It was clearly a vote that showed that there is one key issue in Washington where the Republicans and Democrats largely agree and that is on endless war. Out of the 356 votes to shoot down the resolution 189 of them were Democrats and 167 were Republican. Only five Republicans voted in favor of the Kucinich resolution.

I watched most of the three-hour debate via C-SPAN and it was quite interesting to see that the two leaders on the House floor managing the anti-Kucinich resolution effort were Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) and right-wing Cuban-American Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from Miami, Florida.

Our two representatives from Maine (Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree) both voted to support the Kucinich resolution. Very good. Now we have to see if they vote against the next war funding supplemental of $33 billion expected to come up late next month and will they become leaders in the House to help bring others in their party around on this issue? It’s nice to have their support on this resolution but by looking at the vote totals it is clear that unless the Democratic Party comes around on this issue soon we will have no $$$ back home for jobs, education, health care, bridge and road repair and a whole lot more!

Some of the language from those who spoke during yesterday’s debate was of particular note. Rep. Berman called the recent U.S. attacks on the rural hamlet of Marjah in Afghanistan a great success, calling it a “city” and justified the surge in Afghanistan as revenge against “those who attacked us on 9-11″.

Rep. Ros-Lehtinen said we can’t “pull out now” or we’d lose face around the world. This debate, she claimed, will “demoralize our troops.”

Several Democrats expressed disappointment and outrage that the Kucinich resolution was even allowed to come to the House floor. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) said House members “should not be allowed to waste three hours of our time on a resolution that should fail.” Rep. Janet Harmon (D-CA) also spoke against the resolution and made the case that “We now have a better strategy from our president.” Rep. John Tanner (D-TN) also called for defeat of the Kucinich resolution and said, “NATO is becoming a global military alliance that will help us fund and supply troops [for our wars] around the world.”

Kucinich and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) responded saying that this was really the first time since the war on Afghanistan began that the House was allowed to really debate the war.

Not one person I heard, including Rep. Kucinich, mentioned a mumbling word about oil/natural gas pipeline routes through Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) called it “despicable” that only two members of the media were covering the debate. When I looked on the web site of the Washington Post I could find nothing about the Kucinich resolution.

As I said above five Republicans voted with Kucinich on his resolution. John Duncan (R-TN) said, “There is nothing conservative about the war in Afghanistan. Fiscal conservatives should be horrified about the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been wasted over there.”

Former civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) made an emotional appeal for support for the anti-war resolution and asked the question, “How much more debt must we bare?”

Immediately after Lewis spoke, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) came to the podium. I recognized Johnson because he was the business community candidate put up to run against former Rep. Cynthia McKinney for her seat. Johnson called the resolution an “usurpation of the power of the Commander in Chief….our policy is bringing promising results….the resolution is ill-timed and ill-conceived….let the president implement his strategy.” His corporate funders in Atlanta were likely pleased that their investment in his House seat was already paying dividends.

We must thank Rep. Kucinich but in the end the whole three-hour affair really showed just how bankrupt the Congress really is.

Here is the full list of those who voted in favor of the Kucinich resolution to bring our troops (and war $$) home from Afghanistan.

—- YEAS 65 —

Baldwin
Campbell (Republican)
Capuano
Chu
Clarke
Clay
Cleaver
Crowley
Davis (IL)
DeFazio
Doyle
Duncan (Republican)
Edwards (MD)
Ellison
Farr
Filner
Frank (MA)
Grayson
Grijalva
Gutierrez
Hastings (FL)
Jackson (IL)
Jackson Lee (TX)
Johnson (IL) (Republican)
Johnson, E. B.
Jones (Republican)
Kagen
Kucinich
Larson (CT)
Lee (CA)
Lewis (GA)
Maffei
Maloney
Markey (MA)
McDermott
McGovern
Michaud (Maine)
Miller, George
Nadler (NY)
Napolitano
Neal (MA)
Obey
Olver
Paul (Republican)
Payne
Pingree (Maine)
Polis (CO)
Quigley
Rangel
Richardson
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanchez, Loretta
Schakowsky
Serrano
Speier
Stark
Stupak
Tierney
Towns
Tsongas
Velázquez
Waters
Watson
Welch
Woolsey

—- NOT VOTING 9 —

Barrett (SC)
Camp
Conyers
Davis (AL)
Deal (GA)
Diaz-Balart, L.
Hoekstra
Wasserman Schultz
Young (FL)

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/ (blog)

Please be an EPF Representative:

Schedule at a Glance

March 21, 4-8 pm

Public hearing
Location: The Riverside Church Nave, New York City

• Screening of Soldiers of Conscience
• Testimony from Veterans
• Briefings from Expert Witnesses

March 22, 9 am-4 pm

Meeting of Commissioners and Testifiers (closed to public)

Let us know you’re coming!
RSVP today at Facebook

Watch on YouTube | Share on Facebook

The Truth Commission on Conscience in War, a national gathering of community and religious leaders, advocacy groups, and artists, will receive personal testimony from veterans and briefings from expert witnesses about:

• moral and religious questions facing soldiers both before and during combat
• moral and religious criteria of just war
• international agreements governing the justification and conduct of war
• limits of military regulations on Conscientious Objection

Truth Commission proceedings will launch conversations about just war, international law, and greater freedom of conscience for our nation’s service members, conversations led by the Commissioners.

The Truth Commission is supported by your tax-deductible donations and led by a growing list of organizational co-sponsors – including educational institutions and nonprofit organizations:

Become a donor today!

Join as a co-sponsor by contacting Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, Project Director, at rita@faithvoices.org or 510-459-5123.

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TCCW Endorsements

This Truth Commission, rather than focus on troop deployments or withdrawals, has been designed to step back and ask the most important questions: Are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just? Are they permissible under international law? Are they moral? And if they are not, as I believe they are not, what are the options for a person of conscience serving in uniform?

• Mr. Chris Hedges, Pulitzer-prize-winning war correspondent for The New York Times and author of War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

I am heartened by this  conversation between those whose faith commitment leads them to nonviolence and those who adhere to a just war ethic.  This is not always an easy conversation, but it is a vital conversation for our common ground far exceeds our differences.

• David B. Miller, Associate Professor of Missional Leadership Development, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary

Giving testimony – and bearing witness. These are practices as old as the hills and as needed today, in the midst of two wars, as much as they have ever been. Let’s hear the voices of the traumatized echo in our midst – and be moved to justice anew for all who serve in the armed forces and willingly sacrifice on our behalf.

• Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary and author of Trauma and Grace

The United States of America is founded on principals of political and religious freedom. When we punish the soldier who heeds his or her moral compass, our democracy is in grave danger. We fail as American citizens and we fail as human beings. As a mother, an advocate, a teacher, a feminist, and an interfaith minister, I testify that the first Truth Commission on Conscience in War is vital and timely.

• Rev. Dr. Kaia Stern, Truth Commission Chair and Professor, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute, Harvard Law School

Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan dominate much of current U.S. foreign policy, I cannot think of a more timely moment for this Truth Commission. It holds the promise of bringing moral ideas too often hidden in narrow academic circles into a setting of lively public discourse, thereby making a principled contribution to an urgent, fractious national debate. The focus on conscientious objection centralizes the core question of individual, citizen moral rights in relation to the practical interests of the nation-state.

• Rev. Dr. Traci C. West, Professor of Ethics and African American Studies, Drew University Theological School

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Why Hold A Truth Commission on Conscience in War?

Current requirements for Conscientious Objector status require opposition to “war in any form.” This requirement denies freedom of conscience to any service member who believes that some wars may be morally justified while others are not. Service members who oppose a particular war, such as those in Iraq or Afghanistan, have no legal basis for refusing to deploy. Instead, they face sanctions, and even court martial and prison for following their conscience.
Read more…

A complete listing of the resolutions is available here.

Resolutions:

• Direct the Episcopal Church join the Jobs for America Now Coalition (A&N003).
• Reassert the Episcopal Church’s “long-standing belief that war is inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ”; remember “with sorrow those on all sides of the hostilities in Afghanistan who have been wounded, traumatized or killed”; recall the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 that led to military action in Afghanistan; support the goal of just and lasting peace in Afghanistan; welcome the setting of a timetable for withdrawal; urge the U.S. and its allies to use force judiciously and protect the innocent people of Afghanistan; assert that “an escalation in forces need not lead to an escalation in force”; call on the Afghan government to end corruption and strengthen its security forces; encourage the U.S. and its allies to promote economic development and human rights in Afghanistan; pray for the safety and well-being of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, all those who have been wounded, traumatized or killed, and for a swift and peaceful end to the war; urge Congress to provide for the needs of troops and their families; acknowledge the pastoral challenges presented by multiple deployments and combat stress, and commend the Episcopal Church’s federal ministries office for its work (A&N004).
• Welcome the peace-making initiatives of President Barack Obama and Middle East envoy George Mitchell and urge them to re-double their efforts; acknowledge “the tragic histories of the Jewish and Palestinian people as victims of injustice, wars, dispersion and exile, the existential fear and insecurity this has created for both peoples and the distress their conflict has caused throughout the Middle East”; recognize the commitment of Israelis and Palestinians to the land they regard as their homeland and respect their national aspirations; call on theU.S. to pursue fair and balanced approach to making peace; acknowledge that peace can be achieved only by a division of historic Palestine into two sovereign states; call upon Obama and Congress to press Israel to end the blockade of the Gaza Strip; affirm that a territorial division must include a shared Jerusalem; recognize that the use of force, violence or arbitrary power by Israelis or Palestinians to determine the outcome of this conflict must be condemned absolutely; urge all Episcopalians to work and pray for the liberation of Israelis and Palestinians from generations of conflict and for restoration of harmony among Jews, Muslims and Christians worldwide; affirm that the creation of peace with justice is a compelling priority for the church and for the U.S. (WM009).
• Express solidarity with the Episcopal Church of Colombia, ministering in the midst of Colombia’s internal armed conflict; recognize that the resulting social and humanitarian crisis is aggravated by displacement of civil population to the Ecuadorean border; urge the U.S. government to commence a “generous program of resettlement” for those who cannot return to Colombia and are unable to integrate or remain in Ecuador; to work with the UN High Commission for Refugees and other organizations to assist host countries by providing adequate funding; to press for a political solution to the armed conflict between the Colombian government and opposing forces; and voice the church’s “strong opposition” to the installation by the U.S. government of military bases in Colombia (WM010).
• Join the international community in mourning the death and destruction resulting from the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti; recognize that the level of destruction and collapse of essential services is “in part the consequence of poverty in which the nations and churches of the West have long been complicit”; express deep solidarity with the Diocese of Haiti; call for relief and development efforts that recognize the human rights and dignity of all Haitians, especially vulnerable groups, ensure that Haitians are fully involved in the planning and execution of all such projects, and that such projects should benefit all Haitians; honor the leadership of Bishop Jean Zaché Duracin; recognize that Haiti’s recovery and reconstruction must be directed by the Haitian people, and affirm Duracin’s authority and that of the leaders he appoints to request and direct resources required to rebuild the diocese; stand ready to receive Duracin’s call for support; commit to review the church’s support for those efforts at subsequent meetings of council; commend Episcopal Relief & Development and the Haitian diocesan development staff for its ministry of relief work among survivors; commend Bishop Julio C. Holguín and the Diocese of the Dominican Republic for “its selfless support of its neighbor in need;” urge Episcopalians to continue praying for Haitians and to support the long-term recovery effort; support the presiding bishop’s efforts to marshal resources of the wider church in support of Haiti and to work with Duracin in ensuring resources are provided in the most effective manner; commend the U.S. government for its post-quake leadership, including the decision to extend Temporary Protected Status to Haitians in the U.S. as of Jan. 12 (WM011).

(P)      “Lord, help us take up the cross and follow the path to peace.”

(L)      May the path toward peace begin in our hearts through utter

trust in your belief in us O God, and may our treasure be found

in your peace which surpasses our understanding and fuels our hope.

(P)      “Lord, help us take up your cross and know the path to peace.”

(L)      May the path toward peace pass straight into our homes, where prayer provides perspective and where faith fosters growth and healing and joys.  May our homes become havens of peace.

(P)      “Lord, help us take up your cross and practice the way of peace peace.”

(L)      Let your path of peace extend to our neighborhoods and

communities, where the healing balm of grace may soothe the strains and stresses of daily life, and your spirit of generosity and loving-kindness may transform our cultures, streets and local affairs.

(P)      “Lord, help me take up your cross and practice your way of Peace.”

(L)      Let the peace which the world alone cannot give, that peace which you bestowed and wrote upon our hearts inform and transform the nations; that mutual aid might replace mutual destruction.   And may the vision of care for God’s creation where there is war no more, where there is food for the hungry, clothes for the naked and security for the peoples of the earth become a vision shared.

(P)      “Lord, help us take up your cross, and practice your way of Peace.”

(L)      Dear God hear these our prayers and help move us toward

Eastertide where the power of love reigns and the community of Resurrection springs forth to transform hearts and homes and world.

(P)      “Lord, accomplish in us the work of your salvation. Help us Lift high your cross and follow you.”

(L)      All this we ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our pattern and our Savior.

(P) Amen.

From the Rev. William Exner, St. Matthew’s, Goffstown, NH

Port-au-Prince - January 13, 2010 | United Nations Development Programme | Photograph used under a Creative Commons license

“The sound rose up and spread across the rooftops of the old city, a deep, guttural, Biblical sound—the sound of souls wailing by the thousands.” This is not a description of post-earthquake Haiti, but a piece of adrenaline-infused reporting from New Orleans after its Super Bowl victory. It trumpets faith in redemptive suffering, the fulfillment of victory over tragedy, the ability to forget, at least for a time, the horrors of Katrina’s destructive power and the propensity of visual spectacle to paper over differences in wealth, health, and opportunity. It also reminds us of the emotive and mysterious, if not primitive, force of religious imagery—guttural Biblicism and wailing souls.

I rooted for the Saints, too, at least on the occasional moments when I walked by the TV set. But the juxtaposition of a victory credited with the power to lift up a people and landscape wracked by tragedy with the ongoing, even greater tragedy of another people and landscape nearby leads me to reflect on how our narratives of normalcy and tragedy are created and disrupted. The magnitude of Katrina and the earthquake in Haiti shattered, or at least suspended, our entrenched narratives about these places and people, but what fills the void? And what is the place of religion in our narratives, and in the lacunae that remain when they are disrupted?

Haiti has long provided an icon of desperation in the Northern imaginary. The resulting narrative tells us that Haiti, like much of Africa, is impossibly corrupt, and the vast majority of Haitians desperately poor. Haiti will never change; this is its normal state. A similar narrative obtained about much of Africa until Nelson Mandela’s release and the end of apartheid twenty years ago transformed South Africa and celebrities homed in to save the rest of the continent. Haiti, however, remained bleak, without hope. Syncretic religious practices melding Christianity and Vodou added to the fatalism about Haiti from the outside, as David Brooks’s recent column, asserting that “the influence of the voodoo religion” has helped to make Haitian culture “progress-resistant,” demonstrates so well. Not only could Haiti not change for the better; it was mysterious and ultimately anti-modern. Haiti had gone its own way from its 1791 slave rebellion to its revolution and eventual declaration of independence in 1804, showing the world that slavery was immoral, while frightening the US founding fathers among others. Its refusal to buckle under pressures from Europe and then the US, its corruption (aided and abetted by Europe and the US, as Elizabeth McAlister, and Jean Casimir and Laurent Dubois show in their contributions to the SSRC’s essay forum Haiti, Now and Next) and violent regimes, and the persistence of strange religious practices presumably showed that Haiti was different.  This inability to align itself with Europe and the US, along with its history as a pariah in the Caribbean intimated that either the Haitians were responsible for their own hopeless condition, or that history and lack of opportunity conspired to prevent them from doing anything about it. In a sense, Pat Robertson merely added an apocalyptic gloss to a long-standing secular story.

The earthquake destroyed not only lives and livelihoods in Haiti itself; it also upended these narratives from the outside. Haiti was hopeless, but the suffering caused by the earthquake was unimaginable, thus rendering aid—and new solutions—necessary. Bill Clinton had already made Haiti the new centerpiece of his foundation’s development efforts, and Paul Farmer, Catholic aid groups, and the Episcopal Church had long been involved in efforts to improve the daily lives of poor Haitians. Haiti, already a major center of church and NGO activity, is now the focus of innumerable new efforts to help.

The narrative void is not absolute, however. News reports have found both hope and hopelessness in daily coverage of rescues and newfound destruction, as the Northern imagination wobbles through alternating tendencies to create new narratives and reinforce old ones. Headlines a few days after the quake announced fears of conflict and vandalism, a common expectation for behavior by the poor and destitute in violent societies, only to be chastened soon thereafter with reports of Haitians coming together to pray and mourn. We were told that the Haitian government was completely non-functional, and that its President, René Préval, could be seen wandering aimlessly through the streets of the capital, yet somehow the Haitian justice minister managed to indict ten US missionaries on charges of child abduction.  And the Haitian ambassador to the US (interviewed the day after the earthquake on the Rachel Maddow show) pointedly refuted Pat Robertson’s thesis (that Haiti had brought about its own troubles through a pact with the devil made when it revolted against France) with a history lesson: not only had Haitian independence provided a potent example of freedom to Simon Bolivar and all of Latin America, but Haiti’s revolution against the French had paved the way for the United States to negotiate the entire Louisiana Purchase for a song.

The magnitude of the destruction and the upending of narratives also leave open the possibility, like Noah’s ark, of a completely new start in Haiti, on the part of both religious and secular external observers and aid-givers.  Aid to Haiti is indisputably necessary, but to what assumptions and expectations does it come attached? Now the narrative of hopelessness competes with the idea of Haiti as a tabula rasa for NGOs, donors, religious groups, and observers, opening the door to all sorts of new (and old) salvific projects.

Perhaps this is the reason why the Baptist missionaries, like the French Noah’s Ark in Chad before them, thought they could take Haitian children across the border to the Dominican Republic (and possibly eventually to the United States). If God was calling them to help and Haiti had turned into an anarchic void teeming with suffering children, whatever they could think of doing would be better for the children they found than their current, post-apocalyptic state.

Similarly, donor agencies and academic gurus also dream up plans to reconstruct Haiti anew, based on pet projects or examples of what has “worked” (and more often what has not) in other cases. I do not wish to disparage these efforts, and I have also contributed to them. Yet, as Elizabeth McAlister points out in her post, some of these plans—and, I would add, the ones most likely to attract the largest amounts of funding—encompass huge silences regarding the history of Haiti and the succession of “private deal-making” between Haitian elites and foreign governments and corporations. Uncovering these silences renders David Brooks’s call for the Haitian poor to be held to “an achievement ethos and tough, measurable demands” as well as the promotion of “locally led paternalism” silly and uninformed at best.

At worst, however, both the “rational aid” projects and the naïve schemes to save children by spiriting them away follow from assumptions that can rush in all too easily to fill the narrative void and influence subsequent aid initiatives. Debates about religion in the Northern imaginary are central to filling this space with preconceived ideas about Haiti and Haitians. In both of these instances, the ideas of external actors about religion—both Haiti’s and their own—form part of the incipient story. In both, Haiti’s actual religiosity is mostly ignored. Some—like Brooks, but also many others—do not wish to understand more about the Haitian religious landscape, which is rich and dynamic and intertwined with political maneuvering as well as social possibilities, as the transition from Duvalier to Aristide demonstrates. Others want to reinscribe Haitian religious practices within their own. Still others question how the always-suffering Haitian majority can even believe in a God, given the force of the destruction.

But Haiti is not a tabula rasa, in either its religious identities or its political, social, and economic configurations. René Préval demonstrated this with his apparently carefully orchestrated ecumenical day of mourning on the earthquake’s one month anniversary, when the head of the Vodou priests shared a podium with a Catholic Bishop, Protestant leaders, and the President himself, acknowledging the role of spiritual practices in both mourning and reconstruction.  And those who question the power and rationality of Haitian religious experiences from the outside might reflect on the fact that even the most well-heeled donors have not been able to resolve problems of coordination and distribution to get enormous amounts of aid to people a month after the earthquake struck.

In New Orleans, not much has been done since Katrina to reconstruct the city for the majority of its inhabitants, despite the flood of good intentions after the hurricane. The Saints’ Super Bowl win and the religious imagery used to describe it represent merely a momentary catharsis in the face of ongoing desperation. If we can begin to understand religious and spiritual experiences as something other than a momentary catharsis in Haiti, we might be able to help in ways that incorporate its rich cultural landscape, rather than try to create it anew. Perhaps we need to keep the narratives about Haiti today, including the role of religion there, disrupted, at least on the part of those of us who are acting and rushing in from the outside, so that we can learn more from Haitians about their own desires, histories, and hopes for the future.

Visit the SSRC’s essay forum “Haiti, Now and Next” here.—ed.

Canon Vicki Garvey, Canon for Christian Formation, Episcopal Diocese of Chicago vgarvey@episcopalchicago.org

Living mystery whose way is not ours,

whose name can not be bought or sold:

lead us from justice without compassion

and sacrifice without mercy

to a love which nurtures

and a grace without price;

through Jesus Christ, the true Bread.  Amen.

Blazing in a bush

Burning in a fiery pillar

Moses met you

Come God and meet us now.

Walking through a city

Listening to a story

Disciples met you

Come God and meet us now.

Fire round their heads

Holiness in their lives

Believers met you

Come God and meet us now.

Holy God, rich in mercy,

Bless us with love.

Healing God, firm in forgiveness,

Bless us with grace.

Disturbing God, strong in justice,

Bless us with hope.

Psalm of the Day

Reading of the Day with Reflection

Holy Friend, Healer and Liberator, we lift up before you those people who are at this very moment suffering from accident, disease, their own folly, or the cruelty of others.  Please have mercy on our race, O God.

Forgive our human iniquities and heal our many diseases.

At this moment many fellow humans beings are crying out against the cruelty of captivity: Hostages and abducted children, prisoners of war and political detainees, and many mistakenly convicted. Please have mercy on our race, O God.

Forgive our human iniquities and heal our many diseases.

At this moment many of our fellows are suffering physical and mental abuse: Battered wives and children, others beaten up by robbers, tortured for information, verbally abused and denigrated, left with untended wounds, threatened with the injury of loved ones, sexually molested or slowly killed.  Please have mercy on our race, O God.

Forgive our human iniquities and heal our many diseases.

At this moment there are people who are traumatized by sudden injury: Victims of industry or the highways, soldiers wounded in battle, civilians bombed or terrorized,  those maimed by the carelessness of others, and some who for personal thrills have taken big risks and lost.  Please have mercy on our race, O God.

Forgive our human iniquities and heal our many diseases.

At this moment there are thousands who are in terror or despair because of natural disasters: Flood and house fire, cyclone and earthquake, avalanche or bushfire, drought or lightning strike, storm waves or volcanic eruption.  Please have mercy on our race, O God.

Forgive our human iniquities and heal our many diseases.

Holy Friend, help your church to do whatever we can to lesson the multiple sufferings of humanity. Encourage each of us to rest our own pain and grief in your infinite mercy, and not to cease from righteous anger, prayer and appropriate action while injustice and neglect exist anywhere on this planet.  Please have mercy on our church, O God.

Through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen!

The God of love be with us all.

The Christ of grace be for us all.

The Spirit of truth be among us all.

Amen!

– Drawn and adapted from Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church [Church Publishing, 2009], 89; Ruth Burgess and  Chris Polhill, Eggs and Ashes [Wild Goose, 2004], 82-83; Bruce Prewer, Uniting Church in Canada, blog for this week..

Vice President Joe Biden has just concluded a speech at the National Defense University on “The Future of U.S. Nuclear Deterrence.”  In his remarks, Biden articulated the arms control agenda of the Obama Administration, featuring the importance of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a new START agreement with Russia .

Whether or not our Senators were watching, and whether or not your local papers deem it newsworthy, the speech provides an important opportunity for letters on the urgency of moving forward with nuclear arms control measures.

Please consider:

a)      Writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper, and

b)      Writing to Sen. Judd Gregg, who is still undecided on the CTBT and START.

Biden outlined the key points of the Administration’s agenda to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, which include:

• Bolstering the budgets of the national weapons labs to better monitor the safety and reliability of the existing nuclear weapons stockpile without new tests or warhead designs;
  • Completing the new START agreement with Russia ;
  • Strengthening measures to secure vulnerable nuclear materials, which will be the topic of a summit in April;
  • Rallying support for stronger non-proliferation measures during the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in May;
  • Beginning negotiations for a treaty cutting off production of fissile materials; and
  • Ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

The VP concluded with what might be the most important point to cite:

“The horror of nuclear conflict may make its occurrence unlikely, but … the very existence of nuclear weapons leaves the human race ever at the brink of self-destruction.”

(For a copy of the actual text, send me an email at ctbt@nhpeaceaction.org.)

(For news coverage of the speech, go to:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/18/AR2010021803293.html.)

Key points to emphasize:

• Nuclear weapons do not protect us.  To the contrary, their very existence is a threat to U.S. security and to life on earth.
  • Advanced technology makes it possible to verify compliance with the CTBT.  Moreover, once the treaty enters into force, on-site inspections can be ordered if cheating is suspected.
  • There is scientific consensus that explosive tests are not needed to prove the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons.
  • Nuclear nations and those which may aspire to join the club need tests to develop new warhead designs.  A ban on nuclear testing would block such developments.
  • The USA has already observed a nuclear testing moratorium for 18 years.

The best source for background on these and other points is a new website from the Arms Control Association, at www.projectforthectbt.org.

Tips on writing letters to the editor:

• Keep them brief.  Many papers will tell you their suggested length.  For example, the Union Leader says all letters must be 200 words or less.
  • Keep them concise.   Focus on one point, not everything that’s on your mind.
  • Make them relevant.  Tie them to something that was in the paper, e.g. an article about Biden’s speech.
  • Make them timely.  Tie them to something that was in the news, e.g. Biden’s speech.

You can submit letters by email or from the paper’s web site.  Please let me know if they get published.

Senator Gregg

Treaty ratification requires 67 votes, two-thirds of the Senate.  When these treaties get to the Senate floor, we want both New Hampshire ’s Senators to vote with the majority, for ratification.  Although the CTBT may not come up this year, we still want Sen. Gregg to hear from his constituents about it.

To contact Sen. Gregg, go to his website at:  http://gregg.senate.gov/contact/, or

send a fax to:  (202) 224-4952.

Feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

Arnie Alpert

NH Peace Action CTBT Project

ctbt@nhpeaceaction.org

18 February 2010

The Rev. Nicole Janelle in Haiti

The devastating earthquake in Haiti destroyed the tools of many empowering Episcopal ministries in the Diocese of Haiti. Episcopal churches, primary and secondary schools, universities and vocational schools, hospitals and clinics no longer are able to serve the countless Haitians who depend on these institutions for their spiritual, educational and medical needs. One of the many ministries in the Diocese that will need to be rebuilt in the future is the Episcopal Peace Fellowship nonviolence library at the Bishop Tutu Center.

In 2008 EPF initiated a partnership with the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti focused on providing nonviolence training to young adults and professionals in the Diocese. That summer, before the hurricanes struck, EPF held its first nonviolence training in Port au Prince. Approximately seventy young adults from around the country attended, spending several days studying nonviolence theory and practice at the College of St. Pierre.

EPF board member Will Wauters and I made the journey to Haiti to attend that training, eager to make connections with the participants and to support the workshop facilitator. Three months later, back in Haiti to attend the annual Haiti Connection conference and accompany the Presiding Bishop on her first pastoral visit to the Diocese, I met with some of the same young adults who participated in the nonviolence training to talk about ideas for subsequent trainings. The young adults were keen on receiving more instruction and didactic tools that would allow them to train their peers in their schools and churches. They especially spoke of the need to receive training to deal with domestic, gang and political violence.

During that visit, I gifted on behalf of EPF several books on nonviolence written in French. These books found a home at the Bishop Tutu Center based in the diocesan cathedral complex. As books are scarce in Haiti, the nonviolence library at the Tutu Center enabled groups and individuals within the Diocese to read and discuss important texts. In fact, shortly thereafter, a group began to meet weekly at the Tutu Library to engage in this sort of conversation.

Though the Diocese of Haiti is still in an emergency-response mode, plans to rebuild the Diocese will soon emerge. EPF stands ready to engage in that process of rebuilding as directed by the bishop and people of the Diocese of Haiti. Ongoing sales of the EPF nonviolence organic tee shirts are being donated to Episcopal Relief and Development for immediate relief work. Donations to EPF earmarked to rebuild the nonviolence lending library will allow EPF to replace the books and nonviolence manuals lost in the rubble of the quake.

During her recent pastoral visit to the bishop of Haiti, our Presiding Bishop remarked to Bishop Duracin: “You should skip Lent this year; you have already had your Good Friday.” This Lenten season I hold in my prayers the faces and names of the young adults I was privileged to meet in Haiti. As I flip through the many pictures on my computer of our training, I realize that I do not know who in that group is still alive. Along with Bishop Duracin, I pray that we will soon be able to sing our Alleluias with Episcopalians in Haiti. Until then, I wait in solidarity with my Haitian brothers and sisters in the Lenten desert, praying that they will find the strength to emerge from the unimaginable destruction of this tragedy.

The Rev. Nicole Janelle
Episcopal Peace Fellowship

Click here to buy EPF’s Haiti T-Shirt. The funds raised for this shirt will be sent to Episcopal Relief and Development and toward EPF’s fund for rebuilding the nonviolence library.

Eric Johnson and friend

Justice and Peace Meditation for Lent 3 (C) 3 March 2010

Reading:  Luke 13:1-9
Televangelist Pat Robertson recently proclaimed that the earthquake in Haiti happened as a result of a pact the founding fathers of that island nation made with the devil in order to gain their independence from France. Before making this pronouncement, Pat should have checked the lectionary reading for this week, in which Jesus is asked about the death of a group of Galileans and another group who died when the tower of Siloam fell upon them. His questioners hope that Jesus will proclaim that these misfortunes were the deserved punishments for past sins. But Jesus will have none of that. He tells his listeners that they shouldn’t attempt to see calamitous misfortunes as punishments from God; rather, they need to look at themselves, repent of their own shortcomings, and worry about their own judgment day.

Dear Lord, teach me to see what you would have me do and not to worry about what I think others may have done.

6 February 2010

As US and British troops prepare to attack the town of Marjah in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, military commanders and the media are openly comparing the operation to the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, one of the bloodiest war crimes of the Iraq war.

The operation in central Helmand province, long an area of intense resistance to the US-led occupation, will constitute the largest military offensive since Washington invaded the country in October 2001. At least 15,000 troops are expected to lay siege to the Helmand river valley town, which has 80,000 inhabitants and is said by the US military to be a stronghold of the Taliban.

A total of 125,000 people live in the district around Marjah, which is an agricultural center 350 miles west of Kabul. The population has been swelled by Afghans fleeing villages occupied by US Marines last summer, following President Barack Obama’s order shortly after he took office to send 21,000 more troops into Afghanistan.

US Marines, frustrated and enraged over casualties suffered at the hands of an unseen enemy who is able to attack and then blend back into the local population, will be unleashed against the town in a violent military assault, with predictable results.

Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the US Marines in southern Afghanistan, spelled out the character of the upcoming offensive. Those found in Marjah would have three options. “One is to stay and fight and probably die,” he said. “The second one is to make peace with his government and reintegrate.” The third would be to attempt to escape, “In which case we’ll probably have some people out there waiting on them as well.”

“We’re going to go in big,” said Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. “I’m not looking for a fair fight,” he added.

In a highly unusual move, the US command has publicly announced plans for the offensive. “It’s a little unconventional to do it this way, but it gives everybody a chance to think through what they’re going to do before suddenly in the dark of night they’re hit with an offensive,” said General Stanley McChrystal, the senior US commander in Afghanistan.

The stated intention of revealing the target of the upcoming offensive is to allow civilians to flee before the Marines move in. It also provides a preemptive alibi for the US offensive by painting those who fail to heed the warning as die-hard Taliban who deserve to be killed.

Stratfor, a military-intelligence web site with close ties to the US state apparatus, reported Thursday that “the assault is likely to include the cordoning off of the area, so many of the fighters dedicated to its defense will probably be forced to fight to the death or surrender.”

The article continued: “With assaults on Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq under their belts, the Marines are experienced with this sort of urban assault.”

What is the record of urban assaults of “this sort”?

The Marine assault on Fallujah in November 2004 reduced most of the city of 300,000 people to rubble, as warplanes dropped thousands of tons of explosives and helicopter gunships and battle tanks fired missiles into buildings and strafed the area with cannon fire.

The US military command claimed to have killed 2,000 “insurgents,” but the real death toll remains unknown. Civilians who remained in the town were subjected to the same bombardment. Some were shot to death during the door-to-door raids that followed, and others were killed while fleeing. Wounded fighters were summarily executed, and medical facilities were targeted for military attack. All those in the city were denied food, water and electricity for more than 10 days.

The operation was a vicious exercise in collective punishment against the population of Fallujah for the killing there of four Blackwater mercenaries and the city’s protracted resistance to foreign occupation. It embodied the criminality of the entire war and was characterized by multiple and gross violations of the laws of war.

If American military commanders are to be believed, a similar operation is being prepared in Afghanistan, and for similar reasons. The town of Marjah is to be turned into a killing field.

As in Fallujah, vengeance plays a role. US military forces have seen a steady escalation in casualties over the past year, while the CIA suffered a humiliating attack at the end of December that left seven of its operatives dead on the Afghan border.

In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the US military command sees value in making an example of a population center known as a center of resistance to occupation, sending a message to the entire country that such resistance is futile and will be met with slaughter and destruction.

This bloodletting is officially justified in the name of a never-ending struggle against terrorism. Behind the propaganda, the driving force of the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, is the attempt by America’s ruling elite to counter the crisis of US capitalism through the use of force and the seizure of strategic positions in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, both centers of vast energy reserves.

A year ago, when Barack Obama entered the White House, there existed hope among broad layers of the American people that his inauguration would turn such words as Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Blackwater, torture and rendition into the lexicon of a dark and shameful, but closed, chapter in US history.

The preparation of the Marjah offensive only underscores that, far from being ended, the crimes of the Bush administration are continuing and escalating under the Democratic president.

Today there are more US troops deployed abroad in colonial-style wars and occupations than under Bush, and the killing has spread from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and Yemen. The Obama administration is seeking $322 billion for the two ongoing wars and occupations, a figure that will doubtless be swelled by further demands for “supplemental” funding.

The supposed candidate of “hope” and “change” has emerged ever more clearly as the hand-picked agent of sections of the political establishment and military-intelligence complex that wanted to effect certain tactical changes in policy, while continuing to employ militarism abroad and wage a relentless assault on the working class at home.

American working people cannot accept a new round of war crimes carried out in their name. The demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US and other foreign troops from Afghanistan must be joined with a political offensive against the Obama administration and the financial oligarchy that it defends.

Bill Van Auken

The author also recommends:

The siege of Fallujah: America on a killing spree
[18 November, 2004]