SPC
Response to TerrorismThis is a Special Bulletin of the Vietnam Veterans Against Another
Vietnam (V2A2V). V2A2V is not an organization; rather, it is an extended ad-hoc
hyper-community comprised of every child, woman, and man on this planet who
has ever been directly or indirectly affected by the American War in Vietnam
and who is prepared to do whatever is possible and necessary to ensure that
something like that never, ever, ever happens again.
1. OPERATION ISAIAH 2:4 –
A 168-Hour Fast and Prayer
Vigil for Peace, Justice, Truth, Repentance, and Reconciliation
He shall judge between the nations,
and impose terms on many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
One nation shall not raise the sword against
another, nor shall they train for war again.
- Isaiah 2:4
Retired US Army Master Sergeant Jeff Moebus will undertake Operation Isaiah
2:4, a 168-hour Fast and Prayer Vigil for Peace, Justice, Truth, Repentance,
and Reconciliation. The action will begin at 7:48 am on Tuesday, September 25,
exactly two weeks after the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center,
and continue until 7:48 am on Tuesday, October 2.
The purpose of the juice and water fast and prayer vigil is to offer up a personal sacrifice as an act of remembrance, repentance, and reconciliation for the victims of the acts of war perpetrated against the people, government, and nation of the United States of America on September 11. The further purpose is to prevent or reduce additional victims in the future by giving voice to the principles and values of peace, justice, truth, nonviolence, love, reconciliation, rationality, and common sense in a time of overwhelming calls for war, retribution, propaganda, hatred, revenge and retaliation, enflamed passions, and the mindless descent into individual and collective madness.
The fast and prayer vigil will be held in Jackson Square, in front of the Cathedral, in the heart of Old Town New Orleans. Moebus plans to maintain a 24-hour a day presence at the vigil site. Activities to be conducted during the vigil will be sunrise and sunset prayer gatherings, and daily study, meditation, and shared reflection on the teachings of war and peace in the Muslim Koran, the Jewish Torah, the Christian Gospels, the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddhist Dhammapada. There will also be a faith-based examination of globalization and its linkages to the events of September 11.
Moebus hopes that others will join him in fasting or vigiling, and participating in the prayer, study, meditation, and reflection activities for all or part of the entire period as they are led to so do, either at the vigil site or in their own location.
The fast and prayer vigil will be conducted as a participatory action in the FAST FOR JUSTICE AND LIFE: Resisting Violence in the Global Economy, being held during that period in Washington, DC and throughout the country by the Religious Working Group on the World Bank and the IMF (see http://www.religiouswg.org for more information).
2. WHY REVENGE, RETALIATION, AND RETRIBUTION BY MILITARY ANNIHILATION IS NOT AN OPTION, AND THE IMPERATIVE ALTERNATIVE
One of the most important questions that those opposing the “first war of the 21st century” must answer is: What is your alternative? What do you propose to do INSTEAD of bombing Afghanistan, and anyone else who makes the Enemies List, back into the Stone Age?
The alternative is launching the most intensive criminal investigation and manhunt in the history of the universe, marshaling the law enforcement, intelligence, surveillance, information, and communication capabilities of the entire planet so as to get answers the following questions about the September 11 special operation: who planned it, who financed it, who provided administrative, logistical, and operational support, who exercised command and control, and, most importantly, who ordered it?
When these questions have been answered and suspected perpetrators have been apprehended, the suspects and the evidence should be turned over to an international war crimes tribunal for trial.
The investigation and manhunt should NOT be controlled by the United States, particularly the FBI and CIA. Given the record of almost criminal incompetence that these two agencies have accumulated over the past decade or so, it is unlikely that they are competent to handle an investigation and manhunt of this nature. More importantly, both of these agencies are implicated in the events of September 11; it was their failures (along with numerous other US federal, state, and local agencies) to adequately protect the people of the United States that enabled the acts of war to be perpetrated. Thus, they have a vested interest in the outcome of any investigation of the crime.
The reason that revenge, retaliation, and retribution by military annihilation is not an option is that it would destroy evidence that may be critical to the investigation and subsequent legal action. Additionally, it would wipe out any possibility of connecting any dots that may be emanating from the target areas so as to be able to answer that ultimate question: who ordered the operation?
During the Gulf War, the anti-war movement castrated itself when it was unable to handle simple signs containing three little words. When the forces for peace allowed the government to shift the focus from whether or not the public supported the war to whether or not the public supported our sons and daughters who were on the verge of fighting that war, the battle for the hearts and minds of those Americans entertaining some doubts and reservations about the wisdom of the planned war against the Iraqi people was lost by the good guys.
Signs proclaiming SUPPORT OUR TROOPS exploded everywhere; there were more of those signs, in some places, than there were American flags. And the implication was immediately established and enforced that unless you supported the war, you were against your own and your neighbor’s sons and daughters who were placed in harm’s way to do their duty and to protect their country and our freedom, with liberty and justice for all.
Somehow, the anti-warriors allowed themselves to be sucker punched into accepting the notion that it was in some magical way possible to oppose the war but still “support our troops.” Any accusation that they weren’t supporting the troops was met with lame and labored efforts to prove that, “Of course we support our troops; it’s just that we oppose the war.” This proved how little the peace camp understood about war, and thus severely undercut its credibility.
The only way that wars are fought is by troops. Generals don’t fight wars. Politicians don’t fight wars. CEOs of transnational corporations don’t fight wars and talking heads in the media don’t either. The only way that war will stop is when troops stop fighting them. Politicians and generals can order all they want, but if the troops say, “We ain’t fighting your f---ing war,” the war is over.
So, when people support the troops, they support the war. Period. The two cannot be separated.
I spent a lot of time around soldiers who were on their way to the Persian Gulf back then. And they could only look at all those signs and shake their heads and laugh the bitter laugh of one confronting The Ignorance. “If they want to support us so much,” more than I can count asked, “why don’t they keep us from being sent to that God-forsaken place?” Their comments about the anti-warriors who proclaimed to support the troops but oppose the war are unprintable.
If it happens again, if the first war of the 21st century ends up with the peace movement trying to riddle through how to support troops and oppose the war, the blood that will be shed will be on its hands.
Berrigan would probably tell the story this way:
The angel of the Lord asked him, "Suppose that ten thousand war resisters came unarmed from America to the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, fasted there, prayed, and marched right in. In sum, they risked their lives, with one thing in mind: to bring sanity, an alternative, to a mad situation. Suppose they hung in, refused to go away, and placed their bodies where their mouths were, and inserted themselves as human shields between the Afghani people and the full force and might of the American military and the international coalition sent to pulverize that land into dust?”
"Wait a minute," he said. "Suppose they failed. Suppose they were carpet bombed, or strafed, or machine gunned, or rounded up and carted off to concentration camps."
The angel responded by breaking into song, "Everybody want to go to heaven, nobody want to die."
He continues:
We have assumed the name of peacemakers but we have been unwilling to pay any significant price for peace.
We want peace with half a heart and half a life and half a will the war continues because the waging of war is total but the waging of peace is partial.
I think of the good, decent, peaceloving people I have known by the thousands and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction of their comforts, their homes, their security, their incomes, their futures, their plans -- that five year plan of studies, the ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. "Of course, let us have the peace," we cry, "but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties." And because we must encompass this and protect that and because at all costs -- at all costs -- our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men and women should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost -- because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers.
Peacemaking is hard. Almost as hard as war.
Has anything changed? Really?
With the possible exception of the airline and insurance industries, has the economic, political, or military power of the United States, and the ability to project that power pretty much anywhere in the world been in any way significantly diminished?
Much more importantly than that, particularly for the people, the lands, and nations of Latin America and the Caribbean Basin, however, are these questions:
Has the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, theInterAmerican Development Bank, or any other agent or agency of neoliberal globalization, corporatization, privatization, and militarization changed the way they do business?
Has NAFTA been revoked or the drive to create the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) been derailed?
Has the Andean Regional Initiative or Plan Columbia been defunded?
Has the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly
known as the School of the Americas (SOA) been closed?
Has Vieques or Chiapas or Guantanamo been liberated?
On the other hand, consider the landscape in Washington, DC:
The Legislative branch of the government of the US has folded itself into the Executive branch.
When, in the name of national security, President Bush asks Congress for eleventy gazillion dollars to upgrade our defense, intelligence, law enforcement, surveillance, security, anti/counter terrorist, etc etc etc capability, who and what is going to stop him from getting what he wants and more? When he asks for money to go full-bore ahead with STAR WARS - again in the name of national security - who's going to stop it (if somebody argues, might we expect a rogue nation" missile to take out, say, Chicago)? When he asks for fast track Trade Negotiating Authority for the FTAA, who's going to stop it? When he seeks to rename the ANWR in the sacred memory of the victims of S11 as the "September 11 National Memorial Wildlife Refuge," and tacks on a rider to open the whole thing to oil drilling -- again, in the name of national security, whose going to stop him?
The voices of dissent and protest (the anti-globalists, the environmentalists, the progressives, etc etc etc) have been neutralized and silenced. Unsure that they would be able to figure out how to convince the American people that there is a difference between throwing a rock through a Starbuck’s window and flying a 757 into the World Trade Center, the anti-globalists are casting about for a strategy to confront a new landscape, the spectre of global war and not just simply global plunder. Unsure that dissent may not soon become treason, the environmentalists, the progressives, and the liberals have all muted all criticism, all challenges, all loyal opposition to anything proposed by the White House.
The military-industrial/national security/neoliberal globalization faction has seized virtually total control of the US government. Now, the task is a Rush to Normalcy and Rush to Vengeance. And the question is, who is going to stop them, who is going to stop it?
This war can be stopped. This war must be stopped. This war will be stopped. It will be stopped if a critical mass of American and world citizens of conscience and concern stand up and commit themselves to demand truth, justice, and peace. It is that simple. Unless there is Truth, there will be no Justice. Until there is Justice, there can be no Peace. With critical mass, we are Unstoppable. Without it, the Empire is unstoppable. It's very simple. It's just not very easy.
As a retired GI, I refuse to allow draft dodgers like Dick Cheney or Rush Limbaugh define what it means to be a patriot.
As an American citizen, I refuse to allow self-proclaimed super-patriots to wrap themselves in the flag and go forth to perpetrate the abominable acts being contemplated in councils of war in Washington, DC, all purportedly to the honor and glory of that flag, and all in my name.
It nauseates and infuriates me to see American flags festooning everything in mindless, meaningless displays of “loyalty, unity, and support” (sic) for whatever action is undertaken by the Administration.
Is there any way that I, as a patriotic, concerned citizen of conscience, can take back my flag and use it as an expression of my dissent with what is emerging as the American government’s response to the events of September 11? Is there any way that I can do it without defacing the flag or doing anything that violates the laws of flag etiquette? (I see no value whatsoever to be gained in wasting time or energy getting into rock fights about deliberately disrespectful actions toward the flag; that will accomplish nothing but generate antagonisms that have nothing to do with the real work at hand…stopping this war.)
There is. I can display the flag upside down.
The upside down flag is a legally, internationally recognized distress signal. Paragraph 176(a) of Chapter 10 of Title 36 of the United States Code states: “The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.” And that is exactly what this nation is confronting: a catastrophically dangerous situation in which assistance is needed, immediately. Displaying the flag upside down violates no law, and is almost guaranteed to get a curious, as opposed to hostile, reception.
Another emergent symbol of solidarity with the government is driving with one’s headlights on. A response to that is to drive with one’s emergency flashers on, day and night. This is simple act that could provide beacons of sanity on the highways and byways.
If everyone who is against or has even the slightest doubts as to the morality and utility of revenge, retaliation, and retribution by military annihilation would start driving around with upside down American flags and flashing emergency lights, it might prove astonishing.
I am painfully aware of what the American flag symbolizes to many people and other nations in this world and among American citizens, as well. To this I can only offer the sage advice of one Wendell Berry, who admonishes us in his “Mad Farmer Liberation Front Manifesto”:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbor and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
Any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
And shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
That won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands….
7. BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Moebus, 54, spent 28 years in the US military, including 22 years on active duty. He spent two years in Vietnam in the 60s, first as an airborne infantryman and then an assault helicopter door gunner. In the 80s, he spent two years in the Middle East on a project of major significance to US national security even today. He also spent four years in the Reserve Component US Army Special Forces. On June 3, he conducted a 52-day Fast and Prayer Vigil at Fort Benning to protest US economic, political, and military policy and action in Latin America, particularly as manifested by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA). He and his wife, Kathy, live with their dogs Hobo and Ginger on a sailboat.
8. CONTACT INFORMATION:
For any questions, or, to participate in OPERATION ISAIAH 2:4, either as a faster
and/or vigiler, or as a member of the Support Team, contact Jeff Moebus as 504.641.3766
or jgmoebus@bellsouth.net.
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