In April 2016, President Obama approved new rules that allow ten civilians to be killed for every drone strike in the seven countries the US is currently bombing. Also, he returned to the use of “signature strikes” which target not terrorists, but behaviors and personal attributes.
Here are two obituaries for Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.
OBITUARY: Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace,
passes away at age 94, NCR April 30, 2016
http://ncronline.org/news/
“Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94”
by DANIEL LEWIS, NY Times, APRIL 30, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/
And here is a statement written by Frida Kerrigan:
April 30, 2016
Daniel Berrigan, Uncle, Brother, Friend,
PRESENTE
A statement from the Family of Father Dan Berrigan, SJ
This afternoon around 2:30, a great soul left this earth. Close family missed the “time of death” by half an hour, but Dan was not alone, held and prayed out of this plane of existence by his friends. We – Liz McAlister, Kate, Jerry and Frida Berrigan, Carla and Marc Berrigan-Pittarelli—were blessed to be among friends—Patrick Walsh, Joe Cosgrove, Father Joe Towle and Maureen McCafferty—able to surround Daniel Berrigan’s body for the afternoon into the evening.
We were able to be with our memories of our Uncle, Friend and Brother in Law—birthdays and baptisms, weddings and wakes, funerals and Christmas dinners, long meals and longer walks, arrests and marches and court appearances.
It was a sacrament to be with Dan and feel his spirit move out of his body and into each of us and into the world. We see our fathers in him—Jerry Berrigan who died in July 2015 and Phil Berrigan who died in December 2002. We see our children in him—we think that little Madeline Vida Berrigan Sheehan-Gaumer (born February 2014) is his pre-incarnation with her dark skin, bright eyes and big ears.
We see the future in him – his commitment to making the world a little more human, a little more truthful.
We are bereft. We are so sad. We are aching and wrung out. Our bodies are tired as Dan’s was—after a hip fracture, repeated infections, prolonged frailty. And we are so grateful: for the excellent and conscientious care Dan received at Murray Weigel, for his long life and considerable gifts, for his grace in each of our lives, for his courage and witness and prodigious vocabulary. Dan taught us that every person is a miracle, every person has a story, every person is worthy of respect.
And we are so aware of all he did and all he was and all he created in almost 95 years of life lived with enthusiasm, commitment, seriousness, and almost holy humor.
We talked this afternoon of Dan Berrigan’s uncanny sense of ceremony and ritual, his deep appreciation of the feminine, and his ability to be in the right place at the right time. He was not strategic, he was not opportunistic, but he understood solidarity—the power of showing
up for people and struggles and communities. We reflect back on his long life and we are in awe of the depth and breadth of his commitment to peace and justice—from the Palestinians’ struggle for land and recognition and justice; to the gay community’s fight for health care,
equal rights and humanity; to the fractured and polluted earth that is crying out for nuclear disarmament; to a deep commitment to the imprisoned, the poor, the homeless, the ill and infirm.
We are aware that no one person can pick up this heavy burden, but that there is enough work for each and every one of us. We can all move forward Dan Berrigan’s work for humanity. Dan told an interviewer: “Peacemaking is tough, unfinished, blood-ridden. Everything is worse now than when I started, but I’m at peace. We walk our hope and that’s the only way of keeping it going. We’ve got faith, we’ve got one another, we’ve got religious discipline…” We do have
it, all of it, thanks to Dan.
Dan was at peace. He was ready to relinquish his body. His spirit is free, it is alive in the world and it is waiting for you.
Andrew Bacevich speaks at the Naval War College (from Wikipedia)
For our readers in the Boston area, here is a chance to get involved:
Please join us on June 1 to hear a talk by Andrew Bacevich on the dangers of American militarism.
Andrew Bacevich is a Catholic historian and Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University where he taught for many years. He is also a Vietnam veteran who retired with the rank of Colonel after over 20 years in the US Army. He has written many books on American foreign policy including The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War, and Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War. His newest work, America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History was released on April 5, 2016.
Professor Bacevich is also a regular contributor to the Catholic magazine/website Commonweal and many other publications and websites. He has appeared on TV shows such as the Bill Moyers Journal and even the comedy show of fellow Catholic Stephen Colbert.
This event will be the first in a series intended to help American Catholics and others to confront the problems of militarism and perpetual war which exist in our country today. After the talk, we will have a “social hour” with a cash bar available. Relax, have a pint and make new friends. Discuss politics and religion. Even this year’s humdrum Presidential campaign! All the things you can’t talk about at work!
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
7:00 PM at:
The Hibernian Hall
151 Watertown Street
Watertown, MA
Free and open to the public. Ample parking. Doors open at 6:30.
Sponsored by Boston Catholics Against Militarism
Join our meetup. Oppose militarism and build Catholic solidarity!
Nobody Knows the Identities of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It, by Glenn Greenwald, March 8, 2016
“Consider how circular this entire rationale is: The U.S., like all countries, obviously has a legitimate interest in protecting its troops from attack. But why does it have troops there at all in need of protection? The answer: The troops are there to operate drone bases and attack people they regard as a threat to them. But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups could not pose a threat to them…
If you’re an American who has lived under the war on terror, it’s easy to forget how extreme this behavior is. Most countries on the planet don’t routinely run around dropping bombs and killing dozens of people in multiple other countries at once, let alone do so in countries where they’re not at war…
But for Americans, this is now all perfectly normalized. We just view our president as vested with the intrinsic, divine right, grounded in American exceptionalism, to deem whomever he wants ‘Bad Guys’ and then — with no trial, no process, no accountability — order them killed. He’s the roving, Global Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And we see nothing disturbing or dangerous or even odd about that. We’ve been inculcated to view the world the way a 6-year-old watches cartoons: Bad Guys should be killed, and that’s the end of the story.
So yesterday the president killed roughly 150 people in a country where the U.S. is not at war. The Pentagon issued a five-sentence boilerplate statement declaring them all “terrorists.” And that’s pretty much the end of that. Within literally hours, virtually everyone was ready to forget about the whole thing and move on, content in the knowledge — even without a shred of evidence or information about the people killed — that their government and president did the right thing. Now that is a pacified public and malleable media.”
Getting quickly back on topic, here’s some more material from Michael Brendan Dougherty, a very fine, openly Catholic writer who bears watching for his frequent articles about foreign policy, politics, religion, popular culture and just about anything. Potentially a strong ally in the fight against militarism.
Thanks to one of our readers, Robert, for the heads up about this!
Tom Woods did a podcast on the Just War Theory, interviewing author Laurie Calhoun, author of War and Delusion: A Critical Examination (Twenty-first Century Perspectives on War, Peace, and Human Conflict).
Calhoun: “The theory has no content…It is vacuous…If you examine it…you find that in fact [the criteria] tend to be platitudinous and they are used rhetorically by leaders to support their cause for war.”
Indeed, the JWT is used to justify, not limit, war — and it has been that way for centuries.
“You can’t win by playing defense. You must take the war to the enemy — without restraint. If you’re not determined to win at any cost, you’ll lose…
…War is never clean or easy…Collateral damage and civilian casualties are part of combat and always will be. The most humane approach is to pile on fast and win decisively…
…The generals who won World War II would start by leveling Raqqa, the ISIS caliphate’s capital. Civilians would die, but those remaining in Raqqa have embraced ISIS, as Germans did Hitler.”
So, kill ’em all, says the retired military officer.
Aggressive wars. Fought without restraint. At any cost — financially or in terms of human life. Fought not against combatants but “the enemy.” This is the American military mentality and sums up 20th century warfare. All horror is justified in the name of “winning” based on some completely theoretical and speculative and imaginary number of people who were “saved” as a result of whatever action was taken. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Christian Just War Theory.
I would love, just once, for one of these people to define what “winning” looks like in the War on Terror, let alone in a post-nuclear age. That would be interesting.
“I think that if there is one truth that people need to learn, in the world, especially today, it is this: the intellect is only theoretically independent of desire and appetite in ordinary, actual practice. It is constantly being blinded and perverted by the ends and aims of passion, and the evidence it presents to us with such a show of impartiality and objectivity is fraught with interest and propaganda. We have become marvelous at self-delusion; all the more so, because we have gone to such trouble to convince ourselves of our own absolute infallibility. The desires of the flesh — and by that I mean not only sinful desires, but even the ordinary, normal appetites for comfort and ease and human respect, are fruitful sources of every kind of error and misjudgment, and because we have these yearnings in us, our intellects (which, if they operated all alone in a vacuum, would indeed, register with pure impartiality what they saw) present to us everything distorted and accommodated to the norms of our desire.” Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
The Friends of Franz Jagerstatter are sponsoring a letter to Pope Francis, asking him to denounce U.S. war-making during his visit in September. They are asking individuals and organizations to sign on.
Here’s the letter. Here’s the petition.
What are you waiting for?
Before Roe v. Wade,
….there was the Eugenic Protection Act.
World War II is often called The Good War and is widely accepted by Catholics as being the best modern example of a “just war.” But what should we think when a just war is fought with unjust means? Or has evil results?
When I was a kid, my friends and I (all boys, of course) were infatuated with WW II. Many of our fathers had fought in that war and Hollywood promoted it endlessly in exciting movies about heroic American and Brit efforts to defeat “the Krauts and the Japs.” We saw every movie and TV show and even knew the details of the fascinating weaponry that was employed by the American infantrymen, whom we emulated in our play.
But all of us kids were Catholics, and I’ll never forget how one day that made us different. In grammar school a nun told the class about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and how Catholic morality condemned those acts of war because the American decision makers had deliberately targeted non-combatants and the innocent. At one point we were even assigned to read John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima, and that was the beginning for me of a lifetime of skepticism about war and the U.S. Government.
The bombings were and still are the two greatest single acts of terrorism in history. But the aftermath of the war also brought into the world another instance of targeted killing of the innocent. It is a lesser known episode but it has had an ongoing worldwide impact which is arguably a greater threat to mankind than the advent of nuclear weapons.
In 1948, during the time of the American post-war military occupation, Japan legalized abortion. The enabling law was called the Eugenic Protection Act and, according to a book written in 2011 by Mara Hvistendahl, it was allowed and encouraged by the occupying force, under Supreme Commander General Douglas MacArthur. Continue reading