A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

Priceless

Welcome Home Banner…

By Photos By Chuck F…

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For several years I’ve frequently visited Camp Lejeune, a large Marine base two hours east of where I live, on the North Carolina coast.

I go because they have a brig — a jail — and several of the GIs I have worked with as resisters to war have served time in it.

Here’s a photo of the gate there from which prisoners are released; the man just about to emerge is Clifford Cornell, a GI resister who was released in January.

Early on in these visits I noticed homemade banners hanging on a fence along the public highway to the base. They were made by families to welcome Marines back from combat deployment in Iraq.

Many of the banners were very simple: “Welcome home Corporal x, we missed you.”

But many were more than that: funny, touching, naughty, and catch-in-the-throat.

They were also ephemeral: hanging on the fence, ripped by wind and weather, til they fell off or someone took them down to put up new ones.

Soon enough, I started taking pictures of the most striking ones, to document this remarkable form of military “folk art.” That was in 2004.

Five years later, the wars are still going on, and the combat deployments for Marines have piled up. And as a result, I have dozens of these photographs.

I believe they give a very special glimpse into the impact of the wars on the American families who bear their brunt. And these expressions, at once both intimate and public, deserve a wider audience.

So I’ve made a one hundred-page book: Priceless: Welcome Home Banners For US Troops Returning From War

It’s now available at the print-on-demand site, blurb.com. The link above will take you to a sample of what’s in it; you can also see some of the banners at the Quaker House website here.

BTW there’s no “political” commentary in the book. I want to let the pictures do the communicating, and leave readers to their own reactions. For me, the banners are full of silent eloquence.

March 10 — how could I forget? How dare I fail to remember.

Four years and four months ago, John Stephens and I began a blog site called freethecaptivesnow.org , as both a personal vigil and a community service, compiling and posting nightly updates of reports — or mostly the lack of reports — about the fate of four… peaceworkers kidnapped in Iraq. They had been taken in Baghdad, and one of them, Tom Fox, was a Quaker and a friend of both John and me.

Tom Fox, in his red Christian Peacemaker Teams ball cap, in Palestine between tours in Iraq.

After those long weeks of uncertainty, it was this day, March 10, 2006 when we learned the worst: that Tom Fox had been murdered, his body found dumped in a vacant lot in that war-torn city.

About two weeks later, the other three: James Loney of Canada, Harmeet Sooden of New Zealand, and Norman Kember from England, were freed by British commandos. John and I then laid down our nightly vigil.

A collection of photos and tributes is still online here.

“Every night of those thirteen weeks, either John or I would scan dozens of wire service reports for news of Tom and the others, and post what we
found: with only a few exceptions, the news was “no news.”

The exceptions were when the gloomy videos of the four – and then, on March 7, 2006 the three, minus Tom – were released.

An ad placed in Arabic newspapers, appealing for the captives’ release.

Here, to mark this occasion, is an excerpt from the Introduction I wrote to a short book of remembrance, “Tom Fox Was My Friend. Yours, Too.” It speculates on why he was killed:

On March 10 came the dispatch we dreaded most: confirmation of Tom’s murder. (Early reports that he had been tortured were not confirmed by a
later autopsy.) The only relief from this loss appeared on March 23, when the other three captives were freed.

Who killed Tom? And why? Few other than the ones who pulled the trigger know the truth, and one wonders how much even they understand.

Speculation abounds, of course, with many of my more left-leaning friends imagining a CIA-sponsored conspiracy to silence these noisy pacifist dissenters.

Yet from the reading and interviews I have done, however, the most likely guess seems much more mundanely sordid: it was all about money.

The videos showing Tom and the others were issued by a previously unknown group, “the Swords of Righteousness Brigades.” This name is very likely a fake, a cover for a criminal gang, which simply kidnaped them for ransom. There is, as John and I learned while keeping our vigil, a sizeable kidnaping industry in Iraq. Many Iraqis have been thus abducted for profit, as well as citizens of numerous other countries.

The four CPT captives; Tom Fox is second from right.

James Loney felt the ransom was wanted to help finance the guerilla insurgency. Many other observers feel that while the kidnapers are Muslims, and many have likely suffered from the invasion and occupation, these crimes appear to be only loosely connected to religious or political grievances. Rather, they are more a specimen of organized crime in a devastated and lawless society.

From this “profit-seeking” perspective, taking CPT team members was not a particularly good “investment”: the group has pledged not to pay, and not to ask anyone else to. Moreover, none of the four had a personal fortune to plunder. But the gang likely figured that regardless of such brave declarations, given enough pressure, someone would eventually cave in and pay. (Harmeet Sooden later told a New Zealand press conference that he suspected a ransom had been paid for
him and the other survivors, despite vehement government denials.)

But if the kidnapers were after money, why kill Tom? There are a number of hypotheses:

One, to show the friends and supporters of the other three that the kidnapers meant business. Some other hostage killings – for instance, that of longtime relief worker Margaret Hassan, an Iraqi citizen originally from Ireland – were evidently staged to show recalcitrant governments that ransom demands were life and death matters.

Or two: because Tom was an American, and as a veteran had a US military ID card, he was a certified “enemy,” and one for whom the US government would not pay. That made him worth less and disposable.

Or three: if the kidnapers couldn’t get ransom from Tom’s family or government, maybe they recouped something by selling Tom to another Iraqi insurgent gang, one willing to pay for the privilege of shooting a military-identified American. (It is all-too easy to imagine their derision at his protests that he was a musician, not a fighter.)

Again, no one knows, but these are plausible explanations for the inexplicable. . . .”

All the quotes below are from sources that Tom was familiar with:

George Fox:

“Be patterns, be examples in every country, place, or nation that you
visit, so that your bearing and life might communicate with all
people. Then you’ll walk cheerfully across the earth answering that
of God in everyone. So that you will be seen as a blessing in their
eyes and you will receive a blessing from that of God within them.”

From the Epistle to the Hebrews, 13:3:
“Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with
them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were
being tortured.”

From the Qur’an, 11:20:
“And all that We relate to you of the news of the Messengers is in
order that We may make strong and firm your heart thereby.

12:111:
Indeed in their stories there is a lesson for men and women of
understanding.”

From the Tao Te Ching:

“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water, yet nothing can better
overcome the hard and strong, for they can neither control nor do
away with it. The soft overcomes the hard, the yielding overcomes the
strong. Everyone knows this, but who can practice it?”

Fayetteville NC Observer

Published: Mon Feb 22, 2010

Marines’ training at Fort Bragg to raise decibel levels around town

A staff report

The noise level around Fort Bragg may increase when the Marines conduct their annual spring artillery training on Fort Bragg from March 1 to April 2.

“These units fire significant amounts of 155 mm ammunition, which can be associated with loud explosions and echoes upon detonation,” a statement from Fort Bragg said.

The visitors will bring two dozen 155 mm howitzers to Fort Bragg.

The Marines will comply with Fort Bragg requirements that prohibit firing all of their howitzers together between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. daily or from 10 a.m. to noon Sundays.

However, the Marines are allowed to fire fewer than 24 howitzers during these times.

“We realize the sound for this training may be bothersome to some, and we apologize for this,” said Tom McCollum, Fort Bragg spokesman.

“The Marines, like the Army units stationed here, have to train as they would fight, and one of the main advantages of the U.S. military is we can fight in all types of weather and around the clock. To restrict the Marines from firing at night would handicap their training, which may reduce their abilities to accomplish their combat missions.”

The training will give Fort Bragg soldiers a chance to see how the Marines operate and what their capabilities are.

Zen Koans of the day:

#1
What is the sound of 23 howitzers going off at 3 AM?

#2
Is this the true hidden meaning of “March Madness”??

OMG — The first congressional press conference challenging the Af-pak escalation was today, and the only Republican there was Rep. Walter Jones, a conservative Catholic who represents Camp Lejeune, the Marine base from which a big chunk of the new troops will come.

At Camp Lejeune, families put up handmade welcome home banners along the highway where the troops come in. I’ve been documenting them periodically for several years. Here are a few, at the Quaker House site.

Camp Lejeune Marines have already lost more than 300 soldiers killed in iraq and Af-pak,and a few thousand wounded.

Jones was once a BIG supporter of the Iraq invasion — he was the one who brought “Freedom Fries” in the Capitol cafeterias; but after signing several hundred condolence letters (not with an automatic pen like Rummy used), he repented and changed his tune.

He’s still a conservative Catholic rural Republican tho, so us citified NC progressive/peacenik types (including this Quaker) don’t have a clue how to talk or work with him, to our discredit. Instead we mostly tag along after the “moderate” NC Dems like hungry, whipped dogs hoping for a scrap of attention and response. And hardly ever getting even a pat on the head.

Maybe there’s a better way to recognize his rare act of political conscience.

PS. Here’s where to find the transcript of the press conference.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2009/12/1/183411/732 .

[NOTE: The banner photos copyright by Chuck Fager — Facebook keep yer mitts off!]

Friends–

Last winter, I discovered the work of independent military analyst & columnist Gwynne Dyer.
A Canadian based in London, his pieces have been consistently several cuts above almost everything else I have read since then about matters of war and peace.
He’s “un-bought and un-bossed,” wicked smart, knows his stuff, and is a fine writer to boot.
No wonder he’s basically shut out of the US media. I get his columns via a Google alert.
Dyer has just posted a new column, on the awful killings at Ft. Hood. Here is an excerpt, with a link to the rest. It’s not long, but very meaty. Check him out.

Gwynne Dyer: U.S. media overlook obvious explanation for Maj. Nidal’s mass murder

By Gwynne Dyer

Earlier this year, the Pentagon committed $50 million to a study investigating why the suicide rate in the military is rising. It used to be below the suicide rate in comparable civilian groups, but now it’s four times higher.

Thirteen American soldiers were killed by a gunman at Fort Hood in Texas last Thursday, but 75 others have died by their own hand at the same army base since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Why?

To most people, the answer is obvious. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been frustrating, exhausting, and seemingly endless, and some people just can’t take it any more. But the Pentagon is spending $50 million to search for other possible causes, because it doesn’t like that answer.

The U.S. military budget tops half a trillion dollars, so the military can splash out on diversionary studies that draw attention away from the main problems, which are combat fatigue and loss of faith in the mission. And we are seeing exactly the same pattern in the response to the killings in Fort Hood, although in this case the military are also getting the services of the U.S. media for free.

Let’s see, now. A devout Muslim officer serving in the U.S. Army, born in the United States but of Palestinian ancestry, is scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in the near future. He opens fire on his fellow soldiers, shouting “Allahu akbar.” (“God is great” in Arabic.) What can his motive have been? Hard to guess, isn’t it? Was he unhappy about his promotion prospects? Hmm.

There is something comic in the contortions that the U.S. media engage in to avoid the obvious fact that if the United States invades Muslim countries, some Muslim Americans are bound to think that America has declared war on Islam. It has not, but . . . .

Read the rest here.

The conference speaker Wednesday night was a welcome improvement. Alexie Torres Fleming’s story is easy to summarize: born and raised poor in the south Bronx, she escaped from a collapsing neighborhood into middle class respectability, but then was drawn back to live and work in her home turf. She now operates a youth program.

Torres Fleming spoke well, and made two comments that stick in my memory. The first was about her program, which was that through it she is not seeking to “save” the young people in her still very problematic area, as much as to be saved by them.

The second comment came in response to a written question. It said, in sum, You were raised in the South Bronx and returned there to respond to God’s call. Most of us (in the audience) are of middle class origin, and have no such oppressed home area to return to. What are WE supposed to do?”

Torres Fleming gave exactly the right answer to this, which was: “I don’t know.” That is, it’s up to the questioner and others (plus God) to figure out their own call and respond faithfully.

This was the right answer, not only because it was correct, but also because it displayed a welcome modesty. She did not rise to the bait of telling us we must do this and must do that. This is so easy for someone in control of the microphone to fall into, especially in a religious setting, and especially when someone with certified ”oppressed” credentials faces a “privileged” audience. I admire her for having the humility and integrity to refuse this rhetorical pose.

The answer also resonated with a conversation from earlier in the day, with someone on the Epistle Committee, whose first draft is to be read initially on Thursday, then finalized on Friday.

Quaker readers will know that Epistles are generally summary documents, traditionally used as a means of communicating with sister Quaker communities. Their format usually runs something like, “To Friends Everywhere, we met on X dates, worshiped and heard various speakers, did this and that, conducted our business, and hope to meet again next time, as way opens, and God(or Christ)’s Love to You All.” More or less.

However, the person I spoke with was not a Quaker, and his hopes for the document were quite different. He wanted to see something like a manifesto emerge, a ringing declaration which would catch the attention of the media and the outside world.

I’m afraid I did not encourage him in what to me is a very naive notion. For one thing, the idea that the media gives a hoot what 300 or so church people do in a series of wordy meetings in busy downtown Philadelphia is a pipe dream. And ditto in spades for the world beyond that, and especially those holding worldly power.

Yet some older Quakers and others still cling to mouldering memories of the days when the AFSC’s Clarence Pickett was reputed to be a confidant of Eleanor Roosevelt; and when senators and supreme court justices (and Martin Luther King) could be coaxed into appearing at the FGC conferences in Cape May New Jersey.

 The good old days, when the mighty of the world seemed to be concerned with What The Quakers Think about Things.

Well, I’m here to tell thee that those days (which I think are rosier in retrospect than in reality), are gone, long gone. The minutes that meetings struggle over so agonizingly, telling Congress to do this and the president to stop doing that, are of interest mainly to historians in generations to come. It may still be considered gauche to say this out loud, but nobody in Washington pays them any mind.

In any case, there is no time on the schedule for much agonizing: 15 minutes is allotted for each reading. This fits: as there has been no open discussion in any plenary thus far, why should that be expected to change now?

But it’s just as well. To bring forward the draft of The Great Arch Street Declaration On Peace of 2009 would pull the stopper out of froth of bottled up desire to comment, not to mention the standard Quaker practice of wordsmithing such texts. If such is attempted, the outcome is likely to be most lamentable.

Besides which, what could this conference possibly say that would have worldly news value – that we believe Jesus preferred peace to war? FRONT-PAGE headlines! Or further, that we agree with him? STOP the presses!

If there is any media response to the conference, I predict it will be tiny and token. So I hope the Epistle Committee will dial back their aspirations and not lose sleep over their task.

For that matter, the Epistle as of Wednesday could be very brief, not much more than “they talked, we listened.” We were told Wednesday night that this will change on Thursday, that those in charge will graciously open some space to hear what attenders are concerned about.

That’s awfully good of them, and perhaps it is about time. Some here may have needed all the hours of pietistic praise services; this Friend did not. It was more of a reminder than I sought as to why my last four-plus decades have been spent in the silence-based Quaker stream; that other stuff is not my cup of tea.

Moreover, this Friend’s wish is that among the planners there had been more of the spirit of Alexie Torres Fleming’s second answer, about what we should do: “I don’t know.” Perhaps then they would have allowed us get down to the business of finding, sharing and refining our own answers sooner, and in more depth.

Fortunately there are other consolations, which we can venture into in another post.

Folks, I don’t get it.

I’m here in Philadelphia, at a conference entitled “Heeding God’s Call” . It started on Tuesday Jan. 13, 2009 and will extend into Saturday the 17th.

It’s supposed to be about strengthening the peace witness of churches and other faith groups, but especially that of the so-called “Historic peace Churches,” namely Quakers, Mennonites & Brethren. These three groups, especially the first, made up the large majority of the 270 or so persons I counted present in the opening session.

Several features of the event deserve comment. Here I’ll start with one, the workshops, that left me thoroughly befuddled.

The workshops are supposed to last for not less than three hours, which is a sizeable chunk of our time. So one presumes they are meant to be substantive. There are 22 of them, and the complete list is available here  .

Attenders were sent several emails urging us to sign up for workshops in advance. But making a selection was not easy for me. That’s because there was very little on the list that seems pertinent to my work in this area, or on many related issues I’m interested in but not actively pursuing.

Here’s what I mean. In the 22 workshop descriptions, the word “war” or “wars” occurs in only two; and in one of those , #5A, it is in the title, “How Can I Preach Peace without Starting a War (in my congregation?).”

Which frankly sounds like it’s more about helping nervous pastors keep their jobs, and rather tenuously related to actual “war.”

Only workshop #6A, and not in the title but in its very terse description, invited attenders to “Explore the Connection between wars abroad with ‘wars’ at home.”

This great scarcity of the term was curious to me. In what is billed as a major conference on peace, of 22 workshops, none includes “war” (as in large organized violent conflict) in its title, and only one refers to that subject, and then only in part.

To quote my 20-something daughter, “What’s Up With That?”

Similarly, only one workshop, #2B, mentions the military, viz, “How Can We Talk to the Military?”

That’s a good question. But again, is that all that need be raised here about the key segment of the population that makes war happen? This spareness felt puzzling and inadequate. Making peace and dealing with war seem to me closely, indeed intimately related.

Ditto for the military, its supporting machinery, and its deep roots in our culture. Perhaps that’s a wildly skewed notion, but it reflects considerable experience, and I am bold to say I think it very reasonable. But evidently not for the planners.

Curiosity thus piqued, I did more searching, and discovered that numerous other terms and topics, which likewise seemed to me strongly connected with peacemaking in our actual world, were completely missing, from the 22-item workshop roster –AWOL in army jargon.

Among them:

Torture ; Terror/terrorism;

Militarism; Soldiers

Occupation(s)

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Georgia, Chechnya, Darfur, Congo, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine; etc.

Besides single terms, there were a number of crucial phrases that one looked for in vain. Such as:

Christian Zionism;

Military Industrial Complex;

nuclear weapons;

pervasive military recruiting among young persons (and the not so young);

war-supporting christianity;

the infiltration of the US military by extreme versions of crusading fundamentalism;

ministry to servicemembers and families scarred by PTSD or military-related violence, including domestic violence;

Strengths & weaknesses in religious peace witness today; how to build on the former and overcome the latter.

In this listing, which could be longer, I have consciously leaned toward topics which have clear religious dimensions; this is a church conference after all, and I for one believe that religion, especially in America, has a great deal to with war and peace.

Hmmmm. I’ll ask around as way opens in the next day or so, and see if I can gain any new insight into this conundrum. And I’ll speak of some other puzzling aspects of this event in upcoming posts.

But what’s going on here? And what’s NOT going on?