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By Kathy Kelly
Days after a US warplane bombed a Medical doctors With out Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing forty-two folks, twenty-four of them sufferers, the worldwide president of MSF, Dr. Joanne Liu walked by the wreckage and ready to ship condolences to relations of those that had been killed.
A quick video, taped in October 2015, captures her almost unutterable disappointment as she speaks a couple of household who, the day earlier than the bombing, had been ready to deliver their daughter residence. Medical doctors had helped the younger lady get better, however as a result of the conflict was raging outdoors the hospital, directors really useful that the household come the following day. “She’s safer right here,” they stated.
The kid was amongst these killed by the US assaults, which recurred at fifteen-minute intervals, for an hour and a half, regardless that MSF had already issued determined pleas begging the US and NATO forces to cease bombing the hospital.
Dr. Liu’s unhappy observations appeared to echo the phrases of Pope Francis lamenting conflict’s afflictions. “We stay with this diabolic sample of killing each other out of the will for energy, the will for safety, the will for a lot of issues. However I consider the hidden wars, these nobody sees, which can be far-off from us,” he stated. “Folks talk about peace. The United Nations has accomplished every little thing doable, however they haven’t succeeded.” The tireless struggles of quite a few world leaders, like Pope Francis and Dr. Joanne Liu, to cease the patterns of conflict have been embraced vigorously by Phil Berrigan, a prophet of our time.
“Oppose any and all wars,” he urged. “There has by no means been a simply conflict.” “Don’t get drained!” he begged folks, including, “I really like the Buddhist proverb, ‘I can’t kill, however I’ll forestall others from killing.’ ”
Individuals who’ve embraced his message proceed assembly on the Pentagon, as occurred on December 28 when activists commemorated the “Feast of the Holy Innocents.” Christians historically dedicate this present day to the remembrance of a time when King Herod ordered the bloodbath of youngsters beneath two years of age due to a paranoid perception that one of many just lately born kids within the area would develop as much as oust Herod from energy and kill him. Activists gathered on the Pentagon held indicators decrying the slaughter of innocents in our time. They’ll protest the obscenely bloated navy finances which the US Congress simply handed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023.
As Norman Stockwell of The Progressive just lately famous, “The invoice comprises almost $1.7 trillion of funding for FY2023, however of that cash, $858 billion is earmarked for the navy (‘protection spending’) and an extra $45 billion in ‘emergency help to Ukraine and our NATO allies.’ Which means that greater than half ($900 billion out of $1.7 trillion) is just not getting used for ‘non-defense discretionary applications’—and even that lesser portion contains $118.7 billion for funding of the Veterans Administration, one other military-related expense.”
By depleting funds desperately wanted to fulfill human wants, the US “protection” finances doesn’t defend folks from pandemics, ecological collapse, and infrastructure decay. As an alternative, it continues a deranged funding in militarism. Phil Berrigan’s prophetic intransigency, resisting all wars and weapons manufacturing, is required now greater than ever.
Outraged by the reckless slaughter of harmless folks in wars starting from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Phil Berrigan insisted that weapons producers cashing in on limitless wars needs to be held accountable for legal exercise. The weapons firms rob folks, worldwide, of the capability to fulfill fundamental human wants.
The appallingly grasping Pentagon finances represents a company takeover of the US Congress. Because the coffers of weapons producers swell, these navy contractors rent legions of extremely paid lobbyists tasked with persuading elected officers to earmark much more funds for firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon United, and Normal Atomics. In line with militarists, stockpiles of weapons have to be used up, with the intention to justify extra weapons manufacturing. Media complicity is important and could be bought, with the intention to frighten US taxpayers into the continued bankrolling of what might develop into worldwide annihilation.
Phil Berrigan, who in his lifetime developed from soldier to scholar to prophetic anti-nuclear activist, astutely linked the racial oppression he opposed as a civil rights activist to the rising oppression attributable to militarism. He likened racial injustice to a horrible hydra that contrives a brand new face for each space of the world. All through his life, Phil Berrigan recognized with folks menaced by the hydra’s new faces of conflict. Elaborating on this theme in a guide referred to as No Extra Strangers, printed in 1965, he wrote that the dispassionate resolution of individuals in the US to follow racial discrimination made it “not solely simple however logical to enlarge our oppressions within the type of worldwide nuclear threats.”
How can we in the US forestall the killing that goes on, in our identify, in a number of wars, exacerbated by weapons made within the USA? How can we resist the rising potential, acute scourge of a nuclear trade as combatants proceed issuing nuclear threats in Ukraine and Russia?
One step we are able to take entails each political and humanitarian efforts to carry accountable the companies cashing in on the US navy finances. Drawing on Phil Berrigan’s steadfastness, activists worldwide are planning the Retailers of Demise Conflict Crimes Tribunal scheduled to be held November 10 to 13, 2023.
The Tribunal intends to gather proof about crimes towards humanity dedicated by those that develop, retailer, promote, and use weapons to commit crimes towards humanity. Testimony is being sought from individuals who’ve borne the brunt of recent wars, the survivors of wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, and Somalia, to call however just a few of the locations the place US weapons have terrified individuals who’ve meant us no hurt.
“We render you, firms obsessive about conflict profiteering, accountable; answerable!,” declares the Reverend Dr. Cornel West on the Tribunal’s web site.
On November 10, 2022, organizers of the Retailers of Demise Conflict Crimes Tribunal and their supporters served a “subpoena” to the administrators and company workplaces of weapons producers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon United, and Normal Atomics. The subpoena, which can expire on February 10, 2023, compels them to offer to the Tribunal all paperwork revealing their complicity in aiding and abetting the US authorities in committing conflict crimes, crimes towards humanity, bribery, and theft.
Folks menaced by the hydra’s new faces of conflict typically have nowhere to flee, nowhere to cover. Hundreds upon 1000’s of the victims are kids.
Aware of the youngsters who’re maimed, traumatized, displaced, orphaned, and killed by the entire wars raging immediately, we should maintain ourselves accountable as properly. Phil Berrigan’s problem should develop into ours: “Meet me on the Pentagon!” Or at its company outposts.
Humanity actually can not stay in complicity with the patterns that result in bombing hospitals and slaughtering kids.
This text is posted at The Progressive.org; a shorter model seems on the World BEYOND Conflict web site.
– Kathy Kelly (kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Inventive Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). She contributed this text to The Palestine Chronicle.
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