Tag Archives ⇒ enemies

Reading the story of Solomon’s dedication of the first Temple, I’m struck…

December 21, 2011
· Martin Kelley

Read­ing the sto­ry of Solomon’s ded­i­ca­tion of the first Tem­ple, I’m struck by how the pow­ers of divine com­mu­ni­ca­tion attrib­uted to the Tem­ple are ones that Christ brought with­in us. We don’t have to go to a spe­cial place in Jerusalem to get God’s atten­tion.

If a man sin against his neigh­bour, and an oath be laid upon him to make him swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house; If thy peo­ple go out to war against their ene­mies by the way that thou shalt send them, and they pray unto thee toward this city which thou hast cho­sen, and the house which I have built for thy name.

Embed­ded Link

2 Chron­i­cles 6:22 King James Ver­sion (KJV) — Bible — You​Ver​sion​.com
If a man sin against his neigh­bour, and an oath be laid upon him to make him swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house; 

From the Vault: More Victims Won’t Stop the Terror (10/2001)

October 7, 2010
· Martin Kelley

Today is the ninth anniver­sary of the war in Afghanistan. In recog­ni­tion, here’s my Non​vi​o​lence​.org essay from 10/7/2001. It’s all sad­ly still top­i­cal. Nine years in and we’re still mak­ing ter­ror and still cre­at­ing enemies.

The Unit­ed States has today begun its war against ter­ror­ism in a very famil­iar way: by use of ter­ror. Igno­rant of thou­sands of years of vio­lence in the Mid­dle East, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush thinks that the hor­ror of Sep­tem­ber 11th can be exor­cised and pre­vent­ed by bombs and mis­siles. Today we can add more names to the long list of vic­tims of the ter­ror­ist air­plane attacks. Because today Afgha­nis have died in terror.

The deaths in New York City, Wash­ing­ton and Penn­syl­va­nia have shocked Amer­i­cans and right­ly so. We are all scared of our sud­den vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. We are all shocked at the lev­el of anger that led nine­teen sui­cide bombers to give up pre­cious life to start such a lit­er­al and sym­bol­ic con­fla­gra­tion. What they did was hor­ri­ble and with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But that is not to say that they did­n’t have reasons.

The ter­ror­ists com­mit­ted their atroc­i­ties because of a long list of griev­ances. They were shed­ding blood for blood, and we must under­stand that. Because to under­stand that is to under­stand that Pres­i­dent Bush is unleash­ing his own ter­ror cam­paign: that he is shed­ding more blood for more blood.

The Unit­ed States has been spon­sor­ing vio­lence in Afghanistan for over a gen­er­a­tion. Even before the Sovi­et inva­sion of that coun­try, the U.S. was sup­port­ing rad­i­cal Muja­hadeen forces. We thought then that spon­sor­ship of vio­lence would lead to some sort of peace. As we all know now, it did not. We’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with vio­lence in the region for many years. Our for­eign pol­i­cy has been a mish-mash of sup­port­ing one despot­ic regime after anoth­er against a shift­ing array of per­ceived enemies.

The Afghani forces the Unit­ed States now bomb were once our allies, as was Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein. We have rarely if ever act­ed on behalf of lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy in the region. We have time and again sold out our val­ues and thrown our sup­port behind the most heinous of despots. We have time and again thought that mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism in the region could keep ter­ror­ism and anti-Americanism in check. And each time we’ve only bred a new gen­er­a­tion of rad­i­cals, bent on revenge.

There are those who have angri­ly denounced paci­fists in the weeks since Sep­tem­ber 11th, angri­ly ask­ing how peace can deal with ter­ror­ists. What these crit­ics don’t under­stand is that wars don’t start when the bombs begin to explode. They begin years before, when the seeds of hatred are sewn. The times to stop this new war was ten and twen­ty years ago, when the U.S. broke it’s promis­es for democ­ra­cy, and act­ed in its own self-interest (and often on behalf of the inter­ests of our oil com­pa­nies) to keep the cycles of vio­lence going. The Unit­ed States made choic­es that helped keep the peo­ples of the Mid­dle East enslaved in despo­tism and poverty.

And so we come to 2001. And it’s time to stop a war. But it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly this war that we can stop. It’s the next one. And the ones after that. It’s time to stop com­bat ter­ror­ism with ter­ror. In the last few weeks the Unit­ed States has been mak­ing new alliances with coun­tries whose lead­ers sub­vert democ­ra­cy. We are giv­ing them free rein to con­tin­ue to sub­ject their peo­ple. Every weapon we sell these tyrants only kills and desta­bi­lizes more, just as every bomb we drop on Kab­ul feeds ter­ror more.

And most of all: we are mak­ing new vic­tims. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren are see­ing their par­ents die, are see­ing the rain of bombs fall on their cities from an uncar­ing Amer­i­ca. They cry out to us in the name of peace and democ­ra­cy and hear noth­ing but hatred and blood. And some of them will respond by turn­ing against us in hatred. And will fight us in anger. They will learn our les­son of ter­ror and use it against us. They cycle will repeat. His­to­ry will con­tin­ue to turn, with blood as it’s Mid­dle East­ern lubri­cant. Unless we act. Unless we can stop the next war.

Bandaging our wounds, mourning our dead and loving our enemies

July 7, 2005
· Martin Kelley

blankI’m away from my usu­al haunts on work-related duties but the news sites have plen­ty of arti­cles about the hor­ri­ble bomb­ings in Lon­don; there is no need for yet anoth­er list.
It is always trag­ic to see the cycles of vio­lence, ter­ror­ism and state-sponsored war feed­ing one anoth­er to new acts of vio­lence. Our prayers that the new round of heart­breaks in Lon­don don’t lead into a kind of retal­i­a­tion that will only hard­en hearts else­where. We need to envi­sion a new world, one based on love and mutu­al respect. It’s impos­si­ble to nego­ti­ate with the kind of ter­ror­ists that would bomb a packed bus but we can be a wit­ness that hate can be con­front­ed with love. We must ban­dage our wound­ed, mourn our dead and con­tin­ue to build a world where the occa­sions for all war have been transcended.

Classifying Intelligence Blunders

July 15, 2003
· Martin Kelley

The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment might be throw­ing out its pros­e­cu­tion of sus­pect­ed Al Qae­da ter­ror­ist Zacarias Mous­saoui because it does­n’t want to allow him to ques­tion anoth­er Al Qae­da detainee in court. With­out the tes­ti­mo­ny of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the judge might throw out the entire indict­ment against Mous­saoui. What’s the Jus­tice Department’s ratio­nale? It says any tes­ti­mo­ny “would nec­es­sar­i­ly result in the unau­tho­rized dis­clo­sure of clas­si­fied information.”

Almost three years lat­er, what kind of clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion could Mous­saoui pos­si­bly have? Sure­ly noth­ing that future ter­ror­ists could use. The only thing he could talk about is con­di­tions in the pris­ons. Bin al-Shibh is being held in a secret loca­tion under mil­i­tary law but has report­ed­ly con­fessed to being part of the 9/11 attacks. Sure­ly all the infor­ma­tion he knows about the attacks is also known by dozens of oth­er Al Qae­da mem­bers still at large. Why is U.S.Attorney John Ashcroft’s Jus­tice Depart­ment so ner­vous about let­ting bin al-Shibh speak in public?

A gov­ern­ment will clas­si­fy a piece of infor­ma­tion if it feels that its dis­clo­sure would threat­en nation­al secu­ri­ty: that with it, its ene­mies could use it to launch some new attack. But every­thing that Mous­saoui and bin al-Shibh know is already known by our ene­mies. Gov­ern­ments some­times will abuse their pow­er and declare some­thing clas­si­fied if it con­tatins infor­ma­tion that would be embar­rass­ing to its rep­u­ta­tion or its polit­i­cal leaders.

It’s a big deal to risk throw­ing away a case like this, and it seems like­ly that Ashcroft is try­ing to keep some piece of infor­ma­tion from the Amer­i­can peo­ple. He could be try­ing to keep skele­tons of past U.S. mis­deeds safe­ly in the clos­et, using “nation­al secu­ri­ty” as the blan­ket to cov­er up the truth. The two sus­pect­ed ter­ror­ists might know quite a bit about U.S. intel­li­gence coop­er­a­tion with Afghani ter­ror­ists dur­ing the 1980s (when they were aim­ing their attacks at the Sovi­et Union). They might know about U.S. intel­li­gence mis­takes that could have pre­vent­ed 9/11. They sure­ly know about con­di­tions in the secret pris­ons were even detainees’ names and loca­tions are con­sid­ered “clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion.” Who’s secu­ri­ty would be threat­ened if this kind of infor­ma­tion got published?