Peace Rally Today
Today was a sunny day, a good day to spend outdoors. That I did, raking and watering leaves in the morning, in the afternoon at the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war peace rally, and shoveling and distributing wood chips at the DMZ community garden.
You might wonder why I was watering leaves. I was watering the leaves I moved from the rain garden in front of the house to the new front yard garden we are creating on the other side of front lawn. I was watering the leaves so they do not blow away. The wintered fall’s leaves should make a good base for this new front yard garden.
As the endless war in Iraq drags on the crowd at the anniversary of the start of the war becomes smaller. After years of protesting, and with a new president, the occupation of Iraq continues. In fact the occupation and war in nearby Afghanistan has escalated. The rally brought in a number of issues, economic issues at home, plight of immigrants, health care, the war in Afghanistan, but the rally is just for the faithful and awakens few persons to the real issues facing our crisis.
I almost did not go, but then someone had the idea of bringing our MU, Teach War No More banner. Thanks to George Martin, a trusted leader of the peace movement in the area, we were invited to sit on the stairs right in front of one of the microphones for the speakers. Our sign was in sight of everyone, but I am not sure how much our message was communicated.
We are not trying to stop university students, if they choose, from joining a military training program like ROTC. The real issue is that Marquette is the host for the Navy, Army, Marines and Air Force for officer training in war for students from 14 colleges and universities in the area. Military students would get college credit no matter where the courses were held. However, Marquette, by hosting the four military departments, gives credibility to the teaching of war and to values contrary those of persons of many faiths. No matter how much Marquette may financially benefit from being the host school for the military, it is not moral and ethical, in the opinion of some of us, for Marquette to teach war.
The more I ponder this moral issue the more I realize that the teaching of war and values contrary to the Christian values that Marquette represents is at the heart of many of the other issues talked about at the rally today: immigration treatment, torture, lack of affordable health care, war in Iraq and Afghanistan. All of these issues are rooted in us as we allow them to be taught and practiced in our society. Teaching of War at a Catholic university represents how embedded the values of violence and war are in our society. These values lead to rules of engagement in modern war where soldiers can kill up to 30 civilians to get to their target. Soldiers in military prisons did not just think up one day the idea of torturing prisoners. The values and training that allow torture are embedded in military training. Lack of respect for the human lives of immigrants goes to the heart of a value, dignity of all human life, that is suppressed in military values. The priority of individual conscience is stuffed out in military training, which gives military orders priority over conscience and does not permit a solider to decide whether a war is moral or not.
As I awake more to how teaching war is so encysted in our society I will need to work outside more in the garden here and DMZ to keep hope alive. Somehow in the sun, working with the soil, the dark values that lead to war and violence disappear. In our universities and colleges we need to teach organic gardening, not war.
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