Gates Signals Endless War in Afghanistan

Canada should consider extension of Afghanistan mission,
Gates suggests

From CBC.ca:

U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates hinted on Thursday that Canada should extend its military mission in Afghanistan past the 2011 scheduled end date.

Gates, who arrived at Canada's main base in Kandahar on Thursday, was asked by a reporter whether Canada should continue its mission

"The countries that have partnered with the United States and Afghanistan here in [regional command] south have made an extraordinary commitment and proportionately none have worked harder or sacrificed more than the Canadians," said Gates, who arrived at Canada's main base in Kandahar on Thursday.

"They have been outstanding partners for us and all I can tell you is has been the case for a very long time, the longer we can have Canadian soldiers as our partners the better it is."

Canada has been a coalition partner in the occupation of Afghanistan since 2001. I think the original idea of going in there was to catch Osama Bin Laden, but mission creep has turned the project into something else entirely. OBL is now in Pakistan if he even exists. One other thing - almost as soon as we got there an American pilot high on speed killed four Canadian soldiers by dropping a bomb on them. Then the US pulled a large number of troops out of Afghanistan and redeployed them to Iraq, making the remaining allied troops' mission much much more difficult.

Most Canadians have no idea why we're even in Afghanistan anymore, and anybody who's looked at the mission would conclude that we've been played by our trigger-happy imperialist southern neighbours. Like Iraq there doesn't seem to be any exit strategy, nor even any conditions defined under which the mission (if, without objectives, you can even use that word anymore) can be concluded.

I think it's fair to ask a few questions. First off I'd like to ask General Gates - if this 'mission' should be extended, why? And for how long exactly? By 2011 we'll have been there for a full decade, with little or nothing to show for it other than the fact that we've driven the Al Qaeda training camps further up into the mountains on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. On the downside we've provided ready-made propaganda to the other side so that those camps will be full of eager new recruits far into the foreseeable future. Heckuva job if you ask me.

I have questions for Canada's leaders too. Whoever they may turn out to be. Do we really want to be perceived by the rest of the world as being the lapdogs of American imperialist ambitions? This strikes me as being an extension not only of the war, but of the long french kiss that Stephen Harper has been applying to George W. Bush's ass for his entire term in office. By the end of January Bush will be gone, and Harper may have left the Prime Minister's Office as well. Is this a legacy we want to keep alive?

I wish I had questions about Barack Obama's intentions in Afghanistan. Sadly, he's made himself clear on that score.

CBC's David Common said Gates comments should not be considered a formal request, but that they are significant because the defence secretary is staying on in that role under Barack Obama's administration. As well, the president-elect has said getting more troops to Afghanistan is a priority.

Gates also told reporters that the Pentagon will move three brigades into Afghanistan by next summer,. the most specific he's been on when he'd begin meeting the requests of ground commanders asking for 20,000 troops.

The extra troops are expected to be deployed to Kabul to secure the capital before moving to Kandahar, considered the epicentre of violence and where most of the 2,500 Canadian soldiers in the region are based.

Should this request ever be formalized, I'm hoping Canada has the good sense to answer, "HELL, NO!!" And I say that as someone who initially supported the idea of going into Afghanistan, ousting the Taliban and pursuing the perpetrators of 9-11. Turns out that like everything else Bush the Lesser has done in the last eight years, the Afghanistan mission was a boondoggle based on a lie.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE: Here's a news story from today's New York Times that adds another compelling reason to get the hell out of Afghanistan ASAP.

U.S. Forces Kill 6 Afghan Police Officers by Mistake

KABUL, Afghanistan

United States forces killed six Afghan police officers and one civilian on Wednesday during an assault on the hide-out of a suspected Taliban commander, the authorities said, in what an American military spokesman called a “tragic case of mistaken identity.” Thirteen Afghan officers were also wounded in the episode.

A statement issued jointly by the American and the Afghan military commands said a contingent of police officers fired on United States forces after the Americans had successfully overrun the hide-out, killing the suspected Taliban commander and detaining another man. The Americans had already entered the hide-out, a building in Qalat, the capital of the southern province of Zabul, when they came under attack by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from a compound nearby.

Multiple attempts to deter the engagement were unsuccessful. The Americans, concerned about women and children hiding in the building they had taken, returned fire using small arms and aircraft. After the firefight, the Americans discovered they had been shooting at Afghan police officers. But the deputy police chief of Qalat said the police officers had been in a police station when they came under American fire, which destroyed the station.

Friendly Fire = the most tragic of all oxymorons. This kind of stuff stops happening the day we leave.

TAGS: Endless War, Orwellian Nightmare, Coalition of the Gormless

FOX Accidentally Tells The Truth

...Woman Reports Georgian Aggression

FOX "news" was trying to catapult the propaganda of Russian aggression with an interview of a 12-year-old girl from the San Francisco area and her mother, who were caught in the war zone. Check out the reaction from the FOX bobblehead when they lay the blame squarely on Georgia's Prime Minister Mikheil Saakashvili.

12 Year Old Girl Tells the Truth about Georgia

In the description of this vid at YouTube it says that FOX had just come off a commercial break two minutes earlier. As soon as the woman puts the blame for the war on Georgia, not Russia there's a sudden and urgent need for another break. After the break the woman is allowed only 30 seconds to complete her thought. That's fair and balanced for ya'.

h/t Global Research.ca

TAGS: FOX "news", Media Bias, War In Georgia

155,000 "eggs."

Give or take...

GENEVA (Reuters) Jan. 9 - About 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of their country, according to World Health Organization (WHO) research published on Wednesday.

The new study, which said violent deaths could have ranged from 104,000 to 223,000 between March 2003 and June 2006, is the most comprehensive since the war started.

The study drew on an Iraqi health ministry survey of nearly 10,000 households — five times the number of those interviewed in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study that said more than 600,000 Iraqis had died over the period.

While well below that figure, the United Nations agency’s estimate exceeds the widely-cited 80,000 to 87,000 death toll by the human rights group Iraq Body Count, which uses media reports and hospital and morgue records to calculate its tally…

The White House said it had not seen the study, but mourned the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

“The unmistakable fact is that the vast majority of these deaths are caused by the willful, murderous intentions of extremists committed to taking innocent life,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto...

The rest is here. Another “unmistakable fact” that Mr. Fratto conveniently left out is that these people would probably not have died if the Bush/Cheney regime had not launched an unnecessary, illegal, immoral, indefensible war of aggression based on lies and media manipulation against a country which posed no immediate threat to us.

But hey, these aren’t Americans we’re talking about here. During the summer after the Iraq War began, my family and I took a day trip down to the Jersey Shore. I had my “Peacemonger” and “War Is Not The Answer” bumper stickers emblazoned (as always) across the back window of my Honda CR-V. We were curbside unloading our beach paraphernalia when this guy comes by on his very expensive imported Italian racing bike (the kind with peddles) and starts heckling me. He didn’t like my stickers. My wife told me to ignore him, but that just made him angrier. So my son said, “Let him have it, Dad.” So I did. Very politely. With my usual litany of peacemongering questions:

- “How many of the September 11th hijackers were from Iraq?”

- “How can you justify attacking a country which has never attacked us?”

- “How can you say that oil isn’t what this war is about, when Iraq sits on the third largest oil deposit on the planet?”

That kind of thing. The biker guy started sputtering. And then I said, “Sir, with all due respect, I am not willing to have your president kill my sons so that he can try to prove he’s right about what is obviously so wrong.” And the guy says, “Well, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.“ And then he rode off.

I still can’t get over that.

“Egg” count, as of Jan. 10, 2008:

- Total U.S. combat deaths in Iraq: 3921 (NINE just yesterday)

- Total U.S. combat wounded: 28,000 +

- Iraq civilian deaths: 151,000 (est.)

- Iraq civilian wounded: Only God knows

- Progress made by the new Iraqi government towards peace and reconciliation: Zero.

- End in sight: None.

Meet the latest "worst humanitarian catastrophe in Africa".

As if Darfur and Congo weren’t bad enough…

AFGOYE, Somalia (McClatchy News Service) Dec. 16 - A year after the U.S.-backed Ethiopian army toppled a hard-line Islamist regime in Somalia, the country has become Africa’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

Some 200,000 refugees, mostly women and children, have fled from a pro-government offensive to makeshift camps along a 10-mile stretch of sun-baked asphalt that leads from the seaside capital of Mogadishu toward the inland town of Afgoye.

The crisis is brutal on young people.

One night last month, Fatima Sheikh Ali awoke to the deafening crash of mortar rounds on her neighbor’s roof. Shrapnel blasted through Ali’s tin-walled home in Mogadishu, and sent her 13-year-old daughter, Muna, into her arms, quaking.

Sometime in the chaos of that night, Muna stopped speaking. In an overcrowded encampment of sand and scrub a few miles from the capital, where the family now lives among thousands made homeless by the war, Muna silently collects firewood and looks after her siblings, a worried gaze fixed in her eyes.

“She is traumatized,” her mother said, and a warren of women who had gathered around her murmured sympathetically. A nurse with the Somali Red Crescent Society said, “There is nothing to be done. It is a very sad story.”

The conflicts in Sudan’s Darfur region and in eastern Congo may have displaced more people, but international relief efforts in Somalia have faltered in the face of violence that has emptied entire neighborhoods in Mogadishu.

Most displaced Somalis, such as Muna’s family, live in dome-shaped huts made out of spindly tree branches and covered with tattered swatches of fabric or plastic. They sprout from the sand like multicolored mushrooms along the road from the capital.

The United Nations Children’s Fund said earlier this month that one-quarter of the refugees around Afgoye were younger than 5. Both sides are using older boys as combatants, and girls who venture out of the camps risk being raped by freelance militias, the agency said.

“Things are now getting absolutely worse,” said Christian Balslev-Olesen, UNICEF representative for Somalia. “There is a dirtiness to this war. Children are a real target“…

The rest here. As bad as all this is - and it is bad - the worst aspect of what’s in this piece is the part which focuses on the war on children which is so much a part of this chaos. Children as targets for rape, for abuse, for killing, as a source of cannon fodder. And, as usual, the Bootlicking Corporate Media in this country is ignoring this crisis as it spirals out of control. I have heard some very solid coverage on the BBC World Service, but even there, the coverage isn’t consistent.

But it is always depressing. And frustrating.

Americans - especially American politicians - don’t want to go near this place. They’re all suffering from “Blackhawk Down Syndrome,” as a voice on the BBC put it recently. Too many bad memories of dead American soldiers being dragged through the streets. And, of course, as in Darfur, the problem seems so intractable as to be utterly hopeless (especially because the longer the world goes without doing anything, the worse things get). And besides, it’s - once again - just a whole bunch of poor black people with no resources killing each other - again - so why should the West care?

You know, it’s funny: I used to see kids - usually teenagers - and folks who were old enough to know better spouting off about “anarchy.” A lot of the old school punks and proto-Goths railed on about the supposed glories of anarchy in their music. They’d spray paint that big goofy red “A” with the circle around it on walls and wear it on their black t-shirts. Even now, there’s an anarchist streak in a lot of radical bloggers out here in the cyber-sandbox. They go on and on about how great things would be if we could just give anarchy a try.

The thing is, we have. In the Balkins. In Rwanda. In Darfur. In Congo. And now in Somalia.

Look at the picture above. That’s what anarchy looks like. With a dose of apathy thrown in.

Somalia resources:

Human Rights Watch

CARE: Somalia

Reuters Alternet: Somalia

Inform yourselves. Time to get UNRULY!

Lies, Damned Lies, and Dead Lies

Bush Lie Dispenser, originally uploaded by azrainman.

The Bush administration has presented you and me with some spectacularly false information. Consider this mini list of "untruths"...

• Saddam Hussein and Iraq were linked to the terrorist acts on 9/11/2001.
• Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
• The military conflict would be short (5 days, 5 weeks, maybe 5 months).
• The mission was accomplished.
• The war would pay for itself.

The complete list is so much longer. (That's 7 good Bush Lie links, not including Crooks and Liars, which tracks the whole crooked lot of them.) Most recently, there are these last two matters of Bush botched record keeping:

• The reported number of brain injuries linked to the conflict in Iraq.
• The number of US Iraq war/occupation deaths.
  

The number of brain injuries inflicted on US personnel affects the ultimate long term cost of the war and occupation, something I have been fretting over for a while now, and I'm not alone. Thus, the injury and cost untruths are intertwined.

The last item in the list is blood curdling, at least for me. In a recent edition of CounterPunch, Mike Whitney asserted that, "The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it."

Whitney tells the tale of CBS's Investigative Unit and its experience obtaining misinformation from the Department of Defense (DOD). Whitney's article reveals that CBS submitted a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the DOD for a story on military suicide. After a 4 month wait, CBS received a DOD document indicating, "that between 1995 and 2007-- there were 2,200 suicides among 'active duty' soldiers."

Trusting the DOD about as much as I do and realizing the DOD was only answering part of their question, CBS went on to collect veteran suicide data from 45 states and learned that in 2005 alone there were 120 suicides each week for a total of 6,256 suicides among those who had served in just that one year.

Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that "multiple-tours of duty" in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

Adding these 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the 3,865 combat casualties "officially" reported by the DOD yields a sum of 10,121 military deaths. Furthermore, even a conservative "low-ball" estimate of 2004 and 2006 suicide figures indicates that US military casualties from the Iraq war and ongoing occupation now exceed 15,000.

That's right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that--as yet--has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs, Dr. Ira Katz, who attempted to minimize the suicide increase, but Whitney doesn't seem to buy it.

Maybe Katz is right...Maybe it's perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it's normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it's normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm's-way for their country.

If you want to know my personal opinion (which is consistent with what some officials in a position to know have claimed), the Bush administration has not misled; it has not misinformed; it has not been mistaken. It has lied. They are crooks. They are liars. They are war criminals. And they provided incomplete information about the number of military suicides with the intent to mislead, as they have on every other matter.

To say that the "official" information provided by the Bush administration cannot be trusted is an understatement. And heaven knows, I wouldn't want to be accused of that. I'm just trying to figure out which one of them will blame the soldier suicide surge on the Democrats.

And by the way, it's not normal. You know what else isn't normal? Taking it lying down.

Take lying down~ to hear or yield without protest, contradiction, or resistance: I refuse to take such outrageous lies lying down.

Agitate. Find a way.

TAGS: Iraq, Casualties, Suicide, Bush, Lies, Brain Injury, War, Occupation

Go ahead: defend THIS.

I Dare You.

Just sitting here waiting for one of the more prominent warmongers to defend this latest lie. Submitted without further comment. From today's USA Today:

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.

The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.

The number of brain-injury cases were tabulated from records kept by the VA and four military bases that house units that have served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One base released its count of brain injuries at a medical conference. The others provided their records at the request of USA TODAY, in some cases only after a Freedom of Information Act filing was submitted.

The data came from:

• Landstuhl Army Regional Medical Center in Germany, where troops evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan for injury, illness or wounds are brought before going home. Since May 2006, more than 2,300 soldiers screened positive for brain injury, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw says.

• Fort Hood, Texas, home of the 4th Infantry Division, which returned from a second Iraq combat tour late last year. At least 2,700 soldiers suffered a combat brain injury, Lt. Col. Steve Stover says.

• Fort Carson, Colo., where more than 2,100 soldiers screened were found to have suffered a brain injury, according to remarks by Army Col. Heidi Terrio before a brain injury association seminar.

• Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, where 1,737 Marines were found to have suffered a brain injury, according to Navy Cmdr. Martin Holland, a neurosurgeon with the Naval Medical Center San Diego.

• VA hospitals, where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been screened for combat brain injuries since April. The VA found about 20% of 61,285 surveyed — or 11,804 veterans — with signs of brain injury, spokeswoman Alison Aikele says. VA doctors say more evaluation is necessary before a true diagnosis of brain injury can be confirmed in all these cases, Aikele says.

Soldiers and Marines whose wounds were discovered after they left Iraq are not added to the official casualty list, says Army Col. Robert Labutta, a neurologist and brain injury consultant for the Pentagon.

"We are working to do a better job of reflecting accurate data in the official casualty table," Labutta says.

Most of the new cases involve mild or moderate brain injuries, commonly from exposure to blasts.

More than 150,000 troops may have suffered head injuries in combat, says Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., founder of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force.

"I am wary that the number of brain-injured troops far exceeds the total number reported injured," he says.

About 1.5 million troops have served in Iraq, where traumatic brain injury can occur despite heavy body armor worn by troops.

Good grief. It just goes on and on. As will the pain and suffering of all these vets.

Still Fortunate After All These Wars

Do you want to know what I think about the U.S. military asking wounded soldiers to return the signing bonus incentive the military had offered them to get them to sign up for military service in the first place?

This is what I think...

More videos here, here, and here.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief,
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord,

It ain't me, it aint me, I ain't no senators son, son.
It ain't me, it aint me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,

Yeah!
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaires son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, lord,
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Ooh, they only answer more! more! more! yoh,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one.

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no.

~Fortunate Son, CCR

Roy Zimmerman has similar thoughts...

TAGS: Roy Zimmerman, CCR, Fortunate Son, Signing Bonuses, Bush

One aspect of "The War" that Ken Burns probably won't be telling us about.

Nine days from now, PBS will begin presenting the latest documentary from one of the masters of the genre, Ken Burns. The War is a seven part series that, according to the official series web site, will “[tell] the story of the Second World War through the personal accounts of a handful of men and women from four quintessentially American towns. The series explores the most intimate human dimensions of the greatest cataclysm in history — a worldwide catastrophe that touched the lives of every family on every street in every town in America — and demonstrates that in extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives.”

Well, I’d chime in that even in “ordinary times” (please tell me when those happen, okay?), there are no “ordinary lives," but that’s another post…

Anyway, I really like the work of Ken Burns. If I could afford them, I’d own copies of his other “masterpieces,” The Civil War and Jazz and Baseball. Yes, I know some people quibble and fuss over his work, particularly about what he “leaves out” or emphasizes “at the expense” of something else. Critics complained, for two examples, that there were “too many white musicians” discussed in his Jazz series, or that it seemed like an awful lot of Baseball focused on the teams from New York (one in particular) and Boston. Those might be fair points, but I have to ask in response, can you please tell me, of anyone else who has ever devoted 1, 140 minutes to the subject of jazz, or anything close to that, anywhere? I’ll wait… Didn’t think so. I think Ken Burns does amazing work, and I can still watch those three series over and over again and never be bored by them. It helps that I’m fascinated by the subject matter to start with, but I know many people who were especially entranced by The Civil War, who came away with a new understanding of our most important and definitive national tragedy.

Now comes The War, Burns’ treatment of World War Two. He says he wanted to do this after he learned that something like 2,000 WW2 vets die every day (correct that figure if I’m mis-paraphrasing). Realizing that there would soon come a time when all these folks would be gone, Burns wanted to get their up close and personal recollections and reflections on film, before it was too late. It’s a terrific idea. To me, oral history by the “every day people” who lived it is the most interesting kind. And now, instead of having actors and actresses read what someone else wrote about their experiences, we will see the faces of those who were there, and hear their words from their own mouths. And hearts.

I will watch every minute of this series, and I’ll be watching particularly closely to see if Burns spends any time on the issue of conscientious objectors. Several thousand Americans refused to allow themselves to be conscripted into military service during “The Good War,” a war that the overwhelming majority of people believe had to be fought and had to be won to save the world from evil. Some entered non-combat military service, and served bravely and valiantly in the military as combat medics, ambulance drivers, or hospital workers. Some were part of Civilian Public Service (CPS), and worked as smoke-jumpers, attendants in mental hospitals (who were responsible for many important reforms in the treatment of the patients in the “snake pit” institutions of the 1940s), as laborers on civilian construction projects (such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike), or as human ”guinea pigs” who allowed themselves to be test subjects in various medical experiments. Some others refused to be part of the “system” in any way, and went to federal prison for their beliefs, where they suffered as if they were common criminals. Some suffered more than that, because of why they were there.

I spent many, many hours reading about these brave Americans this past summer. I still have a couple thick books left to read. I was amazed that, even with all the stuff I’ve read about World War Two over the years (yeah, a Quaker military history nut: go figure), I’d never heard about this aspect of our history. In fact, until I became a Quaker, I’d never heard about this at all, at least in the context of World War Two. Conscientious objection was not a wide-spread movement during this war, but it does say something about the spirit and character of these men that they could stand up to what had to be enormous pressure to resist participating in something they felt was morally wrong, based on their (primarily but not always) religious beliefs (most COs were members of traditional "peace churches," such as Mennonites, Quakers, and Brethren).

There were many COs who refused to fight in Vietnam, but with the end of the draft, anyone who now wishes to opt out of service can simply refuse to enlist (although males still have to register for Selective Service or face legal penalties). At least for now, that is. Some current military personnel are refusing deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, or they are refusing to return after having been overseas. The media is ignoring them, as are many folks who should know better here in cyberspace. (You can read about - and sign up to support - them right here, gang.) They deserve our respect and support, if we really believe in peace.

So, we’ll see if Ken Burns mentions this particular band of brothers starting on September 23rd. I’ll be watching. But I won’t be surprised if that particular brand of heroism is ignored. I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with what’s in my books. And with spreading the word.

TAGS: War, Peace movement, History, Media

On gratitude.

I hope this makes sense. I'm feeling scatter-brained today, so I'm not sure if this will all come together or not. But I want to talk about something I don't think we all think or talk about enough, and that's gratitude.

I am feeling grateful today, for lots of reasons, but for one in particular: I went to my Meeting for Worship this morning (the Quaker name for "going to church"), and - thank goodness - there was one of our younger Friends (I can call him that, as he's half my age), safe and sound and sitting on one of the ancient benches. This young man is one of my heroes, although he'd blush and shuffle his feet if I told him that to his face. He's recently graduated from law school and just finished his law boards. While he was a student, he and some other students started a program to provide free legal assistance and representation for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. That program will continue now that he's left the school. We are all grateful for knowing him, and I know the people he's helped were all grateful that he and his colleagues were there for them in their time of need. But that's not the half of it.

Late last month, this young man joined a group from Christian Peacemaker Teams and went off for two weeks in Hebron, to live and work with the Palestinians there. Now, if you know anything about the Middle East, you know that this is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet, so we were all desperately worried about him while he was gone. We also all had at the back of our minds the story of the beloved Friend Tom Fox, who, as a member of a CPT group, was taken hostage and subsequently murdered in Iraq. So, we were all terrified for him the whole time he was gone. As is his way, he told us all today that the scariest part of the trip was riding with the cabbies in Hebron, because they drive "like maniacs." We took him at his word. He talked about what an amazing experience he'd had, and we all can't wait to hear more in the coming weeks.

So, as I sat in the silence today, I felt grateful for his safe return to us and to his family. I thought about how grateful I am that my own adult son is safe at home (finally, now, as I write this, after his being away for three days at a "music festival" in America's most dangerous city) with his mother, his brother, and me, and not overseas in harm's way fighting Mr. Bush's War of Empire. I felt grateful for the rain that's been falling here all day, because we so sorely need it, and grateful at the same time that we're not in the path of a hurricane, as so many folks will be tonight. I felt grateful that no one in my family has to go hundreds of feet underground to make a living, and, while I'm saddened at the thought that so many families are grieving today, I guess I'm grateful that I am not, even as I hold those families in The Light.

Most of all, though, I felt grateful just to be in that place this morning. In a week or so, the fifth anniversary of my mother's death will be upon us. My mom died exactly ninety days after my father died of a sudden heart attack. My mom had been sick for years - dying by degrees, really - and my dad's death was the final blow. She literally gave up after he was gone. It wasn't really surprising, but I was there when she died, and it was a really difficult struggle coming to terms with all that, with the experience of watching her die. It's a lot of emotional stuff with which I'm still dealing. For a good six months after she passed, I was totally consumed by the settling of my parents' estate, and I didn't really grieve much. Shortly after the final settlement and the sale of their home, my emotional roof caved in. I should have probably gone to a therapist or something, but I didn't, and I'm still picking up those pieces because of that. Being the cement-headed person I can be sometimes, I wanted to try to get my life straightened out "by myself." My wife and kids were a big help, as were my colleagues and friends at work. The September after my mom's death, I was blessed with a roster of some of the most amazingly compassionate and kind-hearted middle school students I've ever had the honor of teaching, and they helped me get through the year without even knowing what they were doing for me. Things started to work out, although they're still not all "right" yet, but they're getting there..

And I did something else back then: I went back to Meeting. I tried a spiritual route to dealing with my grief, but, at first, it was hard. I'd been away from organized religion for many years, but although I still felt like I was a believing, "spiritual" person, the old way of doing things - the United Methodist Church in which I was raised - had stopped speaking to me in my late teens. I dabbled in Buddhism, but found some its basic teachings clashed with some of my core personal beliefs, although the practice of meditation worked wonders for easing my pain, in the way that sitting in silence does now. Then I remembered having visited the same Meeting where I am now a member during another time of crisis and pain in my life. During my second year in college, my closest friend in the world was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was the first friend I'd ever lost to death, and everyone who knew him was devastated by his untimely passing. I knew Dave (yeah, we were "Dave and Dave") through my old church: we were youth group helpers together. But after he died, the very last place I wanted to be was in that church, because everywhere I went in that town reminded me of him. A close friend recommended I try a Quaker Meeting for Worship. "You'll like the silence," she said (I've never forgotten that). So I attended for about a month, four First Days in a row. I never talked to anyone there: I just went in, sat in the back, took in what was happening, and left at the "rise of Meeting" (when the Meeting for Worship ends). Then I moved on, but I had been moved. Obviously. Because when I needed that warm and trusting silence again, it was there for me, almost twenty-five years later. So I went back one day, almost without thinking, on a whim, really.

And this time, I stayed.

I've been attending my Meeting now for four years, and I've been a member for three. I have made friends there, people I think will be friends for life. I serve on two committees (Quakers love committees), and this past year, I co-led an Adult First Day School ("Sunday school") class, where we discussed and picked apart one of my favorite Quaker books. Becoming a Friend has enriched and informed and improved my life, and it has helped heal and make me whole again. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Yes, there is a point here. When we scroll down the page of this and the other blogs we read and contribute to, it's really easy to become angry or cynical or frustrated or just plain sad. There is so much pain and suffering out there, and so much that makes us angry. And I hope I haven't bored y'all too much with all this religious talk here. I don't think you have to be "a believer" to get my point. But one of the things being a Friend has taught me is the importance of gratitude: of taking the time to think about and to be truly grateful for the good things we have in our lives, whether it be our health, our families, our friends, our careers, or having a place like this to share and rant and laugh with other like-minded folks.

Or just being grateful for a quiet place to sit on a rainy Sunday morning.

TAGS: Faith, Hope, Misc. ramblings