THE BITTER FRUIT OF WAR – ALWAYS MORE WAR

Members of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and its allies at the entrance of a Syrian government {our enemy} air base in the northern province of Idlib after seizing it.  This day, an Al Qaeda group was acting as our friend {they fight against ISIS too}.  Photo 9-915 NYT

Tony Blair Says Iraq War Helped Give Rise to ISIS –NYT 10-26-15

New Documents Call The U.S. Drone Program Into Question - NPR 10-16-15

How Drones Create More Terrorists - Atlantic Monthly 8-13

Modern war is a whack-a-mole policy, always creating more enemies in its destruction, killing and displacing millions, only good for those in the business of war.  Our world leaders, strategists, and clergy are beginning to speak more opening on this, deeply criticizing our present course.

Below is something I wrote in the middle of the Iraq War.   May God grant us the wisdom to put away the double-edged sword of war.

October 14, 2077
Dear Editors of the Washington Post,

               

The article in your Oct 12^th paper, “9 Children Killed in U.S. Raid in Iraq,” is further evidence that our “surge” there is a surge in innocent death.  We again were trying to hit al Qaida, but 16 civilians perished with the suspected 15 insurgents. Just so many more bugs on the windshield of 4 ½ years into our Iraq war policy.

 

                How many innocents have been killed in this war of occupation?  We no longer count the bodies of any of the casualties of war except our own.  The officials in charge of this modern war must feel that would be counter-productive.  How much innocent death is acceptable?  A Dept. of Defense analyst who did targeting for early bombing campaigns in Iraq states in a public radio documentary worth listening to [esp. part 2] http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/05/300.html, that the allowable limit is 30 civilians for 1 bad guy. 

                Even with our precision munitions this war has killed innocents in the hundreds of thousands according to the only scientific studies that have been done to date (by John’s Hopkins University epidemiologists published in the Lancet medical journal, Oct 04, and Nov 06 issues).

                What happens when we as a people accept even one innocent death as inevitable to protect our way of life?  Ask any of our soldiers who’ve had to shoot or run over children with their convoy vehicles in Iraq, as part of their unwritten rules of engagement, to avoid roadside bombs at all costs. Violence always multiplies violence, both physically and spiritually.  Visible and hidden costs are enormous and exponential for both the victorious and the victim.

                The Pope of my Catholic church {the previous Pope Benedict XVI}, when still a cardinal on May 2, 2003, was asked about this Iraq War.  He said, “There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq…” Then commenting further on civilian casualties, “today we should be asking ourselves if it is licit to admit the very existence of a just war.”  (Zenet News Agency)

                To protect the innocents and respect all life, it will be necessary not only to end our Iraq war, but also to be leaders in a worldwide movement to banish all war.

              

              

Yours truly,

Michael McCarthy PA-C

Blue Water Pax Christi

2714 Stone St.

Port Huron, MI  48060

810 982 2870

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

October is Respect Life, and Pray the Rosary month
November brings All Saints, All Souls Days

References

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/tony-blair-says-iraq-war-helped-give-rise-to-isis.html?ref=world

http://www.npr.org/2015/10/16/449238106/new-documents-call-the-u-s-drone-program-into-question

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/how-drones-create-more-terrorists/278743/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/11/AR2007101100275_Comments.html

http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/05/300.html

More –

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/07/top-u-s-warfighting-experts-drones-increase-terrorism.html

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-10-11-base-attack_N.htm

ISRAEL, U.S., HOLY WARS, ASSASINATIONS

Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony on 13 September 1993.

On the brink of an opening doorway to peace in the Middle East, on Nov. 4, 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a former general and defense minister, was assassinated, by an ultra-conservative Israeli.   He’d been leading his country to sign the Oslo Peace Accords.  The hard-line leader Benjamin Netanyahu took over then, and the door remains slammed shut ever since.  I wouldn’t have remembered this except “This American Life” public radio program that was on yesterday [very worth the time listening to].   It outlines the thought of the assassins who show no remorse, and are counted as heroes by many Israelis who want no compromise with the Palestinians.  Still, in the recent past the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians favor the peace yet denied them.  While the Israeli government seems bent on a total-security-at-all-retaliatory-costs policy, based on an opportune assassination.

War between the members of these two sides now again escalates, a third Intifada being threatened as there’s no real movement for just solution to the land and power situation.  Knives and guns and army again into the fray.  The violence this times is taking five times more Palestinian lives than Israeli, which is much less than the often greater than ten to one ratio. 

The bodies of Noor Hassan, 30, and Rahaf Hassan, 2, at their funeral. They were killed by an Israeli retaliatory airstrike in Gaza. Credit Wissam Nassar for NYT

Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say -- 10-11-15 NYT

Israel is not alone in this protracted war post assassination situation.   JFK and the Unspeakable is an important book to read, as we approach Nov. 22, the date our President Kennedy was killed, just as he was moving to stop our involvement in Vietnam in 1963 [we didn’t leave until 1975].

 

The United States has consistently backed up those in Israel who want this take-no-prisoners approach to Israeli nation state power expansion.  But violence is never the solution, no matter which side you’re on, or which country/culture you come from—it only perpetuates more violence.

And witness the recent testimony of an Israeli citizen, victim of a mistaken vengeful attack by another Israeli.  Click on to access story & video--Jewish Man Stabbed by Fellow Israeli in Botched Revenge Attack Denounces Ethnic Violence - NYT 10-16-15

IN THE MIDDLE EAST / IN THE WEST

An eye for an eye

An ear for an ear

A mouth for a mouth

A toe for a toe

A tooth for a tooth

A finger for a finger

A brain for a brain

A heart for a heart

A bullet for a bullet

A soul for a soul

A Predator rocket and a bulldozer, for a suicide bomber.

The spirit of perpetual vengeant homicide and holocaust

                Thrives on the ongoing body count

Only to be extinguished by courageous acts

                Of forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the West we export the weapons, machines and money that fuel the conflagrations—

                Until the stench of human sacrifice tortures our nostrils

Reaches somehow beyond TV sets

And in the face of worldwide asphyxiation the only hope is

To renounce our addiction to the militarized oil economy

To convert our fear to trust, in being all God’s family.

                                                                                By Michael McCarthy    January 23, 2002

References 

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/570/the-night-in-question

Dan Ephron, the Jewish journalist interviewed in the NPR program above, has written a book on the assassination, reviewed here in the New Yorker Magazine.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/shot-in-the-heart

http://www.gallup.com/poll/161456/israelis-palestinians-pro-peace-process-not-hopeful.aspx

Israeli Retaliatory Strike in Gaza Kills Woman and Child, Palestinians Say -- 10-11-15 NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/world/middleeast/israeli-retaliatory-strike-in-gaza-kills-woman-and-child-palestinian-officials-say.html?ref=world

"So far this month, four Israelis have been killed in Palestinian gun and knife attacks in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and several more have been wounded. Israeli forces have fatally shot at least 20 Palestinians, many of them teenagers, according to data compiled by the Palestinian Health Ministry and Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been reported injured."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/16/world/middleeast/jewish-man-stabbed-by-fellow-israeli-in-botched-revenge-attack-denounces-ethnic-violence.html?ref=world

VIETNAMIZATION = IRAQIZATION = SYRIANIZATION = SERIOUS MISTAKES

Our war policies are plagued by the delusion that war can be fought by proxy, that we can embark on the path of endless warmaking elsewhere on the planet, in “defense of our interests” employing the locals to do the terrible dirty work.

This is the latest installment’s demise.

 Obama Administration Ends Effort to Train Syrians to Combat ISIS – 10-10-15 NYT

“But officials said they were trying to adapt in real time by seeking to identify the leaders of “capable, indigenous forces” in Syria who would sign a pledge to fight the Islamic State group, receive some instruction on human rights, review the law of armed conflict, and leave with communications gear and some help on how to call in airstrikes.”

There is some counter–effort to bring us back to the reality.  You can’t buy loyalty.

Billions From U.S. Fail to Sustain Foreign Forces – 10-4-15 NYT

“With alarming frequency in recent years, thousands of American-trained security forces in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia have collapsed, stalled or defected, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the United States on foreign military training programs, as well as a central tenet of the Obama administration’s approach to combating insurgencies.”

We have been repeating these disastrous mistakes year after year after year.

This is what I wrote about our efforts to export and market these pre-emptive wars over a decade ago.

Published in the Port Huron Times Herald, in edited abbreviated form, 11-20-03

We need to realize that the business of war is hell, and that to promote it, is to directly oppose God’s plan of mercy and forgiveness that we are all desperately in need of.

 

Artwork by        athy Brahney

References 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/world/middleeast/pentagon-program-islamic-state-syria.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/middleeast/uss-billions-fail-to-sustain-foreign-forces.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

COLLATERAL DAMAGE - LINKED HOME & ABROAD

The Doctors Without Borders hospital is seen after explosions in Kunduz.

CreditDoctors Without Borders, via Associated Press

Hospital personnel in Kabul moved an 8-year-old boy, wounded, along with his father, in an American airstrike in Kunduz on Saturday. CreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times

see Graph from NYT showing target pattern with apparent distance of Taliban from hospital 

These two stories recently superimpose on our newscasts.   They point to the only reliable and most predictable result of our protracted war-on-terror warfighting, and its culture—a collateral damage of death. 

“Airstrike Hits Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan”  NYT 10-4-15

“A crowded hospital in the embattled city of Kunduz that treats war wounded came under attack on Saturday and the American military acknowledged that it may have killed 19 patients, staff members and others at the facility while firing on insurgents nearby.”

 “The airstrike on Saturday set off fires that were still burning hours later, and a nurse who managed to climb out of the debris described seeing colleagues so badly burned that they had died.”

“Confusion, Horror and Heroism in Oregon Shooting”   NYT 10-4-15

“…Mr. Harper-Mercer [the killer] was deeply involved with firearms and had a small armory during his Snyder Hall rampage: body armor, five handguns, a semiautomatic rifle and several magazines of ammunition. [later reported as owning 14 guns, and also for years, always wore combat boots and green army pants]

A makeshift memorial near the road leading to Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore.CreditJohn Locher/Associated Press

We have become slaves to our guns.  We debase ourselves in senseless routine violence because of insane desire to protect ourselves at all costs, by any means necessary.  Yet, as in Jesus’ parable of the farmer so pleased with brand new barns for his hoarded grain, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.” Luke 12:13-21

We are all destined to die—why in a hail of bullets of our hyper-secure society’s own making?  And this while many of us believe that we have been promised new life beyond this world’s death, if we only follow Jesus’ way—the way of unconditional mercy and nonviolent love.

References

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/world/asia/afghanistan-bombing-hospital-doctors-without-borders-kunduz.html?src=me&_r=0

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/us/confusion-horror-and-heroism-in-oregon-shooting.html

Oregon Gunman’s Father Dismayed by Lack of Gun Legislation - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/us/death-of-gunman-in-oregon-college-shootings-is-ruled-suicide.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Oregon Killer Described as Man of Few Words, Except on Topic of Guns – The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/us/chris-harper-mercer-umpqua-community-college-shooting.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

THE NEWS -- FROM THE POLITICS OF DIVERSION, TO FAITHFUL COMMITMENT

We are browbeat by a plethora of entertainments.  It hard to discern any facts, much less give them their structures, from the mountains of scintillating details.  How to discern truth, when diversion is the order of each and every newsday.

      One of many bomb ravaged neighborhoods in Damascus, Syria

Photo shown round the world this Sept. -- Body of refugee 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi

Submerged below dramatic tragic images that do sometimes appear [as with the current flood of refugees] is just the plain banality of war—its pain, sufferings, destruction, with no higher purpose other than perhaps the greed for oil and power.  Our conflicts in the Middle East, are not in defense of democracies; these nations don’t exist as democracies.  In this combative process, our own democracy is under threat of becoming a plutocracy, run by rich military industrialists.  This all to the delight of the evil one who roams about all nations and religions seeking the ruination of souls.

  

War is the brainstorm from Hell, masking rotten pride with glory.  Where did all these migrants, refugees come from, unprecedented since the worldwide disaster of WWII?  From our fears, a multiplicity of savage unnecessary wars propagated out of the toppling of our World Trade Towers.  How should we respond to this multitude, 14 million plus, displaced by these wars and their decimating economic effects?

he Gospel of Luke 16, the story of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar at his gate, has the crucial answer.  We must recognize them, welcome them, and try to meet their needs.  We must beware of this tendency to build walls to keep them out, and the gates we won’t open, or we shall march powerfully into eternity yearning for a drop of healing water to touch our own tired tongues, to moisten our parched souls—finding ourselves far across a chasm from the love of God.

Syria is at present the source of most of the world’s refugees.  A recent report from FAIR indicates how the U.S. has intervened there, only helping to further provoke a disastrous civil war.  Please take time to read this informative review.  http://fair.org/home/down-the-memory-hole-nyt-erases-cias-efforts-to-overthrow-syrias-government/

  

We have the words of St. James’ epistle [I’ve reversed paragraph order] from yesterday’s Sunday service, for further contemplation.   JAS 3:16—4:3

Where do the wars

and where do the conflicts among you come from?

Is it not from your passions

that make war within your members?

You covet but do not possess.

You kill and envy but you cannot obtain;

you fight and wage war.

You do not possess because you do not ask.

You ask but do not receive,

because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

Beloved:

Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist,

there is disorder and every foul practice.

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure,

then peaceable, gentle, compliant,

full of mercy and good fruits,

without inconstancy or insincerity.

And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace

for those who cultivate peace.

This is today!  That more may celebrate, let us pray.

 http://www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/

 We welcome the words of Pope Francis as he comes to visit the USA tomorrow.

9-11, THE TIDAL WAVE OF VIOLENCE

As we drift pass another week in which we commemorate the tragedy of our 3000 plus citizens who died Sept. 11, 2001, now 14 years ago, is it possible we can begin to examine more deeply why that happened, and awaken to the fact that more than a million, mostly Muslims, have met a war-on-terror death since?  Were we just asleep at the wheel when mostly Saudi teams [our best Arab-state friends] commandeered four super-jets to point them at four of the most important buildings in America?  Why then, did we shift so swiftly from a hasty Afghanistan invasion, to a massive shock and awe attack on Iraq, which had nothing at all to do with wounding us on 9-11?  It’s impossible for me to believe as some do, that our government planned to kill its own people, but the manipulation of these events has had terrible effects.

“CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.”  Sept 4, 2002

The answers to these questions are crucial to our future as a nation, yet will be difficult, and slow in coming.  But already the consequences of our war-on-terror-anywhere response to 9-11, are unrelenting and tragic.  Together with the power elites committed to warfare in many countries and factions [Russia, China, France, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, England...to name a few] we are helping plunge the world into ever widening violent disasters:  the first one post 9-11 = Afghanistan; then Iraq, then Libya, then Syria, then Ukraine, now Yemen [with Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria as constant sad baselines].   None of these are even close to peaceful resolution, but instead pervasive magnets for weapons and warriors, provided by almost every nation with a robust military industry, ours being the most powerful.

CBS News report Jan 29, 2002

As in the Port Huron Times Herald - Sept. 8, 2015

 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, one of the thousands that did not make it

Where do all of these waves of refugees come from?  Never since the cataclysm of WWII have so many been swept away homeless.  They come from the all these wars and destroyed economies we have been intimately involved in.   I do hope that when Pope Francis comes to visit soon, that he calls on our government and the faithful, as he has towards Europe, to open our hearts and borders to these millions who’ve lost their homes to war.   May we be called to heed the warning of Luke’s gospel, chapter 16, {the rich man and Lazarus at his gate} and tear down our walls, and gates – beating our swords into plowshares so all may have good work and be fed.

References

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-refugee-crisis-made-in-america/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/07/world/europe/pope-calls-on-europeans-to-house-refugees.html?ref=world&_r=0

“Human rights groups say that, for the foreseeable future, there is every reason to expect migrants from Syria and other countries in crisis to descend on Europe in ever greater numbers. In Syria alone, 11 million people have been displaced by war, seven million within the country’s borders and four million outside, mostly to Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.”

“Critics Push U.S. to Help Europe by Taking More Refugees”

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/09/06/world/middleeast/06reuters-europe-migrants-usa.html?ref=world

http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-war-on-terror-has-killed-4-million-muslims-or-more-do-the-math/5467349

CESAR CHAVEZ--LABOR DAY SHOULD BE A DAY OF GREAT HOPE FOR OUR COLLECTIVE FUTURE

March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993

!Que viva la soledaridad!  !Long live our interconnectedness!  !Gracias a Dios!  Thank you Cesar Chavez for your years of labor to help the struggle for farm workers to be recognized as full members of society.   May we acknowledge many of our migrant workers as having been here long before there was a USA.  And may we welcome the most recent immigrants and refugees caused by our many years of rampant wars that have terrorized other nations’ shores.

Thus it began and so continues. -- After our CIA ups the ante to weaponize Arab Spring.  Syrian refugees fleeing the violence in their country make their way to a refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq July 31, 2012   

QUOTES OF CESAR CHAVEZ

"Do not romanticize the poor...We are all people, human beings subject to the same temptations and faults as all others. Our poverty damages our dignity."

"Our very lives are dependent, for sustenance, on the sweat and sacrifice of the campesinos. Children of farm workers should be as proud of their parents' professions as other children are of theirs."

"People who have lost their hunger for justice are not ultimately powerful. They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing. Such sick people should not frighten or discourage us. They should be prayed for along with the sick people who are in the hospital. "The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature."

"The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating."

"The non-violent technique does not depend for its success on the goodwill of the oppressor, but rather on the unfailing assistance of God.

"It is not good enough to know why we are oppressed and by whom. We must join the struggle for what is right and just. Jesus does not promise that it will be an easy way to live life and His own life certainly points in a hard direction; but it does promise that we will be "satisfied" (not stuffed; but satisfied). He promises that by giving life we will find life - full, meaningful life as God meant it."

hese are some of the words of the nonviolent organizer of the United Farm Workers Union--Cesar Chavez.  His vision and hard work brought dignity and justice to the people of La Raza and latinos everywhere.   He fasted forty days two times as a witness to opponents, and to bring spiritual strength to the people of his movement.  He died alone in one of the farm houses he’d grown up in, after having a hard day in court with agribusiness lawyers who were trying to foreclose that small piece of property left to his family.



References
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/world/middleeast/arms-airlift-to-syrian-rebels-expands-with-cia-aid.html
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzbL3X68TEI

Illumination by Kathy Brahney