TODAY = UNJUST WAR REMEMBRANCE DAY—A MODEST PROPOSAL & PRAYER—FOR CONVERSION

            From War to Peace, from Death to Life.  One must first admit grave error, as in the Iraq War, before one can correct it, and cooperate in the redemption of our war wearied world.   To help us receive this grace here is a prayer Fr. E. C. McCarthy has offered for this season.

LENTEN PRAYER OF PETITION

FOR THE RETURN OF ALL CHURCHES TO

THE TRUTH OF THE NONVIOLENT JESUS

AND HIS WAY OF NONVIOLENT LOVE

bba, in the name of Jesus

we ask you to send the Holy Spirit

to gather the Churches together,

so that with one mind, one heart and one voice,

they may proclaim as God’s Way

Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of all people—friends and enemies—

and thereby teach that

            violence and enmity are not God’s Way

violence and enmity  are not the Christian Way,

violence and enmity are not the Holy Way,

violence and enmity are not the Catholic Way,

violence and enmity  are not the Apostolic Way,

violence and enmity are inot the Way of Jesus,

and thus set Christians free forever

from  bondage to the

unholy, uncatholic, unapostolic, unChrist-like

ways of the counterfeit gods and philosophies justifying

war, capital punishment and abortion.

.

We plead this grace so that

the Nonviolent Lamb

may be our Lord in deed,

as well as in word and sacrament.

We request this gift

so that the Christian Community

may be for afflicted humanity

a faithful witness

to Jesus’ Way of conquering evil.

We implore this healing

so that the Church may be

an authentic extension in time and space

of the Way of the Lamb of God,

of the Way of the Nonviolent Jesus

which is the Way

to renew the face of the earth. Amen.

UR LAMB HAS CONQUERED; LET US FOLLOW.

By Fr. Emanuel Charles McCarthy

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AGAIN - Please consider copying and sending the proposed resolution below to your state & national legislators, and request that they submit it to become law. Also bring it to your church local & national assemblies for enactment as a faith declaration.  Be patient and persistent, hoping for some action on this in time for next March 19^th.  Thank you.

Resolution for "Unjust War Remembrance Day" March 19^th

· Whereas the United States entered into a war with Iraq on Mar 19, 2003 with no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction, or imminent threat to our nation.
· Whereas the leaders of our nation and the national media rushed to war without due consideration and for reasons that remain to be clearly stated or investigated.
· Whereas the citizens of our nation, even those opposed to this war, by and large acquiesced to this war’s prosecution.
· Whereas hundreds of thousands of Iraq civilians, thousands of our soldiers, and a probable tens of thousands of Iraqi insurgents died in this war. Many more than all these dead were the severely wounded casualties of this war.
· Whereas Iraqi infrastructure and economy has been decimated, and our own economy has been definitively damaged by this unnecessary war.
· Whereas this Iraq war did not meet the moral standards required of the just war theory.
· Whereas many prominent religious leaders call us to reject just war theory as impossible in modern warfare, and urge a much deeper faith respecting all human life.

Be it resolved to declare March 19 a national holiday of reflection, Unjust War Remembrance Day, in which everyone should work and pray to develop projects and strategies on local, national, and international levels that resolve conflicts between nations and peoples effectively without resorting to the organized overwhelming violence of war.

Be it resolved also that this resolution, in some form particular to each nation, should be adopted by the United Nations, as every nation has some time in the history of their peoples participated in unjust war.

**********************************************

St. Joseph the Worker, turn our hands from weapons of war to creative endeavor.

Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary it is the favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be.   p. 15

The Cross is and remains the sign of “the Son of Man”: ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapons than the witness of suffering. p.49                                   f                                                                                                                                                                                                   
From “Jesus of Nazareth” by Pope Benedict XVI


Illuminations by Kathy Brahney

FOURTH ANNUAL APPEAL--FOR DECLARATION OF "UNJUST WAR REMEMBRANCE DAY"

"Shock & Awe" Baghdad --  March 19, 2003

March 19^th “Unjust War Remembrance Day.”  When we invaded Iraq, March 19, 2003, with the slimmest possibility of finding even one nuclear weapon [when Israeli neighbors have hundreds, and we thousands], we tried to change our national moral justification of war, from defensive move of last resort, to preemptive war—a war of convenience, for perceived benefits.   The people of the United States and the people of Iraq will be paying for this for years to come.  It will be redeeming to our true national interest, if we as the world’s single superpower & most prolific arms dealer, declare that the Iraq War was our wrongdoing, and that all war is anti-life, disastrously futile---counter to Christian and many other faiths.

"Father forgive them they know not what they do."  Lk 23:34

 On right: Father forgive us we know not what we do--Torture at Abu-Ghraib U.S. detention center, during Iraq War

Members of Congress and our county’s churches should start petitioning for this Day, as a national, even international, holiday.   A Day of Atonement.  Almost all powerful countries have been morally, physically, and economically compromised by unjust war.

Please send the proposed resolution below to your state & national legislators, and request that they submit it to become law.   Also bring it to your church local & national assemblies for enactment as a faith declaration.

Resolution for "Unjust War Remembrance Day" March 19th

·         Whereas the United States entered into a war with Iraq on Mar 19, 2003 with no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction, or imminent threat to our nation.
·         Whereas the leaders of our nation and the national media rushed to war without due consideration and for reasons that remain to be clearly stated or investigated.
·         Whereas the citizens of our nation, even those opposed to this war, by and large acquiesced to this war’s prosecution.
·         Whereas hundreds of thousands of Iraq civilians, thousands of our soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi insurgents died in this war.  Many more than all these dead were the severely wounded casualties of this war.
·         Whereas Iraqi infrastructure and economy has been decimated, and our own economy has been definitively damaged by this unnecessary war.
·         Whereas this Iraq war did not meet the moral standards required of the just war theory.
·         Whereas many prominent religious leaders call us to reject just war theory as impossible in modern warfare, and urge a much deeper faith respecting all human life.

Be it resolved to declare March 19 a national holiday of reflection, Unjust War Remembrance Day, in which everyone should work and pray to develop projects and strategies on local, national, and international levels that resolve conflicts between nations and peoples effectively without resorting to the organized overwhelming violence of war.

Be it resolved also that this resolution, in some form particular to each nation, should be adopted by the United Nations, as every nation has some time in the history of their peoples participated in unjust war.

**********************************************

Who would Jesus Bomb?---by Mark Bryan

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."  --JFK 

Let’s take the first steps into that distance, with commitments to fund peacemaking that rival the billions spent on the military industrial complex.  God bless us with the good fortune of conversion -- from war to peace.

May we all put away our swords, and the Irish our cudgels.  Good things can grow from this peace dividend.

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

LEAD US NOT INTO THE TEMPTATION OF CONTINUED NUCLEAR BOMB TESTING

From website of International Human Rights Observer

Indonesia, an Islamist nation, was the most recent country to ratify on Dec 6, 2011, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  Almost all the world’s governments have agreed to take this first solid step towards eliminating the terrible threat of nuclear weapons.  If you don’t test them it’s much more difficult to develop, build, and rely upon them.  The CTBT was passed over 15 years ago by the United Nations, and based upon a Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968.  The CTBT has been ratified by almost every country.  As the U.S. threatens to go to war to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, you’d think we be one of the founding members of the CTBT club, and certainly Israel along with us.  Not so.

A crew loaded a 'bunker buster' at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in 2007-Photo from Defense Threat Reduction Agency-AP

“The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.”  From 1-28-12 WSJ article Pentagon Seeks Mightier Bomb vs. Iran

he United States is the godfather in a gang of eight nuclear bomb test ban holdouts—together holding the rest of the world hostage to the desire to wield the ultimate version of destructive power.  Who are our atomic bomb lover bedfellows?  Israel, Iran, China, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.  Strange bedfellows.  All 8 spoiler countries must ratify before the treaty can be enforced; 157 already have. 

There is always an intricate reasoned political calculus, as to why a nation wants to maintain dominion with its Weapon of Mass Destruction.  In the end, reliance on the power to destroy and threaten insures that none of us on the planet can come to trust each other, nor convert and re-invest in more creative ways to resolve conflict.  At a most fundamental level, trust in massively destructive weapons replaces trust in God.  WMD has become this century’s idol.   Idolatry of a war god.  An Anti-Christ of anti-life.  Every one of these nuclear bombs we possess and perfect can abort thousands of babies in the womb, and thousands more men, women and children in the fireball of the lust for supremacy.  And we maintain we need them, and retain the right to test and care for them.

“I am become megadeath, the destroyer of worlds.” From Hindu Bhagavad Gita

                               Spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer  - on viewing test of world's first atomic bomb, he’d help create.

 

"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Mt 4:9

The United States, as the world’s undisputed nuclear weapons superpower, has to lead by example on the path to faith and democracy.  It’s do as we do, not merely do as we say.  .  In 1981 I taught a course in the particulars of nuclear disarmament at Prestonsburg [KY] Community College.  We’ve only taken a few small steps towards the goal of putting away the nuclear swords since.  Saber rattling at Iran and North Korea’s fledgling efforts, while ignoring the huge nuclear weapons stockpile in our own eye, will not convince anyone.

Please work and pray to make this treaty a reality.

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.  The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

Armistice Day speech (11 November 1948), -- General Omar Bradley's Collected Writings, Volume 1 (1967)

Button artwork by Ande McCarthy

A good source for focused efforts on passing & implementing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the U.S. is the Friends Committee on National Legislation.  This Quaker group has expertise on the political elements of disarmament, and is well organized towards creating the national and international building blocks for true verifiable nuclear disarmament.  Please see their current info at FCNL nuclear weapons issues.       And download and distribute their CTBT factsheet.

Please click on blue highlights for links and full articles.
Click on art to enlarge.

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

CHICKENS OF WAR ADDICTION COME HOME TO ROOST

It was sad, but not surprising, to read an article in the "Voice," an area weekly newspaper, two days after I’d written last week about the surge of opium & heroin production in Afghanistan.  “Epidemic on the rise? --Heroin use a gateway to crime, poor health, even death.”  As it is in Afghanistan, so it is in Southeast Michigan.   The story quotes Macomb Co. District Court Judge Linda Davis—about 300 people under age 25 died in her county in 2011, due to heroin overdose.  And Sheriff Tim Donnellon of St. Clair County points to 11 similar deaths in our county in 2011.  Heroin-related death totals in our backyard are on the rise according to these sources, as heroin production/addiction in war-ravaged Afghanistan continues its upswing.  Blowback from thousands of miles away.

Heroin and opium addicts in the former Soviet Cultural Center in Kabul--Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

 Afghanistan soldier in poppies----Sanjaray in Zhari district early April 26, 2008---REUTERS-Goran Tomasevic

To sum up the situation here the story continues, “St. Clair County Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Campau [Public Information Officer] said even though a lot of users have to go out of their community to obtain the substance it is becoming even cheaper—averaging about $10 for a small package—and more accessible in part because of the increased poppy production in Afghanistan being sent to the west.”

 AFGHAN FORCES DESTROYING OPIUM POPPY FIELDS--Nangarhar---April 2007 Photograph Rahmat Gul

First Lt Terence Sawick patrolling in Helmand Province-- Afghanistan---photo-Joël van Houdt for NYT

We spend a million dollars a soldier per year to deploy to Afghanistan.  This is what we get here in return?  Increased heroin addiction.  Young people die, stateside and halfway around the world.  More death due to drugs here at home.  More morbidity in Afghanistan, with drone bomb, and opium addiction, and government corruption, damage to their people, and the ongoing IED roadside bomb and PTSD damage to our troops as they hopelessly try to stamp out opium and Taliban in that foreign land.  When will we ever learn—“nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.” Lk 6:43    Guns, drugs and dirty money are the inevitable the taproots of war’s bad tree.   The fruits are violence, death and destruction.

The Cursing of the Fig Tree---Mark 11:14 

Addendum information to last weeks look at Afghan opium production.

Quotes from articles Past

From Nov. 19, 2004 NYT—“Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says”

Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the highest levels [4,200 metric tons] in the country's history and in the world, the United Nations announced on Thursday.

…. most of the profits go to a very few traffickers, warlords and militia leaders, rather than the impoverished farmers, who are often heavily in debt to the drug lords, the United Nations report said.
There are signs, too, of a move toward a greater vertical integration of the business and the growing involvement of international organized crime, according to a recent report by Barnett Rubin of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
His[ Karzai’s]administration has included known drug lords, and many of his provincial governors, police and army chiefs are widely rumored to profit from the trade, diplomats and Afghan officials acknowledge. Commanders of the powerful Northern Alliance, which with American help overthrew the Taliban in 2001, continue to profit from the trade in northeastern Badakhshan Province.
Diplomats say there are even reports linking Mr. Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, an influential figure in the southern city of Kandahar, to the trade.
The government is finally trying to get the word out that poppy cultivation is illegal and that farmers will be penalized. The council of senior clerics recently issued a religious edict forbidding poppy growing.
But international assistance has been inadequate and ill focused, Mr. Rubin says. "U.S. cooperation with warlords and militia leaders tied to trafficking has sent the wrong signal about the U.S. commitment to combating narcotics," he said.

And Present

A January [2012] report by the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 percent last year to about $1.4 billion, or about one-tenth of the country’s GDP, after the crop recovered from a 2010 blight and returned to previous levels.

“Illicit traffic in opiates, including heroin, is a growing problem,” says the document, adding that revenues it generates fuel “corruption, organized crime and in some cases ... terrorist activities and insurgency.”

 This was the plan---From 2-14-10 Huffington Post---Mushtarak  means “together” in Farsi and Pashtu languages

From “The Hard Way Out”—2-1-12 NYT Magazine

Only as recently as 2010 did coalition forces, bolstered by Obama’s troop surge, try to cauterize what Gen. Stanley McChrystal called the “bleeding ulcer” of Marja — a town just outside the provincial capital where the Taliban presided unmolested over a lucrative opium industry.
Successful as it is, the taking of Marja was accomplished with an immense commitment of men and resources that could not realistically be brought to bear elsewhere in the province. An analogy often invoked across Afghanistan is that of the water-filled bag: squeeze the bottom, the top distends.
Year after year, month after month, Helmand has ranked as the deadliest, most violent province in Afghanistan. Nowhere else comes close.


The words of the preacher hero of Black History month give hope and direction----

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 CLICK ON BLUE HIGHLIGHTED ITEMS, = LINKS FOR FULL ARTICLES

PERSISTENT PERNICIOUS POPPIES OF AFGHANISTAN WAR

Opium addict on the streets of Kabul--matches, cigarettes, and foil used to inhale opium paste vapors, strewn about---Photo by Larry Towell

Afghanistan suffers first in war, second in escalating opium drug trade, and now in the plague of epidemic opium addiction.  American media reports often depict the Taliban as the purveyors of war related opium profiteering.  History shows that it has been the other side--the U.S. {and before them the British}-- that have used opium as a weapon to achieve profit in the business of war.  [For an extensive interesting timeline featuring the British see http://opioids.com/timeline/ from Opium: A History, by Martin Booth]

In 2001, Tony Blair said a significant reason for the West's invasion of Afghanistan was to curtail a flourishing heroin trade, yet opium production between 2001 and 2011 increased from 185 tonnes to 5,800 tonnes, according to UN figures.   From UK’s, 2-17-12 The Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9088008/Britains-war-against-Afghan-opium-production-is-failing.html

Astounding but misleading figures.  In fact since the NATO [mostly U.S., and Brits have now left] invasion of Afghanistan, 1 month post the 911 attacks, the average production of opium in Afghanistan has roughly doubled.  Bad enough, though not a thirty-fold increase as reported.  The glitch lies in the 2001 figure which was skewed downward by a July 2000 edict of Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s leader that no opium should be planted or harvested.  [see 9-24-01 UK’s Guardian, “Taliban to lift ban on farmers growing opium if US attacks”

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/sep/25/afghanistan.terrorism8]

Mullah Omar -- Photo ABC News

This mandate led to the least opium produced there in modern times.  But the reduction was short-lived, some consider that it was just a geopolitical ploy.  It had been preceded by a thriving opium trade that had grown out of Russia’s war in Afghanistan [that left so many of their soldiers drug addicted--most to hashish, then more available].   At that time the Afghan tribal warlords, who’d been our covert allies in the Cold War fight against Russia, stimulated further opium war profits & production during their internecine battle for power, especially after the Soviets withdrew in 1990. 

10th Marines, Regimental Combat Team 8, patrol through a poppy field in the Kajaki Dam green zone, Helmand province, Afghanistan, April 19

Now we have entered the scene, been fighting ten years, and opium production continues to soar forever entwined with the spoils of war, and the further decimation of a country.   One line from a worthwhile scholarly study by Chouvy sums it up. “Illicit opium production thrives on war economies and poverty.” [read study-- Afghanistan’s Opium Production in Perspective http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?ots591=0C54E3B3-1E9C-BE1E-2C24-A6A8C7060233&lng=en&id=32010

With huge exports of illegal opium, bumper crops fueled by our prolonged war, comes increased addictive use by Afghans involved or close to its production.  Opium as a medical panacea has been in some use in Afghanistan since at least the B.C. times of Alexander the Great.  But widespread addiction is a modern phenomenon.

Afghans shoot up heroin in Kabul -- Photo by Larry Towell

A United Nations survey begun this month is widely expected to show that at least 1 in 12 people in Afghanistan abuses drugs — double the number in the last survey four years ago.  From NPR story, April 17, 2009.  This program, and its sequel, best typify how a drug trade in a poor war-torn country drags down its inhabitants, and we are now 4 years further into the pit.  Read and listen at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102984398.

Some more sensational reports have implied that the explosion of opium abuse is encouraged by the Taliban, or due to an innate defect of character in the Afghan peoples.  “Afghan infants fed pure opium” CNN, 1-24-11.  “Opium addiction ravages Afghan families--Scourge of remote villages leaves even babies hooked” MSNBC, 8-9-09.   [see links to videos below]  We should remember that opium tincture and paregoric are still given, though not drugs of choice, in the U.S. pharmacopeia for diarrhea, and off-label for colic, and to put baby to sleep.  Yet widespread use by younger and younger children, babies born addicted because of their moms’ and adults’ around them addiction, is certainly a scourge.

The Mullahs and Taliban for their part have maintained that opium production & addiction is amoral, non-Islamic.  However, like many religions, they have often looked the other way for purpose of political & financial gain.  “The drugs are taxed by the Taliban, the police and corrupt government officials.”    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8687734.stm  They are not producing or trafficking, but they, along with many others in the national government we support, skim a profit.





Drug addiction and guns addiction and war addiction are history’s three-headed monster, dominating countries and the people within them until they fail, losing their souls to the opioid of power. It can happen in Afghanistan, and it can happen in the USA, and all places in between—to rich and poor alike.  There is an important 1988 PBS documentary on how the paths of former U.S. presidents and bankers and drug runners intersect—Drugs Guns and the CIA.

’ve lost my video copy, and it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere, but the transcript can be accessed at the site immediately below .  Take the time to read.  It gives a perspective on how those in power have often, from Vietnam and contiguous "Golden Triangle'' to Nicaragua to present day Afghanistan, justified the evils of addiction and war, as the means to fight for, and fortify, our freedoms.  The addiction history of Afghanistan war should once again make Gospel clear that freedom, much less salvation, can never be reached by employing evil, in the supposed service of good.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/gunsdrugscia.html

Mainstream media videos

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/20/afghan.opium.kids/index.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32317823/ns/health-addictions/t/opium-addiction-ravages-afghan-families/



Illumination by Kathy Brahney

Addendum--further background reading--will follow later this week.

LOVE BEYOND MEASURE

From Ande's first valentine to me--1978

Tomorrow we remember how beautiful this love is that many of us have for each other.  In my case, Ande is my blessing before all others.

She’s made of music, and nurse’s hands-on care, with so much mischief and love raising up our children.

Yesterday she played it on the violin, with tears of joy in her recital.  Any instrument will dance with her.  So still do I.

We all lean with trepidation, bordering on complete trust, towards that love which gives the whole self for the good of the beloved.  Greater love than this no one has than to lay down their life for ones they love.  Jesus did so, and promises we can too.    It is not easy.  There is suffering, along with the tears of unbounded joy.  We're called often to love the unlovable, and the beautiful, at once.

Jesus andHis Sacred Heart

St. Valentine was a martyr of the early church.  Not much is known of him, but it appears he was a priest [perhaps married himself] who was caught marrying Christian couples and caring for any believers being persecuted.

Here are some words better than mine---happiness and hope in our valentines.

But as all several souls contain
Mixture of things they know not what,
Love these mix'd souls doth mix again,
And makes both one, each this, and that.

A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size—
All which before was poor and scant—
Redoubles still, and multiplies.

When love with one another so
Interanimates two souls,
That abler soul, which thence doth flow,
Defects of loneliness controls.

From “Ecstacy” by John Dunne

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.  If only they could see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed….                                      by Thomas Merton

                                                                                                                                                                                 

Be not lax in celebrating.

Be not lazy in the festive service of God.

Be ablaze with enthusiasm.

Let us be an alive, burning offering

before the altar of God.

             by  Hildegard of Bingen

And the most wonderful words of all---from inside of Ande's first valentine to Michael--above.

THE DRONES OF WAR COME HOME TO ROOST

Former President George W Bush and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff inspect a Predator Drone---Photograph by Jim Watson AFP Getty Images

LA Times---“Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front.”
“The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country's northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.
Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite "interior law enforcement support" as part of their mission. [ From 12-10-11 article http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/10/nation/la-na-drone-arrest-20111211]”

So there you have it.  The remote control drones of war are amongst us.  And a Federal Aviation Administration bill just has just passed which can greatly expand their use.  Unmanned aircraft can be as small as a hummingbird or have the wingspan of an airliner.  Our air traffic is still planning to move from radar to GPS based, yet we now authorize a timetable for a huge increase of drones, unmanned aerial vehicles [UAV’s], in our friendly skies.   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203889904577201170395161202.html

These are as yet unarmed, meant to track and capture smugglers, drug traffickers and other bad guys.  But they were developed for war, and can be easily converted for shoot to kill purposes.  The lines between military and police application can certainly blur.  The State Department now increasingly relies on these unarmed drones to control things in Iraq.  Iraqis are outraged by these spies in their skies, and don’t trust that they won’t be used in the future to assassinate, that our diplomacy won’t again become lethal.  Even though they might not pack a weapon, the fact that these machines may be hovering over us, as well as the Iraqis, is disturbing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/world/middleeast/iraq-is-angered-by-us-drones-patrolling-its-skies.html?pagewanted=all#

Robotic killing is definitely on a roll.  These Predator, Reaper, [aka MQ1 and MQ9] and other birds of a feather,  have migrated from first use in Iraq & Afghanistan, to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and other places little mentioned, like our own USA.  In today’s 1-5-12 Times Herald appears an AP article noting that, as part of Michigan’s Air National Guard base restructuring, Battle Creek is to receive a unit flying MQ-1 and MQ-9 UAV’s.  Although one would assume the actual fighting will be very remote in our current battle fields, it’s not specified if there will be UAV’s in Battle Creek or not.    http://www.thetimesherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012120203017

We are headed down a slippery flight path.  Fighting wars by remote control joystick brings deep untold sadness into the world.  A new technology arises--killing without remorse, automatic, devoid of recognition of any humanity in the enemy, reduced to a video image hundreds or thousands of miles away from the reality.  Modern warfare is on an accelerated path toward enlisting glorified video game machines to do our fighting, our surveillance, our intelligence.

The missile is aptly named "Hellfire"

The rationale for fighting by remote control is that it saves combatant lives.  It’s the same argument that justified the creation and dropping of the atomic bomb.  How much safer has that nuclear bomb technology made the world?  Millions of combatants & civilians have been killed under its pall.  Squabbling over who gets to have the ultimate killing machine was a driving force for Cold War carnage, led to our invasion of Iraq, and threatens renewed Middle East death totals in possible war with Iran.  Can robotic remote control killing machines do us any better?  Can these high flying avenging angels bring us any closer to the kingdom of God?

Satan's fall from heaven