No Soldiers on a Field

Posted on June 3, 2009 in Abortion Courage & Activism Terrorism Violence War

“They weren’t on the battlefield, but apparently the battlefield’s here.”

Daris Long, father of Private William A. Long

The winding down of the war has made me complacent. I haven’t written about it since October 2007 ((I don’t count the articles I wrote about taking better care of our vets or the video in which I invited the soldiers to come home last November.)) . Military operations still occur in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Civilians die. Soldiers die. Schemes go on behind the scenes to get the oil out while we can. And at home, an angry young man forgot what it means to oppose war.

The shootings committed by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad demand that we people of conscience who oppose war reflect on how we have communicated our message. This is essential: to be a pacifist means making no preparations to kill which hopefully will lead to no killing. Period. Mr. Muhammed obviously prepared to kill: according to the New York Times, police found “several boxes of ammunition and a red duffle bag containing two homemade silencers, binoculars, clothing and medicine.” This leaves me the chicken way out: he obviously wasn’t a pacifist.

But that’s not enough. The word did not get through to him: in a war, the lives of soldiers and civilians are equally important. Antiwar activists protest the deaths of both. To murder in opposition to a conflict makes no sense: the aim of stopping people from dying cannot be achieved by making people expire. Have I failed to do my job as a spokesperson for conscience? Is my silence of the last two years a dereliction of duty?

I think so. For this reason, I shall watch affairs a little more closely. Both the wars and the activities of peace activists shall be my focus when I can get news.

Now I set this challenge to anti-abortion activists: clean your own house. I daresay that you have sinned more than I have. Yet where my first response was to accept this as an act of terrorism and acknowledge the possibility of my influence or failure to express the message, yours was to deny. Shame on you.

To my fellow pacifists and anti-war activists: let’s keep our movement consistent to its principles. We are not soldiers set out on a battlefield: we’re human beings laboring to convince other human beings of justice.