Friday, March 18, 2011

One day until the eighth year anniversary of the U.S.A. invasion of Iraq!  Today at the vigil a tall young man introduced himself saying he was not from here and could he ask, "why are you here?"  Indeed, why?  He is an exchange student from Chile (thus he is not unfamiliar with US militarism and wrong-headed meddling in the sovereign affairs of other countries).  He was somewhat amazed when I told him the vigil story of a decade of daily vigil simply to say what our government was doing in Afghanistan & (later) Iraq was immoral, illegal - etc..  He commented that in Chile protests become riots and there is little of conscience involved.  He wanted to know does the vigil have an impact - is it helping.  My reply: clearly not on any policy level.  However, people passing see us & are reminded - no matter how they react - that we are at this very moment killing people.  It is far too easy to forgot that we are at war - unless you love someone who is or was involved.  As we talked I invited him to join us - "oh, no that would be forbidden" his host family is "very conservative Christian" and the contract he signed as an exchange student prohibits his involvement in such activities.  His friend, self-indentified as a patriotic conservative Christian said he is less conservative than his family and education would have him be.  He has questions.  [Questions can be transformative - can't they?] I ask him how he reconciles "Thou Shall Not Kill" with engaging in war? The American boy spoke of defending his country as an exemption. The Chilean boy said he was never a Christian but believed in God & he wondered how it was that shall not kill became a conditional rule.  How is it that it is wrong to kill unless your family or country is threatened?   Later, I asked the local boy what it meant to him to be patriotic.  "To be willing to serve his country, defend it from enemies."  Willing, I ask, to kill another family's child - for that is all an enemy in fact is.  I wanted to suggest he find the song "Universal Soldier" and listen to the lyrics, but the conversation diverged to the attacks of September 11, 2001 & the  mythology of enemies and terrorists.  The American boy was less informed than the Chilean who had a more sophisticated political perspective.  The conversation spun through the convolutions of media rhetoric and factual information arriving at the fact that the majority of the hijackers were Saudi men.  Why then did we attack Afghanistan?  And, what were those lies that took us into Iraq?  The conversation was bubbling along when I took my leave of the remaining group.  Why did we 8 stand in vigil today?  For many reasons - but one of them was answered by the young exchange student with his mission to talk to us despite rules he had to break:  to raise awareness, to provoke thought, to start conversations about war.  If enough people talk together about the truth of war maybe we will learn to chose other paths....