The Cost of War
The U.S. just started another war. We're good at starting wars. We're not good at ending them, but we start them really well. They say this is for "humanitarian" reasons. Aren't they all?
Five weeks ago, we began a series of posts on the cost of the war in Iraq. We have focused primarily on the human costs
In our little circles, we've been talking a lot about the need to create new holidays and rituals of remembrance as a Church
I was conscripted into the South Africa military in the late 1980s. Still in my teens, I was shipped off to do two years of "service" for my country. This included not only military training, but also indoctrination about "the enemy." I was taught about the threat of communism, of the [...]
We are told the war in Iraq is a necessary part of the "War on Terror" (WOT), and its goal is to bring democracy to the Middle East. Despite this rhetoric it is blatantly clear the US is pursuing its own interests at the cost of democracy in the region. This raises the level of [...]
"Speak to the earth, and it will teach you
"Can I forgive the people who killed my husband?"
It was perhaps the most practical and personal question asked during a recent meeting of Iraqi civil society leaders who had gathered to advise the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) about its future peacebuilding work in [...]
On Tuesday, President Bush spoke to the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters. In a speech that The New York Times described as "Citing Faith, Bush Defends War [...]
In Ramah, a voice is heard, crying and weeping loudly. Rachel mourns for her children and refuses to be comforted, because they are dead. Jeremiah 31:15
Last week a spate of four deaths in our Chicago high schools was blamed on gangs and guns. Last year, the public high [...]
Two brothers, Jamal* and Khalid,* were arrested randomly in a raid of their neighborhood by Iraqi Special Police Forces, the Palestinian ghetto in Baghdad. They were tortured and forced to confess on a [...]
Five years ago, I was in Iraq. It was as a member of the Iraq Peace Team, living in the middle of the "shock-and-awe" bombing of Baghdad -- some of the scariest days of my life. As Easter approached, we walked through the Lenten season with brothers and sisters in Iraq. One night I had a [...]
I write these words from Iraq, where I have worked through the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) since October 2002 - before, during, and since the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. CPT attempts to [...]
The Iraq war has cost lives. Perhaps this is such an obvious statement that many will wonder why it has been made. It has cost lives of military personnel, many thousands of civilians in the immediate theatre of war, as well as lives of insurgents. It has even cost lives away from the [...]
This week will be a full one for me and for many of us in the Washington, DC, area. Friday and Saturday, I'll be leading the Everything Must Change gathering in Vienna, Virginia, but first, I'll be part of the
My parents had an agreement: If my father could name his children, then my mother could raise us in the church. So I was given a full Muslim name, but I was baptized as a Christian. Growing up I never really liked my name very much - Omar. For a little kid in Texas, a foreign [...]
In what has been described as the largest cross-border attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Turkish military is now into its 6th day of a ground offensive inside the Kurdish [...]