March 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

From the editor's desk

"We are truly sleepwalking through history," thundered Robert Byrd, grand rhetorician of the United States Senate. There's one thing about desperate times--they bring out the poets. Laura Bush's ill-fated cancellation of her White House soiree opened wide the floodgates, and there have been marvelous poetry readings all over the nation. Often here at Peacework as we prepare these pages, we struggle to find the exact phrase to characterize an article for the Table of Contents--a phrase that speaks to the heart of a particular story. No such search this month. Outraged eloquence is rolling down these pages like a mighty river. Listen:

to those doing the dying / the mechanism / motives and circumstances / of their deaths / are irrelevant

but be joyful to be a warrior / in this great time

privileged to live in a time / when everything is at stake / and when our efforts / make a difference / in the eternal contest between / justice and exploitation

and remember this / we be many and / they be / few / they need us more / than we need them /

another world / is on her way / on a quiet day / I can hear her breathing

New York, Feb. 15 © Ellen Shub

We begin this March Peacework with Sen. Byrd and a companion piece by British journalist Robert Fiske: "In the end we are just tired of being lied to." Now there's a first line of a poem for you. An Iraq war would be disastrous public policy, and they spell that out. It would also be a human calamity of unprecedented proportions. Charlie Clements, David Potorti, and Ramsi Kysia have each had the direct experience which allows them to talk about obscenities of a policy of "shock and awe" with deadly authority.

Notice the various boxes on these pages that deal with the Middle East: there's the delicious irony of a soldiers' reading list that mocks war; the startling reminder that we are about to bomb the premier archeological site of all time; the tired cynicism of understanding that it may well be happening so that illegal settlers in Palestine can water their lawns; the shocking reminder of which Middle Eastern nation actually does possess nuclear weapons.

There's no shortage of anguished eyewitness accounts from the Occupied Territories these days, and eventually we will have to print some of them, despite charges of anti-Semitism. For now though, we offer a catalogue of stubborn, faithful Israelis and Palestinians who are determined to find a way out of the violence.

We move on, then, to the ramifications of this dreadful adventure back at home. Two draft counselors, mother and son, describe the options that America's young women and men must grapple with as they find themselves being sent to war. We get a glimpse into the shadowy fate of that newest class of "disappeareds"--the victims of the USA Patriot Act. And we read the FCNL's urgent warning about the proposed upgrade of this dangerous legislative assault on the Constitution. We look at the Bush Administration's attempt to dismantle the gains of affirmative action spelled out by people who have paid dearly for the modest steps this nation has taken toward racial justice. We get a crib sheet on the problems with George Bush's economic agenda. All of this happening under cover of impending war.

Finally, Porto Alegre and the World Social Forum. What's that got to do with war and taxes? Why, everything. Porto Alegre and the global democracy movement offer up analysis from below of the devices of empire, of which Iraq and Middle Eastern wars are but one example--and they point to a way out.

It's been hard to do this March. We're short-handed in this office at a time when we've been flooded with eloquence and outraged causes that demand space. So the issue is late--sorry--and we've had to put a lot by for later, in the faith that there will be a later, and that it will be more spacious than today.

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