Month: June 2012

Why not a Father’s Day for Peace?

Posted on by kathiemm

This blog has featured a Mother’s Day for Peace, describing the roots of the current flowers-and-candy-for-Mom day in the work of Julia Ward Howe.

A nod towards initiating a Father’s Day of Peace was made in 2007 in a brief video from Brave New Foundation. The video provided a poignant reminder that fathers around the world love their children and want to see them survive, but little seems to have been done since then to promote a Father’s Day of Peace. Why not?

It’s time for fathers to link themselves to peace, not war.

Role models are available for men of peace: Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Liu Xiabo, Muhammed Yunis, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiezel, Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and thousands of other less well-known men. Maybe your own dad is among them.

Perhaps Veterans for Peace (VFP) could take up this banner. Their goal is to “change public opinion in the U.S. from an unsustainable culture of militarism and commercialism to one of peace, democracy, and sustainability.” They have over 100 chapters in the United States, funded in part through a grant from Howard Zinn. One of their participating groups is the Smedley Butler chapter in Boston, MA, which provided active support for Occupy Boston in 2011.

Learn more about VFP’s mission through this video, then write to them and ask them to add the promotion of a Father’s Day of Peace to their projects.

No dad needs another necktie on Father’s Day. What he needs is a path that offers his children the best opportunity for growing to maturity in a world of peace.

Promote a Father’s Day for Peace.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Another flag?

Posted on by kathiemm
Sign at cemetery: "Please leave old flag her in receptacle"
Photo by Terry Eiler, in public domain

Flags symbolize different things to  different people.

Generally, to one group they symbolize patriotism, bravery, and military success.

To another, they symbolize mindless killing, inhumanity, and a stimulus to endless cycles of murder, destruction, and revenge.

Two veterans who fought courageously in the service of the United States had this to say about the flag:

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable…. Modern technology has outdistanced the Bible. ‘An eye for an eye’ has become a hundred eyes for an eye, a hundred babies for a baby. The tough-guy columnists… who defended this [the bombing of Tripoli by the Reagan administration], tried to wrap their moral nakedness in the American flag. But it dishonors the flag to wave it proudly over the killing of a college student, or a child sleeping in a crib.”  (Howard Zinn, World War II veteran, responding to bombing of Tripoli.)

“The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. (Major General Smedley Butler, career officer, USMC, in 1933 speech.)

Perhaps we should honor some different flags on Flag Day 2012.           

The Iraq Veterans Against the War, for example, is sponsoring the White Flag Warriors, a group of veterans who travel the country, introducing people to Operation Recovery: The Right to Heal Campaign.

Or learn about the Peace Flag Project at http://www.thepeaceflagproject.org/, inspired by Tibetan prayer flags. Make your own peace flag.

For many people around the world, the American flag has become a symbol for imperialism, capitalism, and inhumanity.

Should we not work to make it become a symbol for “liberty and justice for all”?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

It all had to mean something (A Marine remembers, Part 5)

Posted on by kathiemm

[A continuing series by guest author Ross Caputi]

Marines along the Euphrates River
Marines along the Euphrates River. Image in public domain.

Just a couple weeks after he received the news that he failed the drug test, Eddie Barker was found dead, suffocated in a puddle of his own vomit. The high of having survived Fallujah and being welcomed back as heroes was now long gone.

Barker was dead, my friends were getting kicked out of the Marine Corps left and right, and I did not know what I believed or felt about anything.

The end of that winter and for the following year, I spent many sleepless nights replaying the previous two years in my head. They had been full of so many ups and downs, so much pain and suffering, so much hate and discontent, that I felt it all had to mean something.

I remembered my senior year in high school when I wanted so badly to be a Marine. Exactly one year later I found myself in Iraq. I remembered the stunning beauty of that country; the palm groves, the Euphrates River, and the beautiful architecture—and the brutal poverty; the malnourished children, the villages without running water, and the gardens that they somehow managed to grow in the desert.

More than anything else, I remembered Fallujah, even though I tried to forget it. I remembered my friends who did not make it back, I remembered the women and children of Fallujah who were forced to become refugees, and I remembered the lifers in my command who only cared about how much the battle would help their careers.

Ross Caputi, former Marine, founder of the Justice for Fallujah Project, and former president of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Drank ourselves into a stupor (A Marine remembers, Part 4)

Posted on by kathiemm

[A continuing series by guest author Ross Caputi]

I remember the many nights at the barracks where we all drank ourselves into a stupor, but one night in particular stands out in my memory. My friend Chris Bradley stumbled out of his room.

Marine with grenade launcher
Image in public domain

“Rosco!” he shouted, and began stammering to me about what at first appeared to be nonsense, but I soon realized that he was trying to tell me about the most traumatic incident of his life.

“My dad is real good friends with this psychologist guy.” He put one hand on my shoulder and with the other hand he clutched his beer bottle by the neck.

“He says I’m pretty messed up. I told Sergeant Williams and he goes to me ‘Is it because of the old man you shot?’ and I said ‘Yeah.’ Sergeant Williams, he’s the toughest guy in the world, man, but the guy’s got a big heart too.”

For the rest of that night Bradley drank until he could no longer utter a coherent sentence, then passed out. The next morning everyone made fun of him for not being able to handle his alcohol.

I also remember when our command told us that Eddie Barker drank himself to death, about a year after we got back from Iraq. This happened just a couple weeks after our company had to take a surprise drug test and police dogs searched our barracks.

It took awhile for our command to catch on to the snowballing use of drugs and alcohol that had begun almost as soon as we got back from Iraq. But when they did, they showed no mercy. Most of the Marines who went to Iraq were caught for one thing or another and were faced with either time in the brig or a discharge.

Ross Caputi, former Marine, founder of the Justice for Fallujah Project, and former president of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition