War
He may or may not have been the bomb-maker.
Did it matter, now that I stood in front of his body, still connected to tubes and vents and drips, but a body that had already breathed its last?
No, it didn't really matter. I stepped to the bed and laid a hand on his still-warm [...]
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 [...]
A couple of weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, I received a call from my cousin. Her father-in-law in Baghdad was dead. His death was not the result a car bomb or a kidnapping. No bullets or beheadings were involved. Instead, it was a kitchen fire. He was badly burnt up and down his [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The sorrowful convergence of the fifth anniversary of the war and the observation of the 4000th fallen U.S. soldier in Iraq looms sadly ahead. Soon candles will be lit and vigils held, [...]
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
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 [...]
I was in Lebanon and Syria in January and saw up close the agony of the war.
In Damascus, young Iraqi refugees have created a youth choir at the Good Shepherd Center. After singing for [...]
March 19 will be the fifth anniversary of the war with Iraq. In this season of Lent, we are called to lament and repent for an ongoing war that is being waged by our country, financed by our taxes, and fought by our brothers and sisters. After five years, we all lament the suffering and [...]
Mary Nelson just posted on MLK's Riverside speech, but I have some reflections to add. I'll admit that I took a "day off" yesterday instead of a "day on," making a four-day weekend backpacking trip in the Adirondacks with some buddies. But I did [...]
Martin Luther King's sermon at Riverside Church linked the devastating Vietnam war to the struggle over poverty. I began working that year in an under-resourced community and wore a "Bread not Bombs" sweatshirt to anti-war demonstrations. Sadly, not much has changed. The amount spent on the Iraq war (CBO estimate $9 billion a month, up to $1 trillion total), if directed elsewhere, would virtually ensure [...]
Last year, my wife Jeanette and I returned to Honduras with a group from our congregation. What alarmed me was that a decade ago the MS (La Mara Salvatrucha) had a considerable presence in many of the poorest neighborhoods. Now they have a stronghold. One of my pastor friends told me, "Gabriel, people are afraid to come to church. The MS killed a woman in front of the church just the other day." The MS is going global. Recently Law & Order had an episode that featured the MS [...]
Christian support for the Iraq war raises the critical question: To whom do we belong?
We first published this reflection by Jim Wallis in 2002. It has since become our Christmas tradition, kind of our own Charlie Brown Christmas special, if you will. With the ongoing conflicts raging during each passing year, it remains tragically relevant.
Silent Night, by Stanley Weintraub, is the story of Christmas Eve, 1914, on the World War I battlefield in [...]
Nice piece this morning by James Carroll in The Boston Globe. He writes about what he calls "the radical militarization of foreign affairs."
A MAN bit a dog last week. Not just any man, and not just any [...]