WWJD?

In my early adulthood, I read books on Saint Francis of Assissi (1181/1182 -1226). I was especially impressed by his living his life in imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi) and that set me on a  certain path. Later, in the 1980's, I encountered the book, In His Steps by Charles Sheldon, that portrayed late nineteenth century imitatio Christi in light of the Social Gospel. In the late 1990's and early 2000's, I read books by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan on the Historical Jesus that further widened my path.

The subtitle of In His Steps is What Would Jesus Do? In the 1990's this phrase became popular with Christian youth and they used the letters WWJD.

In the lead up to the Iraq War, this question, "What would Jesus do?", kept coming to my mind. I knew the answer in that regard and I became quite distressed when my local church and local churches in general would not stand up for Jesus as the old song said. The heads of the major denominations, though,  including my own, had come out in opposition to the war. I took to the street in protest.

Recently, I was interested in the remarks of President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on February 2. I was impressed at how he spoke of the role that faith, his Christian faith, plays in his job as President. He spoke of not leaving our values at the door. He spoke of the importance of the Golden Rule, treating others as we wish to be treated. He spoke of the financial difficulties of many Americans today. He spoke of treating people fairly and providing opportunities for all. He even mentioned the most vulnerable among us. He did have some good words.

There is a question, though, that I would like to ask our President. I have posted previously on our use of drones in warfare. The President has spoken of how few civilian casualties have come from our drone attacks.  However, in August of 2011, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism produced a study that said at least 385 civilians had been killed by our drones in Pakistan in the last seven years and that at least 168 of these were children. Now my question is: Who Would Jesus Drone?

____________
As a postcript, I would like to link to a  very recent blog post-sermon by the Rev. Chuck Queen that speaks to WWJD. I believe it is quite worth reading.

Grounding Drones

Visit CODEPINK.org to see CP's latest news on their actions against drones, to take action, to get involved, and to get the facts. Go here.

Terror by Drones

On December 28, the Lexington Herald-Leader published an article from The Washington Post on President Obama’s expansion of the U.S. drone war--targeted killings and surveillance of adversaries by unmanned aircraft systems.

The only adviser to President Obama who questioned the expansion of the drone war was Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, who was later fired. Pres. Obama himself seems to have been noncommittal.

The advantage of targeted drone killings is that not as many U.S. personnel are killed as would be in a conventional war. This manner of war-making treats war as a video game. The pilots are located outside the theater, often inside the United States, and operate the drones by a joystick . The remote pilots, however, can suffer psychological repercussions from their actions.


The drone attacks often end up killing civilians, even children. Neither the intelligence nor the targeting is always accurate.

On the same day that the Herald-Leader published The Washington Post article, the Los Angeles Times published an article telling of Pakistani death squads that were going after informants to the U.S. drone program. The drone program has increased hatred of the United States.

The legality of the drone attacks according to international law has been questioned. The group Human Rights Watch sent a letter to President Obama on December 16, 2011 declaring that the US government should clarify fully and publicly its legal rationale for conducting targeted drone killings and the legal limits on such strikes. The group especially questioned the drone killings by the Central Intelligence Agency and stated the strikes should be confined to the U.S. armed forces.

The targeted killings and surveillance by drones are especially heinous. They are a dehumanizing and distancing way of war-making that, thus, make war-making all that much easier. War is getting completely out of hand. Instead of expanding our war-making with drones, we should be ending our War of Terror on Terror.

Obama's Middle East and N. Africa

I have come to believe that my country, the United States of America, is two-faced. We tend to have great values, such as human rights, but tend to act toward other countries, and sometimes against our own people, in a completely contrary manner. I mentioned before that the Native Americans used to say, especially in those "Westerns" of my younger days, that the white man speaks with forked tongue. The Native Americans certainly experienced first hand our contrariness.

In their post for CODEPINK's blog, PINKtank, Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of both CODEPINK and Global Exchange, and Charles Davis, an independent journalist, seem to be saying the same thing about President Obama's major speech on May 20 at the State Department regarding the Middle East and North Africa. We speak of and commend non-violence, but act in a completely different manner.

Here are some excerpts ~

**Given that President Obama daily authorizes the firing of hellfire missiles and the dropping of cluster bombs in places such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, it was awful odd seeing him wax eloquent this week about the “moral force of non-violence” in places like Egypt and Tunisia. But there he was, the commander-in-chief of the largest empire in history, praising the power of peaceful protest in countries with repressive leaders backed by his own administration.

Were we unfamiliar with his actual policies – more than doubling the troops in Afghanistan, dramatically escalating a deadly drone war in Pakistan and unilaterally bombing for peace in Libya – it might have been inspiring to hear a major head of state reject violence as a means to political ends. Instead, we almost choked on the hypocrisy.

* *Yet even for all his talk of human rights and how he “will not tolerate aggression across borders” – yes, a U.S. president said this – Obama didn’t even feign concern about Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime invading neighboring Bahrain to put down a pro-democracy movement there. In fact, the words “Saudi Arabia” were never uttered.

**The president also didn’t deviate from his policy of “unshakable” support for Israeli militarism, typified by his administration’s efforts to safeguard the Jewish state from accountability for its war crimes in Gaza – crimes that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead – and his determination to hand an already wealthy nation more than $3 billion a year in military aid, even as it flaunts the “peace process” and colonizes ever more Palestinian land. 

**Obama’s remarks on the killing of Osama bin Laden were likewise delivered with a complete lack of self-awareness. Describing the latter as a “mass murderer,” Obama – who since taking office has the blood of hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani civilians on his hands – said bin Laden’s philosophy of using bloodshed to achieve desired political changes had been discredited “through the moral force of non-violence” that has swept the region. 

You can read the full post here:  Obama Should Follow His Own Advice on the ‘Moral Force’ of Non-Violence | PINKtank.


Somehow: May Peace Prevail in the Middle East and North Africa. May Peace Prevail in United States Foreign Policy.

Osama bin Laden's Death

The US Needs to Focus on Not Creating Any More bin Ladens | | AlterNet

I would like to recommend this wonderful interview with Samina Sundas, the founder of American Muslim Voice, a post-9-11 group, by Rae Abileah, a Jewish-American of Israeli descent and a CODEPINK organizer. The interview is rather lengthy, but well worth the read. Sundas speaks to American foreign policy and I believe we need to take heed.

The interview was done the morning following the assasination of Osama bin Laden by the United States.

CODEPINK, Libya, and O'Reilly

CODEPINK's Medea Benjamin on The O'Reilly Factor regarding the the intervention in Libya:

The Iraq Debacle

Please read and/or sign CODEPINK's

Iraq Debacle Coalition Statement

http://www.womensaynotowar.org/article.php?id=5510


Also see ~


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/20-5

I say, "Never again!"

A Truth-telling Woman

There is a book I have just read on Afghanistan by a remarkable young Afghan woman. I first heard of it and her through CODEPINK: Women for Peace who recommended it and co-sponsored Joya on a book tour of the U.S. I requested Frankfort's Paul Sawyier Public Library acquire the book which they did. I now recommend this  immensely informational book on the country of Afghanistan by a woman of that country who dares to speak to truth to power, including to that of our own country, the United States of America.

 

 

~ ~ ~ 

 

A woman among warlords : the extraordinary story of an Afghan who dared to raise her voice by Malalai Joya with Derrick O'Keefe

Scribner, 2009.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Book Review

Publishers Weekly
One of the few women, and the youngest, to win a seat in Afghanistan's Parliament, Joya recounts in strong, uncompromising language her march to activism, from her humble origins to recognizing a burning need to bring the corrupted leaders to justice in her war-torn country. Native to the western Afghan province of Ziken, and later Farah City, Joya—a name she had to adopt in order to protect her family—grew up mostly in desperate, unsafe refugee camps in Pakistan after the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1978. With only a high school education (and one wonders how she wrote this book in English), she nonetheless became a teacher in the camps, then worked to organize underground classes for girls in Herat in defiance of Taliban edicts. Her activism grew, supporting orphanages and war victims after the Taliban fled and the U.S. began air strikes and became an armed presence; Joya is adamant in underscoring the responsibility America holds in reinstalling to power the same warlords (commanders she names in the Northern Alliance) who once tore the country apart during the civil war of the 1990s. Having won election to Parliament in 2005 at age 27—Eva Mulvad's film Enemies of Happiness documented her election—Joya was outspoken in condemning these warlords she called criminals and antiwomen, enduring the shutting off of her microphone, assassination threats and, finally, suspension from Parliament. Joya is on a dangerous, eye-opening mission to uncover truth and expose the abuse of power in Afghanistan, and her book will work powerfully in her favor. (Oct.)

 

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 

 

~ ~ ~

 

From the book:

 

Either Obama does not want to acknowledge or he is not aware of the main problem in Afghanistan and thus he will continue the wrong policies of the past administrations. He did not even try to replace the defense secretary, Robert Gates, who has been behind the failed US.S. war in Afghanistan and Iraq. If Obama wants to do anything positive in Afghanistan or if he has genuine concern for the plight of the Afghan people, he must first strongly criticize the past mistakes of the US. government. He must criticize how the United States helped turn Afghanistan into a safe haven for fundamentalist terrorists and now helps prop up a corrupt regime and a powerful drug mafia.

 

If I ever do have the chance to meet President Obama, I will try to convey to him these points and tell him very clearly that the U.S. government has betrayed the Afghan People enough. I would ask that he please stop this pattern, and put an end to the ongoing crimes against my sorrowful people.

 

Day by day the Afghan people become more frustrated by the foreign troops and by the "warlord strategy" of the United States.

 

 -page 209

 

~ ~ ~

 

 

From a recent piece by Malalai Joya in The Daily Beast entitled, Memo to America: Stop Murdering My People:

 

 

We can no longer bear the killing of our pregnant mothers, the killing of our teenagers and young children, the killing of so many Afghan men and women. We can no longer bear these “accidents” and these “apologies” for the deaths of the innocent.

 

We salute the anti-war movements in the NATO countries. Here, we will struggle to our last breath to stop this war that is tearing apart our beloved Afghanistan.

 

 

The Side Bar

If readers have not done so, I urge them to mosey up for a visit to The Side Bar in the right of the The Peace Advocate blog.

In The Side Bar, there is an array of non-alcoholic, peaceful selections from which the visitor may choose.

At the top, there is a PINK widget-link for the CODEPINK site, Women Say No to War. Next, comes a peace quote from President Obama. (We hope he believed what he said.) This is followed by another PINK widget-link for the main site of CODEPINK: Women for Peace and one showing that I support us getting out of Afghanistan. Next is a widget-link to the website and text of the Charter for Compassion which I believe is a great document and effort for peace. I encourage visitors to support and promote this initiative. There, then, is a very important little message-prayer-wish-"mantra" for peace itself.

The following section consists of links to peaceful and, thus, Blissful Blogs. Some are CODEPINK-related and some are by Central Kentucky bloggers.

I then have a little section about me followed by the public followers of this blog.

The next section is a Facebook one: a share button, my Facebook badge with link, the Charter for Compassion page, and the CODEPINK: Women for Peace page. 

The next-to-last section consists of a list of peaceful, Lilting Links, including others related to CODEPINK, the UN (I serve on the board of the Frankort Chapter of the United Nations Association.), other peace groups, including some for Palestinian freedom and human rights and peace for all of Israel-Palestine, and also those of my religious affiliation. I also have reminder-reference links to the UN Declaration for Human Rights and the US Constitution. Included in the Lilting Links are also links to the websites of the members of the Congressional Sixth District of Kentucky with their contact information.

The final section consists of The Peace Advocate's blog archive.

Note that visitors to The Side Bar may taste, sip, and drink as they so choose, but overindulgence is discouraged. I hope that the visit is found to be tasteful, enhancing, and helpful.

Please note also that visitors to The Side Bar are asked to leave their weapons without and to refrain from quarreling and fighting within.

I encourage visitors to become Peace Advocates themselves.

Mr. Obama Goes to Oslo

I.

Mr. Obama went to Oslo

A prize to receive

A speech he gave

Was it for war or for peace?



A realist he was

But idealist, too

He pointed towards peace

From the world that is so



A surge, he said,

Is the way to go

30,000 more troops

Will just have to do



We’ll be in their land,

Be right in their face

What else do they know?

What more do they want?



Jobs, agriculture, health care,

Education, reconstruction

You name it

They want it



Freedom. They want to be

Who they are

But not to the tune

Of the US of A



II.

Mr. Obama went to Oslo

To receive his prize

Was it for war for peace?

We’ll have to decide.



Is it peace that we want?

Well, bring our troops home

Healthcare, education

You name it

We need it



War is costly

In dollars and humans

Peace costs, too

But is better for us



War is work and peace is, too

War seems sexy, but peace does not

War does destroy, but peace builds up

Peace brings joy and happiness

And comes by love

Thanksgiving & Afghanistan

This Thanksgiving was a big one for me and my family. Now I do not usually blog about my family, but this time is an exception.




My family was all together for the feast! This is the first time in a number of years that my family has been together for the occasion.



My son is vegan; I am vegetarian and my husband and daughter are carnivores. For whatever reason, probably a number of reasons, my daughter had been at odds with my son for some time. She has lived with my husband and me. My son has lived on his own. We have been a dysfunctional family that included mental and emotional problems. Since I am not a great cook and because of our lifestyle, my husband, daughter and I usually ate out--Chinese-- for Thanksgiving.



I realize I am exposing the family’s dirty laundry, but there is a reason.

This year my daughter had a change of heart and instigated a family feast. My son now has a partner and an infant son. She asked my son and his partner to do the cooking at our new abode. They graciously prepared and cooked for us all. Even though it was on Friday, because of my son’s job, it was quite a day--a very good and fulfilling one (in more ways than one).

Now for the reason of my writing:

I am quite disheartened by President Obama’s war surge in Afghanistan.

I have not lived through an actual war, but I have lived through war. For years, there has been tension and conflict in my family. I felt inconsistent in my work for peace in the world with my life at home. To have experienced some sort of reconciliation in my family has been gratifying. I do not know how long it will last, but I am grateful for the present.

I firmly do not believe that war or more war is the way to peace.

Somehow folks on this planet have got to learn to live together. Gandhi said that violence begets violence and he quoted St. Paul in saying that we reap what we sow. I believe this is so.

I certainly do not have all the answers. I do believe that the needs of the people of Afghanistan needed to be tended to and that more war is not one of them.

I sometimes think that people also have to find their own way through the maze and that we just need to give them the support they need to get through it.

Sometimes we wait in support. The Taoists speak of wu wei, creative action of inaction, and there is truth to that and in that.

I am also a firm believe in the power of prayer. I know that I have profited from the prayer of others and that my own prayer has been of value

I have been using the little prayer of the World Peace Prayer Society and variations thereof: May Peace Prevail On Earth! You can read about that prayer and its use here.

I pray such things as,” May Peace Prevail in My Family,” “May Peace Prevail in Afghanistan,” and “May Peace Prevail in the Domestic and Foreign Policies of the United States.” I encourage people to try it ad use it.

I also think about Robert Fulghum’s writing, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. He included:


Share everything.


Play fair.


Don't hit people.


Put things back where you found them.


Clean up your own mess.


Don't take things that aren't yours.


Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.


Maybe the United States can learn some lessons.

You can read more from Fulghum’s writing here.

Change

Life for me lately has been about change.

My husband, daughter, and I have moved to a new and very different neighborhood. We had lived in our former house in an older part of town for twenty-seven years. We are now living in a newer part of town, in a rather suburban area. I had lived in the older part for most of my life, even in the same immediate neighborhood. We, however, are still in the process of moving.

I have also gotten a new computer, a laptop, and am getting used to the new machine and its mouseless touchpad. Additionally, I am acquiring a new e-mail program. I had the old e-mail since I started using a computer. It was when my twenty-five-year-old son was a freshman in high school, I believe, that we got our first machine. These both, the new computer and the new e-mail, require learning.

I have written before that I now have a grandson. He is two months of age now. This has been a new experience. My grandson has brought my family back together. He has reconciled my daughter with her brother. This has been very helpful, not least because my son has been helping us in our moving.

In the religious arena, I have acquired a new faith, Unitarian Universalism, by joining the Unitarian Universalist Community of Frankfort. After being a lifelong Episcopalian this is quite a different experience. Their bumper sticker says, “Be U at UUCF” and this has been true for me. I do feel at home, even though it is a new one.

On the national scene, we have acquired a new president in the last year. In some ways, he has been like a breath of fresh air. Some of the change has been nice. However, in the realm of foreign policy, there has not been near enough change for me.

I am convinced that this nation needs a complete turnabout in our foreign policy. Hegemony and imperialism need to be out. We need to learn that war is not the way to peace. (I do not believe I am naïve.) I am glad that we are primed to get out of Iraq, though I am sorry we are to leave residual forces there. We need to leave Afghanistan, too. Our presence and actions in the Middle East and in Afghanistan and Pakistan are deadly and destabilizing. I believe that we, including President Obama and Congress, too, need to wake up, smell and drink the coffee, take courage, and change.

We need to wholly accept the other nations and peoples of the world. They are not evil. They are worthy (regardless of what some think) and they have minds and hearts. It is time to learn new ways of being in the world. We can.

Not Nukes

Sixty-four years ago my country, the United States of America, became the first and only nation to use nuclear weaponry (the atomic bomb) in warfare (August 6, 1945 on Hiroshima, Japan and August 9, 1945 on Nagasaki, Japan). I do not find this a fact of which to be proud. Since then other countries have acquired nuclear weapons, but the United States continues to have the most.

On April 5, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech in Prague, Czech Republic that included this:

The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War. No nuclear war was fought between the United States and the Soviet Union, but generations lived with the knowledge that their world could be erased in a single flash of light. Cities like Prague that existed for centuries, that embodied the beauty and the talent of so much of humanity, would have ceased to exist.

Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules, we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.

Some argue that the spread of these weapons cannot be stopped, cannot be checked -– that we are destined to live in a world where more nations and more people possess the ultimate tools of destruction. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st century. And as nuclear power –- as a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.
So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can."
I repeat, "Yes, we can" and add, “We must.”

The National Priorities Project has this:

Taxpayers in Kentucky’s Congressional District 6 (Chandler) will pay $22.4 million for proposed nuclear weapons in FY2009. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

6,179 People with Health Care for One Year OR
8,798 Children with Health Care for One Year OR
3,377 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
434 Elementary School Teachers for One Year
That same project also has this:

Taxpayers in Kentucky’s Congressional District 6 (Chandler) will pay $1.3 billion for total Iraq & Afghanistan war spending since 2001. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:

351,374 People with Health Care for One Year OR
500,294 Children with Health Care for One Year OR
192,061 Head Start Places for Children for One Year OR
24,686 Elementary School Teachers for One Year

It seems that something is askew. With the dire financial crisis and poor well-being of the nation and the commonwealth, something is not right. Kentucky has historically had problems with the health of its people and has been trying to beef up its historically poor educational system. We need healthcare and education, not warfare. We need life-affirming budgeting, not death-enabling funding.

I had originally intended this blog to be secular, but I couldn’t help thinking of a Psalm portion (33:12-22):

Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all humankind. From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth— he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds. A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save. Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love, to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield. Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.