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son in Iraq

Last spring a nationally known peace activist, Kathy Kelly, of Voices for Creative Nonviolence was speaking at a local church. Before her talk she announced the Nonviolent Resistant Stations of the Cross?, that some of us in Breaking the Silence? were doing on Good Friday. After her talk she took comments and questions. One of the first speakers was a man named Francis Pauc, a West Point graduate and military veteran. He talked about how he had become a pacifist and raised his children to abhor war. However, now his son, Hans, had joined the military and was soon to be deployed to Iraq. He passionately talked about his concerns for his son and raised a lot of questions of what to do.

Francis came to the Stations of Cross and we got to know each other. He has joined us in other actions since that time with our efforts for Marquette University to Be Faithful to the Gospel and to Stop Teach War and our two drone actions this summer Drone and Clowns Storm the Bastille and Drone, Debt and Clown on Brady Street.

Francis has written a number of letters, brief essays and reflections about his son going to war. It is an outgoing series that, with his blessing, we have put on a web page called Father at One.

The latest reflection came today and is called “Supporting Our Troops.”. It raises questions of how to support our soldiers without supporting the wars they are fighting. This is a question that I have often thought about it. I condemn the wars our soldiers are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan but support our troops. Francis does not answer the question but offers some deep insights into this dilemma.

At the end of the essay he states: “It seems so much easier to send a package to a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan than it does to help a veteran return to a normal life in the U.S. Why is that?” I don’t have the answer but as a Father at War he helps us struggle with this question of what it means to be supporting our troops.

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