An open letter from Charlie Clements

In 1992 the United States Air War College invited me to speak to the class of several hundred colonels who were soon-to-become generals. I was nervous. So was the commanding general. He was perplexed about how to introduce a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, one who had degenerated into a…a human rights activist.

 Of course, it was due to the thorough training in honor and ethics that I received at the Air Force Academy that led my refusal to fly missions in support of the invasion of Cambodia. I would spend six months in a psychiatric ward and be discharged from the Air Force as 10 percent mentally incompetent. The good news is that I eventually figured out that same piece of paper implied I was 90 percent competent!

 I left that piece of paper behind many years ago, but the consequences of war have never left me. That is why I traveled to Iraq in January of this year on a human rights mission. There I wrote a letter from an Internet café in Baghdad outlining some of the probable humanitarian consequences, if we went to war. I asked my friends to share this e-mail with others. In no time it had jumped from continent to continent.  I heard from a woman in Argentina. She wanted me to know that she and others would be demonstrating on the 15th of February in their small town in Patagonia. I also heard from a professor in Kenya. She had been injured in the bombing of our embassy there. She said that on February 15^th she would be praying so Iraqis would not experience what she and others had in Nairobi. A health worker wrote to say that as bad as things were on the West Bank, they paled by comparison to my descriptions of Iraqi hospitals. She too wanted me to know that she would be marching on February 15^th. The Internet became the connective tissue for millions of us…who understood we were not alone in our struggle against the rush to war.

Thanks to the rapidity and reach of the Internet, we did not have to depend upon the corporate owned media. As a result, more than a third of Americans did not believe or accept the deception and lies that were used to justify the war.  Compare that to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.  It took almost 20 years for Americans to discover that it was a lie.

 As Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, pointed out just before the war in Iraq began…never in the history of the United Nations had the Security Council so forcefully debated the legitimacy of a war…much less done it for six months. 

 Never before in our country has such a massive anti-war movement been mobilized…much less before the war even started.  Never in the history of the planet have 30 million people demonstrated for or against anything. February 15th was an extraordinary day. Many students from the 92 countries who attend the United World College where I teach part time told me what their families and friends did that day. One student from England, Imogen, said her parents had never been to a demonstration. They traveled by bus from their small village to London where they were inspired by the presence of hundreds of thousands of others.  Once people like Imogen's parents have found their voices, it is unlikely that they will remain silent in the future. On that day Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Quakers, atheists, Muslims, agnostics and UUs marched on seven continents, and we had a strong sense of our interdependence.

 Unlike the 1960s, this peace movement was not motivated by the fear that we ourselves might have to serve in the military or that our children might be drafted. It was based upon a clear awareness that the United States was not threatened by Saddam Hussein.  Our movement believed in the importance of international law and the community of nations to address global conflict.  It grew from our concern and solidarity for the people of Iraq…people who had already suffered so much under Saddam Hussein as well as under the sanctions the United States helped impose and enforce.

 I say all of this because there are many activists who are still confused…angry…even despairing because we were not able to stop the war.  However, early Unitarians and Universalists like Theodore Parker who would tell us not to be discouraged.  He would convince us that our actions have changed the landscape of the world in ways we don't yet understand or see.

 While others argued that catching slaves was sanctioned by the Scriptures, Theodore Parker openly called for defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act and led the Boston opposition to it.  Providing shelter for a run-a-way slave in his home led to his indictment by a federal grand jury.  He died in 1860 before he saw progress in abolishing slavery.  Though made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr., it was Parker, who first told us, “The arc of the universe is long… but it bends towards justice.”

An open letter from Charlie Clements (continued)