WAR IN IRAQ
Military action in what is called the "Gulf War" against Iraq began on January 16,1991 with massive "shock and awe" bombing of Iraqi cities and military targets, followed by a ground invasion, as a response to Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a U.S. ally. U.S. and allied forces crushed Iraqi military resistance rapidly, within six weeks, and declared victory, and an end to the war. But the war, in fact, did not end, because the U.S. and the United Nations promptly imposed a very thorough and stringent economic embargo, a form of siege warfare, which prevented Iraq from restoring its devastated electrical, water purification, medical, educational and industrial systems.
This led to mass hunger, untreated illnesses, and premature death to hundreds of thousands of children and other innocent civilians in the years between 1991 and 2003, when a second phase of bombing, invasion and military occupation began, following false accusations that Iraq had rebuilt and possessed "weapons of mass destruction".
My then wife, Kathy Kelly, was present in Baghdad as a witness and advocate for peace during both periods of active bombing and invasion. Starting in 1996, during the period of economic sanctions, she visited Iraq many times, organizing and leading delegations of western peace activists and journalists, in open violation of the embargo regulations.
Between delegation visits, she did extensive educational work in western countries to advocate humanitarian easing of the deadly economic sanctions. For this work she was nominated three times as a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. I advised her and organized support for her in all of this work.
When the second bombing blitzkrieg and invasion began in March 2003, I began what became a twenty-nine day fast, until the active warfare ended, and I spent nineteen days in jail for protest sit-ins at the office of U.S. Senator Bill Frist, who was Majority Leader of the Senate at that time. I felt, in the spirit of Thoreau, that in this warfare State a prison was the only place where a free man could abide with honor. The writings that follow explained my actions and my view of our responsibility for ending all such wars.
This led to mass hunger, untreated illnesses, and premature death to hundreds of thousands of children and other innocent civilians in the years between 1991 and 2003, when a second phase of bombing, invasion and military occupation began, following false accusations that Iraq had rebuilt and possessed "weapons of mass destruction".
My then wife, Kathy Kelly, was present in Baghdad as a witness and advocate for peace during both periods of active bombing and invasion. Starting in 1996, during the period of economic sanctions, she visited Iraq many times, organizing and leading delegations of western peace activists and journalists, in open violation of the embargo regulations.
Between delegation visits, she did extensive educational work in western countries to advocate humanitarian easing of the deadly economic sanctions. For this work she was nominated three times as a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. I advised her and organized support for her in all of this work.
When the second bombing blitzkrieg and invasion began in March 2003, I began what became a twenty-nine day fast, until the active warfare ended, and I spent nineteen days in jail for protest sit-ins at the office of U.S. Senator Bill Frist, who was Majority Leader of the Senate at that time. I felt, in the spirit of Thoreau, that in this warfare State a prison was the only place where a free man could abide with honor. The writings that follow explained my actions and my view of our responsibility for ending all such wars.
Fast and Vigil at Senator Frist's Office
Karl Meyer Nashville Greenlands
2407 Heiman St.
Nashville, TN 37208
Phone 615-322-9523
March 18,2003
To my friends and to all people,
Today, I am beginning a fast which I intend to continue for the duration of the
Iraq war crisis, as a witness against all military action. If l find the emotional
strength to do it, I will also be present for a daily vigil at the Nashville office of
Senator Bill Frist at 28 White Bridge Road from Noon until 3 p.m. each day, and at
the office of the Nashville Peace and Justice Center at 1016 18th Ave. South from
9 a.m. to11 a.m. each day, where I will be available for volunteer work for peace. I invite you to join me at either site.
I will take up to 32 oz. of soy milk, orange juice, or other fluid nourishment daily to maintain enough physical energy for the vigils and volunteer work.
The selection of vigil sites is intended to express my belief that all sectors of
American society share substantial unfulfilled responsibility for preventing war.
Senator Frist is responsible because he is the most powerful person in Tennessee
supporting the Bush administration push toward war. On the other hand, we in
protest movements also share personal responsibility for social conditions leading
to war; although convinced that war is morally and politically wrong, most of us
continue to pay income taxes that finance military action, and continue to consume
excessive amounts of petroleum products that make domination of Middle East oil
resources seem essential to elected politicians in the United States.
I believe we should stop paying taxes for war, and greatly reduce our consumption of oil and other limited world resources.
From budget analysis by the War Resisters League, I calculate that military costs
financed by federal income tax currently exceed an average of $ 3000 per person, per
year, in the United States.
I undertake this fast in support of my friend Kathy Kelly who is presently in
Baghdad as a witness against war. Kathy is the principal organizer of the Iraq Peace
Team, thirty American peacemakers who are in Iraq and intend to remain for the
duration of hostilities, in company with innocent families in Iraq, as witnesses to the
principle of peace and reconciliation with them.
Kathy has made many trips to Iraq since 1996 to bring medicines to hospitals and to call attention to mass sufferings and death among Iraqi civilians resulting from the United Nations/ United States embargo on trade with Iraq. ( Information: Voices in the Wilderness, 1-773-784-6144 or www.iraqpeaceteam.org )
Sincerely,
Karl Meyer
Karl Meyer Nashville Greenlands
2407 Heiman St.
Nashville, TN 37208
Phone 615-322-9523
March 18,2003
To my friends and to all people,
Today, I am beginning a fast which I intend to continue for the duration of the
Iraq war crisis, as a witness against all military action. If l find the emotional
strength to do it, I will also be present for a daily vigil at the Nashville office of
Senator Bill Frist at 28 White Bridge Road from Noon until 3 p.m. each day, and at
the office of the Nashville Peace and Justice Center at 1016 18th Ave. South from
9 a.m. to11 a.m. each day, where I will be available for volunteer work for peace. I invite you to join me at either site.
I will take up to 32 oz. of soy milk, orange juice, or other fluid nourishment daily to maintain enough physical energy for the vigils and volunteer work.
The selection of vigil sites is intended to express my belief that all sectors of
American society share substantial unfulfilled responsibility for preventing war.
Senator Frist is responsible because he is the most powerful person in Tennessee
supporting the Bush administration push toward war. On the other hand, we in
protest movements also share personal responsibility for social conditions leading
to war; although convinced that war is morally and politically wrong, most of us
continue to pay income taxes that finance military action, and continue to consume
excessive amounts of petroleum products that make domination of Middle East oil
resources seem essential to elected politicians in the United States.
I believe we should stop paying taxes for war, and greatly reduce our consumption of oil and other limited world resources.
From budget analysis by the War Resisters League, I calculate that military costs
financed by federal income tax currently exceed an average of $ 3000 per person, per
year, in the United States.
I undertake this fast in support of my friend Kathy Kelly who is presently in
Baghdad as a witness against war. Kathy is the principal organizer of the Iraq Peace
Team, thirty American peacemakers who are in Iraq and intend to remain for the
duration of hostilities, in company with innocent families in Iraq, as witnesses to the
principle of peace and reconciliation with them.
Kathy has made many trips to Iraq since 1996 to bring medicines to hospitals and to call attention to mass sufferings and death among Iraqi civilians resulting from the United Nations/ United States embargo on trade with Iraq. ( Information: Voices in the Wilderness, 1-773-784-6144 or www.iraqpeaceteam.org )
Sincerely,
Karl Meyer
Kathy Kelly with children in Basra, Iraq, where she spent two months living with them in the summer of 2000. I wore this photograph on a cord around my neck when I sat in at Senator Frist's office in 2003 to protest the U.S. invasion.
Frist Leaflet
We believe that war against Iraq is unnecessary, wrong, and destructive to the needs and interests of all people in Tennessee, America, and the whole world.
Senator Frist, We Urge You,
1] Act to end this war as quickly and humanely as possible, bring our troops home, and make full reparation to innocent families in Iraq for any damage done to them.
2] Vote to ensure that such foolish and destructive war policies will not be continued.
We gather at your Nashville office to speak about the war you voted for and continue to support:
1] This war is not necessary to contain a threat to the world or our own people from weapons that the Government of Iraq may still possess after years of embargo, inspections and disarmament.
2] It threatens the lives of millions of innocent Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. military that you have voted to put in harm's way for no good or sufficient reason.
3] Rage aroused worldwide by unilateral actions of the United States, in defiance of world opinion and the United Nations process, increases the danger of terrorist attacks against American people at home and abroad. It does not increase our safety in any way, as is indicated by threat alerts of the Department of Homeland Security. Thousands of your Tennessee constituents feel anger at the folly of this policy.
4] Huge unpredictable costs of this war will have devastating effects on many families in Tennessee and every other state by directly subtracting from resources available for medical care, education improvements and many other social needs crucial to a decent life. As one among the wealthiest Americans, with complete access to the highest quality of medical care, you may not feel the life-threatening cost of this war to many Tennessee families.
Senator Frist, we call on you,
REPRESENT THE TRUE NEEDS AND INTERESTS OF ALL TENNESSEANS;
RESPECT THE LIVES OF ALL FAMILIES IN IRAQ, AND ALL THE U.S. SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES, WHOM YOU HAVE VOTED TO PLACE AT RISK IN A COSTLY AND UNNECESSARY WAR.
Sincerely,
Concerned people gathered to oppose the Iraq war.
Senator Frist, We Urge You,
1] Act to end this war as quickly and humanely as possible, bring our troops home, and make full reparation to innocent families in Iraq for any damage done to them.
2] Vote to ensure that such foolish and destructive war policies will not be continued.
We gather at your Nashville office to speak about the war you voted for and continue to support:
1] This war is not necessary to contain a threat to the world or our own people from weapons that the Government of Iraq may still possess after years of embargo, inspections and disarmament.
2] It threatens the lives of millions of innocent Iraqi civilians and thousands of U.S. military that you have voted to put in harm's way for no good or sufficient reason.
3] Rage aroused worldwide by unilateral actions of the United States, in defiance of world opinion and the United Nations process, increases the danger of terrorist attacks against American people at home and abroad. It does not increase our safety in any way, as is indicated by threat alerts of the Department of Homeland Security. Thousands of your Tennessee constituents feel anger at the folly of this policy.
4] Huge unpredictable costs of this war will have devastating effects on many families in Tennessee and every other state by directly subtracting from resources available for medical care, education improvements and many other social needs crucial to a decent life. As one among the wealthiest Americans, with complete access to the highest quality of medical care, you may not feel the life-threatening cost of this war to many Tennessee families.
Senator Frist, we call on you,
REPRESENT THE TRUE NEEDS AND INTERESTS OF ALL TENNESSEANS;
RESPECT THE LIVES OF ALL FAMILIES IN IRAQ, AND ALL THE U.S. SOLDIERS AND THEIR FAMILIES, WHOM YOU HAVE VOTED TO PLACE AT RISK IN A COSTLY AND UNNECESSARY WAR.
Sincerely,
Concerned people gathered to oppose the Iraq war.
Looking in the Mirror to See
the Face of War
by Karl Meyer
The Catholic Worker movement will celebrate its seventy first anniversary in May. Looking back, I am amazed to realize I have been with them for two-thirds of that history.
I met Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy forty-six years ago when I was twenty. The day we met I went to jail with them to serve thirty days for refusing to take shelter during a Cold War civil defense exercise. (We maintained that learning to hide in high rise buildings in lower Manhattan was not a helpful way to deal with the potential threat of a Soviet nuclear bomb attack on New York City).
In the cell that night Ammon said, " Being a pacifist between wars is like being a vegetarian between meals. " He was a pacifist because he wouldn't kill people, and a vegetarian because he didn't want animals killed for him to eat. He had refused to register for the military draft for both World Wars I and II. He had served two years at Atlanta Penitentiary, with nine months in solitary confinement, for his World War I resistance.
He was talking about the history of peace movements before both wars. There had been mass movements of Americans opposed to U.S. involvement before both wars, that collapsed as soon as war was declared. Many of the peace advocates either volunteered for military service, or quietly submitted to military conscription.
Nowadays, we have a different problem: a lot of people are only pacifists during wars, which is like being vegetarians during meals while working at a factory pig farm to earn a living between meals. Contemporary liberals and internationalists don't want to fight in wars themselves, or waste their tax payments on excessive military spending.
We march in the streets whenever the government heads into a hot war. When the hot war ends, the marching ends with it, and most of us go on living in the same way we were living before, which is the same way most other Americans live. Mindless economic growth, and defense of our extravagant way of life, have been both reason and rationale for war and empire throughout the history of this republic, from westward expansion to " Manifest Destiny " to the neo-imperialism of the last half century. We live in an economic and political culture that makes imperial power seem necessary, and future wars of domination almost inevitable.
I have struggled nonviolently to end six long wars, in six successive decades, from the 50s through the present. We carried on a forty-year struggle to end the Cold War weapons race with the Soviet Union and its allies. Ending the Vietnam War absorbed our energies in the 60s and 70s. In the 80s, there were three long Central American wars, in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
Then, the continuing Gulf War against Iraq, from l990 through the present. Along the way there were small neo-imperial wars that ended quickly enough that we had little chance to get organized to oppose them: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo. The war in Colombia is a long one that has not yet reached the level of mass awareness.
I've grown old in these struggles, I'm getting tired, and I keep on asking, " What's going on here?", and, " Why am I so discouraged about the future of peace? "
After the 9/11 attack I saw a cartoon showing a table with flags for sale, that was crowded with customers, next to a table with mirrors for sale, that had no customers. At this moment, we could add a table with anti-war buttons and bumper stickers, with lots of customers, and still no customers for mirrors.
Gandhi taught that the path of nonviolence begins with self-examination and purification of self. We need to look in the mirror first to see the face of war, before we look at the television screen and start fuming about George Bush.
Excessive petroleum use is the greatest source of violence on Earth today. It pollutes the atmosphere and distorts the ecological balance of Earth. Political tensions over oil resource control are at the root of many contemporary wars. U.S. policymakers believe they must project overwhelming military power around the whole world to control oil energy resources.
The Bushes, Bakers, Cheneys, Rumsfelds know how to secure huge quantities of petroleum required for the American way of life, at prices American voters find acceptable. Many of us are appalled when we have to see the bloody details of how they go about it. Many of us might be ready to use less petroleum energy, or pay more for it, rather than control it through weapons and war.
However, electoral results tend to indicate that a majority of Americans who shop for oil in the same marketplace with us prefer to deny or ignore the environmental and human costs, or are consciously willing to accept them.
Unless a whole lot of us begin to live in a radically different way between wars, especially by reducing our personal energy consumption, more bloody struggles over control and pricing of petroleum and other world resources are inevitable.
Let's look in the mirror to see how we are living.
Do we live alone or with one or two others, in large houses, while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens are homeless? Do we leave the thermostat at 68 degrees day and night, even when we are all away earning income to pay the bill, or when we are sleeping? Do we leave lights on and appliances running when we are not using them?
Are we driving motor vehicles for thousands of thoughtless miles each year, on every kind of errand or trip that impulse suggests? For instance, would we drive hundreds of miles to Washington or New York for a one-day rally against oil control wars?
Do we own corporate stocks with large appreciations in value, though much of the work that added to their value was done by people in foreign lands and in our own country who were not decently paid for their labor? Could we find alternative investments in affordable housing and in community based economic development that support justice for the poor people?
Do we buy lots of unnecessary products, things for transitory or infrequent use, objects for gifts or personal use that may never be used at all? Is one of our biggest headaches how to store them in closets, basements, garages and attics?
Do we pay high prices for produce imported at all seasons, by gasoline powered transport, from thousands of miles away, from Guatemala, Hawaii, Australia? Do we cut half of it away because of imperfections, or throw it into the garbage to be hauled to landfills after it rots in the refrigerator? What about the fertile land in the yards immediately around our houses? Do we plant most of it in grass, and then scalp it to the ground weekly in summer with gasoline powered mowers and weed-eaters?
Could we grow our own berries, fruits and vegetables by hand cultivation within fifty feet of our own houses?
Finally, do we pay taxes for war? The military budget of the United States costs an average of about $1500 for every woman, child and man. Add the yearly interest payments for past military expenditures that were financed by borrowing from the wealthy segments of society.
About half of all federal income tax revenue is spent on military costs for the current budget, plus interest on past military borrowing and other costs of past wars. George Bush doesn't want our opinions about spending and war. The government doesn't require us to vote, and Bush doesn't even want us to vote in the next election, for he rightly supposes that we would vote against him. The government no longer drafts young men to fight its wars.
There is only one thing our rulers require of us to sustain the execution of their military policies: they demand that we pay federal income taxes.
If I see that those policies are morally wrong, I feel a moral imperative to resist the taxes that pay for them. Over the last forty-five years, I have talked to thousands of people in peace movements about refusing war taxes. They invariably point out that this could be difficult, and even risky.
Yes, it could be. I have refused payment of all federal income taxes for forty-three years. Along the way I've encountered occasional employment and property seizure difficulties. I was even one of the few who've gone to jail for it, serving nine months in federal prison during the Vietnam War, because of my role in organizing war tax refusal. But it was well worth it, and I spent all the money I didn't pay on real social needs that I saw.
In the seventy-year history of the Catholic Worker movement, we have responded to all of these questions about how to live in peace. We have lived in community and received homeless people into our " houses of hospitality ". We have tried to use buses, trains and bicycles more, and to use automobiles less.
We've invested our savings in community development loan funds that finance low income housing and employment opportunities. We wear second-hand clothes and use second-hand appliances, furniture and building materials. We salvage tons of food from dumpsters, groceries and restaurants. We cultivate organic gardens in the country and on vacant lots near our inner city " houses of hospitality ". When we earn enough income to be liable for federal income taxes, lots of us refuse to pay them.
From my life experience I have come to believe that we cannot have a peaceful relationship with the whole of Earth until a whole lot of Americans learn to live in a new way. I still cry when I read the closing words of Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness, written when the movement was only twenty years old:
The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say.
The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone any more.
But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.
--------------------------------------------------------
Information on simple living, hospitality, and urban gardening: www.catholicworker.org
Information and counseling on war tax refusal methods and consequences: National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, www.nwtrcc.org or 1-800-269-7464.
Karl Meyer is a member of Nashville Greenlands , in Nashville , TN, a non-sectarian community affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement.
I met Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy forty-six years ago when I was twenty. The day we met I went to jail with them to serve thirty days for refusing to take shelter during a Cold War civil defense exercise. (We maintained that learning to hide in high rise buildings in lower Manhattan was not a helpful way to deal with the potential threat of a Soviet nuclear bomb attack on New York City).
In the cell that night Ammon said, " Being a pacifist between wars is like being a vegetarian between meals. " He was a pacifist because he wouldn't kill people, and a vegetarian because he didn't want animals killed for him to eat. He had refused to register for the military draft for both World Wars I and II. He had served two years at Atlanta Penitentiary, with nine months in solitary confinement, for his World War I resistance.
He was talking about the history of peace movements before both wars. There had been mass movements of Americans opposed to U.S. involvement before both wars, that collapsed as soon as war was declared. Many of the peace advocates either volunteered for military service, or quietly submitted to military conscription.
Nowadays, we have a different problem: a lot of people are only pacifists during wars, which is like being vegetarians during meals while working at a factory pig farm to earn a living between meals. Contemporary liberals and internationalists don't want to fight in wars themselves, or waste their tax payments on excessive military spending.
We march in the streets whenever the government heads into a hot war. When the hot war ends, the marching ends with it, and most of us go on living in the same way we were living before, which is the same way most other Americans live. Mindless economic growth, and defense of our extravagant way of life, have been both reason and rationale for war and empire throughout the history of this republic, from westward expansion to " Manifest Destiny " to the neo-imperialism of the last half century. We live in an economic and political culture that makes imperial power seem necessary, and future wars of domination almost inevitable.
I have struggled nonviolently to end six long wars, in six successive decades, from the 50s through the present. We carried on a forty-year struggle to end the Cold War weapons race with the Soviet Union and its allies. Ending the Vietnam War absorbed our energies in the 60s and 70s. In the 80s, there were three long Central American wars, in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.
Then, the continuing Gulf War against Iraq, from l990 through the present. Along the way there were small neo-imperial wars that ended quickly enough that we had little chance to get organized to oppose them: Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo. The war in Colombia is a long one that has not yet reached the level of mass awareness.
I've grown old in these struggles, I'm getting tired, and I keep on asking, " What's going on here?", and, " Why am I so discouraged about the future of peace? "
After the 9/11 attack I saw a cartoon showing a table with flags for sale, that was crowded with customers, next to a table with mirrors for sale, that had no customers. At this moment, we could add a table with anti-war buttons and bumper stickers, with lots of customers, and still no customers for mirrors.
Gandhi taught that the path of nonviolence begins with self-examination and purification of self. We need to look in the mirror first to see the face of war, before we look at the television screen and start fuming about George Bush.
Excessive petroleum use is the greatest source of violence on Earth today. It pollutes the atmosphere and distorts the ecological balance of Earth. Political tensions over oil resource control are at the root of many contemporary wars. U.S. policymakers believe they must project overwhelming military power around the whole world to control oil energy resources.
The Bushes, Bakers, Cheneys, Rumsfelds know how to secure huge quantities of petroleum required for the American way of life, at prices American voters find acceptable. Many of us are appalled when we have to see the bloody details of how they go about it. Many of us might be ready to use less petroleum energy, or pay more for it, rather than control it through weapons and war.
However, electoral results tend to indicate that a majority of Americans who shop for oil in the same marketplace with us prefer to deny or ignore the environmental and human costs, or are consciously willing to accept them.
Unless a whole lot of us begin to live in a radically different way between wars, especially by reducing our personal energy consumption, more bloody struggles over control and pricing of petroleum and other world resources are inevitable.
Let's look in the mirror to see how we are living.
Do we live alone or with one or two others, in large houses, while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens are homeless? Do we leave the thermostat at 68 degrees day and night, even when we are all away earning income to pay the bill, or when we are sleeping? Do we leave lights on and appliances running when we are not using them?
Are we driving motor vehicles for thousands of thoughtless miles each year, on every kind of errand or trip that impulse suggests? For instance, would we drive hundreds of miles to Washington or New York for a one-day rally against oil control wars?
Do we own corporate stocks with large appreciations in value, though much of the work that added to their value was done by people in foreign lands and in our own country who were not decently paid for their labor? Could we find alternative investments in affordable housing and in community based economic development that support justice for the poor people?
Do we buy lots of unnecessary products, things for transitory or infrequent use, objects for gifts or personal use that may never be used at all? Is one of our biggest headaches how to store them in closets, basements, garages and attics?
Do we pay high prices for produce imported at all seasons, by gasoline powered transport, from thousands of miles away, from Guatemala, Hawaii, Australia? Do we cut half of it away because of imperfections, or throw it into the garbage to be hauled to landfills after it rots in the refrigerator? What about the fertile land in the yards immediately around our houses? Do we plant most of it in grass, and then scalp it to the ground weekly in summer with gasoline powered mowers and weed-eaters?
Could we grow our own berries, fruits and vegetables by hand cultivation within fifty feet of our own houses?
Finally, do we pay taxes for war? The military budget of the United States costs an average of about $1500 for every woman, child and man. Add the yearly interest payments for past military expenditures that were financed by borrowing from the wealthy segments of society.
About half of all federal income tax revenue is spent on military costs for the current budget, plus interest on past military borrowing and other costs of past wars. George Bush doesn't want our opinions about spending and war. The government doesn't require us to vote, and Bush doesn't even want us to vote in the next election, for he rightly supposes that we would vote against him. The government no longer drafts young men to fight its wars.
There is only one thing our rulers require of us to sustain the execution of their military policies: they demand that we pay federal income taxes.
If I see that those policies are morally wrong, I feel a moral imperative to resist the taxes that pay for them. Over the last forty-five years, I have talked to thousands of people in peace movements about refusing war taxes. They invariably point out that this could be difficult, and even risky.
Yes, it could be. I have refused payment of all federal income taxes for forty-three years. Along the way I've encountered occasional employment and property seizure difficulties. I was even one of the few who've gone to jail for it, serving nine months in federal prison during the Vietnam War, because of my role in organizing war tax refusal. But it was well worth it, and I spent all the money I didn't pay on real social needs that I saw.
In the seventy-year history of the Catholic Worker movement, we have responded to all of these questions about how to live in peace. We have lived in community and received homeless people into our " houses of hospitality ". We have tried to use buses, trains and bicycles more, and to use automobiles less.
We've invested our savings in community development loan funds that finance low income housing and employment opportunities. We wear second-hand clothes and use second-hand appliances, furniture and building materials. We salvage tons of food from dumpsters, groceries and restaurants. We cultivate organic gardens in the country and on vacant lots near our inner city " houses of hospitality ". When we earn enough income to be liable for federal income taxes, lots of us refuse to pay them.
From my life experience I have come to believe that we cannot have a peaceful relationship with the whole of Earth until a whole lot of Americans learn to live in a new way. I still cry when I read the closing words of Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness, written when the movement was only twenty years old:
The most significant thing about The Catholic Worker is poverty, some say.
The most significant thing is community, others say. We are not alone any more.
But the final word is love. At times it has been, in the words of Father Zossima, a harsh and dreadful thing, and our very faith in love has been tried through fire.
We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.
It all happened while we sat there talking, and it is still going on.
--------------------------------------------------------
Information on simple living, hospitality, and urban gardening: www.catholicworker.org
Information and counseling on war tax refusal methods and consequences: National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, www.nwtrcc.org or 1-800-269-7464.
Karl Meyer is a member of Nashville Greenlands , in Nashville , TN, a non-sectarian community affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement.
Civil War in Yugoslavia After Regional Secessions
1992-1995
(Excerpts from my autobiography,
Positively Dazzling Realism)
[In the winter of 1992] warfare was becoming intense and brutal in the Balkan states of the former Yugoslavia. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I had created Yugoslavia as a nation by combining states and regions from the remains of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire that was defeated and broken up in the war.
The Yugoslavian nation was a patchwork of several distinct ethnic language groups intermixed, and overlaid by three major religious identities: Serbian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim. Each ethnicity and religion was dominant in certain regions of the country, but there was a lot of intermixing, assimilation, and intermarriage among the groups.
After World War II, the country was held together as a unified nation by the political power of Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party. They had organized effective partisan resistance to German occupation during the war.
After Tito died in 1980, the unity of his Communist Party coalition began to disintegrate. After the collapse of Communist power in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1991, four states broke away from Yugoslavia and became independent nations: Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Macedonia. In Bosnia, where Orthodox Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, and Catholic Croatians were reasonably balanced in numbers and in strength, a savage civil war broke out in 1992, as Serbs tried to break off from Bosnia and establish a Bosnian Serb state in areas where they were dominant, in alliance with the Serbs in what remained of Yugoslavia.
Bosnian Serbs controlling the mountains around Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, established an effective siege of Sarajevo, and shelled the city regularly from artillery batteries located in the surrounding mountains. Access to the city was intermittent by way of international flights and truck convoys under the protection of United Nations escorts.
Lord David Owen of Britain and Cyrus Vance, a former U.S. Secretary of State, were attempting to negotiate a comprehensive settlement of all the military and political conflicts of the former Yugoslavia, as envoys for the United Nations. In December 1992, several of Kathy's European friends from the Gulf Peace Team invited her to organize an American contingent to join a nonviolent peacemaking initiative to Sarajevo, organized by an Italian Catholic organization, Beati i Construttori di Pace.
[Kathy Kelly and I were married to each other from 1982-1994, and are still best friends.]
Integrating her experiences and my analysis, we wrote an essay entitled, "Satyagraha and Sarajevo”. We argued that mass organized support and nonviolent intervention initiatives by world political, religious, and peace leaders working together could isolate those who were promoting warfare in the Balkans for personal political and economic advantage.
Strong, unified international leadership could bring together the majorities of people in all the countries of the region who would benefit from peaceful solutions, and could bring about a negotiated peace through active nonviolent intervention and mediation:
"We are dismayed that all public discussion of how the world community might intervene to solve the warfare in the nations that were Yugoslavia seems to be centered on whether it would be wise or practical to intervene with some level of military force…
" General Colin Powell and other U.S. military strategists have repeatedly stressed in recent years that if the U.S. is to use force in international situations, it must commit itself from the beginning to introduce overwhelming levels of force that will be sufficient to achieve useful political objectives within a reasonable period of time. U.S. forces must not get bogged down in unwinnable quagmires.
"A similar principle applies to nonviolent and diplomatic strategies for intervening in situations of conflict. The magnitude and persistence of the effort must be commensurate with the size of the problem. Inadequate nonviolent efforts will fail, just as inadequate military efforts would fail.
"For months, the United Nations’ and European Community envoys, Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, have been running around Europe and the new Balkan states trying to arrange a ceasefire and to mediate an overall political settlement. The fact that they are getting nowhere is enough to show that they are not getting the level of diplomatic and political support that they need in order to succeed. They should be given overwhelming political support from the world community.
"Our plan…relies on mobilizing world opinion, intensely focused in order to influence the development of public opinion and action for peace within the former Yugoslavian states.
"First, the leaders of the European powers and the United States, President Mitterand of France, Chancellor Kohl of Germany, President Yeltsin of Russia, the President of the United States (Bush or Clinton as timing decides), and the other Prime Ministers of Europe, should all get together for action on this problem.
"They should invite themselves for a visit of several days to Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo, the capitals of the warring nations. Their visit should be accompanied with a radio and television blitz explaining their mission, particularly using channels in all the countries surrounding the Balkans that could be received within the Balkan republics.
"Their message would be clear and forceful: the world community is appalled at the carnage and fratricide going on in the Balkans; this conflict must be settled peacefully, now.
"The world leaders would go there to knock heads together peacefully, using the power of overwhelming world opinion to mobilize public opinion in the Yugoslavian countries.
"Each visiting prime minister would then appoint a special delegate from among the world’s most renowned peacemakers, mediators, Nobel Peace Prize winners, to be part of a blue-ribbon committee that would support and assist Vance and Owen in their continuing efforts toward mediated solutions, with an early timetable for results.
"This is massive diplomatic intervention. We believe it can work because of certain political realities in the former Yugoslavian states and because of general principles governing the role and development of public opinion."
We went on to discuss political, economic, demographic and cultural characteristics of the Yugoslavian context that made us believe that this approach was workable and could succeed, concluding:
"The task of the world community is to give voice to the demand for peace in behalf of the unarmed victims. Those in Yugoslavia who are open to a peaceful path probably constitute a silent majority. We must appeal to them. We must allow them to feel part of an overwhelming international consensus. If they feel supported by the world community, they may find the courage to speak out and to organize for a peaceful settlement with all of their neighbors."
As a result of Kathy's trips to Bosnia and her public education about them, she was invited to speak at the July National Congress of Peace Action. Peace Action is a moderate, mainstream, national peace organization in the U.S.
It is the successor to the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, commonly known as SANE, which is known for leading many of the protests against nuclear weapons and confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Some of the national leadership of Peace Action believed that military intervention by the U.S. and European countries was necessary or advisable in order to help end the bloody civil war and violence in Bosnia.
But there were elements in the rank and file of Peace Action who did not believe a peace organization, with a long history of education and advocacy for peace, should be involved in advocating military solutions. This latter group was probably instrumental in having Kathy invited to talk at their National Congress.
However, Kathy was preparing to leave for a second visit to Bosnia in July of 1993, and she proposed that I go to Detroit for the Peace Action National Congress and speak in her behalf. This was accepted. I was on the panel with several people who gave talks in the plenary session on Friday night, July 23rd. I told the group:
"When Kathy returned from her first trip to Bosnia in December, we sat down together and wrote out a comprehensive proposal for a nonviolent solution to the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, under the title of “Satyagraha and Sarajevo.” The essence of it, very briefly, is this:
"We do not believe that the answer lies in any form of military force. It is certainly very late to get started now, but the European governments, the United Nations and the government of the United States have missed over a year of opportunity to resolve these conflicts by massive, nonviolent diplomatic intervention.
"You may say that the opportunities for diplomatic solution have been exhausted. This is ridiculous. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen are certainly exhausted. The world community sent two men over there. Leaving aside the question of whether what they attempted was the right approach, the United States totally undermined, undercut and contradicted what they were attempting to achieve. We personally believe that the governments of Europe also failed to give them the support that was needed to resolve this peacefully."
I then went on to summarize the ideas that we had presented after Kathy's first trip. And then speaking to the people of Peace Action, I said:
"Of course, very few people pay much attention to our proposal, and perhaps you would also scorn it as impossible and impractical. But we keep trying to advocate for this at all times and places, and to illustrate it in our own lives by direct action, because we believe that the heart of nonviolence is the idea that we all need to reclaim the personal strength and the personal responsibility for all of our social relationships, that has been usurped from us by centralized governments.
"They have not listened to any of us in our advocacy of effective nonviolent solutions. Should we then turn around and say:
'All right you won't listen to us about this, so now we are going to give you our advice about how, when and under what conditions it would be permissible to use military force.' This is ridiculous.' Why should they listen to our criteria for this use of military force?
"Let us keep ourselves always focused on our own challenge as peace activists. Our work as peace action organizations must always be to imagine, to experiment, to invent, to create nonviolent initiatives and approaches to the solution of domestic and international conflicts."
Later I said:
"Our vision is that nongovernmental peace action organizations will begin to develop and demonstrate the competence to lead the way toward creative nonviolent peacekeeping and peacemaking, so that the United Nations and individual states, and the people of countries victimized by violence and war will begin to turn to them as an alternative. United Nations peacekeeping forces today consist of recycled soldiers.
"Their training is in military tactics. Most of them have no knowledge of the languages and cultures of the countries where they are being sent, supposedly to play a constructive role as peacekeepers and peacemakers. In many cases they are so out of touch with the principle of peacemaking that they even create a prostitution industry among the people of the very countries where they are sent for peacekeeping.
"Our task is to constantly illustrate and advocate for the development, support and training of teams of genuine peacemakers. We are doing everything that we can to realize this goal. It is very difficult, a slow and tiny process, when there is so little social support, when we are paying our own way through our own part time earnings as teachers, carpenters, and so forth. Yet this is a very good way, a very nonviolent way, to work with your own hands, and for each to take his own share of responsibility in direct action for peace; but we need many more people to share in this direct action and direct responsibility for peacemaking.
"In January 1991, when Kathy was in Baghdad with the Gulf Peace Team, she cradled the children of the enemy in her own arms, in a bomb shelter, under a thunderstorm of bombs, while we sat at home in our living rooms watching high-tech light shows over Baghdad, through the facilities of CNN. She could have been in the Ameriyeh shelter, where smart bombs found their way into the ventilation shafts and killed hundreds of Iraqi children and women. She might have been in that particular shelter, but she wasn't.
"Our friends, Linda Beekman and Anne Montgomery, are in Sarajevo tonight, while we are here at the Omni Hotel in Detroit. Our friend, Erica Enzer, 65 years old, whom I first met in the “Ban the Bomb” movement in Chicago 36 years ago, is in Split, in Croatia, tonight, earnestly waiting for the first opportunity to go on to Sarajevo.
"In behalf of these courageous women, please allow me to give your organization some advice, perhaps unsolicited, perhaps unwanted, but I'll offer it anyway.
"I urge you to keep your whole vision and action focused on the creation and advocacy of nonviolent solutions. Barbara Deming was in my opinion just about the wisest advocate of nonviolence of my generation, and she said that what we desperately need is the “further invention of nonviolence.”
"It is not our place or our special task to develop or endorse criteria or guidelines for the use of military force. To do so would only create confusion about what kind of peace activists we are, and thereby undermine our essential witness, the further creation of nonviolent solutions for the 21st century."
As I concluded my talk, more than half of the Peace Action delegates seated in the room rose in a prolonged standing ovation. I had so well expressed their feelings about the direction and goal of their organization.
At a workshop meeting the following morning, on behalf of the board of Peace Action, Cora Weiss withdrew the leadership proposal for a resolution advocating military intervention in Bosnia. Apparently the leadership had sensed that a very large part of the rank and file of the Peace Action organization were opposed to this resolution, and that Peace Action should focus on continuing attempts for a peaceful solution in Bosnia.
It would be 1995 before the civil war in Bosnia and Croatia would be resolved through very strong diplomatic pressure from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on behalf of President Bill Clinton, and putting pressure on President Milosevic of Serbia….
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bosnia War Ends
Since the beginning of the Bosnian Civil War about three and a half years earlier, Kathy Kelly had continued engagement with European peace movement cooperators, including friends she made during trips to Iraq in 1991. She had made two peacemaking trips to Bosnia. In July 1995, as the war continued, Kathy and I reworked our earlier essay on “Satyagraha and Sarajevo,” and brought out an updated version of it, entitled “Another Road to Peace in Bosnia: Overwhelming Nonviolent Intervention”.
We continued to advocate massive nonviolent intervention and massive international pressure through a coalition that would involve a broad range of religious leaders of different religions and denominations around the world.
At the time, there was continuing discussion in the U.S. and in Europe about various scenarios for military intervention by European powers and the U.S., to end the conflict. In November 1995, the violent stage of the civil war in Bosnia was resolved through overwhelming diplomatic pressure on the governments of Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia from the so-called “Contact Group”: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Russia.
The Dayton Accords, which ended the greater part of violent conflict in the former Yugoslavia, were initialed on November 21 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and signed on December 21, 1995, in Paris by the heads of the three Yugoslavian governments.
It is regrettable that the U.S. and major European governments could not get together to apply effective international diplomatic pressure much earlier in the conflict, before thousands of deaths and a huge amount of destruction had occurred.
The Yugoslavian nation was a patchwork of several distinct ethnic language groups intermixed, and overlaid by three major religious identities: Serbian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Muslim. Each ethnicity and religion was dominant in certain regions of the country, but there was a lot of intermixing, assimilation, and intermarriage among the groups.
After World War II, the country was held together as a unified nation by the political power of Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party. They had organized effective partisan resistance to German occupation during the war.
After Tito died in 1980, the unity of his Communist Party coalition began to disintegrate. After the collapse of Communist power in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in 1991, four states broke away from Yugoslavia and became independent nations: Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, and Macedonia. In Bosnia, where Orthodox Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, and Catholic Croatians were reasonably balanced in numbers and in strength, a savage civil war broke out in 1992, as Serbs tried to break off from Bosnia and establish a Bosnian Serb state in areas where they were dominant, in alliance with the Serbs in what remained of Yugoslavia.
Bosnian Serbs controlling the mountains around Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, established an effective siege of Sarajevo, and shelled the city regularly from artillery batteries located in the surrounding mountains. Access to the city was intermittent by way of international flights and truck convoys under the protection of United Nations escorts.
Lord David Owen of Britain and Cyrus Vance, a former U.S. Secretary of State, were attempting to negotiate a comprehensive settlement of all the military and political conflicts of the former Yugoslavia, as envoys for the United Nations. In December 1992, several of Kathy's European friends from the Gulf Peace Team invited her to organize an American contingent to join a nonviolent peacemaking initiative to Sarajevo, organized by an Italian Catholic organization, Beati i Construttori di Pace.
[Kathy Kelly and I were married to each other from 1982-1994, and are still best friends.]
Integrating her experiences and my analysis, we wrote an essay entitled, "Satyagraha and Sarajevo”. We argued that mass organized support and nonviolent intervention initiatives by world political, religious, and peace leaders working together could isolate those who were promoting warfare in the Balkans for personal political and economic advantage.
Strong, unified international leadership could bring together the majorities of people in all the countries of the region who would benefit from peaceful solutions, and could bring about a negotiated peace through active nonviolent intervention and mediation:
"We are dismayed that all public discussion of how the world community might intervene to solve the warfare in the nations that were Yugoslavia seems to be centered on whether it would be wise or practical to intervene with some level of military force…
" General Colin Powell and other U.S. military strategists have repeatedly stressed in recent years that if the U.S. is to use force in international situations, it must commit itself from the beginning to introduce overwhelming levels of force that will be sufficient to achieve useful political objectives within a reasonable period of time. U.S. forces must not get bogged down in unwinnable quagmires.
"A similar principle applies to nonviolent and diplomatic strategies for intervening in situations of conflict. The magnitude and persistence of the effort must be commensurate with the size of the problem. Inadequate nonviolent efforts will fail, just as inadequate military efforts would fail.
"For months, the United Nations’ and European Community envoys, Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, have been running around Europe and the new Balkan states trying to arrange a ceasefire and to mediate an overall political settlement. The fact that they are getting nowhere is enough to show that they are not getting the level of diplomatic and political support that they need in order to succeed. They should be given overwhelming political support from the world community.
"Our plan…relies on mobilizing world opinion, intensely focused in order to influence the development of public opinion and action for peace within the former Yugoslavian states.
"First, the leaders of the European powers and the United States, President Mitterand of France, Chancellor Kohl of Germany, President Yeltsin of Russia, the President of the United States (Bush or Clinton as timing decides), and the other Prime Ministers of Europe, should all get together for action on this problem.
"They should invite themselves for a visit of several days to Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo, the capitals of the warring nations. Their visit should be accompanied with a radio and television blitz explaining their mission, particularly using channels in all the countries surrounding the Balkans that could be received within the Balkan republics.
"Their message would be clear and forceful: the world community is appalled at the carnage and fratricide going on in the Balkans; this conflict must be settled peacefully, now.
"The world leaders would go there to knock heads together peacefully, using the power of overwhelming world opinion to mobilize public opinion in the Yugoslavian countries.
"Each visiting prime minister would then appoint a special delegate from among the world’s most renowned peacemakers, mediators, Nobel Peace Prize winners, to be part of a blue-ribbon committee that would support and assist Vance and Owen in their continuing efforts toward mediated solutions, with an early timetable for results.
"This is massive diplomatic intervention. We believe it can work because of certain political realities in the former Yugoslavian states and because of general principles governing the role and development of public opinion."
We went on to discuss political, economic, demographic and cultural characteristics of the Yugoslavian context that made us believe that this approach was workable and could succeed, concluding:
"The task of the world community is to give voice to the demand for peace in behalf of the unarmed victims. Those in Yugoslavia who are open to a peaceful path probably constitute a silent majority. We must appeal to them. We must allow them to feel part of an overwhelming international consensus. If they feel supported by the world community, they may find the courage to speak out and to organize for a peaceful settlement with all of their neighbors."
As a result of Kathy's trips to Bosnia and her public education about them, she was invited to speak at the July National Congress of Peace Action. Peace Action is a moderate, mainstream, national peace organization in the U.S.
It is the successor to the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, commonly known as SANE, which is known for leading many of the protests against nuclear weapons and confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Some of the national leadership of Peace Action believed that military intervention by the U.S. and European countries was necessary or advisable in order to help end the bloody civil war and violence in Bosnia.
But there were elements in the rank and file of Peace Action who did not believe a peace organization, with a long history of education and advocacy for peace, should be involved in advocating military solutions. This latter group was probably instrumental in having Kathy invited to talk at their National Congress.
However, Kathy was preparing to leave for a second visit to Bosnia in July of 1993, and she proposed that I go to Detroit for the Peace Action National Congress and speak in her behalf. This was accepted. I was on the panel with several people who gave talks in the plenary session on Friday night, July 23rd. I told the group:
"When Kathy returned from her first trip to Bosnia in December, we sat down together and wrote out a comprehensive proposal for a nonviolent solution to the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, under the title of “Satyagraha and Sarajevo.” The essence of it, very briefly, is this:
"We do not believe that the answer lies in any form of military force. It is certainly very late to get started now, but the European governments, the United Nations and the government of the United States have missed over a year of opportunity to resolve these conflicts by massive, nonviolent diplomatic intervention.
"You may say that the opportunities for diplomatic solution have been exhausted. This is ridiculous. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen are certainly exhausted. The world community sent two men over there. Leaving aside the question of whether what they attempted was the right approach, the United States totally undermined, undercut and contradicted what they were attempting to achieve. We personally believe that the governments of Europe also failed to give them the support that was needed to resolve this peacefully."
I then went on to summarize the ideas that we had presented after Kathy's first trip. And then speaking to the people of Peace Action, I said:
"Of course, very few people pay much attention to our proposal, and perhaps you would also scorn it as impossible and impractical. But we keep trying to advocate for this at all times and places, and to illustrate it in our own lives by direct action, because we believe that the heart of nonviolence is the idea that we all need to reclaim the personal strength and the personal responsibility for all of our social relationships, that has been usurped from us by centralized governments.
"They have not listened to any of us in our advocacy of effective nonviolent solutions. Should we then turn around and say:
'All right you won't listen to us about this, so now we are going to give you our advice about how, when and under what conditions it would be permissible to use military force.' This is ridiculous.' Why should they listen to our criteria for this use of military force?
"Let us keep ourselves always focused on our own challenge as peace activists. Our work as peace action organizations must always be to imagine, to experiment, to invent, to create nonviolent initiatives and approaches to the solution of domestic and international conflicts."
Later I said:
"Our vision is that nongovernmental peace action organizations will begin to develop and demonstrate the competence to lead the way toward creative nonviolent peacekeeping and peacemaking, so that the United Nations and individual states, and the people of countries victimized by violence and war will begin to turn to them as an alternative. United Nations peacekeeping forces today consist of recycled soldiers.
"Their training is in military tactics. Most of them have no knowledge of the languages and cultures of the countries where they are being sent, supposedly to play a constructive role as peacekeepers and peacemakers. In many cases they are so out of touch with the principle of peacemaking that they even create a prostitution industry among the people of the very countries where they are sent for peacekeeping.
"Our task is to constantly illustrate and advocate for the development, support and training of teams of genuine peacemakers. We are doing everything that we can to realize this goal. It is very difficult, a slow and tiny process, when there is so little social support, when we are paying our own way through our own part time earnings as teachers, carpenters, and so forth. Yet this is a very good way, a very nonviolent way, to work with your own hands, and for each to take his own share of responsibility in direct action for peace; but we need many more people to share in this direct action and direct responsibility for peacemaking.
"In January 1991, when Kathy was in Baghdad with the Gulf Peace Team, she cradled the children of the enemy in her own arms, in a bomb shelter, under a thunderstorm of bombs, while we sat at home in our living rooms watching high-tech light shows over Baghdad, through the facilities of CNN. She could have been in the Ameriyeh shelter, where smart bombs found their way into the ventilation shafts and killed hundreds of Iraqi children and women. She might have been in that particular shelter, but she wasn't.
"Our friends, Linda Beekman and Anne Montgomery, are in Sarajevo tonight, while we are here at the Omni Hotel in Detroit. Our friend, Erica Enzer, 65 years old, whom I first met in the “Ban the Bomb” movement in Chicago 36 years ago, is in Split, in Croatia, tonight, earnestly waiting for the first opportunity to go on to Sarajevo.
"In behalf of these courageous women, please allow me to give your organization some advice, perhaps unsolicited, perhaps unwanted, but I'll offer it anyway.
"I urge you to keep your whole vision and action focused on the creation and advocacy of nonviolent solutions. Barbara Deming was in my opinion just about the wisest advocate of nonviolence of my generation, and she said that what we desperately need is the “further invention of nonviolence.”
"It is not our place or our special task to develop or endorse criteria or guidelines for the use of military force. To do so would only create confusion about what kind of peace activists we are, and thereby undermine our essential witness, the further creation of nonviolent solutions for the 21st century."
As I concluded my talk, more than half of the Peace Action delegates seated in the room rose in a prolonged standing ovation. I had so well expressed their feelings about the direction and goal of their organization.
At a workshop meeting the following morning, on behalf of the board of Peace Action, Cora Weiss withdrew the leadership proposal for a resolution advocating military intervention in Bosnia. Apparently the leadership had sensed that a very large part of the rank and file of the Peace Action organization were opposed to this resolution, and that Peace Action should focus on continuing attempts for a peaceful solution in Bosnia.
It would be 1995 before the civil war in Bosnia and Croatia would be resolved through very strong diplomatic pressure from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke on behalf of President Bill Clinton, and putting pressure on President Milosevic of Serbia….
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bosnia War Ends
Since the beginning of the Bosnian Civil War about three and a half years earlier, Kathy Kelly had continued engagement with European peace movement cooperators, including friends she made during trips to Iraq in 1991. She had made two peacemaking trips to Bosnia. In July 1995, as the war continued, Kathy and I reworked our earlier essay on “Satyagraha and Sarajevo,” and brought out an updated version of it, entitled “Another Road to Peace in Bosnia: Overwhelming Nonviolent Intervention”.
We continued to advocate massive nonviolent intervention and massive international pressure through a coalition that would involve a broad range of religious leaders of different religions and denominations around the world.
At the time, there was continuing discussion in the U.S. and in Europe about various scenarios for military intervention by European powers and the U.S., to end the conflict. In November 1995, the violent stage of the civil war in Bosnia was resolved through overwhelming diplomatic pressure on the governments of Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia from the so-called “Contact Group”: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Russia.
The Dayton Accords, which ended the greater part of violent conflict in the former Yugoslavia, were initialed on November 21 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and signed on December 21, 1995, in Paris by the heads of the three Yugoslavian governments.
It is regrettable that the U.S. and major European governments could not get together to apply effective international diplomatic pressure much earlier in the conflict, before thousands of deaths and a huge amount of destruction had occurred.
