Mary Lord on the Friends Peace Testimony -- 2
A New Global War
Friends, as events unfold in the world around us, I very much fear that we are on the eve of a new and terrible global war. Even now it could be stopped, but there is not the will to stop it. There is rather the will to threaten and to fight, either by design or lack of thought, blundering forward in a manner reminiscent of the events that led up to World War I. The consequences of the war now beginning will bring immense suffering to many peoples. We as Friends need to do what we can to stop the wars that are already spreading or intensifying. But we also need to be prepared to be Quakers in wartime—never an easy experience.
What leads me to this dire prediction? First, of course, are the statements by the US President Bush and other US government officials that we are in a war that will reach into many countries and last perhaps through our lifetime. It is the decision of this government to respond to the present crisis by promising this generation of young adults decades of warfare as their inheritance. There are Friends in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America who know first hand what decades of war can mean.
Second are the actions that have accompanied the statements. As the war in Afghanistan apparently begins to wind down—both sides in this war of terror are taking the battle to many other countries. US forces are already in the Philippines in what some believe is a violation of their constitution. Troops are also present or en route to Yemen and probably Somalia. Military aid is increasing to Colombia—intensifying that war which until recently was a war on drugs, and is now a war on terror. Troops are reported heading to the former Soviet republic of Georgia. An invasion of Iraq is almost certain, possibly with tactical nuclear weapons. This expansion of the war to a longer and longer list of countries has little or no support from our allies in Europe, except perhaps Tony Blair, or the Middle East or Asia. But it is very likely that the US will nonetheless, as Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Congress, "go it alone."
Recently the US announced a change in nuclear weapons policy—changes that will make it more likely that nuclear weapons might, for the first time in almost 60 years, actually be used in war. Against the backdrop of insider debates about whether to use mini-nukes in Iraq, the change of nuclear policy is ominous indeed. Listening to all of this, the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the "Doomsday Clock" 2 minutes closer to midnight. Having served on that Board myself for several years in the past, I can tell you that the hands of the clock are not moved lightly.
Of course, the US was attacked on our own soil in a despicable act that left more than 3,000 dead in New York and Washington. These terrible attacks affected the children of my own home meeting, Adelphi, which is near Washington DC. It was not widely reported that there were a number of school children on the plane that went into the Pentagon. Some of those children were playmates of the children in our meeting, and the adults at Adelphi had the task of trying to help our children understand what happened to some of their friends. Like me, you may have watched the CBS documentary a few days ago about the firemen in the World Trade Center. It gave us a small sense of the horror of the day close up. The attacks had to be answered—but how? What might we have done instead of going to war?