The Bomb and the Drone: Hiroshima/Nagasaki and Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan

Even though August 6th and 9th are past, the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki belong always before us. The agony of those two cities must remain our dark beacon.

Hiroshima/Nagasaki wasn’t so much about targets as about audiences. We sacrificed a couple hundred thousand harmless, unarmed, undefended human beings to make a point. That spectacle wasn’t so much for Japan as for the Soviet Union and the world at large.

Thanks to the U.S. head start on nuclear technology – vividly showcased at Hiroshima/Nagasaki – for 65 years the U.S. has been able to hold the planet hostage. It’s been able to deploy nuclear blackmail to further its hegemonic design.

Put Drone Warfare on Trial: Support the Creech 14!

Join us in Las Vegas, Nevada

September 14th, 2010

Contact: Voices for Creative Nonviolence at 773.878.3815 or for more information on how to be involved.

The Creech 14 are preparing for trial in LasVegas on September 14th for an action they participated in last April. After a week of demonstrations and vigils in April of 2009, the activists entered Creech Air Force Base to highlight the injustice of the military’s use of drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Members of the US Air Force based at Creech Air Force Base control the drones used in these expanding wars. After a night in jail, the protesters were fined and given a trespassing charge.

Those arrested included John Dear, S.J.; Dennis DuVall; Renee Espeland; Judy Homanich; Kathy Kelly; Fr. Steve Kelly; Mariah Klusmire; Brad Lyttle; Libby Pappalardo; Megan Rice, SHCJ; Brian Terrell; Eve Tetaz; Fr. Louie Vitale; and Fr. Jerry Zawada.

Sponsors of the vigil included Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Nevada Desert Experience, Des Moines Catholic Worker, Strangers & Guests Catholic Worker Farm, Catholic Peace Ministry, Iowa Peace Network, and Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service.

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Las Vegas, Nevada
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By Voices co-coordinators

Since April of 2010, Voices activists have maintained a partial listing of unarmed civilians killed by U.S. led ISAF/NATO troops in Afghanistan. All of the information we’ve assembled is available in the mainstream news. We realized that we ourselves were not paying close enough attention, - we weren’t pausing to ask questions and absorb the details, and so we’ve tried in the past several months to carefully update the “Afghan Atrocities” timetable. We invite others to join us in considering ways to express remorse and condolence to the people whose loved ones have been killed.

It’s important to note that President Obama has set “a clear and achievable mission-to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies and prevent their return to either country.” Yet, the U.S. director of the National Security Agency, Jim Jones, has acknowledged that there are only 50 – 100 Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan and 300 to 400 members of the group in Pakistan.

Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Nonviolence spoke in Des Moines Friday July 31st about the use of drone warfare in Pakistan and Afghanistan. KELLY is one of the “ Creech 14” who will stand trial for protesting the use of drones April 9, 2009 at Creech air force base.

I tell them about how we went into Saab Bofors Dynamics in Eskilstuna in October 2008. There we hammered on the bazookas as a part of a campaign within our antimilitaristic network called “Mischief” (Ofog). “Did you really call the police and waited for them at the scene of the crime?” the young guy asks in disbelief. “Yep, it is a part of civil disobedience. To take responsibility for your actions” I say. Is he also a part of your network” asks the young man and point at the picture of St Francis of Assisi on my t-shirt. “No” I answer “but it is fair to say that the shared our conviction of nonviolence.”

On Dec. 30, 2009, a trusted Central Intelligence Agency informant walked into a base in Khost, Afghanistan, which borders Pakistan, and blew up himself and seven others working for the agency. In the weeks that followed, the United States, possibly for revenge, dramatically increased the number of attacks into Western Pakistan using unmanned aerial combat vehicles, better known as drones.

by G. Simon Harak, S.J.
July 15, 2010

“In other countries, the country has a military. In Pakistan, the military has a country.”

I arrived in Pakistan on May 4th, traveling with Kathy Kelly and Josh Brollier from Voices for Creative Nonviolence, based in Chicago. After traveling through Pakistan for about two weeks, I surely can’t claim to fully understand the country, but these words from I.A Rehman, Secretary General of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, seemed to summarize what I learned.

I learned that most of the combat troops in the pre-1948 Indian Army were Muslims. So the army “got a country” when East and West Pakistan were formed in 1947 from the former British colony of India.

One difficulty is that democracy and the military don’t mix well: the military is not a democratic institution. When it comes to running a country, this mis-fit becomes even more problematic. Kathy and Josh had been to Pakistan last year, and this year, as we went from place to place and interviewed person after person, we kept hearing about how the government was not representative of the people. Instead, we learned that a small ruling elite runs the country for its own benefit.