Monthly Archive for November, 2009

Humans and their Needs

Published on November 27, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

yourNeedsWhat do you need most in your life? What would you do to make sure that need is met? Would you con­tinue to go after your need even if you thought it might cause conflict?

Recently, I’ve been think­ing about human needs. In my edu­ca­tion class, we recalled Maslow’s hier­ar­chy of needs, which sug­gests that human’s require cer­tain needs met before oth­ers. For exam­ple, basic phys­i­cal needs such as food and safety come before needs esteem and self-actualization. In edu­ca­tional set­tings, this the­ory often sup­ports pro­grams such as pro­vid­ing break­fast at school for chil­dren to meet basic needs.

While these pro­grams may be help­ful, my Con­flict Analy­sis class dis­cussed an alter­na­tive per­spec­tive which divides needs into mate­r­ial, social, and cul­tural cat­e­gories. In actu­al­ity, basic human needs do not lie at the root of most con­flicts, but rather issues of iden­tity and secu­rity. Peo­ple may even give up basic needs in order to achieve a sense of secu­rity or to main­tain their cul­tural identity.

I won­der about human needs as I see the work of the church. Out of a desire to fol­low Jesus’ teach­ings of car­ing for neigh­bours, it seems the church has been quick to respond to phys­i­cal and basic needs, such as send­ing aid and engag­ing in devel­op­ment work. More dif­fi­cult, though, is response to needs of iden­tity and secu­rity. Car­ing for our neigh­bours in rela­tion to these needs more closely con­nects with active peacebuilding.

Next time a con­flict arises, I’ll  try think­ing about needs. My needs, oth­ers’ needs — how our needs can con­nect. Per­haps we can find ways of car­ing for one another even when our inter­ests conflict.

Read On

Published on November 27, 2009 by David Driedger. Closed Tags: .

I have begun read­ing Fer­nando Pessoa’s The Book of Dis­quiet. From the first pages of this journal-like ‘fact­less auto­bi­og­ra­phy’ some­thing was stirred in me. Sud­denly the sim­ple and hereti­cal phrase emerged from within me claim­ing, “This book will be my sal­va­tion.” I have never had that sen­sa­tion before in read­ing. I began to feel like the text itself, with or with­out my per­mis­sion, was begin­ning to search me. It was begin­ning to read me aloud back to me. The text was keep­ing in step with me. As I thought it too was think­ing. As I thought it was already think­ing ahead of me. At every pos­si­ble turn it opened paths that I did not know existed. And then it became clearer. I can­not antic­i­pate its goal, its des­ti­na­tion, and so I must humbly fol­low it. So I must decide if its is a sav­iour or a false mes­siah. I can­not know this ahead of time because I can­not assume to know where I will end up if I con­tinue to fol­low. As of now I am read­ing in faith. But then I ask myself what this means for the church, for my faith in God. Have I not already deter­mined the end of my faith, its goal and des­ti­na­tion? Is not the church just a well-rehearsed con­struct that offers no real sur­prise or alter­na­tive? Could this text actu­ally demand more faith than my church? For­give my heresy for the moment. And as though my tex­tual com­pan­ion was already antic­i­pat­ing all this I read the sim­ple and rev­e­la­tory phrase, “I read and am lib­er­ated.” I have already found myself in the text. The text can allow me to be more of myself than I am. I read on … for who I can still become? The author makes no claims as a mes­siah in fact I found out that this man­u­script was found in a trunk after his death. The text is mak­ing no claims to power or con­trol. And still I read on and so I read the cry, “Do my words ring in any­one else’s soul? Does any­one hear them besides me?” For­give my heresy but tonight … I will read on.

CORRUPTION MEDICINE

Published on November 26, 2009 by WillowMan. Closed Tags: , , , .


Cor­rup­tion is in the news again always with tough talk about what the next phase of US and Cana­dian deploy­ment in Afghanistan will look like.  As a young vol­un­teer in Viet Nam in the early 1960s I was assigned to work with a USAID (United States Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment) spon­sored pro­gram called ham­let edu­ca­tion.  At the time I thought that edu­ca­tion was always good and it never occurred to me that I might be part of a larger plan to entice the Viet­namese gov­ern­ment to embrace the U. S. Gov­ern­ment agenda.  As I got into my work I was warned of cor­rup­tion.  Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment advi­sors told me that money for the pro­gram was lifted all along the way from Saigon min­istry peo­ple, through province lead­ers and on down to dis­trict gov­ern­ments that admin­is­tered the dis­burse­ment of money. I was never told what to do about it.  I had not enrolled in a class that might have been called His­tory of Cor­rup­tion in the West­ern World although given the soiled his­tory of US inter­ven­tion in so many places over the last 40 years it should have been a required course.

At the local level where I worked, the dis­trict chiefs con­tracted to have the schools built.  Viet­namese and Amer­i­cans warned me that the con­trac­tors would cut cor­ners by using insuf­fi­cient amounts of cement and lower qual­ity con­struc­tion mate­ri­als.  Accord­ing to these same peo­ple con­trac­tors were required to kick back a cer­tain per­cent­age to the dis­trict chief.  It took for­ever for the paper­work and the money to work its way through the sys­tem down to the ham­lets.  So Amer­i­can advi­sors along the way were encour­aged to pres­sure, nice talk, and occa­sion­ally throw a fit to get ham­let edu­ca­tion and all the other counter insur­gency pro­grams mov­ing.  Even­tu­ally I fig­ured out that I was the final link in that pres­sure process.

Dis­trict chiefs told me that the blame for the slow pace of imple­men­ta­tion order was due to the Viet Cong, or the gen­eral slow­ness of the Viet­namese way.  Even­tu­ally schools were built, ded­i­cated and opened.  There were plenty of chil­dren.  Occa­sion­ally when I vis­ited schools there was pro­pa­ganda on the school walls con­demn­ing Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ists.   I learned that when those signs appeared the schools usu­ally closed shortly there­after and if I went to those vil­lages peo­ple con­tin­ued to be polite and there was still tea to drink but the vil­lagers didn’t want to talk about the school.

As the mil­i­tary build up pro­ceeded I noticed that the US mil­i­tary civic action peo­ple took great inter­est in schools, loved to paint schools, and give sup­port to projects.  Like me they also believed that schools would bring a bet­ter future   As secu­rity broke down such projects lost their lus­ter.  But many of the pro­grams con­tin­ued to be car­ried on the Saigon gov­ern­ment books and some­thing called cor­rup­tion grew as the dis­tance from money to effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion became more remote, often impos­si­ble, due to war.  This led to more accu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and an influx of more Amer­i­can advi­sors always with their gen­er­ous hard­ship pay.  Like me they arrived gen­er­ally under­qual­i­fied in the local arts of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cul­ture and cor­rup­tion.   Back in the White House sit­u­a­tion room war coun­cils were a weekly affair.

Pres­i­dent Obama has promised to announce his Afghanistan deci­sion next week in time for Christ­mas.  West Point, his choice of loca­tion does not sug­gest to me that he or his advi­sors have learned what I thought I learned in Viet Nam about how war and cor­rup­tion embrace each other usu­ally with the lan­guage of eco­nomic improve­ment and devel­op­ment for the peo­ple.   I can hear the gen­er­als and other senior advi­sors now in the sit­u­a­tion room fine tune the use of new mir­a­cle weapons and at the same time inte­grat­ing Canada, NATO and who­ever else into the strat­egy of tar­get­ing the foe.  And then some highly medaled gen­eral or civil­ian secu­rity advi­sor will ask about how the counter insur­gency plans are com­ing along. Some­body pon­tif­i­cates about “the peo­ple” and some­one else describes a con­ver­sa­tion they had in Afghanistan recently. Maybe there is a silence in the room and then some­one from USAID, the civil­ian counter insur­gency agency, reports on how many new peo­ple have been sent in to advise and track roads, schools and other devel­op­ment work.  Over­all the mood is som­bre and no one wants to say the strat­egy won’t work.  Some­one asks about nego­ti­a­tions.   But that dis­cus­sion doesn’t seem to go any­where either.  One of the ele­phants in the room reminds the solemn gath­er­ing how embar­rass­ing it is to give money to a gov­ern­ment that is cor­rupt so some­one sug­gests that we have to get the press to cover a suc­cess story.

Cor­rup­tion usu­ally gets worse in war because people’s sur­vival instinct tell them to think short term and clutch at every oppor­tu­nity for golden nuggets, money, or any­thing that has value and can be traded.  I doubt that the $500 dol­lar per day civil­ian advi­sors will stamp out sur­vival cor­rup­tion.  I have not heard evi­dence that these pricy civil­ians are any more pre­pared with com­mu­ni­ca­tion, cul­ture and cor­rup­tion med­i­cine than I was 45 years ago.  An Afghan’s monthly salary is less than half the amount a U. S. aid worker earns each day.  It costs about $500,000 per year to put these pricy civil­ian advi­sors and cor­rup­tion doc­tors in the field, includ­ing the cost of their hous­ing, trans­port, and secu­rity (usu­ally pro­vided by even higher paid con­trac­tors).  A sol­dier costs the Amer­i­can peo­ple about one mil­lion dol­lars per year.

But the sus­pen­sion of legal and moral stric­tures so evi­dent in con­di­tions of war has its first cousins in New York and Wash­ing­ton where there isn’t a war.  We don’t use the word cor­rup­tion unless it’s a Ponzi scheme.  By keep­ing the bound­aries of the law as wide as pos­si­ble in order to encour­age free enter­prise our rule of law here is respected even though peo­ple, cor­po­ra­tions and syn­di­cates plun­der one another and feed on those who are not orga­nized to escape the insa­tiable grasp for more money.  It is this kind of con­di­tion that incensed the Old Tes­ta­ment prophets when they warned Israel about the fate that awaits the greedy nation.  Cor­rup­tion doc­tors are needed right here in North Amer­ica, not the $500 a day kind that are sent to Afghanistan but the kind who have demon­strated with a life of bold words, or pru­dent action that the future is worth pro­tect­ing.  Preach­ers and mod­ern day prophets whose thought and wis­dom have tasted from the well of sus­tain­able econ­omy can help.  Lis­ten­ers and read­ers should, how­ever, beware of the false gospel of per­pet­ual pros­per­ity cel­e­brated in so many reli­gious and eco­nomic holy places like some mega churches and Wall Street.

In Pak­istan, Iraq and Afghanistan the word cor­rup­tion is used when sharply dressed for­eign advi­sors, who should know bet­ter, need some­one to blame.   Let’s face it, cor­rup­tion is uni­ver­sal.  Pub­lius Cor­nelius Tac­i­tus, roman sen­a­tor, and his­to­rian who pros­e­cuted a pro­con­sul of Africa on cor­rup­tion in the first cen­tury said “The more cor­rupt the state, the more laws.” We still have a habit of pass­ing more laws to build a moat around cor­rup­tion and deal with lapses in moral judgement.

The terms of the debate on Afghanistan are in need of change from cor­rup­tion and blam­ing to respect and hon­est talk.  For­eign power and might will not change the out­come in Afghanistan although gen­er­ous doses of explo­sives from out­side will cer­tainly lengthen the war.  The chal­lenge of Amer­i­can pow­er­less­ness in Afghanistan now faces Pres­i­dent Obama and his advi­sors. If he reaches back to his time as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer he will get some hints of how to address the nation and the world when faced with pow­er­less­ness. Com­mu­nity orga­niz­ers don’t take on cam­paigns that are not good for the com­mu­nity.  A healthy cam­paign reaches out with the pos­si­bil­ity of real gain for all the participants

For­eign fight­ers in Afghanistan from the Mus­lim or the Chris­t­ian world  can ill afford to pay for this war.  This chap­ter of war­fare can be closed by load­ing up the trains, trucks, and air planes with all exist­ing and spent war equip­ment.  By bring­ing instru­ments of war past and present, mines, spent tanks, every­thing, home for recy­cling it will not be used by any­one in Afghanistan or else­where to extend anyone’s con­flict.  Then the world can turn its atten­tion to bind­ing up the wounds from bro­ken rela­tion­ships, the tan­gle of ter­ror­ism, and build­ing a world that is incorruptible.

Giving Thanks?

Published on November 24, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

thanksgiving

This week the U.S. cel­e­brates thanks­giv­ing . For the first time, I real­ized just how big this hol­i­day has become, and the inter­est­ing, and some­times con­fus­ing, con­nec­tions to the Christ­mas “hol­i­day” sea­son (which is which “holiday”?).

At the uni­ver­sity, staff and local stu­dents made sure that all inter­na­tional stu­dents received an invi­ta­tion to spend the hol­i­days with a fam­ily. A kind ges­ture and a cross-cultural expe­ri­ence. Even as a Cana­dian, I find the cul­tural dif­fer­ences fas­ci­nat­ing while I enjoy the famil­iar stuff­ing and cran­berry sauce.

After read­ing an arti­cle shared by a U.S. Amer­i­can class­mate, though, I dis­cov­ered that one of the rea­sons the pil­grims were giv­ing thanks to God was for the defeat of the Native Amer­i­cans who had been “threat­en­ing” the set­tlers. George Wash­ing­ton made it a hol­i­day in mem­ory of the early set­tlers and it has only got­ten big­ger since.

I won­der about this from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. While the peo­ple at the time thought that this was God’s pro­vi­sion for them, the mass geno­cide of a peo­ple is not really some­thing I want to cel­e­brate. I doubt too, that many peo­ple would be so enthu­si­as­tic to read Washington’s procla­ma­tion if they remem­bered the con­text in which it was created.

While I want to respect the cul­ture and tra­di­tions of the place that I am in, I also feel a desire to call atten­tion to the dark side of the turkey holiday’s his­tory, just as I explore the his­to­ries of Canada (thanks­giv­ing became a hol­i­day due to the lob­by­ing of Protes­tant clergy in Ontario?). How to do this in a spirit of unity, sen­si­tiv­ity and curi­ousity, rather than judg­ment or crit­i­cism, is my home­work for the break and beyond.

Butter-Side Up

Published on November 24, 2009 by Paul Loewen. 1 Comment

My toast fell but­ter side up today. I watched it slip off my plate and head towards the ground. Along the way it tum­bled off the counter, bounced on the floor, and landed butter-side up. Don’t they say toast always falls butter-side down? At least, that’s how the expres­sion usu­ally goes. It’s called Murphy’s Law, and it goes some­thing like this:

Any­thing that can go wrong will go wrong.

This usu­ally man­i­fests itself in many ways, but some of the most notice­able are:

  1. You’re dri­ving in traf­fic, and the other lane is mov­ing faster. You switch lanes. Now your lane is going slower.
  2. You choose the slow­est lineup at the gro­cery store.
  3. Your toast falls butter-side down.
  4. It rains on church pic­nic day.
  5. Traf­fic is hor­ri­ble the morn­ing you’re 5 min­utes late.
  6. You get a flat tire just after the car shop closes.
  7. You drop your cell phone and it falls right between the crack of the ele­va­tor and the hall­way floor (I know some­one this hap­pened to).
  8. Your email stops work­ing right when you need it most.
  9. The light turns red just before you get there.

Now, in order for a law to truly be a law, it can­not be dis­proven. In order for it to be dis­proven, only one exam­ple where it isn’t true must exist. Today, that hap­pened for me. The toast fell butter-side up. Murphy’s Law obvi­ously isn’t true, but it points out some­thing inter­est­ing: we don’t notice all the good things in life. The thing I notice about Murphy’s Law is that it takes record of all the things that go wrong, and assumes that the uni­verse is out to get us. On the other hand, when things are going well (ie the toast stays on the plate, our car tire is pumped to per­fec­tion, our lane in traf­fic jumps ahead, etc.) we:

  1. don’t real­ize it
  2. assume it’s because we’re so amazing
  3. smile about it and for­get it

What Murphy’s law points out is not that the uni­verse is out to get us, it points out that we’re often quite neg­a­tive. It’s like the audio/visual team at your church: when they do their job, no one notices. The minute there’s a squeal over the speak­ers, everyone’s head turns.

Let’s try to cel­e­brate the ‘glitch-free’ moments of life instead of moan­ing over the butter-side down moments.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

A Long Autumn Joy

Published on November 20, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

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Autumn con­tin­ues in Har­rison­burg, with the trees still leisurely loos­ing their leaves.

Although many have let go and spread bare branches to the sky, some have waited until the last moment to blaze into fiery colour, draw all atten­tion toward the mass of red, orange, pur­ple and yel­low before releas­ing the flakes of gold to float away in the cool­ing fall air.

Ah, praise to the Creator.

Don’t call us …

Published on November 20, 2009 by Will Loewen. Closed

We’ve looked every­where.  There is no sign of our cord­less phone any­where in our apart­ment.  We only had the one, and the bat­tery was finicky to begin with, so we sus­pect it ran out of power shortly after it was mis­placed.  The rea­son it went unno­ticed for so long is because we used our cell phone much more reg­u­larly, and by the time we thought to call the phone to find it, the bat­tery was already dead.

We’ve retraced our steps to the best of our mem­ory dur­ing the few days when it must have gone miss­ing, but still there is no sign of it.  That has led us to nar­row our list of pos­si­ble cul­prits to one: our one year old daugh­ter.  Her love of tech­ni­cal devices gives her a motive and her new­found walk­ing abil­ity gives her oppor­tu­nity to have car­ried out this offense.  But the most impor­tant step in mak­ing her the prime can­di­date is hav­ing first elim­i­nated our­selves, her parents.

Of course there is the obvi­ous incon­ve­nience of not hav­ing a phone, but that is tem­pered by the fact that we own and pre­fer to use our cell phone.  Any­one who knows to call our land line also knows our cell phone num­ber, and if they don’t, they are prob­a­bly try­ing to sell us some­thing any­way.  It also offends my Men­non­ite sense of eco­nom­ics that I am pay­ing the phone bill to main­tain our con­nec­tion despite not hav­ing the phone, but our inter­net arrives through the same ser­vice provider, so the cost prob­a­bly isn’t that great.  Even­tu­ally we may have to deal with the pos­si­bil­ity of replac­ing it, but for now the great­est incon­ve­nience at this point is the nag­ging pos­si­bil­ity that it is  out of my own idiocy that it is miss­ing in the first place.

I’m a bit of an opti­mist.  I have a feel­ing we’ll find it some­time soon, if only acci­den­tally.  Assum­ing we find the phone, the worst case sce­nario is that we find it a while from now and it’s in a place that makes it obvi­ous that I put it there.  Var­i­ous fac­tors play in to mak­ing some kind of best case sce­nario.  If I find it tomor­row morn­ing, that’d be great.  If I find it lay­ing next to a few other items I’ve lost over the past few months, that’d be nice too.  For a while I was think­ing that the best case sce­nario might be if some­one would come to the door and give us the phone and say that they inad­ver­tently took it dur­ing a recent visit.  Then I thought an even bet­ter sce­nario would be if I don’t find the phone, but a note scrib­bled in crayon that says, “You shall find your phone when you solve these rid­dles three.”  It would make not hav­ing the phone much eas­ier to take if it meant that it was all a trick being played on us by our prodigy of a daughter.

I can’t be the only one with this par­tic­u­lar kind of neu­ro­sis.  When faced with a dif­fi­cult and poten­tially embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tion, I hold on up to the last pos­si­ble moment to the hope that some­thing will be uncov­ered that will reveal me as innocent.

On a broader scale, we often seek redemp­tion when these sit­u­a­tions come upon us.  This kind of redemp­tion hap­pens in var­i­ous ways.  Maybe some sci­en­tist will dis­cover evi­dence that our recur­ring char­ac­ter flaw is some­how a prod­uct of our evo­lu­tion­ary past and so it’s quite nat­ural.  We might see a guest on Dr. Phil who over­came a sim­i­lar prob­lem to ours and so we have hope.  Or worse, we’ll see a guest on Oprah who used your same prob­lem to become a huge suc­cess story.

If we just wait long enough, the thing that’s wrong with us might just be re-interpreted as a strength and we will be vin­di­cated.  Whereas in the past, peo­ple would try to hide their flaws, today we are encour­aged to take own­er­ship of them, and some­how that way we can over­come them or use them to our ben­e­fit.  We are told to believe that really there is noth­ing wrong with any of us.  We are all spe­cial and valu­able etc.

While I often crave the com­fort that gives, I fall back on Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy which pro­vides much more com­fort to me in the long term.  Yes, I am spe­cial in God’s eyes and part of his won­der­ful cre­ation, but as a human, I am fun­da­men­tally flawed.  We as a church make it a require­ment that our mem­bers accept and admit that we are flawed and then we work it out together.

The for­mula makes it sound eas­ier than it really is, but I just wish find­ing our phone were that formulaic.

Honkin’ Drivers

Published on November 18, 2009 by Paul Loewen. Closed

A horn is a quick action — some­thing that just becomes a reac­tion for some peo­ple. I tend to not use the horn enough. When some­one nearly hits me because of some­thing dumb or igno­rant, a quick honk on the horn can pre­vent an acci­dent or warn them to be more care­ful next time. Sev­eral quick honks can be a cheery “hello” to a friend, but we all know the pro­longed horn is not friendly. It seems impos­si­ble to drive with­out hear­ing a horn. I once read, “You know our soci­ety is tech­no­log­i­cally con­nected when the acti­va­tion of a green light in front of our car imme­di­ately acti­vates the horn of the car behind us.”

Peo­ple, all peo­ple, seem to get angrier the minute they step behind the wheel of a vehi­cle. For some rea­son we all get in a rush when we’re behind the wheel — and we feel like mov­ing out of the way for a cyclist, allow­ing a pedes­trian to cross, or slow­ing down at a yel­low light will dras­ti­cally alter the course of our life.

Peo­ple say things in the cab of their vehi­cle that they would never say to peo­ple face-to-face.

As a cyclist, I’ve been at the receiv­ing end of some unde­served honks. I don’t know what it is about being in a car, but peo­ple seem to sud­denly think the world is their oys­ter and every­one else is in their way. They seem to think that only they matter.

But the biggest thing is that cars, and horns, reveal what peo­ple often are: cow­ards. I’m on a 25-lb piece of metal, my only pro­tec­tion being a hel­met. The per­son honk­ing the horn is in a 2000-lb con­trap­tion sur­rounded by metal and glass, utterly pro­tected from any­thing I could do to them. Peo­ple seem to get too con­fi­dent in their vehicles.

Nearly hit by an eldery man, we were a lit­tle shooken up sev­eral weeks ago. A car roared by, yelling at us in anger. While we weren’t inno­cent in the sit­u­a­tion, nei­ther was the man who ran the stop sign. When it comes down to it, there’s noth­ing more cow­ardly than yelling out the car win­dow, honk­ing, then roar­ing away with 200 horse­power under the gas pedal. If he really wants to change the way I bike, I’d pre­fer him to stop, get out and explain to me the error of my ways, thank me for my time, then leave.

As a dri­ver and a cyclist, I cer­tainly think twice before I let anger bub­ble to the sur­face. Would I say it if I wasn’t in a pro­tected vehi­cle, with the ben­e­fit of a gas pedal to pro­tect me from any back­lash? If I wouldn’t say it face-to-face, I shouldn’t say it window-to-face, or even inside my own vehi­cle. Anger needs to be con­trolled, even in a car.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

Snowflakes

Published on November 10, 2009 by Paul Loewen. Closed

A grandma, mother, and young girl are on the side­walk. Which one is stick­ing out their tongue to catch the falling snowflakes?

No, this isn’t an IQ test or rid­dle. Just a sim­ple ques­tion. Have your answer yet?

Just a sim­ple ques­tion that made me real­ize that we don’t take the sim­ple won­ders of life with the pure joy that kids do — some­how we’ve been mud­dled through the years and turned into medi­oc­rity. Don’t believe me? How often do you stop to splash in a pud­dle? To slide on your feet across the frozen ditch — flirt­ing with the line where you know it’ll crack and your foot will get soaked? When was the last time you floored the gas on your car for 0–50, just to feel the accel­er­a­tion? When was the last time you stopped and watched a sun­rise? When was the last time you were walk­ing and broke into skip­ping just because you could?

There’s noth­ing quite like it.

When was the last time you ran and slid on your feet on ice? When was the last time you careened down a hill on a tobog­gan? When was the last time you felt the cold bite your cheeks, turn them rosy, and let a smile rip across your face as you thought, I’m alive!?

No, some­how the years have made us find snow an annoy­ance, the gas pedal a con­ve­nience, the ice on the pud­dle an obsta­cle, the sun­rise a moment to pull down the car visor, the cold a time to bun­dle, the hill some­thing to be avoided — aw, there goes all the fun in life.

Let’s become like chil­dren again.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

Fort Hood Shootings: Tragedy Waiting to Happen

Published on November 9, 2009 by WillowMan. Closed Tags: , , , .

Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter was caught in an impos­si­ble matrix of shame.  As a Mus­lim he was asked to sup­port the killing of his fel­low reli­gion­ists.  Islam for­bids the killing of other Mus­lims.  As a mil­i­tary man he was belit­tled and per­haps harassed for his grow­ing Mus­lim con­vic­tions.  Good sol­diers do not iden­tify with the enemy.  Every day as a coun­selor and psy­chi­a­trist he was reminded of his impos­si­ble dilemma as he lis­tened to the dread­ful sto­ries of bro­ken sol­diers caught in the vise of post trau­matic stress  dis­or­der (PTSD).  Their sto­ries of fatal­ism, guilt, sui­cide and other life chang­ing expe­ri­ence in com­bat killing reminded him that he was a part of the sys­tem that kills other Mus­lims. He was caught between two sham­ing sys­tems and there was no place to turn for help.

The mil­i­tary does not allow for selec­tive con­sci­en­tious objec­tion. Sol­diers, includ­ing offi­cers of all reli­gious and sec­u­lar per­sua­sions who try to extri­cate them­selves from pre­vi­ous mil­i­tary com­mit­ments are belit­tled.  And the bureau­cratic path leads through months and even years of lonely and tor­tured hear­ings, appeals, reviews and rejec­tions. Some go absent with­out leave (AWOL) only to grow exhausted over time with their semi under­ground life and loss of hope for a nor­mal life. They may turn them­selves in or even join the ranks of the home­less.  In pre­vi­ous wars they were wel­comed in coun­tries like Canada where they took up new lives.  Canada is no longer wel­com­ing to objectors.

Objec­tors who are in uni­form tend to act out of the deep­est instincts of con­science that is avail­able to them, Chris­t­ian, Mus­lim, Jew­ish, Bud­dhist, or human­ist.  Major Nader Hasan is one in a long line of sol­diers whose deep inner con­vic­tion led them to refuse to coop­er­ate.  He did it in a more destruc­tive and dra­matic form.  If you want to meet other objec­tors you can visit Under the Hood Café out­side of Fort Hood where G Is with objec­tions to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan con­gre­gate.  I met six of them in a recent trip to Austin.  All of them described thoughts of sui­cide, anguish over their desire to get their lives back, frus­tra­tion at the way the mil­i­tary refused to believe them when they objected, and coun­selling ses­sions with peo­ple like Major Hasan that helped lit­tle.   In our con­ver­sa­tions the group of objec­tors thought­fully con­tem­plated var­i­ous ver­sions of objec­tion, selec­tive con­sci­en­tious objec­tion (not rec­og­nized by the mil­i­tary), com­plete paci­fism (rec­og­nized by the mil­i­tary) or con­tin­u­ing to run.   How­ever in the con­fu­sion of their stress, I was not sure if one or more of them could turn to vio­lence directed at their fam­i­lies or even aimed at the military.

Like Major Hasan the non Mus­lim objec­tors were peo­ple who believed what the mil­i­tary recruiters who are required to meet quota, told them.  They thought they would get money for advanced edu­ca­tion.  They believed that they were going to fight and kill per­sons who may ter­ror­ize Amer­ica.  They believed what they would do was right, good, hon­ourable and even heroic.   The real­ity and inno­cence of the peo­ple they have now killed over­whelms them.  Their con­sciences were stirred by a more deeply rooted uni­ver­sal respect for human life. When they acted on their con­science it was inter­preted as dis­loy­alty to the mil­i­tary and to their nation and their lives are not cel­e­brated like the media rev­er­ently acknowl­edges those who die in America’s wars.

Despite the macho cul­tures from which these non Mus­lim sol­diers came their bod­ies and minds are now closed down to more war. For the young sol­diers I met in Austin TX, mas­sive killings by air, sea and land were enthu­si­as­ti­cally approved and roundly sup­ported by their supe­ri­ors and polit­i­cal lead­ers.  Each sol­dier I talked with has his or her own story of willy nilly, ran­dom shoot­ings that are never inves­ti­gated.  In Major Hasan’s cul­ture, sui­cide attacks are encour­aged as the way to leave a mark or dis­cour­age the enemy.  The dom­i­nant thread in both cul­tures is the ancient model, an eye for an eye and both have teach­ings about just war that are ignored by com­man­ders, sol­diers and the reli­gious teach­ers who back them up.

The lessons from the Fort Hood shoot­ings is one that all of us must hear and believe.  There are great num­bers of peo­ple return­ing from the mod­ern bat­tle field who are wounded in spirit.  The belief in a sys­tem that threat­ens, shocks and kills does not bring real secu­rity.  We all need to lis­ten to peo­ple like Major Hasan and his col­leagues at Fort Hood and help them find a way out of the sys­tem that is killing them and oth­ers.   One way out for them would be a sys­tem of selec­tive con­sci­en­tious objec­tion.  We can press for that.

We can also push for a democ­racy that pro­vides as many rewards for unarmed war­riors, peace­mak­ers and ser­vice work­ers out­side the mil­i­tary as those promised to mil­i­tary recruits.  Maybe we should even advo­cate a draft that  recruits the sons and daugh­ters of the rul­ing class first.  In the long term we need to press for a dra­matic cut in the mil­i­tary bud­get.  And for all of us who dream of the day when a cul­ture of peace­ful­ness with­out killing might pre­vail we need to get seri­ous about all kinds of exper­i­ments that build a cul­ture where con­flicts are set­tled with­out weapons.