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Reflections – 10 Years Later

From John Guzlowski, his poem Sept 13, 2001 found in his post: 9/11 — Ten Years Later

I’ve written a number of poems about 9/11 over the years. The first one was written a couple days of 9/11. That poem talked about how I wanted an end to 9/11. It didn’t happen then, and it hasn’t happened since…

Ted Monica, a fellow former seminarian at Wadhams Hall, and an Episcopal priest, offers his music: Sisters and Brothers.

To the Children of Emma Lazarus – a poem for 9/11 by Konrad Tademar

From Howard Community College on Danuta Hinc’s book To Kill the Other: A question of killing: Howard County author searches for an answer

Five days. That’s all it took after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, for Danuta Hinc to realize that she needed to write a book about how such a thing could happen.

“I realized that I needed to know what leads people to make such extreme choices,” says Hinc, who teaches professional writing at the University of Maryland College Park. “And the next question I asked was: Am I capable of killing someone?”

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Hinc stood in the living room of her Ellicott City townhouse, riveted to the TV screen, unable to sit down, unable to comprehend what she was witnessing.

“Like everyone else, I thought it was an accident. When the second plane hit, I realized to my horror that it was not,” says Hinc, who is in her early 40s and grew up in Poland under Communist oppression.

“My first thought was ‘They must be so organized,’ ” she remembers. Then she realized she didn’t know a thing about them.

“I hated them with all my heart. But I didn’t like that I hated them,” she says.

What eventually came of that rush of tangled emotions and questions, some 10 years later, is Hinc’s book, “To Kill the Other.” It’s a fictional story of a boy who grows up to become a terrorist. It’s not about al-Qaeda; it’s not about ideology. It’s about the choices human beings make.

She spent three and a half years researching and writing the story, which she first wrote in Polish. Then she spent another two-and-a-half years translating it into English. At the time, she was an adjunct professor of English and religion at Howard Community College.

“To Kill the Other” follows the journey of Taher, a sensitive Egyptian boy, from the time he was 7 to his presence as a terrorist on the first plane to hit the World Trade Center…

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Mark Skinner reflects for More Magazine: 9/11 Changed My Life

“I spent so many years doing what I ‘should’ do,” says Mary Skinner, who went from financial exec to award-winning filmmaker.

For 20 years, Mary Skinner climbed the corporate ladder in financial communications, at one point working on the 106th floor of Two World Trade Center, before moving to San Francisco to be close to her family. In the months leading up to 9/11, her life was in limbo. Living with her parents, she wrestled with an internal conflict about her professional future. “I spent so many years doing what I ‘should’ do,” she says. She wanted to return to New York, and even flew there that summer for an interview with a financial services start-up. When the ‘no-thanks’ letter arrived, her disappointment was sharp.

But as the catastrophe unfolded, Skinner’s hesitation disappeared. “I knew friends were caught on certain floors and didn’t make it,” she says. “I felt: I need to be there right now. I’ve got to go back. I had devoted my talent, heart and brain cells to helping somebody make a little more money on currency arbitrage. In the face of what was going on in the world, I felt like, that’s a sin.”

Two months later, Skinner boarded a plane for New York – without a job or a place to live, and for the first time in her professional life, without a plan.

She found temp office work, reconnected with old friends and took writing classes. She enrolled in a documentary filmmaking class at the New School, wanting to make a film about her Polish-born, Catholic mother, Klotylda, who was orphaned and imprisoned during World War II and cared for by strangers afterwards. Klotylda wouldn’t agree to be her subject. Haunted by her mother’s experiences, Skinner continued with her research, uncovering more stories of children saved by heroic strangers…

From Jim Wallis at Sojourners: 10 Years After 9/11: The Good and the Bad

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was at home in Washington, D.C. getting ready to go to Sojourners’ office. I was upstairs listening to the news on NPR when I heard the first confusing report of a plane crashing into the south tower of the World Trade Center. I immediately called downstairs to Joy and asked her to turn on the television to see what was going on. Moments later, as we ate breakfast together with our three-year-old son Luke, we watched the second plane strike the north tower. I still remember my first response to Joy, “This is going to be bad, very bad,” I said.

Of course, I meant more than just the damage to the Twin Towers and the lives lost, which became far greater than any of us imagined at first. Rather, my first and deepest concern was what something like this could do to our our nation’s soul. I was afraid of how America would respond to a terrorist attack of this scope.

But as the Towers collapsed, and the suffering of this horrible event became increasingly clear in the hours and days that followed, other parts of the American soul revealed themselves — the heroic responses of the first responders, and a city and nation of people taking care of each other. As ordinary citizens gave their lives for strangers, they became our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. In the days that followed the 9/11 attacks, the stories of pain, loss, and self-sacrifice brought Joy and me to tears several times. The suffering of many led to the service of many more.

For a moment, the world’s last remaining superpower was vulnerable, and we all felt it. In Washington, people fled from downtown D.C., walking and running right past our house, and gathered to pray at places such as Sojourners’ office. Joy helped Luke set up a little water station, as people frantically rushed by our house.

In our sudden sense of vulnerability we were now, and perhaps for the first time, like most of the world, where vulnerability is an accepted part of being human. And in those first days following 9/11, America, not the terrorists, had the high ground. The world did not identify with those who cruelly and murderously decided to take innocent lives in response to their grievances — both real and imagined. Instead, the world identified with a suffering America — even the front cover of the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline, “We are all Americans now.”

But it was Washington’s response that I was most worried about. Within a short period of time, the official reaction to terrorism would simply be defined as war — a decade of it — resulting in many more innocent casualties than on September 11, 2001. In response to America’s own suffering, many others in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world would now suffer — all in the name of our war on terrorism. The opportunity for deeper understanding, reflection, and redirection would elude us as we sought to erase our vulnerability with the need to demonstrate our superior force and power. This was done quite easily in the early days of both our new wars. But now, we see that the longest series of wars in American history has failed to resolve or reverse the causes of the violence that struck us, or to make us safer. They just made it all worse.

The world expected and would have supported a focused and sustained effort to pursue and bring this small band of criminals to justice. But these last 10 years of manipulated and corrupted intelligence, endless war, practices and policies of torture, secret armies of assassination, global violations of human rights, indiscriminate violence with countless civilian casualties, and trillions of dollars wasted caused America to lose the high ground long ago. The arrogance of American power was our only response to the both the brutality and complexity of terrorism. Perhaps, this arrogance is most recently and brazenly exhibited in former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s new book tour, where he boasts of having absolutely no regrets for any of the momentous decisions he took part in. These are decisions which have made the world an even more divided, polarized, dehumanized, and dangerous place — 10 years after September 11, 2001.

But, fortunately, the official and failed response of Washington to the terrible tragedy of 9/11 has not been the only reponse. A new generation of Christians has asked how Jesus would respond to these same events. Many of them would agree with what Methodist Bishop Will Willimon recently said in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today: “American Christians may look back upon our response to 9/11 as our greatest Christological defeat … when our people felt vulnerable, they reached for the flag instead of the cross.” As many of those who have grown up in the decade since 9/11 confront the conflicts of their world, they are reaching for different things than their government. They are forging alternative responses to issues of injustice and violence, and rejecting the terrorism and war sequence of Washington’s twisted and failed moral logic.

And despite the hateful diatribes of fundamentalist leaders in all our religious traditions, other pastors have decided to love their neighbors, and even their enemies in response to Jesus’ call. Their stories are slowly being told, from American neighborhoods where Muslims have moved in, to conflict areas around the world where faith is being used for bridge building and healing, instead of more revenge killings. Christian leaders are sharing meals, fasting, and prayer with Muslim leaders. Some have defended each other’s congregations and homes in the face of heated threats and rhetoric. While differences between faith traditions are not being glossed over, the nature of a loving and reconciling God is being courageously affirmed across religious lines. In all of this, we are saying that government responses need not define our own…

Christian Witness, , , , , ,

Standing with the Coptic Church

From Christian Newswire: The Second Annual Coptic Solidarity Conference. Offer your prayers tonight for the the Coptic community and the fulfillment of their conference’s objectives.

The second Annual Coptic Solidarity Conference will be held on Friday and Saturday July 8-9 under the main theme of “Will Religious and Ethnic Minorities Pay the Price of the ‘Arab Spring.’ The Christian Copts are the native ethnic religious community of Egypt, descendants from ancient Egyptians. They number around 15 millions, including a large Diaspora with more than half a million strong community of American Copts.

The Copts have experienced persecutions throughout their history and lately have been subject to acts of aggression and discrimination in Egypt at the hands of extremists and Jihadists. Since the revolt in Egypt brought down the previous authoritarian regime of Husni Mubarak, the Coptic community is facing an uncertain future. The Military Council is slow in implementing true democratic reforms and, even worse, they face the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood dominated Government in the near future.

Coptic Solidarity International is an INGO seeking the support of the Coptic community in Egypt and the protection of its fundamental human rights. It raises awareness within the international community about the Coptic historical and current issues via educational and informational activities.

…

Coptic leaders from North America, Europe and Egypt will speak on the conditions of the community in the Middle East and in the Diaspora.

The key objective of this two-day conference is to understand the implications of the current upheaval in the middle East and to offer present and future support to the Copts, and other minorities, as they go through this difficult period.

In February 2011, His Grace Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Church discussed the vision and dream for a new Egypt

As post-Mubarak Egypt stands at a crossroads, Coptic Orthodox bishop His Grace Bishop Serapion is certain his hopes and vision for the new Egypt are shared not only by his homeland’s Christians, but lovers of freedom and human rights everywhere.

“While we have a deep concern about the direction of the country, we still have strong hope and great dreams,” HG Bishop Serapion said Sunday afternoon at the Los Angeles Convention Center in an address about Copts’ vision and hope for building the new Egypt. The event, presented by the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California and Hawaii, over which HG Bishop Serapion is bishop, honored Coptic Christians in Egypt who have been killed in religiously motivated attacks by extremists since 2000. Up to 1,500 people were expected to attend the event.

The event aimed to raise awareness of the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, where they comprise 10 percent of that nation’s 79 million people. The Copts are the largest Christian population in the Middle East. Approximately 40,000 Copts live in Greater Los Angeles, where there are 30 Coptic Orthodox churches.

Following the Jan. 25 revolution in Egypt, Copts’ concerns have deepened for the country’s direction, as pockets of violence have erupted against them. On Feb. 20, Daoud Boutros, a Coptic priest from Shotb near the southern Egyptian city of Assiut, was stabbed to death in his apartment. Father Daoud was a mentor of HG Bishop Serapion. That same day, Egyptian military forces began destroying fences protecting ancient Coptic monasteries, leaving the monks and monasteries vulnerable to attacks. On Feb. 23, military forces opened fire on monks and young people, wounding many severely.

In the past 11 years Coptic Christians have suffered severe persecution and martyrdom at the hands of Islamic extremists, including the New Year’s Day suicide bombing of Saint Mark and Pope Peter Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, which killed 24 Copts and injured approximately 100. Extremists gunned down six Coptic youths in Nag Hammadi in a Mass on Jan. 7, 2010. Extremists also killed 21 Copts in the village of Al Kosheh Jan. 21, 2000.

HG Bishop Serapion offered prayers for the martyrs and observed a moment of silence for those who died in recent weeks during political demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. He echoed the Rev. Martin Luther King’s call to use non-violent means in advocating for a fair society for all Egyptians.

“What is the direction the society will move? Are we moving toward a state where every citizen has equal rights, irrespective of gender or religion, or a religious state where some people are considered as second-class citizens?” he asked. “We are at a crossroads in our society. We must focus on freedom, justice and equality, irrespective of the name of the person.”

Prompted by biblical and theological convictions, to achieve this dream of equality, Copts must wage non-violent struggle, HG Bishop Serapion said. The struggle entails rejecting injustice, exposing the evils of discrimination and standing up for Christians’ rights through the power of the truth, not the perpetuation of violence. Copts aim to cooperate with people of goodwill, regardless of religion, and will remain steadfast in their struggle “until our dream becomes reality,” he said.

“We must be ready to accept sacrifices,” he said. “Martyrs will fall and people will be wounded. This is the price of freedom and justice.”

Political, , , , ,

Imprisonment

From the National Iranian American Council (NIAC): Watch: Maziar Bahari Discusses Imprisonment

NIAC presents an exclusive interview (in Persian) with award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and human rights activist Maziar Bahari. His newest book, Then They Came for Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival, chronicles the 118 days he spent in a six-by-twelve-feet prison cell in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. Bahari spoke with NIAC President Trita Parsi and journalist Sahar Namizikhah before giving a book reading and discussion with NIAC members in McLean, Virginia.

Bahari explains his relationship with his interrogator, and shares how he kept his hope alive and his hatred for his torturer at bay. Bahari also shares his views on dictatorships and their ideology and talks of the importance of democracy. In talking about his days in prison, he explains how Iranian Americans can help support human rights in Iran.

Podcast: Interview with Sarah Shroud

An exclusive interview with Sarah Shourd, discussing her experience imprisoned in Iran and the status of her fiance Shane Bauer and friend Josh Fattal, who are still detained in Iran. The three were detained in Iran on July 31, 2009, while hiking in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan near the Ahmed Awa waterfall, a local attraction. Bauer and Fattal have been held for 686 days without trial. Shourd was released on September 14, 2010, on humanitarian grounds after spending 410 days in solitary confinement. Visit Free The Hikers to support their cause.

Art, Christian Witness, Perspective, ,

Plant an olive tree

From the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation: Please join in solidarity this holiday season, and help to replant olive trees in occupied Palestine.

Knowing that the common people in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continue to suffer under occupation and displacement, we are reminded that Mary and Joseph, huddling in a nook, were refugees under Roman occupation, and that they had traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Joseph’s family lived. Just as they lived in fear of a foreign occupying power two thousand years ago, sadly the Palestinians live in fear of the Israeli occupation, which imposes apartheid and takes their land. Often times, their olive trees are ripped out in an effort to displace them from their land.

Help to plant so that the children of many future generations might enjoy and be sustained by a gift of hope, a gift calling for a just and lasting peace.

The Olive Trees by Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Christian Witness, PNCC, , ,

St. Francis, Denver, attacked again

From the Denver Post: Griego: Little church’s St. Francis statue a target for vandals
By Tina Griego

Someone’s got it out for St. Francis. Or just the little church named in his honor. Or the church as a whole. Who knows? Maybe just fiberglass statues depicting humble saints who turn their backs on wealth to live in poverty.

It’s hard to know the mind of a vandal. This doesn’t keep Father John Kalabokes from trying.

Not quite five months ago, someone stole the bolted statue of St. Francis from its concrete base outside the St. Francis of Assisi Polish National Catholic Church. You might remember this story. The little church sits just below Leetsdale Avenue at South Jersey Street, across from a McDonald’s. Father John speculated the thief or thieves wrapped a chain around the 5-foot-tall statue, secured the other end to a vehicle and hit the gas.

This is a poor church, not affiliated with the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver as it has its differences — small but significant — with Roman Catholicism.

When the news got out, people sent in donations, and about two months after the statue was stolen, the church dedicated a new one: St. Francis, gleaming white, a blue bird perched on his hand.

Credit: John Prieto, The Denver Post
And now this.

“St. Francis was attacked again,” Father John tells me in an e-mail.

I call him in disbelief. “What?”

The statue wasn’t stolen this time, he says. This time, someone or someones went after it with some kind of tool until the head smashed and the face came off.

“This was brutal,” he says, sounding weary. “Somebody has real issues. Whoever did it just beat on the statue, just beat on the head. The whole face came off in one piece.”

When Father John first discovered it Wednesday, he called a television reporter and a short piece aired. Afterward, he wondered whether it was the right thing to do. He wonders, even now, whether more publicity will just gratify the culprit. I don’t try to persuade him one way or another. As I said, it’s hard to know the mind of a vandal. Maybe, Father John decides, more publicity will prompt someone to come forward.

“Let’s face it,” he says. “These kind of crimes only get solved because someone comes forward, a witness or someone who knows something.”

It might not be the same person as last time, I say.

“There’s no way of knowing,” he says. “We suspect it’s an ongoing crime. It’s hard to accept that there would be more than one person out there who would do this.”

He tells me something he didn’t reveal before. About a week and a half after the statue was stolen, someone left a note on its concrete base. The letters were cut out of newspaper like a movie-version of a ransom note and said something like: ” ‘You will be struck,’ ” Father John said. “The police have it now.

“I’m a little discouraged and depressed,” he says. “I don’t understand the joy someone would get out of that. It’s a hateful action. It’s an act against the faithful.”

On Sunday, most of the congregation got its first look at the headless St. Francis. It’s a startling sight. Church members are angered and baffled and they compare it to recent attacks on statues at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden.

After Mass, Father John talks to the congregation. “I’m sure most of you, if not all of you, noticed that St. Francis was attacked again,” he starts, and the woman next to me starts to cry. He says he can’t figure out why someone would do this and that he no longer thinks this is a teenage prank. He says the good news, such as it is, is the statue might be reparable, but the church needs to figure out a way to protect it.

Someone out there is troubled, he says, so pray for him or her. Good came from bad last time, he tells them. It can again.

You may contact St. Francis Parish via their website to express your prayers and support.

Christian Witness, Events, Political, Saints and Martyrs, , ,

Rally to Support Iraqi Christians

From the American Mesopotamian Organization, Justice in Iraq, the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, and the Seyfo Center U.S.A.: A Rally to Challenge the Obama Administration to Support and Protect Indigenous Assyrian Christians of Iraq

For the past seven years we have watched in stunned disbelief as savage Islamist extremist groups have continued to terrorize and murder Iraqi Christians. In the latest attacks, Al Qaeda-linked terrorists stormed the Syriac Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad during Mass, killing the priests in front of their parishioners, and children in front of their parents. On November 2nd the same group announced that all infidels in Iraq should be prepared to die. Enough is Enough!

WHEN: Saturday, December 4th, from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
WHERE: Lafayette Park, Washington, DC

We, the undersigned organizations, demand that the Obama Administration immediately pressure the government of Iraq to protect its most persecuted citizens. To date, the Obama Administration has failed to even acknowledge that Iraqi Christians are being murdered specifically because of their faith and ethnic heritage. They are the descendants of the Assyrians and Babylonians, who were the first converts to Christianity outside Jerusalem in the 1st century A.D., and still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Their plight is shared by other defenseless Iraqis, including the Yazidis, Sabean Mandaeans and Shebeks.

Currently, under Article 125 of the Iraqi Constitution, Iraq’s Christians and other indigenous Iraqis have the legal right to practice their faith, and the right to establish a specific province in which they might live peacefully as citizens of Iraq. We ask the U.S. government to pressure the Iraqi government and Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to remove the obstacles and fully implement Article 125 so that Iraq’s Christians will not be terrorized to extinction.

Join us this Saturday, in Lafayette Park, Washington DC, from 12:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M., along with groups from across the nation to demand, with a loud and unified voice, that the Obama Administration must act now and pressure the government of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to protect all of their citizens!

From the Institute on Religion & Democracy: IRD Urges Prayer, Advocacy for Afghani and Iraqi Christians

“Freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan must apply to our Christian brothers and sisters there.” — Faith J.H. McDonnell, IRD Religious Liberty Director

The Institute on Religion and Democracy is urging an end to persecution of Christians in Afghanistan and Iraq. The organization also encourages Washington, DC area residents to show solidarity with these beleaguered Christians at a rally sponsored by Iraqi American Christians for “Justice in Iraq” at noon, Saturday, December 4, at the White House’s Lafayette Park. The rally will call upon the respective governments to ensure that the rights and freedoms of the indigenous minorities in Iraq are honored and protected.

Two Afghani Christian converts, Said Musa (45) and Ahmad Shah (50) are in prison awaiting trial on the death penalty charge of “apostasy” from Islam. The Christian population of Iraq is under threat from Islamic jihadists following the latest atrocity, a massacre of Christians at Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church, Baghdad, on October 31, 2010.

Musa and Shah were arrested May 31 with other converts after footage of a baptismal service was viewed on national television. Witnesses report that Musa has been beaten, tortured, and sexually abused on a daily basis.

Al Qaeda-connected jihadists have told Iraq’s Christians and other “infidels” to “prepare to die.” This threat followed the attack on Baghdad Christians at Sunday mass which left 58 dead. The Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Christians trace their ancestry back 7,000 years to the ancient Mesopotamians.

IRD Religious Liberty Director Faith J.H. McDonnell commented:

“America has given billions of dollars, and, more importantly, given precious American lives, to bring freedom and democracy to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. But this must include freedom and democracy for our Christian brothers and sisters and other indigenous minorities, as well.

In 2006, the international community was outraged when Afghan Christian convert Abdul Rahman faced the death penalty. His life was saved because of the outcry. These Iraqi Christians, who are being hunted like animals by the Islamists, still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. We must stand with them in their hour of peril.”

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political,

Replant an olive tree in Palestine

Stand with Farmers — Replant an Olive Tree!

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is proud to partner with Canaan Fair Trade to replant olive trees in Palestine, especially in this special season of charitable giving, centered on Muslim and Jewish holidays.

You can help Palestinian farmers remain steadfast on their land and nonviolently resist Israeli occupation by donating to replant an olive tree.

For centuries, olive trees have formed the backbone of Palestinian agriculture. Yet, as part of its illegal military occupation, Israel has systematically uprooted them by the thousands to clear land for illegal Israeli settlements, apartheid fences and walls, and to dispossess Palestinian farmers of their lands and livelihoods.

For every $25 tax-deductible contribution to support the work of the US Campaign, we will replant one olive tree in Palestine. Donate $100 and we replant five. Make your tax-deductible contribution today.

After receiving your donation, the US Campaign and Canaan Fair Trade will electronically send you a Trees for Life certificate. You can replant a tree in your name or in honor of a loved one. Just let us know how you’d like the certificate to read. Click here to replant an olive tree today.

Remember that it is our taxpayer dollars ($3 billion of annual military aid to Israel) that have financed the Israeli army’s purchase of Caterpillar bulldozers and heavy machinery used to uproot trees. Please make your tax-deductible contribution to the US Campaign today so that we can both help replant olive trees and continue our work to end U.S. support for Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights.

To make a donation by phone, call 202-332-0994. Or mail a check, cashier’s check or money order to: US Campaign, PO Box 21539, Washington, DC 20009. Be sure to indicate “Replanting Olive Trees Campaign” on your check, and the name to be printed on the certificate.

Additionally, for even more serious solidarity with the olive farmers, anyone can travel to Palestine for the 2010 Olive Harvest Campaign of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a US Campaign member group.

Christian Witness, Perspective, Political

On peace and independence

From Sojourners:

“War appears inevitable. But, I continue to hope that the cloud will lift.” — Sen. Robert Byrd, in a speech delivered on the Senate floor on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the war in Iraq.

…and a great article below. As we pause on this Independence Day, we should reflect on whether those who do battle with us hate our ideals, methods, presence, or all-of-it. From my take, it has never been about the people of the Middle East hating our freedoms, lifestyle, or ideals (they may not agree with them, but they don’t really care if we do not meet their standards), but rather about our presence in their backyard. Our support of Israel’s continuous war and apartheid policies, and our military presence in other parts of the region, is the sole issue of concern.

It is incumbent upon us to trade equally with all, act as an honest broker of peace and charity, and to stop being the world’s police. Independence is never gained at the point of a gun, particularly in battles of ideology. Further, we cannot fix problems of political ideology, faith practice, cultural mores, dictatorial leadership, or even poverty and hunger through military intervention. Our military doctrine and practice does not fit fourth generation warfare; not now, not in Vietnam, nor in Korea. The record of successes and failures is on the side on non-intervention. Our peace and independence depends on a clear vision as to who we are and who we are to be in the world. The father of our country captured it well in his farewell address, warning that we must:

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. … In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

It’s Time to End This War

After his unanimous approval by the Senate Armed Services Committee as the new Afghan war commander, General David Petraeus was pictured in The Washington Post with a broad smile and thumbs up proclaiming, —We are all firmly united in seeking to forge unity of effort.— No, we’re not, General. No, we’re not. In fact, I believe it’s time to begin to unite the religious community against the war in Afghanistan.

Following last week’s resignation of General Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, confirmation hearings began right away for Petraeus to become his replacement. But the real issue is not replacing one general with another because of inappropriate comments and insubordination — it’s the fatally flawed war policy in Afghanistan.

In February 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks erupted throughout South Vietnam, showing that U.S. political and military leaders’ optimistic pronouncements that the end of the war was near were not true. By then, it was clear to many that the war was not winnable, yet more than half of U.S. casualties in Vietnam occurred from that spring until the end of the war (35,000 of the total 58,000).

I have walked the line at the Vietnam Memorial Wall many times, with tears running down my face as I read the names of my generation who were killed there. And the painful remorse over that awful war is even greater when I remember that the majority of those who died in Vietnam were killed after we knew we would ultimately have to come home without —winning— the unwinnable war. The last of the many reasons for staying in Vietnam that I recall President Nixon saying was to come home —with our heads held high.— We didn’t.

After 9/11, an international police action to bring the perpetrators of that horrible crime to justice would have been one thing. But to begin a war and then an occupation of Afghanistan was the wrong policy, quickly killing more Afghan innocents than the American innocents who died on September 11. It was then further compromised by the completely mistaken and morally unjustifiable war in Iraq.

When will we ever learn? The failed policies are all too familiar: a counter-insurgency strategy requiring more and more troops; creating the continued presence of a large U.S. military force; increasing the resentment and hostility of the Afghan people at a foreign occupation; trying to create a central government out of an ungovernable tribal society; and depending on an incompetent and utterly corrupt political ruler and regime.

An effective anti-terrorism policy was never really tried and was replaced by a —war on terrorism— which has failed. Here’s the metric: Has our primarily military policy in Afghanistan and Iraq killed more terrorists than it has recruited? I think we know the answer to that. The math of terrorism is against us. And our military obsession has made the most important question impossible to ask and even unpatriotic to consider: How might we reduce and defeat the causes of terrorism in the first place?

A new strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on humanitarian assistance and sustainable economic development, along with international policing, was also never tried. It could have been led by NGOs, both faith-based and secular, who have been in the region for years, have become quite indigenous, and are much more trusted by the people of these countries than are the U.S. military. But such assistance would have to be provided, as much as possible, by independent civilian and non-governmental organizations — both international and local — rather than using aid as a government adjunct to military operations.

Yes, after taking over the country, we do have a responsibility not to simply walk away. There are ethical and moral issues that need to be considered: legitimately protecting Americans from further terrorism; protecting the lives of U.S. servicemen and women; protecting the Afghan people from the collateral damage of war; defending women from the Taliban; genuinely supporting democracy; and of course, saving innocent lives from the collateral damage of war, to name a few.

And yes, effective development needs security. We could have focused on economic development, starting in areas that are secure and then growing to additional parts of the country, but providing only the security necessary to protect the rebuilding of the country. That kind of peacekeeping security would have been more likely to gain the international support we needed in Afghanistan, both from Europe and even from Arab and Muslim countries.

Non-military strategies should have led the way, rather than the other way around, as counter-insurgency doctrine requires. We should not have made aid and development weapons of war by tying them so closely to the military; rather, we should have only provided the security support needed for the development work to succeed — led by respected, well-established international organizations with strong local connections.

The current strategy, even with a new commander, will only lead to more casualties — U.S. and Afghan — while likely strengthening popular support for the Taliban as an anti-occupation force. It is a strategy of endless war that is ultimately doomed to failure.

Last Sunday, the photo on the front page of The New York Times broke my heart. It showed the family of a military serviceman just before he was redeployed to Afghanistan. He was in his fatigues, holding his 6-month-old son with a look of deep pain on his face, with his wife resting her head against his shoulder. The article told story after story about families being separated by repeated deployments in an endless war. Soldiers who are fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are dying for a wrong-headed, ineffective, failed, doomed, arrogant, theologically unjust, and yes, immoral war policy. And of course, the ones dying are not the young people headed for our best universities and successful professional careers, but rather they are the ones who have fewer options, or who see the military as their only option. Those with the least opportunities, and their families, are again the ones to sacrifice and suffer. It’s not right and it’s not fair.

The number of U.S. service members killed in June was the highest for one month since this now nine-year war began. It’s time to end this war. Or should we just start building another wall?

Current Events, Poland - Polish - Polonia, Political, , ,

The undelivered speech of President Kaczyński

Dear Representatives of the Katyn Families. Ladies and Gentlemen.

In April 1940 over twenty-one thousand Polish prisoners from the NKVD camps and prisons were killed. The genocide was committed at Stalin’s will and at the Soviet Union’s highest authority’s command.

The alliance between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and the Soviet attack on Poland on 17 September 1939 reached a terrifying climax in the Katyn massacre. Not only in the Katyn forest, but also in Tver, Kcharkiv and other known, and unknown, execution sites citizens of the Second Republic of Poland, people who formed the foundation of our statehood, who adamantly served the motherland, were killed.

At the same time families of the murdered and thousands of citizens of the eastern territory of the pre-war Poland were sent into exile deep into the Soviet Union, where their indescribable suffering marked the path of the Polish Golgotha of the East.

The most tragic station on that path was Katyn. Polish officers, priests, officials, police officers, border and prison guards were killed without a trial or sentence. They fell victims to an unspeakable war. Their murder was a violation of the rights and conventions of the civilized world. Their dignity as soldiers, Poles and people, was insulted. Pits of death were supposed to hide the bodies of the murdered and the truth about the crime for ever.

The world was supposed to never find out. The families of the victims were deprived of the right to mourn publicly, to proudly commemorate their relatives. Ground covered the traces of crime and the lie was supposed to erase it from people’s memory.

An attempt to hide the truth about Katyn —“ a result of a decision taken by those who masterminded the crime —“ became one of the foundations of the communists’ policy in an after-war Poland: a founding lie of the People’s Republic of Poland.

It was the time when people had to pay a high price for knowing and remembering the truth about Katyn. However, the relatives of the murdered and other courageous people kept the memory, defended it and passed it on to next generations of Poles. They managed to preserve the memory of Katyn in the times of communism and spread it in the times of free and independent Poland. Therefore, we owe respect and gratitude to all of them, especially to the Katyn Families. On behalf of the Polish state, I offer sincere thanks to you, that by defending the memory of your relatives you managed to save a highly important dimension of our Polish consciousness and identity.

Katyn became a painful wound of Polish history, which poisoned relations between Poles and Russians for decades. Let’s make the Katyn wound finally heal and cicatrize. We are already on the way to do it. We, Poles, appreciate what Russians have done in the past years. We should follow the path which brings our nations closer, we should not stop or go back.

All circumstances of the Katyn crime need to be investigated and revealed. It is important that innocence of the victims is officially confirmed and that all files concerning the crime are open so that the Katyn lie could disappear for ever. We demand it, first of all, for the sake of the memory of the victims and respect for their families’ suffering. We also demand it in the name of common values, which are necessary to form a foundation of trust and partnership between the neighbouring nations in the whole Europe.

Let’s pay homage to the murdered and pray upon their bodies.

Glory to the Heroes!

Hail their memory!

Christian Witness, PNCC, ,

Christ is Risen! Chrystus zmartwychwstał!

Chrystus zmartwychwstał! Prawdziwie zmartwychwstał! Alleluja!
Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen! Alleluia!

In Poland, the duty of standing guard at the symbolic tomb typically falls on the local fire brigade. The members stand watch at the tomb arrayed in their dress uniforms and in the role of the Roman soldiers (Matthew 27:62-66) whom Pilate sent to guard the tomb. At the Resurrection Procession, when the Eucharist is raised up from the symbolic tomb and Wesoły nam (This joyous day) is intoned, the “soldiers” fall to the ground (Matthew 28:2-4).

[audio:https://www.konicki.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/WESOLY-NAM-DZIEN.mp3]

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