Sudbury Peace Vigil

A very disturbing feature of our collective national consciousness these days is that most of us don’t seem to think much about the seven-plus years of war dragging on (despite pronouncements by our President to the contrary) with no real end in sight. Some of us (on one end of the political spectrum) are too busy doing the Chicken Little thing about how we have no money for health care reform to think about the billions still flowing into Iraq and Afghanistan, some of us (on the other end of the spectrum) are beyond numb with disillusionment, and most of us (no matter what our political stripe) are cued to non-attention by media marginalization and blatant disregard of the issue.

It’s useful, then, to remember that wars aren’t like action movies: Violence as a cathartic spectator sport, followed by a satisfied grunt and exit from the theater while the credits are still rolling. Even when a war is supposed to be “over”, it really isn’t.

The dead are still dead, the devastation persists, the maimed aren’t whole, and the oddly high troop levels morph seamlessly, as if with cinematic special effects, into the army bases and “friendly” governments we leave behind. Study the statistics compiled by the Boston Globe on March 20th, the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and you’ll see that the current US troop level in Iraq hovers around where it was when we first invaded in 2003 (scroll down to the lower lefthand side of the page).

Or read this update on Fallujah’s epidemic of deformed babies (including one born with two heads, who has since died) and see if you can even remember the particulars of what happened in Fallujah in 2004 (the use of white phosphorus? apocalyptic bombardment with “unusual” weapons?) and how they might account for these tragic anomalies.

Think about the poisons left behind by earlier wars–the Agent Orange, the residual landmines, the unexploded ordnance–and imagine how much the past seven plus years have added to the toxic residue.

Think about the homeless, mentally shattered Vietnam vets you’ve seen over the years, and wonder how many of the 1 in 5 Iraq and Afghanistan vets diagnosed with PTSD in 2008 will join them, since only 10% of those diagnosed have actually been treated…

War doesn’t end, it reverberates, horribly. Even when we’re no longer listening.

A great article posted over the weekend by libertarian Doug Bandow describes a one-day “transpartisan” peace conference, which brought together everyone from left-leaning antiwar activists to editors of conservative publications to talk about why militaristic pursuit of empire is a bad idea, both for America and for the rest of the globe:

“The moment economics, domestic policy, or election law came up, participants disagreed. But on the central issue of war and peace the group united. While war might sometimes be unavoidable — pacifism was not on the agenda, though some of the participants might have been pacifists — it should be a last resort, a tragic necessity to protect a free American society. While war sometimes brings out the finest and most sublime human values such as courage and honor, more often it looses the basest passions and destroys what we most hold dear. Despite today’s constant celebration of all things military, Americans are best served by peace, allowing them to enjoy the pleasures and surmount the challenges of daily life.

Yet today the U.S. is one of the world’s most militarized states, accounting for nearly half of the globe’s military outlays. The U.S. government maintains hundreds of military installations and hundreds of thousands of troops abroad. No other country, democratic or authoritarian, comes close to matching America’s aggressive military record in recent decades: nations and territories invaded or bombed include Iraq (twice), Serbia, Bosnian Serbs, Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia, Panama, and Grenada. Threats have come fast and furious against North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and most recently Yemen.

It is bad enough that Washington policymakers see war as a first resort, a convenient tool for conducting social engineering abroad. They seem to treat the resulting death and destruction as incidental and unimportant, especially if concentrated on others.”

Definitely a worthwhile read, which takes a good hard look at the price of endless war, hardly the “costless adventure imagined by members of Washington’s ubiquitous sofa samurai”…

Our worthy founder, Susan, has passed along an invitation for next Saturday, to join Metrowest Peace Action at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, where they’ll be celebrating their first year as a group, welcoming new members and hoping to have Congressman Barney Frank as a guest speaker.

Here are the details:

First Anniversary and New Member Meeting
MetroWest Peace Action
Sat. Feb. 20th
1:30 PM
at the Peace Abbey
2 N. Main St.(Rt. 27)
Sherborn, MA

Here are directions from Sudbury–and a general description of the Abbey, which has been around since 1988–from vigil member John: “Peace Abbey is about 35 minutes away on a Saturday. You go south on 27 through Sherborn center, cross railroad tracks, and it is a 1/4 mile on the left, old brick building. If you have never been there, it is remarkable, an oasis, somewhat taken for granted by the minions that drive by it every day to toil in the bowels of The Machine. It is worth the trip just to see the place.”

For a little taste of what this amazing place is like, check out their site. And check out their “Unknown Civilians Memorial“, which honors the “[o]n average, 2,174 people [who] die every day as a direct result of war,” 9 out of 10 of them civilians, half of them children.

Of course, if Barney Frank–who’s pledged to make cutting military spending his first priority–comes to speak, that will be just wonderful, a badly-needed antidote to the disheartening, deafening silence on the topic from nearly all our elected officials as well as in the mainstream media. As chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Barney urged President Obama, soon after his inauguration last year, to reduce military spending, and had an Op-Ed in The Nation back then, too, the opening paragraph of which really deserves a place in the Hall of Fame of Barney Frank witticisms (and a year later still hits the bull’s-eye on the maddening blockheadedness of current deficit-busting talk):

“I am a great believer in freedom of expression and am proud of those times when I have been one of a few members of Congress to oppose censorship. I still hold close to an absolutist position, but I have been tempted recently to make an exception, not by banning speech but by requiring it. I would be very happy if there was some way to make it a misdemeanor for people to talk about reducing the budget deficit without including a recommendation that we substantially cut military spending”.

Oh, and here’s a pic of our vigil at noon yesterday (Saturday, 2/12/10):

Hope to see you next Saturday–on the town green in Sudbury, at the Peace Abbey afterwards, or both!

Sometimes only a round of mental gymnastics can help convert mind-bogglingly large numbers (like our nation’s military budget) from the abstract to the marginally fathomable. Here is Maya Schenwar (from an op-ed in today’s Truthout) on our spending in Afghanistan:

[T]his year the US will spend more on its occupation of Afghanistan alone than any other country except China spends on its entire defense budget.

There’s no question that war spending for Iraq and Afghanistan will top $1 trillion after Obama’s request is implemented. That’s enough money to stretch – in dollar bills – from the earth to the sun. It’s also enough to pay for ten years of universal primary education for all of the world’s children, according to UN statistics.

It costs $1 million to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for a year. The same amount of money could build 30 or 40 girls’ schools in Afghanistan…

She quotes Travis Sharp of the Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation on what use the $30,000,000,000 budgeted for Afghanistan in FY2010 could be put–which would go much further, without incessant bloodshed and destruction, to truly increasing the security of our nation and globe:

* Double the amount spent on nuclear nonproliferation, anti-terrorism [focusing on specific terror threats] and de-mining ($1.6 billion)
* Double US support of migrants and refugees throughout the world ($3 billion)
* Quadruple the Civilian Stabilization fund for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq ($1.5 billion)
* Triple federal funding for renewable energy research and development ($7.4 billion)
* Double overall contributions to international institutions like the WHO and IAEA ($2.1 billion)
* Double federal funding for DHS First Responder and CDC Disease Prevention programs ($4.2 billion)
* Strengthen capacity of Coast Guard to close off the far-more-likely route of nuclear weapons coming into the United States – through ports ($6 billion)

And here, for a last bit of cognitive workout, is the mind-bender in her conclusion:

In this age of never-ending wars, military spending is band-aid money, in a ghastly sort of way: as conflicts erupt, we continually attempt to bandage them with bombs, instead of addressing the root cause of each injury.

Read the full article.

Kevin Zeese, executive director of “Voters for Peace” (the site is linked to on our blogroll) posted an article last week calling for the peace movement to be kickstarted and envisioning how best to facilitate the process. His piece, subtitled “America Needs a Patriotic, Broad-Based and Politically Independent Opposition to War”, touched on many of the nagging concerns we peace vigilers have been nursing since the euphoric election of November 2008 failed to yield any light at the end of the endless war tunnel.

One of our especially wise and articulate peace vigil members, a retired university professor, spoke to that feeling of stunned disappointment in a letter he circulated in early December of last year about President Obama’s Afghanistan policy. After expressing dismay at the president’s “pursuit of senseless war”, he elaborated:

[Obama's] plan contains, among other problems, the seeds of its own failure. I doubt much can change politically or socially in 18 months when he expects to begin to withdraw troops. We lack a credible partner in the Afghan central government and regional governments are chaotic and ineffective. We now spend on the war in Afghanistan an amount far more than the GDP of that country, most of which is generated by heroin. We hope to build up an ANA of some 170,000 men, an army totally beyond the capacity of the central government to support financially. Obama still blurs the distinction between Taliban and al-Qaeda and misrepresents the composition and political interests of Taliban forces, repeating the hollow warning of great threat if a Taliban dominated government were in control. He speaks as if nothing has changed since 2001, whereas everything has changed.

The most powerful part of the letter is its conclusion, which should be required reading for every American citizen who still believes the $1,000,000,000,000+ war in Afghanistan is “necessary” or “just”:

At 78 years of age, I…have lived through presidential rationalizations of war repeatedly and witnessed the propagandistic power of the military-industrial-congressional complex to encourage and promote war and empire. Make no mistake, there is a permanent war party in washington. For many years, and again now, I have had occasion to recall a quotation (in translation) of Hermann Goering, Hitler’s air marshall during WWII:

“Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

The writers of our Constitution well understood the lessons of war in 18th century Europe and strived to make war difficult to get into and easy to end. In the USA of the 21st century, war power has devolved on one almost imperial person, with the consequence that war is dead easy to launch but nearly impossible to end. How far we have come.

Welcome to the unofficial blog of the Sudbury Peace vigil, which aims to be an extension into cyberspace of the public space we’ve inhabited for half an hour a week over the past five-plus years.

Exactly who are we, and why are we still vigiling?

A partial answer to the first part of the question: We are residents of Sudbury, Massachusetts and nearby towns, both genders, a range of ages, who since November 2004 have been quietly standing–for half an hour, once a week, year round–on the town green, holding signs in opposition to our country’s wars, in Iraq and now, Afghanistan. (Before we began our designated local vigil, our members were busy attending the nationally organized vigils, rallies, and marches held state- and country-wide throughout 2003).

The town green is at a central but non-commercial intersection, bordered by two historic churches as well as the town hall, and on any given Saturday, probably a few hundred of our neighbors pass by. At the very least, they’re reminded that even if the media coverage of the wars has grown spotty or even slightly blasé, the wars themselves haven’t ended, and we’re still vigorously opposed to them.

Here’s a photo of a vigil in early September of this year:

September 9, 2009 Peace Vigil

Some people honk, give us an approving thumbs up, or roll down their window to voice their agreement with the messages on our signs (whereupon we typically invite them to come stand with us on future Saturdays). Others frown or give us a thumbs down (in the early years, they would have spat curses and made obscene hand gestures at us). And many just pass by, cellphones glued to their ears, gazes fixed on the road ahead of them even if they’re stopped at a red light.

We hope that we inspire at least a few people each week to give more than a passing thought to our country’s wars and their mind-boggling, still-ominously-rising costs (both human and material), and to feel that they, too, can voice their opposition to endless war as our new, de facto national way of life.

For a short answer to the second part of the question (‘why are we still vigiling?), take a look at the title of this post. It directly quotes the response of one longtime vigil member, John, to those in the group who wondered what the point was of continuing to stand waving signs in the wind, snow, and rain every darn weekend now that Obama had been elected, on a platform that promised a sane, diplomacy- and human-rights centered foreign policy, as well as a rapid wrap-up to the catastrophe in Iraq.

For the long answer, check back as more blog posts go up here. Other members will be sharing their perspectives on the war(s) and the vigil as response to it (as well as their stories of things that have happened to us and them along the way). We’ll also be sharing relevant links and articles, seeking to send our message and our voices as far and wide as the Internet will take them.

In closing, let me reiterate a few chilling facts, which make an appropriate if grim backdrop to our peace vigil’s effort, and highlight the absurdity of trying to fix the federal deficit and our troubled economy with a freeze on “discretionary” domestic spending:

–the US military budget is not only larger than all the military budgets of the world combined , but 20 billion dollars bigger than it was last year;

–45% of every American tax dollar feeds the military budget;

–the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 has now topped $1,000,000,000,000, with $130 billion dollars more (so far) appropriated for those wars in FY 2010…

And, of course, that’s before tallying in the staggering human costs to all this stratospherically expensive warmongering….