic. The reality and innocence of the people they have now killed overwhelms them. Their consciences were stirred by a more deeply rooted universal respect for human life. When they acted on their conscience it was interpreted as disloyalty to the military and to their nation and their lives are not celebrated like the media reverently acknowledges those who die in America’s wars.
Despite the macho cultures from which these non Muslim soldiers came their bodies and minds are now closed down to more war. For the young soldiers I met in Austin TX, massive killings by air, sea and land were enthusiastically approved and roundly supported by their superiors and political leaders. Each soldier I talked with has his or her own story of willy nilly, random shootings that are never investigated. In Major Hasan’s culture, suicide attacks are encouraged as the way to leave a mark or discourage the enemy. The dominant thread in both cultures is the ancient model, an eye for an eye and both have teachings about just war that are ignored by commanders, soldiers and the religious teachers who back them up.
The lessons from the Fort Hood shootings is one that all of us must hear and believe. There are great numbers of people returning from the modern battle field who are wounded in spirit. The belief in a system that threatens, shocks and kills does not bring real security. We all need to listen to people like Major Hasan and his colleagues at Fort Hood and help them find a way out of the system that is killing them and others. One way out for them would be a system of selective conscientious objection. We can press for that.
We can also push for a democracy that provides as many rewards for unarmed warriors, peacemakers and service workers outside the military as those promised to military recruits. Maybe we should even advocate a draft that recruits the sons and daughters of the ruling class first. In the long term we need to press for a dramatic cut in the military budget. And for all of us who dream of the day when a culture of peacefulness without killing might prevail we need to get serious about all kinds of experiments that build a culture where conflicts are settled without weapons.
*Major Nader Hasan June 2007 notes for speech at Walter Reed Hospital advocating option for Consciencious Objector status for Muslims in the conclusion.
My old masques are lost somewhere in storage but something inside me still wants to dress up like Dracula for Halloween. All Souls Day and All Saints Day and Halloween, all special days from popular cultures at this time of the year, help me remember the underworld and the dead. The origins of these festivals cover a range of cultures from pre modern religion that combine threads of various holidays. When someone knocks on my door impersonating a robotic looking devil that person is projecting a fear already present in my culture. By impersonating the demons of evil I make them visible so that I can do something with them perhaps even re form them into objects of opportunity rather than enemies.
Many of my neighbours around the world believe that unless departed spirits are treated respectfully their spirits will haunt the living. All of us remember our loved ones who have died. In Viet Nam josh sticks are lit on special days and food is set out for the spirits of the dead especially the ancestors. According to one tradition the custom of “trick or treating” goes back to the middle ages when poor people begged for a donut like soul cake and if they received a cake they would agree to pray for departed souls. The prayer connection to “trick or treat” has not survived but its interconnection to another world of devils is alive at Halloween usually at our front doors.
All Souls Day is a time of great celebration especially in Latin Countries and the Philippines. A festival atmosphere not unlike a Mennonite relief sale pervades as families spend the day and often the night at the cemetery where the departed ones are buried. In the Philippines people bring food, flowers, and candles to be placed on the grave site. Tents are constructed for overnight stays.
The cemeteries are so crowded that people sleep on top of the grave sites. Children invent new games like collecting melted wax and compete to be the one who makes the biggest ball of wax for recycling back home to make candles. Family ties are strengthened. People who have not talked to each other for months or even years due to disputes are forced to converse at the door of the land of the dead. Politicians move among the people giving words of greeting and comfort and silently courting support.
In former times traditional priests sold prayers on behalf of departed souls who may be awaiting final entry into heaven. The religious significance of All Souls Day is being eroded by advanced market practices. Chain stores set up temporary outlets to push their products at the cemetery where there is steady traffic. All Souls Day and night is a time to wear good clothes. It is an occasion when returning overseas workers show off how well they are doing. Rich people build mausoleums, an extended crypt with amenities for living, at the cemeteries where they can stay in comfort for the entire celebration. Young people dance and karioke music competes (and usually wins) over the sound of prayers and passion music. Masked behind all the dancing, eating and festive activity is the experience of unbroken connection to the spirits of those who continue to make us who we are.
This year in the competition to wear the best Halloween costume that impersonates a modern devil I bet an award somewhere will go to the one who imitates a high finance “too big to fail” capitalist who just made off with a fantastic bonus. And if the devils work as a team which the top ones tend to do I bet they will find a way to shmooze with politicians. Like priests in long forgotten cultures they will raise money and garner power in places where the dead, whose good we celebrate, can’t talk about what bothers them and the living are cautious.
When Halloween is over some of us will go to church where we might be reminded that this is All Saints Day a time to remember the Saints including martyrs. Originally many Christian martyrs were executed because they refused to worship a Roman emperor, the symbolic head of the public religion of the day. Some came to Christian faith as soldiers. Their faith interrupted very promising careers and sometimes led to persecution and death. Beside these ancient martyrs this year we may choose to remember people like Tom Fox, the CPT worker (Christian Peacemaker Teams) who was taken hostage and killed in Iraq while trying to live out the way of nonviolent love.
This season, Halloween reminds me of the dilemma that all people of the book face at some point. If God is so good and perfect why is there so much evil and violence? By remembering my freedom and autonomy I am respected. I am allowed to get stuck with an obsession that one of those devils offers by tricking me for a treat. I am also allowed to make choices about who I am and where I want my weight and overweight to be felt.
The masks and elaborate masqueraders of the season remind me of the dangerous energy around me. I can do better. By remembering the Saints and Souls I am inspired not to be trapped, tricked or captured by the gambling energies of high finance, consumerism and the attendant armaments required for their protection. I don’t know if Dracula had all of this in mind when he inspired me to dress up for Halloween. If he comes to my door later this week I will thank him for reminding me of all this bad stuff around me and that I (and the people of the earth) have some important choices to make in the coming year.
Filed under: Militarism, Peacemaker spirit | Tags: air force, conscience, Human Rights, pacifism, spirit
Two weeks ago I spoke at a gathering in Austin TX on Honouring Conscience. As I prepared I revisited those times in my life when I had listened to my own conscience. And then I began to make notes of people around the world who had acted out of conscience. I remembered troubling days of decision making many had reported to me. I recalled the joy and freedom that lit up their faces as they told their story and the consequences including changed relationships to neighbours, nation and colleagues that flowed from their decisions. I had never experienced such energy and confidence in preparing for an event as I did for this one.
At our gathering we celebrated acts of conscience in an honouring ceremony where persons from many walks gathered for special words of blessing and recognition, former soldiers, tax resisters, community activists, educators, professionals, workers, and Conscientious Objectors. As the words of recognition were spoken, my mind was also illuminated with a cloud of witnesses with whom I had worked from every clan, culture and nation where I served. It was humbling to be in the presence of this sacred trust of inner light, a force more powerful than law or might.
Immediately before this honouring ceremony I attended a workshop where the presenters included six former and current soldiers from Fort Hood north of Austin, one of the major finishing schools and launch sites for soldiers going to Iraq and Afghanistan. Each soldier described his own journey through patriotic acts of killing to preserve “our way of life”. They spoke of the estranging space deep inside called PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), where the meaning of their acts intermingled with their conscience.
One described the “first” Iraqi child he killed because he thought that child would grow up to be a terrorist. Another described a 36 hour odyssey in the field of killing. Each soldier spoke of suicide thoughts, broken relationships, abusive behaviour, lying, stealing, legal and illegal drugs and alcohol in the journey to find safety from the memories. Now they stumble through college classes in a world where there are few jobs. When asked if anything helped in their journey to recovery they agreed that the spirit and compassion of Cindy Thomas who runs a coffee shop called Under the Hood, just off the base gave them hope. Cindy’s active duty husband’s experience and the decision of her son to join the marines compelled her to open this center. The soldiers couldn’t think of anything else that helped them.
But the Iraq veterans were not the only former military people at this event. An important spirit behind the celebration of conscience was Garland Robertson former air force pilot and chaplain. Garland’s journey included his own renewal of conscience when as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force he reached a boundary within that would not allow him to go on without speaking more directly about militarism. A multi year battle with his superiors through rejection, hearings and court cases led to his retirement and current pastoral work at the Austin Mennonite Church. His firm persistent familiarity with the Spirit encourages people around him to be alive to the life of conscience.
As these heroes spoke I remembered the Iraqi soldier I met in Baghdad who refused to serve in Iraq’s army. His ear was partially cut off as a permanent reminder of his disobedience. I remembered the paramilitary soldier in Columbia who showed up one day seeking help to disappear from his comrades who would surely kill him if they knew he was trying to leave. I remembered the local heroes, pastors, prophets, imams, monks and human rights workers who listened to conscience and saved lives in the Philippines, Viet Nam, Burma, Indonesia each in a special time of political emergency. In Pakistan this past June I met a Pakhtoon man from the part of Pakistan where the Taliban are strong who travelled for two days by foot and bus to tell the story of the bombing that his people live under and plea for help to save lives.
Did Albert Einstein really mean what he said, “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.” Conscience is not something that is owned by a particular class, nation or sect although it is foundational to the life of faith. Nor can it be destroyed when people find ways to listen to it and act on it. Tyranny finds its place when people of conscience fail to act. Listening to conscience does not make us over into perfect specimens of our species. When conscience choices are made the darkest hours of our common life become points of light for all humanity. Even a child understands the voice of conscience.
Before there was law, conscience already existed. That is why the breaking of law is not disrespect for the law. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from the Birmingham jail wrote, “An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
Filed under: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Detainees, Immagination, Pakistan, Peacemaker spirit | Tags: Afghanistan, digital war, drones, Las Vegas, Pakistan, robotic warfare
The invitation to a gathering of reflection on peacemaking in Las Vegas came several months ago. I was honoured to join the group for a day because the question of how to respond to America’s current wars, its plans for dominance in space and the unfolding movement of robotic warfare challenges all of us, young and old, to think in fresh ways. My time in Vegas would be completed with another adventure in contemplation in the desert sands where Creech Air Force Base trains pilots for robotic warfare.
The collapse of world wide finance and my lack of confidence in the big players may be creating a greater space for imagination. When I complained to one participant, Vincent Harding, that I still have little confidence in what to do he gave me a little pastoral advice from an African proverb. “How do you eat an elephant,” he asked. “One bite at a time.” I left Las Vegas where the demons of irrational luck seem to be in control determined to free up the mirage of powerlessness in my mind.
I am done with letting the big players and gaming machines control the culture. I know more than I have acted upon. Economics is also a matter of spirit. My mind’s deep freeze has kept me from the light within and the possibility of light in my opponents, the people who manage the remaining collapse of a world that takes care of the people who are “too big to fail”. Truth happens in experiments. It is backed by courage and preparedness for the teachable moments. My time in Las Vegas was one of the moments when I was taught.
My wake up call to finance capital was completed in the biggest detention center of Las Vegas. But first I had to go to Creech Air Force Base 45 miles northwest in the desert. I wanted to meet a commander at Creech to discuss the work of Predator I and II, the drones that I heard so much about from Pakistani people when I visited that Muslim country in June. I joined a group of seven. But, as we began to walk along the commercial entry way to Creech AFB we were detained by Clark County police behind a large movable cement barricade. We were placed in the care of military police with heavy belts who pointed their big black guns at us. It gave me a little extended time to think about the finances that pay the bill for Creech.
As we waited in front of the guns to be transported to Clark County Detention Center, two blocks from the Golden Nugget, one of Las Vegas oldest sanctuaries of luck, my colleagues asked me to redeem the time by giving a full voiced report on my recent trip to Pakistan for the benefit of my fellow detainees and our guard – caretakers. With apologies to my friends back in Pakistan for the absence of tea service I was able to represent truthfully some of what I learned about their fears of being the objects of Predator drones and their hopes for an unfolding of justice with peace in South Asia.
By midnight six hours after the pilgrimage into Creech began, I had been fingerprinted several times, questioned repeatedly, tested for TB, had my blood pressure checked, asked if I had recently tried to commit suicide, and I repeatedly spelled and corrected my last name for the vast criminal bureaucracy of the Las Vegas region. Somewhere along the way I was relieved of my shoes, socks, watch, ID, money, and everything but my pants and shirt. Later in the night I was pushed into a 10 foot by 20 foot holding cell where 18 other people were already making some kind of peace or silently plotting revenge at police who had shouted or insulted them on their road to detention.
The sounds of the cell included broad sustained snores, other body noises and loud television, a cacophony that reminded each of us non sleepers that we had reached a peculiar moment of truth. By approximately four am a gruel like slop arrived for breakfast. Most of us could not face the Wonder Bread and whatever else there was. Nausea teased our stomach muscles. The guards had thoughtfully placed a large plastic bag in the middle of the floor and told us to put any left over food that we couldn’t eat or would not stay down into it. “If you make a ‘blankety blank’ mess,” screamed the guard. “You can plan to be in the holding area for two more weeks.”
By the time of my release the second and third “gruelling” meals had come and gone. As those hours passed, I got to know my cell mates. Several had been picked up for the high crime of jay walking evidently a matter of major concern in the city of mostly bad luck. Others were picked up for traffic violations. Everyone except me had some other kind of outstanding legal problem. For several men, simple records had never been updated.
My loss of shoes and socks became a matter of considerable concern since the temperature in the holding area of lucky town is just south of a cool fall day near the solar ice cap. While the street people slept through the fog like another day on the tracks, the rest of us shared our stories.
One man, a high roller was tracked for outstanding debts of $125,000 at two casinos when he was stopped on a traffic violation. A couple calls and he zipped up his $700 dollar shoes and was off to another race. He told me he once won $600,000 in two hours but admitted his career on the strip had lost his family a lot more than he had won. I managed to get a modest applause, enough to wake up the permanent sleepers when I told them I was in for “disturbing the war” at Creech AFB.
Actually I think I got lucky in Vegas because I was introduced to at least two angels in waiting. I haven’t had a chance to talk to them very much yet. You see angels always come to me in unkempt and upsetting ways. First, the angel of unearned and unconscious powerlessness showed up in the gathering to do peace visioning. I will be talking to that angel. The second appeared in both the shouts of the Clark County Sheriff’s officers and in the up close and personal discussions with other detained people. My cell mates were curious about Afghanistan and Pakistan but they also reminded me to watch out for bully behaviour wherever it shows up, in Afghanistan, in Las Vegas police uniforms, on the back streets of Vegas or on Wall Street. I will be having more conversations with this angel too. The light and dark of the desert has gotten me revved up again. I guess that is what a reflection session and retreat is supposed to do. Thanks!
Filed under: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Politics of Empire, Taliban | Tags: Afghanistan, Afghanistan troop surge, counter insurgency, military contractors
This week General McChrystal’s review of what is needed in Afghanistan began to make its rounds. Although the unclassified “multi disciplinary assessment” might not titillate your breakfast musings, it sets the tone for the coming debate and if we want to engage in the discussion, we better know what it says. In a word the report calls for the ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force which includes NATO and other forces to change its internal culture by getting closer to the people, protecting the people, and tightening up its command structure while it decentralizes in order to respond to local conditions. It repeatedly calls for the mission to be properly “resourced” which is Pentagonese for more troops and it urges more ability in language and cultural skills to relate to local people.
The memo reminds the Afghan government that it needs to clean up its act. It alludes to the mantra of corruption as if this is a new characteristic of a “counter insurgency” situation. The pages note that the abuse of power and privilege by the Afghan government has not helped. However it does not remind its readers that corruption, abuse of power and opportunism, also standard form in US politics at home, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, are common themes in war and particularly where there are insurgencies.
The report is silent about religion or traditional communal decision making of Afghan village culture as a component for healing - well the memo actually does not use the term healing. It makes no mention of gender roles or how traditional justice processes work among the various ethnic groups. It vaguely acknowledges the possibility of selective negotiations and uses the term reconciliation. But the central theme is a call for what it names as a new strategy and warns that without it and proper resourcing things can get worse, much worse.
The memo lets us know that “conventional warfare culture is part of the problem”. Immediately I thought of the US Air Force or the newly conventionalized robotic war machine at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas. Would these projects and units like them that do so much damage to relationships, trust and long term confidence be shut down? I tried to conjure up images of how a marine unit might look, devoid of its Hummers, trucks, and helicopters and ready access to a plethora of communication devices just a few of the elements of the conventional warfare culture that I know.
It’s a stretch to think of a marine unit “tasked” to build relations with the local people, sitting in circles of elders, sharing food, brain storming about what works and what doesn’t work. I imagine those marines travelling by bicycle, without arms, uniform or even candy to give out. Maybe a sign somewhere on the bicycle would say “I am an unarmed soldier and I am here to help”. I thought that General McChrystal should know that imaginations like the one implanted within me creates images for an army that could embrace serious internal cultural change.
For the record, McChrystal should be reminded that beginning one century ago an unarmed nonviolent army of 100,000 like the marine unit I described once existed among the tribesmen like the people McChrystal’s army now fights in border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Badshah Khan, its leader, was buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan in 1988. The cultural changes advocated here are not as remote to Afghanistan as conventional thinking might consider them to be. I know that General McChrystal would still be worried about the security of his unarmed troops. Should he be worried? Yes! Would ISAF death rate be worse than it is presently with all the armour, the weapons, and airplanes removed.. Probably not!
A bonus to a major cultural shift towards simplicity for foreign forces in Afghanistan may be its attractiveness back home in a society that is rooted in notions of sacrifice. For conservatives it would mean lowering the costs. For liberals it would appeal to notions of really helping rather than breaking things. Going low budget with constant self reflection has been tried by private groups and it works. Implementation will require a different kind of consultant, contractor, trainer and analyst. The new strategy could silently eliminate all the armed mercenaries that repeatedly sully the image of our country. Everybody would win with this strategy, Afghans, Americans, conservatives, liberals even the Pakistani and Iranian neighbours who would feel less pressure to keep up in terms of missiles and military hardware. Successful implementation of the new culture of the International Security Assistance Force would clearly mean less troops, not more, as the values behind the new culture take root.
Another suggestion that I liked in this memo is the call for people to think. To break through the fog of the more than 130 military acronyms in this document does require thinking. But why not take General McChrystal at his word and think more deeply with him about what might work. Neither President Obama nor his White House staff are particularly experienced in Afghanistan although some of them have done unarmed community projects and that is a plus if they take time to remember how they connected with communities.
One of the ways in which the Afghanistan effort has been “under resourced” for the last 8 years is thinking. I don’t presume to have all the answers about security. However I believe that the people I have known and worked with in villages, provincial towns, and cities across this world including Afghanistan really have useful thoughts and solutions. The problem is that no one can get to them because the contractors, the Hummers, the drones and the conventional warfare culture gets in the way. It’s a big deal to change a culture. General McChrystal will need a lot of support because he will get mean opposition if he in fact survives long enough to work out a vision.
The memo is reaching for something that may have a moral equivalency to conventional war. Any soldier who resolves to find a way for change outside the standard instruments of war is stepping into testy waters. That is why he or she thinks more troops are needed just in case nothing works. The memo fails to show how more resources will bring the mission closer to success. Military thinkers like the rest of us stumble around when we know we must work outside the box. If more resources just brings escalation and deepens the resolve of both sides for victory using terrorism if necessary, the mission will fail. If this process of culture change can turn us to deeper things, like how justice is accomplished, the conversation before us may help.
Filed under: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Detainees, Impunity, Iraq, Viet Nam | Tags: Afghanistan, counter insurgency, torture
Torture has been on my mind. I know that I need to push back its cover from where it dwells in the shadows. I know that my nation may refuse to do so when they use torture as a means of waging war as a path to peace. Lecturing others about torture comes more easily. I have learned in the last fifty years that laws preventing torture, and molestation will not stop it. But law will help. However, only a moral conversion will change things. People tell me human nature will never change. I believe change is always happening. It’s what we do with change that counts.
Six years ago this month I was in Baghdad where I talked to some of the earliest prisoners to be freed from detention after the American occupation began. I wanted a profile of what was happening and maybe some hints on how to intervene with protective actions. The interrogation routines reflected patterns, revolvers pointed at heads, loud sounds, sleeplessness, shouting, taunting, accusations and more. When these descriptions ended very often there was a sigh and the former detainee would look at me and say “and there were things about which I cannot talk”. I could not imagine what the unspeakable things might be until I saw the pictures from Abu Ghraib. Then the unspeakable “things about which I cannot talk” took shape, sexual humiliation, nakedness, and molestation. Similar interrogation methods were described to me years earlier in Viet Nam, and the Philippines.
According to the record Jesus was flogged, a process designed to hurt and humiliate the prisoner. After Jesus was handed over to the Roman soldiers, themselves foreign occupiers, he was mocked, given a crown of thorns, dressed in courtly purple and taunted. The digital photos from Abu Ghraib may be the closest representation of what might have happened when Jesus was alone with soldiers, better even than Mel Gibson’s more macho representation in The Passion of Jesus. What would a hidden camera among the Roman soldiers who taunted Jesus have revealed that we don’t know from the existing record?
A crucifixion was an extreme formula of execution in Roman times. At first, under the Republic it was used for slaves, but under the empire its use was enlarged to include criminals and persons involved in revolts. Cicero called crucifixion “the most cruel and disgusting punishment” and the Apostle Paul talks of Jesus’ end, “even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8) almost to suggest that there are all kinds of less humiliating, less painful and quicker ways to be put to death. Jesus may have been crucified naked as was often practised in crucifixion formulas of the time. The first century historian, Josephus called crucifixion, “the most pitiable of deaths”.
The response of the Obama administration which is to place torture at arms length with more study reflects an ambivalence about dealing with it now. The brave words heard in the campaign reflected a belief that we are better than the events of Abu Ghraib depict us to be, something we all want to believe about ourselves and our nation. But denial also has even wider cultural support. No leader can take on torture trials without using up considerable political capital and without exceptional support in the population. President Obama does not have that support because people like me take so long to uncover and admit the depth of our own revulsion.
When the photos from Abu Ghraib surfaced I was forced to look deeper into the interrogation process than I had before. The people who supported me now could believe me too because the media gave confirmation. But what if I could not depend upon media confirmation particularly in an era when being embedded with the military went largely unquestioned? What if a soldier had not leaked his digital photos for the world to see? How many more people would have been taunted, and betrayed, by state sponsored torture in Iraq because of my insistence upon evidence that would hold up with sceptics?
________
* For a more thorough study of these themes read Prisoner Abuse: From Abu Ghraib to The Passion of Christ by David Tombs in Religion and the Politics of Peace and Conflict, ed. Linda Hogan and Dylan Lee Lehrke, Pickwick Publication, Eugene Oregon (Princeton Theological Monograph Series)
Filed under: First Nations People, Nonviolence | Tags: Canada, native people, peace, revenge
Last week I attended the fourth in a series of council meetings in my township, Alberton. The room was full again because the council was scheduled to vote on making a zoning change so that Weechi-it-te-win, a native family services organization could purchase a farm where it would open a new facility for youth. Dozens of worried, angry people have spoken up and shouted out at the council meetings. “Our Way of Life” is threatened said one young man who is starting a family. Across the highway from the projected facility, FOR SALE signs have appeared in several yards, a visible signal of protest although the owners must not be serious because their prices are highly inflated.
I first learned the language of threat used with the phrase “Our Way of Life” during the 1950s emanating from white supremacists in Alabama as the civil rights movement heated up. My home was then in Ohio. I knew something was wrong about race relations but couldn’t figure out how it affected me and my way of life. So in the late 50s as a student at Eastern Mennonite University (Virginia) I wrote and delivered a speech for an oratorical contest condemning segregation and racist thinking . It was actually a pretty safe thing to do. In those days we generally believed that racism was wrong but it didn’t occur to us very often that people like me could do something about it. After the speech a few people came to me to suggest that I may have stepped over the line and some people were offended by my speech. It was all very polite. Nothing like the doomsday, “Our Way of Life” protests I felt in Alberton last week. Or maybe I just was not listening very well.
The other day I learned that some Americans say that Obama’s health reform agenda is dangerous because it threatens “Our Way of Life”. Although I am living in Canada where I enjoy public health care I occasionally sneak a peak at American news where some commentators tell me how bad the Canadian health system is. I could not have known this by living here in Canada because for the first time in my life I go to the clinic for preventative check ups regularly and I am getting healthier. I have only lived here for five years so I might have a myopic view. In Chicago where I lived before I only went to an emergency room if I was really sick, and I worried that they would clean out my billfold.
This ongoing tussle with the shadowy side of our common life brings me back home here to Alberton township, (dispersed rural population 1000) where the council voted down the application for the native run youth facility on zoning grounds. The “Our Way of Life” people and the strict zoning interpreters on the council won out for now. I wonder what the council would have done if zoning changes were requested to pave the way for a university computer research facility. Would that fit into the Business Park zoning designation. That would have really challenge “Our Way of Life”. And if the paper mill that employs 650 people would close or downsize what would that do to zoning and “Our Way of Life”?
Now in Alberton I am faced with the same “Way of Life” problem I faced fifty years ago when I was a student in Virginia. Do I stay quiet, keep the lawn mowed, and try to be nice to my neighbours? Do I make a sign “Natives, Non Natives, There is room for all of us” and walk or bicycle the forty or so miles of Alberton roads inviting my neighbours to a conversation. I am not sure how I feel about walking these roads alone. The tone of the meetings in the council chamber is stuck right now but what happened in Alabama tells me that things don’t stay stuck forever, even though Birmingham is not yet perfect..
The North American continent is stumbling towards a “Way of Life” that could be good for all of us. The unfinished project of equality, and democracy sometimes gets in the way of “Our ‘current’ Way of Life”. The lawyers scramble for the spoils when we have disagreements like this. Law helps but it doesn’t change my deeper side. I learned to try to be true to what is right in Sunday School a long time ago. I am not always successful. Education helps me sometimes but I forget very quickly. So how do I listen to my moral conviction, and outrage and help harvest them into a “Way of Life” that awakens the best for all of us, native, non native, timber worker, unemployed, professional, youth and retired? Adjustments to an always changing “Way of Life” may be inconvenient in the short run. I think I can handle this walk through the valley of shadows but I will only know as I do it one step at a time. I invite my neighbours to walk with me.
Filed under: Afghanistan and Pakistan | Tags: drones, Pakistan, peace, Pukhtoon, Taliban
A Pakhtoon representative for international aid groups travelled for two days by foot and bus from the his tribal area in South Waziristan, to meet with us in the Rawalpindi, the partner city of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. A kindly but firm man in his early thirties, he described his work. There was no edge in his voice as he outlined the lives of Taliban in the villages he knew best. People in his communities all know the Taliban because family members are Taliban, he told our five person delegation from Voices for Creative Nonviolence, visiting Pakistan in May and June of this year.
Our new friend’s voice rose with fear when he spoke of drones, his word for the remotely piloted US Predator I or II aircraft that occasionally are observed in the skies above tribal villages where he is at home. “Even the children have learned not to play in groups at the slightest sighting of a drone. They whisper that a Hellfire missile may target them.” For sixty years villages in his Pakhtoon tribal area have not experienced significant government presence from Islamabad. This policy is a continuation of British colonialism’s rule reaching back another100 years.
In May the Pakistan army entered the Swat Valley, the lush Swiss like mountainous home to more than two million Pukhtoon people. The army’s announced goal was to push out the Taliban who had consolidated their power and were beginning to extend their influence even further towards Islamabad. A banker I met who had fled the Swat valley with more than a million other people when the Pakistan military arrived was animated about the Taliban. “We must be rid of them.” he said, “I don’t care if they are chased out by the Indian Army or American drones. I want them out dead or alive.” The banker, an ethnic Pukhtoon, warned me not to listen to the attitudes of the poorer classes because they didn’t understand the real situation.
The Internally Displaced People (IDPs or refugees) from Swat Valley and other Pukhtoon tribal areas were tentative in speaking their minds. They may have been cautious about our peace delegation or worried about other Pakistanis listening in to our conversations. We were alarmed by their stories of a harrowing flight in the wake of Pakistani army commands. “We were ordered by Pakistani army people to leave immediately. We fled with nothing but the work clothes on our back,” said one farmer. Another refugee told of a neighbor women who asked her husband to grab her new baby sleeping in a blanket. Only after they had fled for some distance did the family discover that there was no baby inside the blanket. The husband had grabbed the wrong blanket. The family was prohibited from returning to find the child. Stories abound of parents separated from their children, spouses and other extended family members. Some IDPs have begun to return to the Swat Valley.
More than anything the displaced people are confused. For two years they have watched Pakistani military units stand by as Taliban forces took over local police detachments and asserted control over schools and the local judiciary, and rolled back women’s opportunity in society. Some told of assassinations, particularly beheadings. A Pakistani photo journalist we met has been in hiding because she fears government reprisals since her pictures of the persecution of women in Swat Valley gained world wide attention earlier this year. Others described grass roots sympathy for the Taliban religious teachings. These teachings are disseminated by daily radio broadcasts. We were told by different people that the real enemy was Central Asian peoples with the Taliban, America, China, the Pakistan military, the Taliban, India, even Israel.
For the Pukhtoon people “Talib” means student. Taliban (students) are young boys who come from poor families and attend Madrasas, Islamic schools sometimes called seminaries. A Pukhtoon leader from Peshawar told me that a poor family has three choices for their children, “send them to government schools if they exist and let them remain hungry, stay out of school altogether and remain hungry, or attend a Madrasa where they memorize the Koran and eat decent meals”. Thousands have chosen the foreign financed Madrasas since the Soviets invaded Afghanistan 30 years ago. Many of those young students are now grown Taliban fighters in places like the Swat Valley and Afghanistan. The Taliban movement was a project of the military intelligence services of Pakistan. It began with generous support from US military and intelligence agencies.
The Taliban is not the only Pakistani movement pushing for stricter Islamic law. For example, the much older Jamaat-e-Islami has been hard at work expanding its support among Punjabi and Sindhi peoples where it has exercised significant influence in University student movements and led relief efforts for IDPs. “We want you to stop giving money to the Pakistani military now.” said one representative of the JI, “because your money makes our society more violent and it supports the Taliban.”
Other people representing a more secular thread of Pakistan are worried that the Taliban and militant Muslims of other stripes are gaining. “You actually have militants in the nuclear program,” a nuclear physicist told us. “The Taliban drift is a major problem. This will be a drag on us for at least a decade.” As the Taliban have taken their war of truck bombs and road side explosives from Pukhtoon country on Pakistan’s western border and Afghanistan into the majority population centers including Lahore and Karachi the mood in much of Pakistan has turned dramatically against the Taliban – so much so that the Pakistan military must get serious about confronting its erstwhile “asset”. The Pakistan military intelligence developed the Taliban in the early 1980s to provide security on its western border while its main units of the army faced India on the eastern Punjabi plains and Kashmir.
The cultural distance between Pakistan’s great urban centers and the remote villages that support the Taliban is enormous. Even sending the military into some of the tribal regions not under direct government rule like North or South Waziristan may be akin to sending out former Wall Street finance wizards to Iowa to run a tiny organic farm. A Human Rights worker told us, “The Taliban did deliver law and order where the government failed. Pakistan authority had not entered some tribal areas for 60 years and finally when it is entering those areas it is with a gun.”
Although Pukhtoon tribal society encourages revenge, elements of traditional modes of reconciliation survive in the village jirga (councils of elders). “If you go to the elders in civilian clothes they will welcome you with an honour and protection reserved only for guests.” The pattern of an eye for an eye, the ideology of all sides, can be broken with sincere words backed up by actions over time. I believe this is the partly the work of Richard Holbrook, the special US negotiator for Pakistan and Afghanistan. If he searches he will find Pakistanis in all parts of Pakistan anxious to be partners and give leadership. Such a movement needs support from inside and outside the Obama administration to overcome the residue of revenge that still survives from 9/11.
The ideology of a primitive reconstruction of law and religious order that is the record of the Taliban frightens Pakistanis and some Americans. For us in the US, Christian reconstructionism and Dominion theology reminds us that our faith can be hijacked too. By engaging with the hard face of Christian theology more deliberately we can at least become familiar with how “Talibanization” is not just a phenomena of western Pakistan.
Pakistan is gifted with a layer of South Asian wisdom that views the Taliban and all the world beyond the simplistic and confining categories of good and bad, light and dark. I was the recipient of some of that insight during my recent visit. Some of these voices will probably be silenced and imprisoned in the coming months as has been the pattern in Pakistan over the last 60 years but their influence will endure. Our delegation found discussions of peace and nonviolence welcomed by various religious and ethnic camps. There is a depth of conviction and hints of hope within Pakistan. Hopefully those in power will listen before the violence brings down another Pakistani government and perhaps its long time unreliable patron, the United States.
Our work on this side is to find ways to lift the veil of secrecy. This situation is complex but complexity should never deter us from working through the fog towards the cultural nodes that hold out promise for reconciliation. The US embassy is scheduled for a 736 million dollar face-lift in Islamabad with Marine guards, and civilian-military contractors. It will be protected by advanced digitized security gimmicks. A quirky Iraq-like US green zone in another Muslim country may in fact constrict the space so needed for experiments in peacemaking. Most of all Pakistan needs room to sort out its own priorities and determine how Muslim convictions in the context of the rainbow of Pakistani cultures can energize it into the future.
Filed under: Afghanistan and Pakistan, Blaming the Victim, Islam | Tags: blasphemy, peace
This past week seven Christians were burnt alive in the Gojra District of Punjab the most populated province in Pakistan. The rioters alleged that the Koran had been defiled by Christians. That is blasphemy. The Punjab government, now ruled by the Muslim League and home to several militant Islamic groups, delayed the launching of an investigation. A day earlier 70 homes of Christians were burned. Gojra is a city of 150,000 and headquarters of the Anglican Church of Pakistan.
As a child I was aware of Christian teachings in Luke 12:10 where blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is described as unforgivable. Like many other children I worried that I might have said something, done something or carried an attitude that might doom me forever. Finally I summoned the courage to ask a Sunday school teacher what the verse meant and was told that I should not worry about it. I took some comfort but continued to worry secretly about some of my bad words and thoughts.
My comfort level did not increase when I read, “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain”. (Exodus 20:7 KJV) And still more frightening for me was the phrase from Leviticus 4:16 where I read that blasphemy is a capital crime and that those who speak blasphemy “shall surely be put to death”. To be honest I wasn’t sure what the word blasphemy meant. Maybe my teachers didn’t know either.
In Islam, strict blasphemy is any act of speaking ill of the Prophet Mohammed or any other prophet identified in the Koran, saying that Jesus Christ is the son of God, or speaking disrespectfully of the one God. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights calls for everyone to enjoy freedom of thought, conscience and religion. In 1948 when this was adopted most nations did not feel a need to protect God, religious leaders, or activists from blasphemy. Today militant religious movements – minority though they may be – have reinvented more primitive and literal applications of teachings regarding blasphemy.
In Pakistan the current blasphemy laws, the strictest in the Muslim world, provide penalties including death or fines for persons. Professional people, Muslims and non Muslims, have been subjects of prosecution, vigilantism or riots. Americans deserve to be reminded – perhaps some of us never knew – that these severe measures, Articles 295 B and C were put in place during a period of constitutional reform instituted under General Ziaul Haq who came to power through a military coup. General Ziaul Haq, perhaps the most conservative Muslim ever to rule Pakistan enjoyed a warm relationship with the government of Ronald Reagan. Their two militaries and intelligence services cooperated intensively in the fight to chase the Soviets from Afghanistan. This was also the period when the groundwork was laid for the Taliban movement.
Until General Haq’s period in the 1980s Pakistan included people from minority religions in its senior leadership. This pattern has returned only recently. In 2007 a Hindu was appointed Chief Justice of Pakistan and last year a Christian was appointed to the High Court.
In a show of strength by the local Gojra Christian community, the families refused to bury the coffins immediately but instead placed them on the city’s railroad track to block trains. Their courageous act was a protest against the police who had not taken steps to initiate an investigation. Sitting with the Christians beside the coffins in his black suit was Federal Minister of Minority Affairs, Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian.
Another bold move was organized by Civil Junction, an Islamabad based safe gathering place and coffee shop which provided valued support for my recent trip to Pakistan. On August 4th they held a candle vigil for the victims of Gojra as a first step towards condemning the act and the laws which instigate and endorse such acts. The event was telecast live on Pakistani TV, and running coverage went out over radio. Bigger events are being organized.
After the Gojra killings there was a strong popular and federal government burst of condemnation. The Roman Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace called the incident shocking and said, “There seems to be a growing consensus that society at large must fight this abuse of religion.” Muslim groups also spoke out.
These acts of public protest show that Christians and Muslims are working together in a campaign to put an end to blasphemy laws instituted in the mid 1980s. They also push for firm government prosecution when mob acts and terror is directed against any minority religion. About 5% of Pakistan’s 170 million people is made up of minority Sikhs, Buddhist, Hindus, Christians and others. The Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim group that believes that the Messiah or Muslim Mahdi returned symbolically in the form of its 18th century founder, are considered heretical by some Muslims and they are often treated with prejudice like those from non Muslim faiths.
The attack on Christians was probably carried out by one of many non Taliban militant groups in Pakistan. Christians who are often from the less fortunate classes are frequently charged by militant groups to have ties with Americans although I found little evidence for that when I travelled in Pakistan. The strong public condemnation and expressions of compassion from the broad Pakistani population is a reminder for all of us that like the US people’s response to the bombing in Oklahoma City April 19, 1995 there is a strong and decent center to Pakistani society.
Filed under: Japan, Militarism | Tags: conscience, Hiroshima Day, peace, revenge
On August 15 1945 I was five and a half years old. My mother and I were in the house when the news arrived by radio. I didn’t realize that it was so important. I had never known a time in my life when there was no war. War was normal and it didn’t affect me except for the brown sugar we had to use instead of white sugar for our cereal. My mother asked me to run to the barn and tell Dad that the war was over. I felt an urgency in her voice.
I ran out the cement side walk to the barn and tried to find my father. Going to the barn with a message was normal. Usually it was about someone in the community or church. Occasionally it was about an emergency that my father, a minister needed to tend to. This time was different because it had to do with the whole world. So I ran as fast as I could. He wasn’t in the barn so I looked in the milk house and then the granary, the shop, and the chicken house and finally I found him on the barn bridge repairing something.
Out of breath I ran up the barn bridge as fast I could and said. “Mom said I should tell you the war is over.” There it was I had said it. Dad looked down at me and said, “Oh, I am so glad.” He said it again, “I am so glad.” His response seemed strange because usually when I delivered a message he would race off to the car or to the house to make a telephone call and I would race after him to get in on the action. “Oh, I am so glad.”, he said it again and then he was silent. In the distance we heard the sound of explosions and Dad said, “I think they are celebrating the end of the war.” I was confused because I didn’t understand the meaning of the word, celebrate. My mission was completed. My final words to Dad that day, “But who won?” His answer, “Nobody won.” For months I wandered around trying to understand why, “Nobody won.”
The Little Boy in me is still contemplating how nobody could win. Little Boy was the name of the bomb that exploded over western Hinshou island on August 6 1945, nine days before my mother sent me on my first war ending mission. Some people may have forgotten the name of the bomb that hit Japan.. Most of us may not have known its name.
The images of incinerated Japanese children, parents, soldiers, buildings and playgrounds never get easier to look at. The bomb that destroyed so much within us and killed so many was built by the Manhattan Project (1) an effort the size of the pre war auto industry incorporating the work of 130,000 people. The 5 ton bomb exploded 1,900 feet above Hiroshima directly over a parade field where Japanese soldiers were doing calisthenics at approximately 8:15 am. Enola Gay, the B-29 aircraft named in honour of a favourite fictional character of the pilot’s mother, was already 11½ miles away when it felt the shock of the blast. At first Colonel Paul Tibbet, the pilot thought his airplane was taking flak. After the second shock wave the crew looked back at the city and described what they saw, “The city was hidden by that awful cloud . . . boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall,”
The spiritual cloud of Little Boy from the misted-over memory of my childhood now hovers over all of us. Colonel Tibbet retired in Columbus, Ohio the city where I joined American Mennonites last month for the biannual church assembly. About piloting the Enola Gay he said, “I’m proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it, and have it work as perfectly as it did… I sleep clearly every night.” Shortly before his death in 2005, he said, “If you give me the same circumstances, I’d do it again.”
I still want to deliver my own Little Boy message of August 15, 1945 because the war set in motion by the Hiroshima event is not over. Almost all of us recognize how dangerous it has become. Most of us know that the chances of more Hiroshima explosions anywhere in the world remains very high. So we push it from our memory or leave it to government authorities who work in secret. Sixty-four years ago it took an effort the size of the car industry of the time to build and deliver the nuclear bomb. Today it would take only a handful of motivated and reasonably educated people to deliver one. Moral conviction combined with the fear that we may not survive has held us so far but that dam may break.
“Nobody won,” a teaching passed to me by my father and passed to him from generations before him hints at another way of thinking about winners and losers, attack, revenge and enemy work. On that day 64 years ago Dad started to teach me to suspend my instantaneous need for judgement, punishment and pride of victory. Sometimes I remember to practice these lessons. That is also when hope settles over me so that I can see a unity in the cosmos that may reach beyond my generation.
