 December 2001/ January 2002
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
From the editor's desk "War Works"--a headline from the "News of the Week in Review" in the New York Times a few weeks ago. As I sat with fellow Quakers after Meeting that Sunday, we were dismayed, disoriented, our peace testiony somehow cast loose from its moorings. At Peacework, one of our correspondents sent along this remark which Hermann Goering, the Nazi leader, is said to have made at the Nuremberg Trials after WW II: "Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." In a dark time, we who hope for peace with justice need a prophetic voice. Thus the lead article in this year-end Peacework--"Speak Truth to Power," classic statement of committed peace activism from the American Friends Service Committee. We offer it to you with prayers for the new year. AFSC, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the Muslim Peace Fellowship sent our friend Doug Hostetter to Afghanistan with money for food. Sounds simple enough, but Doug's letters home make clear exactly how complex a task it can be. His photographs show us the beautiful people we have been dropping bombs on. Doug's account of the painstaking process of getting the right food to the right people was underlined by a front page picture in today's Times of a mud hut in Afghanistan, partially roofed by plastic tarpaulins. The caption explains that food packages dropped by US planes missed this village and landed, instead, a few miles away, among Northern Alliance soldiers. War works. Well, yes, but it depends on how you define success. War reliably kills people--most of them not soldiers--wreaks havoc on the environment, spends down the victor's treasury, and brutalizes its soldiers and its youth. It creates profiteers and demagogues, and stifles a free press. It tends to spill over borders. "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography," said Ambrose Bierce. In this Peacework, John Pilger points out Afghanistan's fatal proximity to the oil fields of the Caspian Basin. We visit Iraq, the apparent next-in-line in George Bush's war on terror, noting the West's long-standing desire for a compliant government there. Elaine Hagopian looks at the thoroughly modern terrorism abroad in Palestine and Israel, and sees ghosts of colonial wars and Algeria. And on down the road? Joseph Gerson issues a warning on East Asia, and Ehito Kimura explains some of the complexities of Islam in Indonesia. Lawrence Reichard, back from a visit to Colombia and Ecuador, sees US expansion in the region where, again, oil abounds and the US has colonial interests. Must we just sit dismayed, as my Meeting did that morning? Of course not. Michael True reviews a book from Oxford Research Group that catalogues persistent, courageous initiatives to prevent conflict which have met some success. Not the stuff of headlines, but models for activists nonetheless. Ann Fagan Ginger tells us to ground our peace work on basic documents--the UN Charter and the US Constitution. We see John Conyers willing, if necessary, to stand and speak alone. He, and Rep. Barbara Lee, present good models as we begin to discern the outlines of the work ahead to redefine "security," preserve civil rights, and shore up public health and economic well being. Might be lonely at first, but how else to find out who else is out there? Kofi Annan, in Oslo yesterday to receive his Nobel Prize for Peace, spoke of a world that has "entered the third millennium through gates of fire." And who had to walk through those gates first? The poor, the disenfranchised, of course, and the people of Afghanistan. We have been reminded in this Peacework of the others who will reliably follow them, country by country, and of the catalogue of cherished liberties which will have to be struggled for all over again. Daunting challenges to begin a year with.
"Peace has no parade, no pantheon of victory," said
Annan. Nevertheless, we think the price is worth it. 
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