THOUGHTS ON THE WAR ON TERROR

Back to the War on Terror. Is there anyway the United States justify war against a nation for incidents such as 9/11? The terrorists seem to be organized in such away that no central organization can be blamed. Before President Bush the presidents involved seemed to have tried to single out individuals and punish them. I'm not going to look up dates and particular incidents and with a lousy memory I'm just briefly going to discuss this to make us think. Carter, Reagan, Bush1, and Clinton instead of starting WWIII dealt with each terroist act on an individual basis. (Desert Storm took place because of Iraq attacking a nation.)Take McVeigh and Oklahoma City, we could have attacked each state McVeigh had operated in, and some are still blaming an organized central command for the tragedy.Believe it or not, some have mentioned some part of the US government. Bush centered his war on two nations that probably didn't have anymore to do with the attack than other Arab countries. He might have attacked the two countries because of their ability to control a large part of the world's oil supply. Investing a large amount of money and human life Bush is seeking to end terrorist action.Are we going to continue this costly operation. Only the next election will tell. Think on the subject that I have just touched on?

IS WAR ON IRAQ JUSTIFIED

UFO Cults - History Channel Interview

A PLEA FOR PEACE (copied) Cathedral of Hope Prayer MinistryDevotion for Tuesday, August 10, 2004The search for weapons of mass destruction came up last Monday night at one of our regular meetings of the Order of St. Francis and St. Clare. Not a very Franciscan dialogue you might suggest, but the subject came up when one of our members commented that she had recently read a work which stated that the genuine weapon of mass destruction, real or imagined, is not hidden away under some mound of sand in a middle Eastern nation. The real weapon of mass destruction is poverty. About a generation ago, when I was directing a lot of documentary films, I had the opportunity to inspect quite a few destructive weapons of the steel and gunpowder variety during a series of films we were doing for a branch of the US armed services. The films were about the opportunities for training and higher education in any number of fields that were available in the military, so they seemed safe enough for a fledgling pacifist to undertake, but though most of the footage we shot was located in classrooms, gymnasiums, and aircraft hangers, we still had to trudge through and by warehouses upon warehouses of weapons to get there. Even now, I can't erase those images of neatly catalogued stacks of grenades, huge Howitzer bullets, rifles, bazookas, rocket launchers and whatever other evil looking casts of metal we passed by, innocently carrying our lights, script pages and cameras. It was incredibly difficult to focus on those positive compositions of young men learning how! to use an architect's square and young women teaching trigonometry without obsessing on what was hidden by the walls behind them. Even more distracting was the inevitable image of these bright and motivated young people being forced by duty to use these weapons to annihilate their neighbors. But, we proceeded to carry out our duty and continued to photograph them in their relay races and electronics classes, while in my private world of thought, I kept wondering which one of them wouldn't live through all this; which one would never sleep for a full night again after ending the world of another human being? Being surrounded by this contrasting setting of hope and potential devastation during those few weeks did more than any other experience in my life toward turning those pacifist tendencies into a lifestyle. So now, I'm a Franciscan surrounded by others of my own kind, yet living in a world peppered with weapons that make those arsenals I toured thirty years ago look like sandboxes full of tinker toys. Where is the hope now? It's easy and pious enough to say that the hope still lies in the teachings of the same Prince of Peace; teachings that have been available for a couple of thousand years. We've even succinctly identified and targeted the main enemy: poverty. Now what? I believe the search for the weapons that nurture and empower that enemy should begin in our own minds. As long as we return acts of aggression with similar or more brutal acts, the enemy's arsenal will only multiply. When we finally ask ourselves, "what degree of spiritual or physical hunger could lead to such an act?" -then bomb the aggressor with Cheerios, can we begin to deliver the real enemy a fatal blow.Prayer: God of love, be the divine neutral party today who searches my own thoughts for weapons of mass destruction. Forge them into instruments of your peace. In the name of our Teacher, AMEN.Dan PeelerMinister, Children and FamiliesCathedral of HopeDallasdpeeler@cathedralofhope.com