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War Is (Still) Not the Answer by Andrew Foster Connors
I remember standing on a street corner in March of 2002 with a sign saying simply, “war is not the answer.” It was an interesting group of seven or eight of us, a teacher, a minister, a few retired self-described peace activists, a couple of nuns. A man drove up to the corner rolled his window down and spewed his vitriol. “I wish they’d bomb all of you to hell,” he said and then he spit on the sister standing beside me. A lot has happened since that lonely day in 2002. Groups like that one grew around the country, rejected our exile, until a new movement was born. Partly through our voices, the political climate changed – candidates no longer had to demonstrate their hawkishness, but defend why they voted for an ill-conceived war. One of the few Senators who voted against the war from the beginning is now our President. On election night it was easy to feel as though our work together was done. Peace had won! The war would soon be coming to an end. And then I remembered that many Americans felt this way when Martin Luther King delivered his public condemnation of the war in Vietnam. At the time he spoke, 9,000 Americans had lost their lives in the war. Yet almost 50,000 more would be lost before the last of our troops was safely home. The Vietnam experience points to a central lesson in politics, one that lovers of peace are quick to unlearn: peace requires political will. Political will is generated by the voices of people who come together to speak an alternative to the politics of violence that so often seduces leaders in our nation. In 1932 Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said to a group of reformers, “I agree with you. I want to do it. Now make me do it.” The war in Iraq has already claimed the lives of more than 4200 Americans and somewhere between half a million and 1.2 million Iraqis. Imagine entire population of the city of Baltimore killed over a six year period. Without sustained political pressure to end the war, those numbers will continue to rise. I have heard some express a concern that they wish to give President Obama some time. Others say they trust him to “do the right thing.” These expression of well-wishing are noble, but ill-founded. As a seasoned community organizer, I imagine that President Obama, of all politicians, would be the first to share Roosevelt’s truthful observation and challenge to those who believe they have elected a reformer. Anyone who believes that President Obama wants to “do the right thing” and end the war in Iraq, should support his desire by helping to sustain the political pressure he needs to follow through. The Christian Peace Witness invites you to do just that by joining with us on the 100th day of President Obama’s administration. As we have done in the past, we will gather for worship to hear again God’s peaceful alternative to the way of violence. We will challenge each other to bear that vision publicly, and sustain our voices until the war is indeed ended. Baltimoreans are invited to meet at Penn Station at 4pm, purchase roundtrip MARC tickets ($14), and join in prayer before departing on the 4:50pm train for Union Station. Bring a lunch or buy one on arrival at Union Station. From there we will metro to National City Christian Church where worship featuring Daniel Berrigan, Liz McAllister, Tony Campolo, and Sr. Dianna Ortiz will take place at 7pm, followed by a candlelight procession to the Whitehouse led by Rev. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist church. At 9:30 pm the Baltimore delegation will depart in time to catch the 10:30 pm train home. It will be a late night, but an important one, not simply for our movement, but for Americans and Iraqis alike. You are invited to bring a loaf of bread and $1 or more for DirectAid Iraq, an Iraqi humanitarian and peacebuilding effort working with Iraqi refugees. I hope to see you on the train.  |