"I Want to Express My Remorse" For Participating in War, Not Resisting It

Two days before the US invaded Iraq, on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 2003, four Catholic peace activists, Daniel Burns, Peter Demott, Clare Grady, and Teresa Grady (The St. Patrick's Four) entered a military recruiting station and poured their own blood on the floor, walls, and US flag.
In their first trial, the St. Patrick's Four presented a necessity defense, and nine of twelve jurors voted to acquit them. In the second trial, Federal District Judge McAvoy ruled necessity defenses inadmissible. Even so, the defendants were acquitted of Federal felony conspiracy charges (the first federal conspiracy charges filed against peace protesters since the war against Vietnam). They were convicted on misdemeanor charges of "damage to government property" and "entering a military station for an unlawful purpose." Demott was sentenced on January 24, 2006. Below are excerpts from Peter DeMott's pre-sentencing statement.

Teresa Grady and Cindy Sheehan at Camp Casey in Crawford Texas,
August, 2005, www.stpatricksfour.org

I would like to begin my remarks by observing a moment of silence to honor the dead of the war in Iraq, the 2300 or so United States military and coalition personnel who have died as well as the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have been slaughtered, ninety percent of them civilians, thirty or so percent of that number innocent children.

I was present in this courtroom yesterday morning in solidarity with my friend Danny Burns. I heard Mr. Lovric [the prosecutor], characterize Danny, Clare, Teresa, and myself as arrogant, as people entirely lacking any respect for the law, and, yet more reprehensible to Mr. Lovric's way of thinking, completely devoid of any sense of remorse or contrition for what we have done.

And what have we done? What acts have brought us to this court? Out of what context did they arise?

In the months leading up to the war hundreds of thousands of people, in fact millions of people in different cities and towns around the world, turned out to protest against this war. On March 17th, Saint Patrick's Day of 2003, two days before the United States launched its illegal, unjust war of aggression on Iraq Danny, Clare, Teresa and I went to our local Army and Marine Corps recruiting station and after carefully and prayerfully pouring a small amount of our own blood in the lobby, we knelt in prayer and read the following statement [excerpted here]:

"Killing Cannot Be With Christ"
- St. Patrick

"'Our apologies, dear friends, for the fracture of good order.' [Editor's note: from Daniel Berrigan's 1968 poem about burning draft files.] As our nation prepares to escalate a war on the people of Iraq by sending hundreds of thousands of US soldiers to invade, we pour our blood on the walls of this military recruiting center. We mark this recruiting office with our own blood to remind ourselves and others of the cost in human life of our government's war making.

Dr. Martin Luther King reminds us that "we are called to speak for the weak, the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers [and sisters]."

In a democracy we need to be vigilant to insure that our leaders not abuse the law. It is the responsibility of each and every one of us to nonviolently confront those who break the law with impunity which is what our leaders have done through their use of lies and deceptions and forgeries to promote and prosecute this war.

As I stand here awaiting sentencing I want to express my remorse. I feel a deep and profound remorse for having participated in the war in Vietnam. Some fifty-eight thousand Americans died in that war. Some two million Vietnamese! For what? I feel remorse for not having obeyed Christ's command to love your enemies, to love one another.

I would like to close my remarks by reading a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s [Trumpet of Conscience]: "There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging, the fire truck goes right through the red light.... Or, when a person is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed.... Disinherited people all over the world are bleeding to death from deep social and economic wounds. They need brigades of ambulance drivers who will have to ignore the red lights of the present system until the emergency is solved.... Massive civil disobedience is a strategy for social change which is at least as forceful as an ambulance with its sirens on full."

The judge, on Jan. 24, 2006, sentenced Peter to eight months in jail, four to be served in Federal Prison and four at a Binghamton halfway house, due to a family illness. Danny Burns and Clare Grady were sentenced to six months, and Teresa Grady was sentenced to four months. To donate to the St. Patrick's Four Family Support Fund, www.stpatricksfour.org. To write them: Clare and Teresa Grady, Broome County Jail, 155 Lt. Vanwinkle Drive, Binghamton, NY 13905; Daniel Burns 13182-052 and Peter DeMott 10891-083, MDC Brooklyn, Metropolitan Detention Center, PO Box 329002, Brooklyn, NY 11232