Some extracts from Jim Wallis' article (an article that's worth reading in full) on the end of the Iraqi War - as far as the US's involvement in it is concerned.
The war in Iraq was fundamentally a war of choice, and it was the wrong choice.
From the outset, this war was fought on false pretenses, with false
information, and for false purposes. And the official decisions to argue
for this war and then carry it out were made at the height of political
and moral irresponsibility — especially when we see the failed results
and consider both the human and financial costs.
This week, U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a nine-term Republican from eastern
North Carolina and long-time member of the House Armed Services
Committee....called his decision to give President George W. Bush the authority to
go to war in Iraq “a sin.”
Jones has had a change of heart towards the War through having personal encounters with families who lost their precious loved ones, and by the convictions of his own Christian faith. He says 'we were lied to and “misled” into war by the “previous administration.”
Wallis lists some of the costs of this unjust war:
* 4,499 U.S. military killed
* 32,200 wounded
* 110,000 estimated Iraqi civilian deaths
* 2.5 million internally displaced Iraqis
* $800 billion in federal funding for the Iraq War through FY2011
* An estimated $3-5 trillion total economic cost to the United States of the war in Iraq.
* As many as 300,000 U.S. troops returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress disorder.
* 320,000 troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with traumatic brain injuries
* The number of suicide attempts by veterans could exceed an earlier official estimate of 1,000 a month.
Wallis adds: Such a list takes my breath away and should drive each of us to pray
for lives that have been so painfully and irreparably changed.
And note that for every US soldier killed, nearly 25 Iraqi civilians were killed. Admittedly, there has been much internal bloodshed, not entirely related to the War.
Showing posts with label wallis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wallis. Show all posts
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
Occupying and wealth
A quote from the latest Sojourners newsletter, written by Jim Wallis.
1. Don’t expect the Occupy Wall Street movement and sites across the nation and world to produce a set of demands. They are instead raising some fundamental questions about the un-economy, and creating the space for a new cultural and political conversation about it. It’s our job now to push that conversation forward— an especially good role for the faith community as our biblical values and theological assertions are integrally involved in these matters. It’s time to put our faith values forward in the midst of what could become a new global conversation about what a fair, sustainable, stable, and happy economy might look like.
2. Don’t worry about endorsing the Occupy Wall Street movement (all the diverse elements involved wouldn’t even endorse each other!), but rather engage it. I asked a young African-American man I met at Occupy Wall Street what churches could do to help. He suggested three things: inspiration, consultation, and presence. I think that’s a very good guide. Worship services are already being held at many of the sites, led by local clergy of many faiths. Take a potluck meal down to the site as a chance to sit, eat, and talk with the people there. Take your youth group or members of your congregation down there after church just to see, meet, and listen. Offer the occupiers support—material and spiritual—along with prayer and love.
I'm not personally sure that the local Occupy movements (in Dunedin's The Octagon, for instance) are doing much more than piggybacking on the big movements overseas. Nevertheless, they are keeping the bigger movement in mind, and that in itself is perhaps a valuable thing. Regrettably, the young man who was interviewed in the Otago Daily Times the other day seemed naive in some areas as to where the money comes from to help him study at Varsity and then to support him when he's out of work at the end of his study (which for some reason he assumes he will be).
On the other hand, it was interesting to see on TV7 a couple of weeks ago a short doco on wealthy people in New Zealand being castigated by other wealthy people for not giving to philanthropic concerns, whether the arts, or medicine or whatever. Not everything is bad/wrong in the wealth sector.
1. Don’t expect the Occupy Wall Street movement and sites across the nation and world to produce a set of demands. They are instead raising some fundamental questions about the un-economy, and creating the space for a new cultural and political conversation about it. It’s our job now to push that conversation forward— an especially good role for the faith community as our biblical values and theological assertions are integrally involved in these matters. It’s time to put our faith values forward in the midst of what could become a new global conversation about what a fair, sustainable, stable, and happy economy might look like.
2. Don’t worry about endorsing the Occupy Wall Street movement (all the diverse elements involved wouldn’t even endorse each other!), but rather engage it. I asked a young African-American man I met at Occupy Wall Street what churches could do to help. He suggested three things: inspiration, consultation, and presence. I think that’s a very good guide. Worship services are already being held at many of the sites, led by local clergy of many faiths. Take a potluck meal down to the site as a chance to sit, eat, and talk with the people there. Take your youth group or members of your congregation down there after church just to see, meet, and listen. Offer the occupiers support—material and spiritual—along with prayer and love.
I'm not personally sure that the local Occupy movements (in Dunedin's The Octagon, for instance) are doing much more than piggybacking on the big movements overseas. Nevertheless, they are keeping the bigger movement in mind, and that in itself is perhaps a valuable thing. Regrettably, the young man who was interviewed in the Otago Daily Times the other day seemed naive in some areas as to where the money comes from to help him study at Varsity and then to support him when he's out of work at the end of his study (which for some reason he assumes he will be).
On the other hand, it was interesting to see on TV7 a couple of weeks ago a short doco on wealthy people in New Zealand being castigated by other wealthy people for not giving to philanthropic concerns, whether the arts, or medicine or whatever. Not everything is bad/wrong in the wealth sector.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Trafficking, Water, Wallis
Blog Action Day is coming up in Oct - there's a link for more information right down the right column of this blog. Not sure why it decided to hide itself way down there, but now you know, and have no excuse for not finding it!
I was hoping that they'd choose Human Trafficking as their big issue for the action day, but they've chosen Water, which, in terms of the need for clean water in many countries is certainly an issue, and the lack of which results in deaths.
However, I've been getting tweets (tweets galore, in fact) relating to Human Trafficking and consequently that's an issue that's more on my mind. A friend on Facebook alerted me to a site called The A21 Campaign, this morning, so I've been checking it out. In line with its name it has 21 things you can do to help make people more aware of human trafficking. Click here for the list.
I went and heard Ji
m Wallis speak on Tuesday - he'd been brought to the city by the Professor of Public Theology at the Otago University. He's a fairly low key/laid-back speaker, has a good sense of humour, tells lots of stories, and (quixotically) is married to the woman who was consultant to the series The Vicar of Dibley. She's an Anglican priest, British born.
His theme is injustice, injustice, injustice. You may have heard of Sojourners, the organisation that he heads, but he does far more than that. He has the ear of people in high places - including Barak Obama, and is a Christian who is able to speak into society in a way that many Christians cannot - through lack of opportunity. You might put him in the prophetic mode, except that he wasn't wearing anything outlandish in the way of garb, now was he eating locusts or intending to cook his evening meal over dung; nor had he buried his underwear in the ground and disinterred it a year later (only to find, as would be expected, that it had deteriorated considerably); now has he been fed by ravens at any known point.
Nevertheless, prophet to the nation(s) is pretty much what he is. Thank God for him.
Wallis had plenty of injustice issues to comment on, and there's only so much you can say in a couple of hours, so he didn't speak much about human trafficking, as it happened. It did come up at one point, when he pointed out that there were more slaves now than there had been in Wilberforce's time - millions more. Wilberforce successfully fought for the abolition of slaves but the battle needs to be fought all over again in our day. Check out the A21 site if you're devoid of ideas as to how you might be involved.
I was hoping that they'd choose Human Trafficking as their big issue for the action day, but they've chosen Water, which, in terms of the need for clean water in many countries is certainly an issue, and the lack of which results in deaths.
However, I've been getting tweets (tweets galore, in fact) relating to Human Trafficking and consequently that's an issue that's more on my mind. A friend on Facebook alerted me to a site called The A21 Campaign, this morning, so I've been checking it out. In line with its name it has 21 things you can do to help make people more aware of human trafficking. Click here for the list.
I went and heard Ji
m Wallis speak on Tuesday - he'd been brought to the city by the Professor of Public Theology at the Otago University. He's a fairly low key/laid-back speaker, has a good sense of humour, tells lots of stories, and (quixotically) is married to the woman who was consultant to the series The Vicar of Dibley. She's an Anglican priest, British born.His theme is injustice, injustice, injustice. You may have heard of Sojourners, the organisation that he heads, but he does far more than that. He has the ear of people in high places - including Barak Obama, and is a Christian who is able to speak into society in a way that many Christians cannot - through lack of opportunity. You might put him in the prophetic mode, except that he wasn't wearing anything outlandish in the way of garb, now was he eating locusts or intending to cook his evening meal over dung; nor had he buried his underwear in the ground and disinterred it a year later (only to find, as would be expected, that it had deteriorated considerably); now has he been fed by ravens at any known point.
Nevertheless, prophet to the nation(s) is pretty much what he is. Thank God for him.
Wallis had plenty of injustice issues to comment on, and there's only so much you can say in a couple of hours, so he didn't speak much about human trafficking, as it happened. It did come up at one point, when he pointed out that there were more slaves now than there had been in Wilberforce's time - millions more. Wilberforce successfully fought for the abolition of slaves but the battle needs to be fought all over again in our day. Check out the A21 site if you're devoid of ideas as to how you might be involved.
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