Tag Archives ⇒ iraq

A time of sadness and prayer

March 11, 2006
· Martin Kelley

Sad news com­ing over the inter­net: after 100 days of cap­tiv­i­ty, Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er Tom Fox was found dead yes­ter­day in Iraq, the sta­tus of his three com­pan­ions unknown.

The Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er Teams issued an ele­gant and heart­felt state­ment begin­ning “In grief we trem­ble before God who wraps us with com­pas­sion.” Fox knew the risk he was tak­ing going to Iraq unarmed. But he also knew that this wit­ness  would mean more to the Iraqi peo­ple than a hun­dred tanks. He knew the war we Friends wage is the Lam­b’s War, a war won not through strength but through meek­ness, our only weapon our humilty before God and our love of neigh­bor. My prayers are with his fam­i­ly and friends, may Christ’s com­fort con­tin­ue to hold them through these aching times.
More his­to­ry and resources on my “Chris­t­ian Peace­mak­er Team Watch”:http://www.quakerquaker.org/christian_peacemaker_teams/

peace movement humanitarian among iraq abductees

November 28, 2005
· Martin Kelley

The UK “News Tele­graph is confirming”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/29/nirq29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/29/ixnewstop.html what many of us in the peace move­ment have been wor­ry­ing about all day: that at least some of the four west­ern­ers abduct­ed in iraq over the week­end were mem­bers of the “Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams”:http://www.cpt.org/
bq. A British anti-war activist abduct­ed in iraq was inves­ti­gat­ing human rights abus­es with a group called the Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Team when he was held.
Nor­man Kem­ber, 74, the only publicly-named abductee, is a for­mer sec­re­tary of the Bap­tist peace Fel­low­ship in Eng­land and a board mem­ber of the Eng­lish Fel­low­ship of Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. He’s been an out­spo­ken oppo­nent of the war in iraq. In the “April/May 2005 edi­tion of FOR’s newsletter”:http://www.for.org.uk/plinks0405.pdf (pdf) he talked about chal­leng­ing him­self to do more:
bq. Now per­son­al­ly it has always wor­ried me that I am a ‘cheap’ peace­mak­er (by anal­o­gy with Bonhoeffer’s
con­cept of ‘cheap’ grace). Being a CO in Britain,talking, writ­ing, demon­strat­ing about peace is in no
way tak­ing risks like young ser­vice men in iraq. I look for excus­es why I should not become involved with
CPT or EAPPI. Per­haps the read­ers will sup­ply mewith­with some?
Here at Non​vi​o​lence​.org, I’m occas­sion­al­ly cha­tised for being more con­cerned about west­ern vic­tims of vio­lence (indeed, how many iraqis were abduct­ed or killed this week­end alone?). It’s a fair charge and an impor­tant reminder. But per­haps it is only human nature to wor­ry about those you know. I’ve prob­a­bly met Nor­man in pass­ing at one or anoth­er inter­na­tion­al peace gath­er­ing; I might well know the three uniden­ti­fied abductees. I sus­pect a peace move­ment vet­er­an like Kem­ber would be the first to tell me that paci­fists should­n’t sit con­tent­ed­ly in middle-class com­fy arm­chairs sim­ply sout­ing slo­gans or dash­ing off emails (Quak­er Johan Mau­r­er, wrote an “impas­sioned blog post about this just last week”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2005/11/saturday-ps-nancys-questions.htm). Part of the rea­son folks put them­selves on the lines for orga­ni­za­tions like Chris­t­ian peace­mak­ers Teams is that they want to do their peace wit­ness among those fac­ing the vio­lence. When the vic­tims aren’t just “them, over there” but to “us, and our friends, over there” it becomes more real. This is what the fam­i­lies of the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary casu­al­ties have been telling us. Now, with Kem­ber and the three oth­ers miss­ing, our wor­ry is made more real. For bet­ter or worse, the peace move­ment is scan­ning the head­lines from iraq with even more wor­ry tonight.
Our prayers are with Kem­ber, as they are with all the miss­ing and all the vic­tims of this hor­ri­ble war.

Smoking gun: the oil companies did write America’s energy policy

November 16, 2005
· Martin Kelley

Short­ly after the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion took office, Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney held a series of secret meet­ings in the White House that have guid­ed Amer­i­ca’s ener­gy pol­i­cy over the last four years. The White House has refused repeat­ed requests for a list of par­tic­i­pants at the “task force” meet­ings. All we’ve known for sure is who was­n’t invit­ed: eniron­men­tal­ists and any­one else who might bring a per­spec­tive crit­i­cal of Amer­i­ca’s depen­dence on fos­sil fuels.
We’ve long sus­pect­ed that Cheney’s spe­cial guests were top oil com­pa­ny exec­u­tives and that these con­sul­tants large­ly wrote the ener­gy guide­lines that came out of the meet­ing. The pol­i­cy strong favor the eco­nom­ic inter­ests of “Big Oil” over envi­ron­men­tal or nation­al secu­ri­ty con­cerns. The oil com­pa­nies have repeat­ed­ly denied being at the meet­ings: Just last week, oil indus­try offi­cials from Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Cono­coPhillips tes­ti­fied at a joint hear­ing of the Sen­ate Ener­gy and Com­merce com­mit­tees that their employ­ees had been part of Cheney’s ener­gy task force.
Liar liar, pants on fire.
The Wash­ing­ton Post has obtained a White House doc­u­ment that exec­u­tives from Big Oil did indeed meet with the ener­gy task force in 2001. Inves­ti­ga­tions are in order. Sen­a­tor Frank Laut­en­berg of New Jer­sey said “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meet­ings secret, and now oil exec­u­tives may be lying to Con­gress about their role in the Cheney task force.” This issue is impor­tant not only to Wash­ing­ton Belt­way insid­ers but to all of us. Dis­as­ters like Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and the ongo­ing quag­mire in iraq are fueled by Amer­i­can ener­gy needs. As long as we have Big Oil dic­tat­ing our ener­gy pol­i­cy we will con­tin­ue to have these wars and cli­mate tragedies. Peo­ple will die, lives will be ruined and we will all be taxed for our oil misadventures.

It’s Official: US Abuse at Gitmo

November 30, 2004
· Martin Kelley

While the images of U.S. solid­ers tor­tur­ing iraqi pris­on­ers at Al Grahib Prison in Badg­dad have been broad­cast around the world, US offi­cials have fre­quent­ly reas­sured us that con­di­tions at the U.S. deten­tion camp in Guan­ta­mano Bay, Cuba, were accept­able and in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tion’s rules for treat­ment of pris­on­ers. As proof the Pen­ta­gon and Bush Admin­is­tra­tion have fre­quent­ly cit­ed the fact that the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reg­u­lar­ly inspects prison con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano. They for­got to tell us what they’ve seen.
A con­fi­den­tial report pre­pared by the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross this sum­mer found that con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano Bay were “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” Strong words from a cau­tious inter­na­tion­al body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made avail­able to the pub­lic but instead pre­sent­ed to the accused gov­ern­ment, in the hope that they will cor­rect their prac­tices. In pred­i­ca­ble fash­ion, the Bush Admin­stra­tion pri­vate­ly denied any wrong­do­ing and kept the IRC find­ings secret. In a dis­play of incred­i­ble audac­i­ty it then defend­ed itself _from oth­er accu­sa­tions of torture_ by cit­ing the IRC’s pres­ence at Guan­tanamo, con­ve­nient­ly omit­ting the IRC’s strongly-worded crit­i­cisms. Amaz­ing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its find­ings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recent­ly inter­viewed British pris­on­ers who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guan­tanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one reg­u­lar pro­ce­dure was mak­ing unco­op­er­a­tive pris­on­ers strip to their under­wear, hav­ing them sit in a chair while shack­led hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forc­ing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loud­speak­ers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to max­i­mum levels.
It’s not nee­dles under fin­ger­nails or elec­trodes to the pri­vates, but it is indeed “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” While it was hard to believe these pris­on­ers’ sto­ries when they were first pub­lished a few months ago, they become much more cred­i­ble in light of the IRC conclusions.
We still don’t know about what’s hap­pen­ing in the camp. The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has the pow­er, not to men­tion the duty, to imme­di­ate­ly release Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reports. But the Unit­ed States has cho­sen to sup­press the report. No tor­tur­ing gov­ern­ment has ever admit­ted to its actions. Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self denied wrong­do­ing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for tor­ture. We rely on bod­ies like the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross to keep us honest.
There are those who defend tor­ture by appeal­ing to our fears, many of which are indeed ground­ed in real­i­ty. We’re at war, the ene­my insur­gents are play­ing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions when he sent air­lin­ers into the World Trade Cen­ter. Very true. But the Unit­ed States has a mis­sion. I believe in the ide­al­is­tic notion that we should be a bea­con to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world com­mu­ni­ty to join us. We haven’t been doing that late­ly. Yes it’s eas­i­er to fol­low the lead of some­one like Sad­dam Hus­sein and just tor­ture any­one we sus­pect of plot­ting against us. But do we real­ly want him as our role model?

Why don’t we say that charity and love are Christian issue?

November 3, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In this elec­tion, reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tives were able to craft a mes­sage mak­ing same-sex mar­riages look like an afront to apple pie and base­ball and of course peo­ple vot­ed against it. What if we could have some­how framed this elec­tion with the details of human suf­fer­ing that these laws suggest?
Now avail­able for the fash­ion­able Bush-era bumper. Pro­ceeds go to sup­port the Non​vi​o​lence​.org websites:
  

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Four More Years (Let’s Roll Up Our Sleeves)

November 3, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent George W. Bush has been re-elected for four more years. The man who led the Unit­ed States to “two wars in four years”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_antiwar.php and whose poli­cies in Afghanistan and iraq con­tin­ue to cre­ate chaos in both coun­tries will get four more years to pur­sue his war of ter­ror­ism against the world. Amer­i­cans will not sleep any safer but will dream ever more of con­quer­ing and killing ene­mies. We’ll con­tin­ue to sow the seeds of wars for gen­er­a­tions to come.
I was wor­ried when Sen­a­tor John Ker­ry unex­pect­ed­ly picked up in the pri­maries to become the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. In his patri­cian upbring­ing he was very much like Pres­i­dent Bush, and they actu­al­ly agreed on many of the big issues — war, gay mar­riage, stem cell research. But in his per­son­al­i­ty, style and tem­pera­ment Ker­ry was too much like for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore.
Yes, I know Gore won the pop­u­lar vote in the 2000 elec­tion and that his loss was declared by mys­te­ri­ous chads and a hand­ful of senior cit­i­zen judges in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. But an elec­tion as close as that one should have been seen as a resound­ing loss, no mat­ter what the Supreme Court ver­dict. As Vice Pres­i­dent, Gore had helped lead the nation to one of its great­est eco­nom­ic recov­ers in our life­times. He was also clear­ly smarter in the Pres­i­dent, more knowl­edge­able and far­sight­ed, with more care­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed visions of the future. But he bare­ly won the pop­u­lar vote, mak­ing the elec­toral col­lege vote close enough to be debated.
Ker­ry is intel­lec­tu­al and aloof in the same way that Gore was. And clear­ly there are a num­ber of Amer­i­can vot­ers who don’t want that. They want a can­di­date who can speak from the heart, who isn’t afraid to talk about faith. They also want a can­di­date who can talk in sim­ple, moral­ly unam­bigu­ous ways about war.
And what about war? Would a Pres­i­dent Ker­ry have real­ly pulled out troops soon­er than Pres­i­dent Bush will? Who knows: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dents have pur­sued plen­ty of wars over the last cen­tu­ry and when Ker­ry pro­claimed he would hunt down and kill the ene­my, he spoke as the only one of the four men on the major tick­ets who actu­al­ly has hunt­ed down and killed fel­low humans in wartime.
We can make an edu­cat­ed guess that a Kerry-led Amer­i­ca would leave iraq in bet­ter shape than a Bush-led Amer­i­ca will. Ker­ry has the patience and the plan­ning fore­sight to do the hard coalition-building work in iraq and in the world that is nec­es­sary if U.S. mil­i­tary pow­er will trans­late to a real peace. But a Ker­ry plan for paci­fi­ca­tion and rebuild­ing of iraq could eas­i­ly have fol­lowed the path that Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son’s did in Viet­nam: an unend­ing, constantly-escalating war.
Did Amer­i­cans offi­cial­ly approve the coun­try’s past two wars yes­ter­day? It’s hard to con­clude oth­er­wise. Despite the lies of mass destruc­tion and despite the “will­ful mis­lead­ing of the Amer­i­can people”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000194.php that Sad­dam Hus­sein was some­how involved in the 9/11 attacks and “pos­sessed weapons of mass destruction”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_iraq_weapons_of_mass_destruction_scandal.php, some­thing over 50% of Amer­i­cans thought the Bush/Cheney Pres­i­den­cy was worth keep­ing for anoth­er four years.
But there’s noth­ing to say a pop­u­lar vote grants wis­dom. In the next four years, those of us want­i­ng an alter­na­tive will prob­a­bly have many “teach­able moments” to talk with our neigh­bors and friends about the dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe those of us whose “paci­fism is informed by reli­gious understandings”:www.nonviolence.org/martink/archives/000462.php can cross the intel­lec­tu­al divide some more and talk about how our faith gives us a sim­ple, moral­ly unam­bigu­ous way to argue against war. The coun­try needs “strong paci­fist voices”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php now more than ever. Let’s get talking.
ps: …and donat­ing. Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a nine years old peace resource guide and blog. It’s time it gets reg­u­lar fund­ing from its mil­lion annu­al read­ers. “Please give gen­er­ous­ly and help us expand this work”:http://www.nonviolence.org/support/. We have a lot to do in the next four years!

Vote for War (Or Else)

September 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

On Tues­day Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney told an Iowa audi­ence that there would be more ter­ror­ism in the U.S. if he was­n’t re-elected Vice President:
bq. “It’s absolute­ly essen­tial that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice,” Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 peo­ple in Des Moines, “because if we make the wrong choice then the dan­ger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be dev­as­tat­ing from the stand­point of the Unit­ed States.”
His words under­score just how much the Bush/Cheney Admin­is­tra­tion have relied on the 9/11 ter­ror­ist attacks for their polit­i­cal legit­i­ma­cy. Ter­ror breeds ter­ror and fear, anger and vio­lence esca­lates in its wake. The wars in Afghanistan and iraq are shap­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­ca haters, as much because the post-war rebuild­ing has been so care­less and self-serving to Amer­i­can eco­nom­ic inter­ests. War-mongerers in one coun­try sup­port the war-mongerers in anoth­er by pro­vid­ing each anoth­er with tar­gets and argu­ments. The cycle goes on.

War is Just Another Racket

July 20, 2004
· Martin Kelley

In the LA Times, “Advo­cates of War Now Prof­it From iraq’s Reconstruction”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-advocates14jul14,1,614346.story?coll=la-news-politics-national
bq. For­mer CIA Direc­tor R. James Woolsey is a promi­nent exam­ple of the phe­nom­e­non, mix­ing his busi­ness inter­ests with what he con­tends are the coun­try’s strate­gic inter­ests. He left the CIA in 1995, but he remains a senior gov­ern­ment advi­sor on intel­li­gence and nation­al secu­ri­ty issues, includ­ing iraq. Mean­while, he works for two pri­vate com­pa­nies that do busi­ness in iraq and is a part­ner in a com­pa­ny that invests in firms that pro­vide secu­ri­ty and anti-terrorism services.
In Under the Same Sun, “Is This Any Way to Run an Occupation”:http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000110, links and com­men­tary about how politically-connected U.S. com­pa­nies are pil­fer­ing iraqi oil mon­ey with­out audits, com­pet­i­tive bid­ding or oversight.
Belt­way lawyers might find all this per­fect­ly legal, but where I come from we call these kind of kick­backs good ol’ boy cor­rup­tion. And the rest of the world will just see the famil­iar pat­tern of modern-day colo­nial­ism: a rich Amer­i­can elite get­ting even rich­er by extract­ing third-world resources at gun­point. iraqis will pay for all the Hal­libur­ton yachts with the schools, hos­pi­tals and high­ways they won’t be able to build. “Amer­i­can sol­diers are pay­ing for it by dying”:http://news.google.com/news?q=american+soldiers+killed+iraq&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF‑8&c2coff=1&output=search and the “iraqi chil­dren may or may not be pay­ing for it with sodimized abuse at Abu Ghraib prison”:http://lincolnplawg.blogspot.com/2004/07/is-this-sy-hershs-october-surprise.html. We will all pay for it for gen­er­a­tions because of all the ill-will we’re earn­ing and the igno­rance we’re sow­ing. How many times do we need to prove that war is just anoth­er racket?