April 2003

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

From the editor's desk

I can't shake off the image on the front page of the two Sunday papers that come into our house--a soldier seated cross-legged on the ground cradling a bare-foot child with bloody garments. Her family had been "caught in the cross-fire." The little girl a study in fear and need; the young army doctor's face a mask of incomprehension and agony; the two forming a bizarre pieta of inconsolable grief. That photograph pretty well sums up this atrocity they are calling a war. I dread that my grandchildren will see it in their dreams and nightmares.

What to offer you about a war that may well be "over" by the time you read this? Our AFSC colleague Joseph Gerson was supposed to write about Korea, but ended up giving us a broad and useful overview of pathological megalomania. It is by no means clear yet who will write the history of this era, and Joe challenges the peace movement to action. We take courage from the example of some who have refused to be part of the Bush/Blair exercise in bullying. If you ever need to write a letter of resignation, you may want to refer to John Keisling's or Robin Cook's examples.

March 20. Students from MIT, Harvard, and area high schools on their way to massive rally in downtown Boston © Ellen Shub

Increasingly the opposition is frustrated in our attempts to make our voices heard; increasingly we must look to the tradition of nonviolent direct action for strategy, courage, and moral underpinnings. Bob Irwin, long a student of this field and currently a nonviolence trainer with Boston's United for Justice with Peace, gives us a road map. If you flip through the pages of this Peacework, you'll come to "An Appeal to Conscience in Support of Those Refusing to Pay for War"--one example of a nonviolent direct action. Perhaps we can accept its challenge. It is after all April and taxes are due.

Wondering if you've seen all this before? Well, yes, we're caught in a tableau eerily similar to the events that followed the Reichstag fire in 1933. Thom Hartmann reminds us of the rise of the Third Reich lest we doom ourselves to repeat it.

Despite famine in Africa, despite nuclear weapons in Korea, despite pneumonia in Hong Kong and melting in Antarctica, our attention is riveted on the Middle East. In Iraq the US is bombing the site of the oldest city-culture in the world, while, under cover of war, Israel is pursuing a policy of oppression in the Occupied Territories that seems certain to generate suicidal reprisal and that by some appraisals amounts to genocide. We hear from two who chose to stay with the victims--Ramzi Kysia in Iraq, safe for now; Rachel Corrie in Palestine, crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer.

What makes us angriest is the hypocrisy. Israel is "investigating." Donald Rumsfeld expressed outrage that the Iraqis were forced to drink untreated water in Basra--yet another example, said he, of why Saddam Hussein had to go. We're no fan of Hussein, but the reason the water is untreated is that the US bombed the treatment plants in 1992, a violation of the Geneva Conventions. And the US has refused under sanctions to permit Iraq the replacement parts to repair the damage. (AFSC's Campaign of Conscience was denied permission to ship water purification systems, thus putting our agency and the many signatories to the Campaign in conscientious violation of the orders of the US Treasury, since the systems have been installed.)

We turn to an issue that will continue to weaken the peace movement until we fully face it and address it--longstanding, unspoken, systemic racism. Never intended, never mean-spirited, but nevertheless... Louise Dunlap has begun to unpack this charged subject, and gives us some notes from a work in progress. Aaron Tanaka, intern in AFSC/New England's Justice Program, helps us connect local with global struggles. And Gabriel Comacho challenges us to take a long look at what we can learn from the global south. These are painful lessons; remedies will take hard work. It's critically important.

We conclude this issue with a moving cry from the heart by a 12-year-old in Maine. Charlotte speaks for "the children of the world who don't make any of the decisions but have to suffer all the consequences." She speaks for the little girl in the photograph whom we long to comfort, and she speaks for my grandchildren whom I yearn to protect. Paul Lacey, writing to AFSC staff, talks about the young soldiers in the desert: "I can and do pray that they are not called to do things which will afflict their memories and torment their spirits for the rest of their lives." I hope that joining in these cries and prayers will strengthen my resolve. There's lots to be done.

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