Filed under: Detainees, Iraq, Militarism, Nonviolence, Philippines, Politics of Empire
This is Gene Stoltzfus’s last essay, completed on Wednesday, March 10, 2010, just before he headed out on his beloved motor-assisted bicycle on the first spring day of the year. He picked up his U.S. mail in International Falls, MN. Then on his return journey, less than a kilometer from home in Ft. Frances, ON, his heart stopped. Please feel free to leave comments after this post on his blogsite: http://peaceprobe.wordpress.com. For more background on Gene’s life and updates on his memorial services, see: http://www.cpt.org.
Gene Stoltzfus, 1940-2010, Presente!
–Phil Stoltzfus, Gene’s nephew
–Dorothy Friesen, Gene’s wife
I have talked to survivors of military interrogation around the world who at some point thought they would not live for another day. I never write about it in the U.S. and Canada because it seems so unbelievable and out of place in a world of sanitized shopping malls and super highways. When I retell their stories I notice that people here fidget. But interrogation processes are one way in which martyrs are created. Martyrs in the original sense are “witnesses to the truth,” with a deep commitment of conscience that sustains them through moments of cruelty and abuse.
Some people are killed during interrogation. They never get to tell the story themselves. So I have learned to listen to those who narrowly avoid interrogation’s brush with death. This might be the time that you will prefer not to read on. But if you stop here you will skip over an important part of living and dying that stretches around the world and touches the entire human family.
I spent two hours in Iraq talking to a 22-year-old student who was arrested in a house raid along with two of his brothers. Until the time of his capture he was relatively uninvolved with anything political, not an unusual story in the Iraq of 2003. After his capture by American military personnel he was not allowed to sleep for two days. After 48 hours the American GIs told him that he would be killed unless he told them where Saddam Hussein was hiding. He was continuously blindfolded. He was told that his brother, taken into custody at the same time, was just now being shot. In the distance he could hear a gun being fired. If he didn’t want to die, he must tell all. Then nearby he heard a gun being cocked and felt a revolver touching his head. He expected to die. There was more shouting from the soldiers and then silence.
“I believed I would die,” he told me. “And then after a long wait I felt my hand to be sure I was still alive.” His blindfold was temporarily removed and then he was marched off to one of Iraq’s prison camps where he met others who experienced similar beatings and moments of terror. He was released three months later because of persistent outside intervention – an advantage that many disappeared people do not have.
My time with him left me exhausted and jolted me to wonder how I would respond to interrogation. Would I make up a story? Would I lie? Would something I say implicate others? Would I respond with anger or physical struggle? Would I go quietly to my death as some martyrs are reported to have done? Would anyone know how I died?
After my talk with the unlikely martyr, the connection of this Muslim student to my own ancestors in 16th-century Europe fluttered in my mind. Did the stories I read in my youth about the Anabaptist martyrs prepare me for this? Death by burning or drowning is now little practiced, but current authorities still believe that truth can be accessed by means of brutality. The pattern of torture used for their interrogation blended now with the people I was meeting. The Anabaptist stories recorded in the Martyrs Mirror (subtitled “The Bloody Theatre of the Anabaptists or Defenseless Christians who suffered and were slain from the time of Christ until the year AD 1660) are part of the continuous tapestry of state-sponsored cruelty reaching to our very own day.
In the late 1970s I worked in the Philippines. One day I was invited to meet a pastor and former political prisoner. The Marcos dictatorship had sent its military and paramilitary to his community and their tactics were designed to control popular discontent through cruelty, terror, domination, killing and confiscation of property. The pastor felt bound by his convictions to do what was possible to protect the people of his church. He was arrested and interrogated for weeks. His body was spent. Finally he was encased in a blindfold and told he would be killed. He felt the barrel of a revolver that touched the temple of his head and rested there for a time while his interrogator demanded that he give names of the people with whom he worked. “I was silent because I couldn’t think any more,” he told me.
“Were you afraid you would endanger others?” I asked. “Of course I was worried that what I said would implicate others but when the gun was put to my head I just expected to die. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I even thought about being a pastor but that didn’t seem very important in the moment. I was ready to die. I just told them to get it over with. During those days I thought about the martyrs. The interrogator didn’t pull the trigger. I don’t know why.”
I felt my gut twitch after the pastor described the near-death moment. Was there anything I could say or do? Anything healing? Anything personal? The pastor, like the Iraqi student 25 years later, only requested that I tell the world what happened to him. That was enough.
Accounts like these stories of people living on borrowed time reach back centuries to pre-Roman times and show me that the impulse to domination is still alive in our as-yet-uncivilized reptilian brain stem. In our time the word “martyr” has morphed from its root meaning of “witness to the truth” to a description of someone who dies for his or her beliefs. The Greeks and early Christians who used the term understood death to be a possible outcome of the path towards truth and light. Eventually “martyr” referred exclusively to those who died for their belief. Those who began as witnesses to truth became martyrs at the time of death. For the Muslim, shahada (martyrdom) also springs from the internal struggle that results in the witness to truth. Both religious traditions have departed from the core understanding of martyrdom in times of political conflict and triumphalism.
From where did my childhood curiosity arise to steal into my father’s study to read about the martyrs? Those drawings of torture and burning bodies awakened wonder within me. In one of my early return journeys to North America from the lands of torture – before I understood that torture techniques had their home here – I was introduced to a new psychological disease called the martyr complex – seeking persecution to fulfill an inward need. Had I been the unwitting recipient of this disease? Or was the use of the term “martyr complex” the work of a psychologist who had never met a torture victim or known the honored path to witness practiced by martyrs?
Church buildings pay tribute to martyrs, including long-forgotten soldiers who died in distant lands to protect the nation or empire. Their deeds are celebrated and interwoven with patriotism. I have visited churches in the Netherlands, the birthplace of Anabaptist martyrs, where they place the Martyrs Mirror on their altars before the service of worship and return it to a locked closet after the service. I once inquired about the influence of the book of martyrs in the life of worshipers and was told that, “Most of us have no idea about the stories in that book. It’s from another time.”
Why are soldiers and interrogators still trained in the craft of torture? Can moral outrage and attempts to protect the prisoner change things? Why do Christian crusaders or Muslim suicide bombers slip into patterns of domination that kill and destroy in a manner that cannot possibly reveal truth? Can respect for and veneration of martyrs draw us closer to the truth when the patterns of our lives are so remote from the authentic truth-seeking represented in martyrs?
Genuine martyrs appear when people believe that their witness on earth is connected to the whole of the universe. Martyrs are not inclined to draw attention to themselves, but their path can draw people to the glory and faith of a vision. Martyrs have all the foibles of the rest of us. Some may not deserve the label. In our human family great movements that push us to transcend boundaries with visions of hope produce martyrs. But organizations and movements become emasculated and ineffectual when they protect themselves too much from the risk of bold witness. On the other hand, they also undercut themselves when they slide into violence against others in order to try to control the outcome of their vision. We have the challenge of incarnating a blend of vulnerability and boldness.
The test of martyrdom is whether that particular witness to the truth helps to support and sustain the community’s commitment to a full-bodied vision of peace and justice. The martyrs are present with us and may be more powerful for their witness in death than they ever could have been in life.
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: 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.
Filed under: Militarism, Politics of Empire | Tags: conscience, counter insurgency, digital war, military contractors, Robert McNamara, robotic warfare
There once was a very smart man who built cars and figured out ways for big organizations like governments and businesses to do things better. He had what a lot of people called a liberal sense of morality towards the world. Many people were liberal at that time. He wanted to do good and make things better, more democratic. He was a good father who welcomed friends of his children into his home even when they demonstrated against the big military system that he supervised.
At the beginning of the reign of JFK, the emperor called him in Detroit where he was making cars. Emperor JFK asked him to oversee the Defence of the Empire. He replied that he was not trained to take on such a responsibility. The emperor told him there is no school that prepares people for these jobs. So Robert McNamara like many people of his time went to Babylon to serve the people with the best intentions. He wanted to do good, make things more efficient, save the people’s money, and create systems where there was a better chance for good decisions.
His country was about to enter a very big war in a little known area of the world, Viet Nam. The country was already locked in a very hot fight that had the strange name, Cold War. When he took up his job as Defence Secretary his generals believed that if that Cold War went nuclear there must be massive retaliation and as much of the enemy as possible should be destroyed. Within a few years he realized that such massive retaliation might lead to a terrible outcome, mutually assured destruction. So he started looking for ways to trim the atomic weapons. Also in the year of our Lord 1963 Robert McNamara ordered the entire defence system to implement Equal Opportunity for All Minorities. Because of the order the military became the most integrated unit in all of the empire, ahead of churches, restaurants, and businesses.
But sadly most of his time went into that old fashioned war at the edge of the empire. He was a loyal servant of the emperors of the time and tried his best to understand the enemy. Despite misgivings he sent 535,000 soldiers and air planes to that distant land to decimate villages, and roads – anything that would kill or destroy the enemy’s spirit. But bombs, chemicals and killing only made the enemy stronger and smarter. One and a quarter million people in that land, more than the population of the capital of the empire, were killed during his time. He travelled to that distant land many times and tried to be nice to the people. Even that didn’t work very well. One time when he left Viet Nam he tried to say “Long Live Viet Nam” in the local language. His tones and accent was severely lacking and what he said was “Viet Nam wants to lie down”.
Robert liked good information. He felt like he failed to understand the enemy so he invented something called counter insurgency, a collection of programs intended to make the enemy like his people and the empire’s other allies. It didn’t work very well. The intelligence people around him couldn’t get the right information. Even if they found information they didn’t know how to separate truth from falsehood. They got into the habit of buying and trading information although they never actually went so far as to commercialize it on Wall Street. Even expensive information was not very reliable.
One time he said, war is “impossible” to win. He hinted that if his country had lost World War II the people who engineered the bombing in that war may have been prosecuted for genocidal destruction. But Robert, like the liberals of his day, persisted despite their troubled consciences. He did not resign his work or speak out except many years later when from hindsight he identified his doubts and mistakes. Many blamed him for defeat. Many more blamed him for overseeing the overwhelming outrage of that war.
His country would not be the same again. The nations of the earth would no longer trust the good intentions of his country’s people. When the war finally ended seven years after he stopped serving the emperor, his country was tired and spent. People did not utter the word, Viet Nam. No one said defeat, not even Robert, but almost everyone knew that they had been part of a dreadful epic fight where something had gone horribly wrong. And the people pushed their pain, confusion and guilt deep inside themselves where it festered and made them sick.
Robert McNamara died this week at age 93 and people are unsure how they should remember him. Some people used to think that the world had set a limit to war beyond which the empire dare not go because of the moral outrage surrounding Robert’s war. But now 40 years later it seems like those limits have not been learned or honoured. Others in the empire, those who wanted Robert to send more troops and bombs, believe that the innovations and organization that Robert brought to war, counter insurgency, military might, tricks of the intelligence community and electronic barriers to the enemy still can make things come out right.
Some people search their belief system, and their confidence in the great myths of the time wanes. In these days like in the days of Robert McNamara a new emperor has been crowned and the people want things to turn out better. They want to believe that they are a special righteous race who deserve prosperity. And the new emperor tells the people what they want to hear. Hope is mixed with warnings and forgetfulness.
The Emperor’s soldiers of the new age are turning to smarter bombs, better missiles, and more intelligent machines called robots. But these don’t bring victory. Others have turned to nonviolence, an old force but newly discovered by those who resisted Robert. Even non-violence is studied for ways it can be used or manipulated for imperial ends. Bits and pieces are borrowed but disembodied nonviolent tactics are lifeless without authentic love, a vision for transformation and conviction behind them.
The Emperor and his entourage two generations after Robert still can not find a way to explain to the world why a big powerful country would pound the life out of very poor people. The enemy is still described as a terrorist. But some people of the world have become wiser and they know the real meaning of terrorist. They use the term terrorist for those who operate the foxy new robotic weapons, missiles and smart bombs in the same breath as surprise attacks from below by people who build road side bombs and use hi-jacked air planes as missiles to destroy great buildings.
The people of the world remain restless about the empire. And at home, out of sight of the great weapons factories, polished floors of lobbyist offices, and defence contractors, all those who live from the fruits Robert’s systems, there are bands of street people and broken lives now made even worse by hard times.
Robert McNamara is about to be buried. An aging street person in Colombus, Ohio limps past the statue of another Emperor, William McKinley assassinated 102 years before JFK. The street person fought bravely for the empire, and remembers the day that Robert sent him off to battle. He curses and talking to no one in particular asks if the lessons from Robert’s time will be buried with him.
This morning here at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, 40 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the day’s first practice run of the Reaper (technically referred to as the MQ-9 Reaper Hunter/Killer UAV) took off at 7:06 am and circled to practice landings and take offs every 18 minutes through the morning hours. I have joined a group this Holy Week to vigil and pray under the banner Ground the Drones. The training and piloting of the aircraft now carrying out their mission of information gathering and destruction in Afghanistan and Pakistan is headquartered here at Creech. Unlike the first Predator, an earlier unmanned aerial vehicle now widely used and armed with 2 Hellfire missiles, the Reaper is pressed into service because it is capable of carrying 14 Hellfire missiles.
Our group has enjoyed almost a cordial welcome from base workers, pilots, officers and enlisted people as they enter and depart the base. Many wave and occasionally the horns are tooted or the V sign is flashed in support. Between these signs of positive connection are challenges like the man yesterday who rolled down his window and shouted at me, “Do you have any idea how many American soldiers’ lives are saved every day by these aircraft?” I replied that I didn’t know and he advised me that the true number of saved service lives was 20 to 30 per day. I have not been able to confirm these numbers from any scientific source but I did remind him that the drone air crafts create enormous hostility in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq that will take generations to overcome. He was not impressed.
A chaplain from the base told a colleague who is vigiling here that disturbing dysfunctions are beginning to show up among officers and enlisted people who pilot and support these aircrafts. Flight crews of two, including a pilot and a technical support person called a sensor, sit here in rooms with several monitors and digitally guide these crafts as they move through their missions thousands of miles away in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. The pilot is experienced, but the sensor is a fresh from basic training and technical school.
These aircraft are capable of remaining airborne for extended periods of time. According to the International Online Defence Magazine, “The availability of high performance sensors and large capacity of precision guided weapons enable the new Predator to operate as an efficient ‘Hunter-Killer’ platform, seeking and engaging targets at high probability of success.” The Reaper also known as Predator II began flying missions in 2007. It was pressed into service according to Defence Magazine because it filled a gap, “between conflicting demands for payload,, altitude, speed and persistence.” Unlike the first generation Predator, the Reaper can fly at an altitude of 50,000 feet.
In the coming months and years the full implications of the US military transformation to digital warfare will become apparent. The outrage we now see in the countries where they are used and the signs of trauma now becoming visible among soldiers, designers and victims will signal a new era of brokenness and anger. Yesterday US Secretary of Defence Gates announced a 127% increase in funding for drones and other digitally guided military hardware. These crafts are much cheaper and believed to be less risky for military personnel than the more expensive weapons like the $350 million dollar F 122 which is to be cut.
Our local communities here in the US host the corporations that develop these new and smarter instruments of war. The workers who build them, the designers who create them and the day by day operators of these wily crafts worship in our churches.
The Indian Springs Motor Motel where our vigil group has rented a room for logistical support is packed solid with young marines, here for some last minute training in desert warfare and basic training in coordination with the new age of digital war. They are friendly, serious and some are worried. Yesterday morning two of them described their inner conflicts and ambivalence as they recovered from a hard night on the town. In a few days they will be off to the front lines.
About three hundred yards down the road from the main entrance to Creech there is a small building set aside for two week training programs for military chaplains who are about to depart for duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. We know that the military chaplain is one of the first to be contacted by soldiers who are disturbed and morally shaken by what they experience in combat. Every month dozens seek a way out and often encounter enormous difficulty and little support even from chaplains, all of whom come from religious traditions that teach love and upholding of life.
Like the chaplains, all of us who claim faith are invited to reach deep into the wealth of our traditions that are built on the ethics of love and discern what our responses can be in this new age of digital warfare. We will be further enabled to do this when our religious support structures – churches, denominations and institutions – also reach deep into the humanizing and peaceful resources of holy tradition. The desert here in Indian Springs, Nevada where native people once came for water to sustain life, is waiting for the transformation inherent in our faith.
Last week in this column I wrote about the need for a an independent inquiry into the bombing massacre reported in Azizabad near the western Afghan city of Herat. Over the last week international reports suggest that outrage in Afghanistan is building. Yesterday, in a reversal to the previous U. S. denials we learned that the U.S. Central Command will send a senior team headed by a general to investigate the charge that 90 people including children were killed on August 21, 2008 by U. S. bombs.
The treatment of civilians became a political and legal issue that was codified into Geneva conventions and legal code especially after World War II. This international standard is frequently tested and sometimes stretched beyond recognition as war unfolds. In combat, soldiers and officers regularly shoot or bomb first and hope that someone can fix it later. Soldiers are taught to break things and kill. This is what armies do. The nuanced work of relating to civilians – hearts and minds – is a thread of military thinking that shows up long after the breaking of things stops working.
Psychologists, social workers and anthropologists occasionally make a showing in the outworking of modern warfare as part of the intelligence gathering processes, prisoner interrogation, and care for wounded and tired soldiers. But the real warriors know the hard work is still combat and breaking things. When the faith community and human rights activists can sustain their energy and pressure, inquiries are called as an answer to that pressure. That is what we see now. It will be months before a report is issued.
Soon persons will be named to the military inquiry, at least if everything goes according to script. We will not learn a great deal about the results of this inquiry for several months. Its findings will be conditioned by the quality of its fact finding process, pressures from within the Central Command and the willingness of people with whom they speak to tell the truth, always a testy problem when investigators are armed and in uniform. It will also depend on the level of public interest and outrage here and in Afghanistan.
In the Abu Gharib scandal there was a military inquiry headed by a gutsy Major General named Taguba (a Major General has two stars) whose family was from the Philippines. His findings were tough and they shocked the world and may have even earned a little credibility for the Pentagon in some quarters. For his vigilant and patriotic effort in January 2006, Taguba was instructed by General Richard A. Cody, the Army’s Vice-Chief of Staff, to retire by January 2007. The general who leads the Azizabad inquiry is well versed on this recent history and knows that the inquiry work could be a career changer. He or she knows that doing inquiries is one of those auxiliary tasks the army has to do sometimes like social work, civil affairs and anthropology to negotiate the terrain of war in the modern world. He must not embarrass the military while constructing an answer for the public.
The Taguba inquiry’s tough findings were an exception to the script. More often military inquiries establish some of the facts and raise many more questions. The public is left guessing through months of writing and rewriting. Finally, if the story remains in the news long enough a report is issued and that document will point to mistakes, incompetence, or dereliction of duty on the part of soldiers, enlisted persons, but rarely of officers. When that occurs there may be mild punishment or military trials where guilt or innocence is determined by a military court. Military courts hate to hand down severe sentences because it wrecks havoc in morale among the rank and file.
As it stands now the best we can hope for is that Azizabad will remain in the news for some time to come. Without fresh material from people on the ground in Azizabad the reporting will largely be on the progress and process of the inquiry. In other words the reporting will be more about the American government and people’s perceptions and less about the victims. Last week in this column I proposed a serious and independent inquiry. I called for a team of Afghans and internationals who have experience and competence in these matters. This military inquiry makes it even more urgent that our proposed independent initiative be implemented and that the team be empowered to find the true facts and tell the story.
In our time the ballot box has become one of the most widely accepted instruments for nonviolent change. When applied fairly around our world we have a chance to help voters vote from a place of wisdom and vision for a more peaceable world. Smart bombs and dumb bombs can make enemies but so can the absence of truth. In this matter of Azizabad there is a chance that the truth will prevail if we have the courage to walk into the confusion of violence, listen and be informed by the voices at the point of impact who can help us build a structure of truth.
Afghanistan: Civilian Deaths From Airstrikes: Airstrikes Cause Public Backlash, Undermine Protection Efforts. Human Rights Watch Report Cover
On August 21 a major bombing tragedy occurred near the western Afghan province of Herat. According to the Afghan government and UN sources, 60 children and 30 civilian adults were killed. The Pentagon has disputed this charge and said that only five civilians and 25 Talilban insurgents were killed in the midnight air attack on the village of Azizabad . Ninety percent of all aircraft in the Afghan war belong to the US. Air attacks have increased dramatically as the Taliban have gotten stronger over the last year. In one month, July of this year, the total tonnage of dropped bombs equalled the total tonnage for all of 2006. The air war in Afghanistan is growing as the balance in the ground war shifts to engage intensified Taliban strength.
Afghan officials in Herat said that the bomb fell on villagers who had gathered for a memorial ceremony for a person killed last year. This story was a minor blip in the late August headlines as US politicians maneuvered for position at the polls and struggled to outdo one another to support the war effort in Afghanistan. Unless an independent inquiry is launched the entire incident, perhaps one of many in Afghanistan, will hover on the edge our consciousness for several months as official military inquiries grind on until its memory disappears.
But, an independent inquiry requires people on the ground with skills in interviewing, cross checking and a commitment to establishing the truth. Included among the questions would be how many people were killed? Was there reliable or inaccurate intelligence? Had villagers actually gathered for a ceremony of remembrance? Was the ceremony a cover for other organizational endeavours? Were there civilians present? Were there actually 30 children killed? Why would children be present if the event was called for strategic reasons? As a real inquiry developed, these questions would lead to deeper questions related to air strikes in general and the accountability of expatriate bombings to the Afghan government.
In conditions of war where suspicions run high and truth is regularly compromised it is difficult but not impossible to carry out such an inquiry. For credibility a team of fact finders would need to be made up of a combination of Afghan and international participants who can carry on conversations and ask questions in an atmosphere of trust. My own experience is that the passions unleashed by an event such as this pushes the families of victims to outbursts of anger mixed with statements of truth telling. By meeting enough people a general picture of what occurred can be reconstructed and described in detail. It may be more difficult to gain reliable information from military sources but even this is not impossible. My experience is that despite the appearance of rigid discipline and single mindedness there are soldiers who will talk usually off the record and after a respectful relationship has been established.
In violent conditions like the town of Azizabad on August 21, 2008, persons from the outside may be viewed as deceptive representatives of those who carried out the bombing unless introductions are facilitated in a trusted manner. Other forms of trust building may be required. But most important is the interview process itself. Where trauma, hatred, fear, distrust and grief are present, relating with a personal touch can be crucial. The quality of the interview, if limited only to the objective facts, may remain surface and even be devoid of factual reliability. The interviewer may need to address the pain and grief or the memory of the one(s) who died by questions such as, What can you tell me about the person who was killed? How was he or she known in the family or village? Did the person have any premonition that a terrible tragedy may be in store? Finally the team of inquiry will have to address the question that is uppermost in minds of families of the victims, What good will this inquiry achieve? Will anyone listen? Will we see compensation or justice for the tragedy?
This kind of work takes time. Many would prefer that an inquiry be bent to make recommendations to policy makers, i.e those who plan the bombing and target them My own judgement is that it is much better to simply tell the story of what happened as truthfully as possible. When the fact finding team is confident of the truth, its findings will speak for themselves. Perhaps the independent inquiry will find that US spokesperson Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green was right when she described the charges of killing so many civilians as, “outrageous”. But, if official responses prove to be unfounded and it turns out that a massacre has occurred, the findings will cry out to the world with a quality of moral indignation that no one, not even a heavily medaled general can disregard for long.
The email published here with permission highlights the journey that people on the road to peacemaking encounter within themselves and from the outside. The author’s main concern is Lockheed Martin the largest U.S. Defence Department contractor and also the supplier of Statistics Canada’s technology for census.
Hello Gene,
You don’t know me, but I check in on your blog from time to time. I’m in need of some advice. I decided to withhold my census in 2006 due to Lockheed Martin technology used to count the census. My wife and I envisioned this protest as part of our Christian witness. Then after 6 months my wife and I decided to return it after defacing its bar codes with the hope that Lockheed Martin would no longer be able to count it, along with a letter explaining our position and our disappointment with Statscan (Statistics Canada).
Then about a month ago I received a summons from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) asking me to appear in court on June 6th as I was charged by the Justice Department for withholding my census. I was approached by an activist who also was charged who told me only 63 of thousands of people who withheld their census were actually charged, including many thousand of Native Canadians, none of whom were charged (thank God).
This activist and some of the people at Vive Le Canada (vivelecanada.ca) and Count Me Out (countmeout.ca) [groups advocating greater Canadian control in the age of globalization] would like me to plead not guilty, begin the court process, and involve the media. I talked to a scholar friend of mine who said he had not heard of anyone making this sort of civil disobedience, but that in my situation he would in fact plead not guilty and seek to make the case public. I have started in this direction. But what bothers me is I am not finding any other Christians who are also withholding their census.
I am wondering if this is the hill I want to die on. I am new to peacemaking, and very naive. When I started this whole process, I thought I was heading down the right track, now I have less confidence, especially as the Crown, the judge, and other legal staff didn’t seem to care whether I plead guilty or not, as they felt it would do little good either way. Without really knowing any Canadian peace movement types, I struggle with what to do. So… I thought I’d ask you since we share the same province, I live in Kingston, Ontario. The other activist who has been charged is in Saskatchewan. God Bless,
Todd, My wife is Canadian and I am American. We have lived here in Fort Frances since I left Christian Peacemaker Teams. Dorothy has been verbally interviewed by census workers on a couple of occasions and the reference to Lockheed Martin was news to her. We are pleased to be alerted to this item. I am thrilled with your witness. I believe that the advice to plead not guilty has merit.
The choice to plead not guilty is usually the only way that the legal system allows you to challenge the official policy. If you plead not guilty I hope that you can make a statement in court clearly stating your reasons for your action. If you are found guilty and there is a fine you will have to decide what to do about it and how it can be used for further witness. Court cases are time consuming and can be expensive depending upon what you do about legal representation. However the cost need not be measured in dollars only. Each piece of the process provides a step to enlarge the public discussion about your action. Your bottom line is your inward knowing of what you want to communicate.
On January 26, 2006 a group of us vigiled in front of Lockheed Martin headquarters as part of our Shine the Light presence in the Washington area. See my blog report.
A public trial of this nature opens space for others to think and reflect on their lives and how the conduct of their lives has definite implications for the whole earth and people everywhere. Different people will consider your witness from very different stances. Here are some things to think about.
1. Canadian Christians will be alerted to the fact that there are people whose lives are rooted in the Gospel of Peace. Some will feel jolted. Others may be confused. Still others will say it is silly and ineffective or even think you have lost your good sense. A few will be challenged or encouraged to read their census forms much more carefully. Most of all you send a signal that the Gospel of Peace crosses all boundaries and intersects inconveniently with otherwise useful and innocent activities of governments.
2. Being alone when you take on wedge issues like this is hard. You will need a support team.
3. The process of discussing it with people and the public can bring a great wall of silence or advice like the dismissive comments of the judge and other legal staff. You will find responses like this in church and throughout society. I choose to interpret these criticisms positively. Someone is listening but the listener would prefer that the moral dilemma or attendant discomfort your decision poses for them would just go away. All of us do that some time.
4. You will need to do homework on Lockheed Martin because people will want to know a little more about this vast corporate structure with 135,000 employees in 56 nations. Canadians will want to know why Statistics Canada, a body that collects important information for policy planning including defence has contracted with an American defence giant to crunch its numbers and information. I wonder why Lockheed Martin is in this business at all and how the reach into Canadian statistics is related to U.S. defence planning. I doubt that you will get the answer to this from their WEB site but it is a legitimate question for Canadians to ask.
5. “Wondering if this is the hill I want to die on.” You said it perfectly. When you set out to intersect with a boundary like this something dies within you. It becomes part of your record, your resume. Some of those good corporate, government or even church jobs you might have been thinking about now may be more remote. And the conversations at Christmas gatherings and festive events may become a bit dicey. When you examine an issue for yourself without the props of social approval and find your heart nudging you away from the mainstream in a way that engages your body and mind there is death and new life. New life is planted, something that feels more like the breath of God that can nurture the planet and make all things new.
6. “I am finding no other Christians who are also withholding their census.” This is a lonely journey sometimes but your witness will create new space where there was no space before. You will not be alone in your action because others will come forward to listen to your explanation and research. Others will connect to your fresh notion of the life of faith. Others will be outraged or just irritated. But, the space you are creating will be a gift and the loneliness will be swallowed up by the content of the hope towards which your faith and action point.
You are not naive. You have already begun to find allies and others will appear. Still others will be quietly encouraged.
Gene Stoltzfus
Filed under: Christian Peacemaker Teams, Militarism, Nonviolence, Politics of Empire
The Responsibility to Protect doctrine gives international support to a new standard for intervention and protection for civilians when a state cannot or will not protect its people. The standard calls for an armed and trained UN peacekeeping force of thousands but emphasizes humanitarian intervention as well. The plan that grew out of millennium goals in 2001 would place soldiers under international command in nasty situations like Rwanda, Darfur, Burna, Zimbabwe, Palestine, civic and police violence often in cities, and perhaps in places aboriginal people are under attack. The doctrine has received ecumenical church support but is at least one step removed from direct involvement, personal risk or engagement by churches. Ecclesiastical support implies armed soldiers put in place to force greater justice, human rights and political order.
In a time when world wide initiatives in peacemaker teams and conflict resolution enjoy exceptional success this proposal stretches us because it returns again to the possibility of military intervention. Filipino, Waldon Bello, with a long view of globalization reminds us that the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect adopted by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1674 April 28, 2006 may be a sanitized version of modern imperialism. The doctrine challenges the often overlooked covenant in place for centuries to respect the sovereignty of states. However, in order for there to be a credible critique of armed intervention, non-violent conflict resolution and peacemaker teams work must grow many times over.
Some years ago I visited our Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) in Colombia. On the day before my arrival the team received an emergency call for help from a remote villagers where armed conflict had broken out between groups allied to the government and underground forces. The people urgently requested a presence of protection and I travelled to the village with Scott Kerr an experienced CPT member. By the time we reached the village more than half the people had fled and the fire fight was over. Those who remained were terrorized because they knew that both sides of the belligerent forces would return and charge individuals in the community with collaboration which may lead to execution or capture.
Two hours after we arrived one armed group entered to the village and began going house to house while their commander sat down to visit. My experienced partner talked to him softly and firmly, requesting that his soldiers not enter houses. He explained that visiting homes would make the occupants targets of his enemy. Within minutes the commander ordered soldiers not to enter houses and within an hour he called his thirty soldier unit together and they moved out. Later in the day representatives from a competing armed group arrived and were similarly encouraged to respect the local people. I believe our presence may have saved lives, property and affected the future of the community.
This story illustrates in the short term how an unarmed presence is effective where a presence of protection with arms may have been less effective. Additionally in the long term the unarmed presence creates space for people to make decisions about their own life, whereas an armed presences forces compliance and may awaken fear. Persons advocating armed international intervention point to success in Bosnia and contrast it to the failure to intervene in Rwanda where many died in a genocidal outrage.
Christians and people of many religious faith would most likely agree that they have responsibility to protect and assist vulnerable victims. The Responsibility to Protect initiative is built in part on the now largely abandoned, but nevertheless important, fifty years of armed Canadian peacekeeping experience where soldiers were used.
Christian support for the proposal builds on a millennium long reflection and negotiation with the New Testament themes of enemy loving that culminated in a compromised doctrine of just war variously applied since its inception in the 4th century. My experience is that an unarmed nonviolent presence of protection is sound scripturally and works better. My hunch is that unarmed peacemakers are also less at risk.
At the root of this discussion is our understanding that what is necessary is a basic shift in how violence is overcome. The habits of making things come out right by means of armed intervention reach back to the founding of organized warfare in the land of Iraq 5000 years ago. In fact the premier symbol of nationhood and empire is its military. Nations and empires turn to their soldiers because there is nothing else available that they think works. And, they are pushed to do something. Nations generally resist change and think short term. Breaking the habits of armed soldiering in the way we organize ourselves will require generations of effort and experiments.
An armed international peacekeeping force is not the answer. However, active rejection may not be the answer either. Enemy loving is a real way for humankind to do better. When our scripture cheers us on to enemy loving (Blessed are the Peacemakers…) it reflects a vision of how things might be different. But that difference requires organization, moral fortitude, training and willingness to assume risk.
The problem of violence is on the mind of villagers, urban dwellers and governments around the world. The thought that violence can be held in check and perhaps melted by nonviolent means is good news to a lot of people. It is bad news for those who are stuck in old ways. The growth and success of conflict resolution initiatives should not surprise us. But it does. In our darker moments all of us are tempted to submit to the superstitions that surround us about the effectiveness of armed intervention.
Christians around the world reflected more unity of opposition to the threat of war in Iraq than we have seen in many centuries of wars. The exceptions were some Christians in the US. Some of the opposition to the war resulted from serious engagement with the Bible. Some resulted from practical local experience with war and violence in the last century. Some motivation came from local political culture. Some opposition arose from a world wide renaissance of interest in the Gospel of Peace. This renewed interest is a sign of enormous opportunity to deepen our faith in the Good News of Peace and organize ourselves to turn back violence in places where people are not protected. This is not the time to negotiate away pacifism and the ongoing experiment to develop methods of nonviolent intervention.
But in our enthusiasm a thread of humility helps as well. None of us has invented the perfect path to overcoming violence with love. All of us who strive to create official or private initiatives of violence reduction at some point cooperate with armed groups and police, sometimes with some success – often with disappointing results. I have yet to meet an armed group that doesn’t at some point abuse its power, or become destructive in the pursuit of “just” goals.
“What if Hitler had not been stopped?” is the first question I will be asked when presenting these convictions. My response, “What if Christians had taken the generic New Testament teachings of peacemaking literally and refused to join Hitler’s armies?” “What if Christians had refused to participate in the plantation system before the American civil war?”
Is there a future if we don’t do better? Can our world overcome its superstitious embrace of arms without the gentle, persistent reminders of people who only use the strength of words, body language, honest negotiations and organized truth telling? If Christians can’t figure out a way to do better we must admit that an armed interventionist group is the answer and we may have to get behind it with money people, and organization.
What if Christians and others would break from the addiction to the force of arms to get things to come out right? What if this century would build on the successful experiments in nonviolent enemy loving arising out of the horrible conflicts of the last century?
Over the years I have tried to weave a responsible path among those who caution, sometimes with a touch of paranoia, that intelligence services monitor your every move in the work of international or domestic peacemaking. To wall myself off from the influence of those who are inclined toward conspiracies I have boldly practised truth telling on phones and the internet in the hope that my perspective, if it is worth listening to, will tempt analysts and policy makers to the truth as I see it. This elementary and direct form of truth telling keeps me from second guessing myself and the people with whom I work. This strategy may be naive unless it is occasionally informed by prudent moments of not saying everything I know.
Living by the Biblical dictum “The Truth Shall Make You Free” may have become even more stretching in our high tech world.. The explosion of surveillance capabilities in the wake of the era of Homeland Security and 9/11 reminds us that we need to know that our lives and work can be scrutinized as never before. When state security is believed to be threatened the lines of respect for responsible civilian work may be transgressed with impunity.
Last month was the fifth anniversary of the US military shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The apartment complex out of which our team worked was several blocks from The Palestine. I was not in Baghdad at the time of the shelling which killed two journalists, Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish television network Telecinco. Predictably the Pentagon explained the killings as accidental. Democracy Now recently interviewed Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.), who worked with a highly classified team that monitored telephone, and satellite communications in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq. Kinne saw secret US military documents that listed the hotel as a possible target. Kinne also described how she was personally ordered to eavesdrop on US citizens working for news organizations and NGOs (non government organizations) in Iraq. US law forbids the monitoring of its citizens.
Sgt. Kine described her memory of the work of NGOs as identified in the telephone intercepts. As she did so my mind was jogged by her reference to people in that international community who pled with US Forces to deactivate munitions and ordinance that appeared in random public places throughout Bagdad where children played and people frequented. When asked by telephone what to do I advised our peacemaker team to find officers whose command included demolition capability to clean up these dangerous substances. Our team went to the newly installed occupation authorities to request intervention. The team was told that the occupation forces did not have time to carry out such activities.
I cannot now and may never be able to verify that my conversations were included in the massive monitoring effort. But, I do not regret our efforts then and later on behalf of the safety and protection of Iraqi victims of these munition piles some of which ended up in the hands of insurgent groups. We spoke openly and often by telephone about the unfolding crisis among more than 20,000 detainees who were taken into custody by the occupation forces. According to Sgt. Kine before Shock and Awe began, her work group was instructed to keep the law that forbade monitoring of US citizens. When Shock and Awe began her group was given a “verbal waiver” to track NGOs regardless of national origin. As the war unfolded she described everything as chaotic, with little oversight. When she raised questions about law or content she was reminded, “You are not an analyst.”
In the interview Sgt. Kinne spoke of her shock when she learned from an email that was circulated in her work group that the Palestine Hotel, home to hundreds of international journalists, was one among many of the targets identified for the invading US Forces. Also on the list was the emerging and highly respected Arabic news network Al Jezeera which was later destroyed. Within five months of the beginning of the occupation many of the NGOs were gone, frightened away by explosions at the International Committee of the Red Cross, The Jordanian Embassy, The United Nations, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the future I believe we will learn more about the sources of these bombings too.
On another occasion her unit received the intercept of a fax from the Iraqi National Congress, a key expatriate Iraqi political group with strong US government ties, purporting to identify the locations of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). When the fax was hastily translated, it was ordered immediately sent to the White House where it added to already shaky evidence of the WMD. As Kine studied the document her initial positive impressions about WAD location and existence as outlined in the document turned to more doubts and questions.
Kine left the military and after some soul searching because of her top secret clearance, has joined other Iraq veterans to go public with her experience. This is a big decision for her. When she breaks ranks to tell what she knows from top-secret assignments, she engages in a form of civil disobedience. I believe she may be watched by people with even more advanced technology that she herself once used. If and when colleagues with similar experiences join her there may be indictments because she broke the rules of confidentiality to tell the truth.
Her reward for coming out of the intelligence closet is a conscience free of the heavy ghosts of fear of the truth. She chose not to live by the rules of paranoia.
Kine’s story reminds us that the world has vast and new capability to watch us as we move about to live out our convictions, our ethics, and our faith. She also reminds us that we are moving into a time of new countervailing pressures in the era of Homeland Security where intelligence cameras can pick us out of the crowd and distant computers can monitor every one of our keystrokes. Our movements, our words and our bodies are recorded and then systematically integrated by still more advanced programs to warn the gate keepers of our nations and empires.
While we are wise to be informed of how these omnipresent systems work, we do ourselves no favour if we allow fantasies of conspiracy to guide our moral conduct and decision making. Are the cameras hidden in light posts our enemies? Are the people who design the systems the enemies of freedom and life? Are the public security systems or military infrastructures who monitor us our enemies? The witness of Kine is that we have friends all along the way if we have the eyes to see them and trained ears to recognize them.
The unfolding integrated systems that will be part of our lives, benign, legal, or illegal are probably here to stay. It’s good to know how they work. But ultimately we are responsible for our own lives. Crossing the line into faithful obedience (what some call civil disobedience) will be very different in the coming years. The threat of punishment will continue to be real. But each of us has a choice between living out our hope or being bound by our fears. We have only begun this new phase of the journey on a path equipped with the engines of cyberspace and hidden landmarks.
On May 1st, 2003 President Bush announced that the mission in Iraq was accomplished. Now five years later we know that less than 4% of the Iraqi and American casualties in Iraq came before the President’s dramatic announcement on the USS Abraham Lincoln, 30 miles from the shore of Southern California. Our memory of the announcement reminds us that the mission was confused from the start. It also reminds all of us that missions cannot be accomplished by a media event alone.
Some people believed the Iraq mission was to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. Others believed it to be the overthrow of Saddam. Still others connected it to the fight against Al Queda. Some with access to the President saw the mission as a way to start reworking the political culture of Middle Eastern nations. Some conservative Christians saw the mission as essential to their faith, a necessary step to be in harmony with God’s work through the modern nation of Israel. Most of the world thought the venture into Iraq was wrong or stupid. It has been fun for critics to dangle the Mission Accomplished media event in front of the White House as one May 1st unfolds into another for five years now.
Peacemakers can use the event on the USS Abraham Lincoln to remind ourselves not to cheapen our own mission of violence reduction with premature claims of success. We have some things in common with the White House. I know the temptation to proclaim early success because achievement raises money, recruits people and helps build organization. President Bush’s proclamation on the USS Abraham Lincoln arises from a space inside me too. By being impatient for success I know that truthfulness is compromised. Living in hope is essential but it can easily erode into rosy optimism that seduces us to ignore objective reality on the ground.
Sometimes a mission statement verges on a vision and points to the future. Where I live, native people occasionally spend several days in a vision quest that may include fasting, prayer, and isolation in the forest or hill. The quest refines the person’s purpose. Some form of a visioning experience might be useful for any of us to discover or refine our purpose in life. Reformers, religious leaders and politicians try to articulate a vision that makes sense to a wide body of people. For a vision to release the power from within there needs to be a shared sense of ownership. In my work of peacemaking from time to time it has been necessary to clarify the mission.
Management gurus in government, corporations and non government organizations love to have mission statements. The military is very careful to define its mission and gets irritated with political meddling. The secular hue of the word mission today clouds its one time religious, and for most of us Christian, origin although it is used by other religions as well. It denotes a specific commitment that points people to the truth, perhaps in belief as well as action. In good missions the two are not disconnected. The collective memory of its religious origins in our culture gives the word a boost in authority and authenticity while other words like objective, goal or task may invite our eyes to glaze over.
The mission of peacemaking is on my mind. My thoughts have been influenced in no small way by hundreds of conversations I have had in villages across the planet. In these places there is a problem of systemic violence, fear of official and private armed groups, and the threat of personal assault. People’s lives are interrupted by career bureaucrats and security unites who should have been called insurance agents because they can resort to manipulation of truth and violence to “insure” that nothing ever changes. Telling the truth arising out of a mission of peacemaking in these situations requires dexterity and nimble timing. You don’t want to get local people hurt. But change won’t happen without making the invisible, visible.
A real mission is deeply felt and therefore does not easily roll over to public relations platitudes declaring premature success. Sometimes, we are tempted to define our mission in broad sweeping, inclusive terms so that we are not so restricted, but missions that are too diffuse, unclear or wrong lead to confusion, distrust, breakdown and real though perhaps unintended damage.
Most of us want peace but overuse of the word does not awaken a lot of fire in the belly. Nor is a resolution or statement of consensus useful unless that statement arises from a deeply felt quest for what that unity of purpose unlocks within people. In truth there are many Mission Accomplished type missions that are not achieved and may even be laughable in the perspective of history.
How would I prevent a debacle of mission in the peacemaking world where I have worked? As a prelude I would have a concise statement that gave clear boundaries on the mission within a one sentence vision. And these are the notions I would use for help. (1) Know what the local people’s problem(s) and visions are. (2) Integrate this into planning. (3) Expect some setbacks along the way. (4) Expect success to actually come in tiny increments and give thanks publicly for these incremental building blocks. (5) Tell the story of what is really happening so that the success and failures along the way help everyone learn. (6) On those very rare occasions when there is near complete success have a big party for everyone when you also can laugh at the dumb things that were done.
Peacemakers are still in a position of relative powerlessness when viewed from the dominant, big picture world. Whenever our announcements exaggerate the dark side or the light side of reality, we cut ourselves off at the knees. The mission is also compromised when existing cultural threads of peacemaking already present in any culture are ignored. However, if we begin in the spirit of hope we may be given the eyes to see the tiny positive lights when they show up. A confident mission of peacemaking stands on its own foundation and will survive and even flourish.
