Viewpoint Who is our neighbor?
By TOM ROBERTS
Retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf of
Desert Storm fame had just received the Harry S. Truman Good Neighbor Award and
a clutch of gifts from the Truman Foundation.
The 1991 New York ticker-tape parade and subsequent celebrity of
the retired general aside, the war against Iraq has never really ended. Though
Schwarzkopf was not here to talk about the wars continuation, the point
was forced by five activists in the audience.
As the retired general was about to begin his remarks, a woman
stood up in the middle of the room and cried out: Question! Question! Are
not the children of Iraq our neighbors, too?
There was murmuring, and police quickly moved to escort her from
the Imperial Ballroom of the Muehlebach Towers in downtown Kansas City, Mo.,
where 600 had gathered May 8 to honor the general with the annual award.
The woman, Mary Knebel, dropped some leaflets on the table where
she had been having lunch and began walking away between two police
officers.
As the police were moving toward Knebel, Tom Sanger got up at
another place in the hall and called out, God forgive us for the
sanctions that kill 5,000 children every month!
As the police led him away, Sr. Frances Russell, rose and said,
God forgive us for being so comfortable with death and killing!
As the police began to lead her away, Mary K. Meyer stood at the
rear of the room and cried out: God forgive us for being so comfortable
with clean strikes by cruise missiles!
All the while the general stood at the podium, silent. By now the
crowd was booing louder and yelling for the demonstrators to get out.
The exits that way, said someone near my table.
The guards began moving toward Meyer when a final voice rang out on the other
side of the large room.
God forgive us for putting oil interests above human
beings! said Sr. Marie de Paul Combo. Now the crowd was groaning. The
boos swelled again. Another pair of police moved among the tables.
Get them out of here! said someone in the crowd.
We came to hear the general, not you! yelled another.
The five repeated, as they were led from the ballroom: Are
not the people of Iraq our neighbors, too? Largely unnoticed was the
foreign student, one of a group invited by the Truman award foundation, who
followed the protesters outside. Knebel said the student approached and thanked
her for what she had done. The student, from the Middle East, said she knew
about the Iraqi children.
When they all had been removed, Schwarzkopf cut through the
tension that had interrupted the celebration. I am always tempted to say
at a time like this that it appalls me that some people feel that in the
exercise of their constitutional rights of free speech they should trample on
the rights of everyone else. The place erupted in cheers.
But I wont say that. The place exploded in
laughter.
Of course, no ones constitutional rights were in question.
This was political theater -- intrusive, annoying, in the words of one of the
protesters -- impolite -- but it hardly involved a constitutional question. One
might argue, instead, that Schwarzkopfs appearance, itself, was largely
political theater, an extension of the script that the United States had
imposed on a far different reality when we declared victory in Iraq in 1991 and
came home.
The war never really ended. Saddam Hussein remains a thorn in the
American side. Ten years after we declared victory we continue to bomb Iraq
almost daily. Until recently, when there was a slight easing of the sanctions,
we had insisted on maintaining, through the apparatus of the United Nations,
the most thorough and unyielding boycott in modern history.
According to a United Nations report released last August, the
deaths of 500,000 children under the age of five had been directly related to
the U.S.-inspired economic sanctions. Since then, tens of thousands more can be
added to the total -- an estimated 5,000 a month.
One is tempted at a moment like this to wonder how someone attains
the status of war hero while leaving behind such a mess and such gruesome,
ongoing consequences. But that is the way of war. It is never neat and tidy, as
our imaginations would make it.
More than one right answer
During rather brief remarks following the disruption, the retired
general said some things that led me to wonder if, apart from the clash of
political theater, he and the protesters might have far more in common than the
audience would suspect.
He mentioned, for instance, after acknowledging the foreign
students, that he had lived as a teenager in a number of countries, including
Iran, Germany and Italy. He said he believed whatever success he may have
achieved in the international arena came from the experience he had
living in those countries and learning that theres always more than
one right answer, and all we have to do is look long enough and hard enough,
and we can find mutual agreement on almost any subject.
He also spoke of the need for character in leaders and how
character came to the surface most clearly when confronting difficult
decisions, not those we know will be popular or make us look good but the kind
we sweat over and that keep us up nights pondering. He spoke of Trumans
decision to use nuclear weapons and his own military decisions to place life in
jeopardy.
I can tell you, he said, that none of us,
absolutely none of us, go ahead and make a decision like that, when we know
its going to cost even one human being their life, without the greatest
of soul searching, without thinking and rethinking the ramifications of those
decisions.
He and the protesters might disagree on what constitutes the right
decisions, but I think they might agree on searching for mutual agreement, and
they might have a common understanding of the nighttime wrestling with
decisions that leads one to act on unpopular convictions.
I also wonder if, offstage, many of those in attendance would not
find the protestors petitions had merit.
Who is our neighbor? is an ancient and disturbing
question. If we take Jesus lead and answer everyone, the avenues of
action are quickly defined -- and massive violence fades as an option. In
theory, that is, and until oil and tyrants and national interests
get tossed into the mix and the concept of neighbor is squeezed into
ever-narrower categories.
In real world political theater, the war story always gets the
biggest parts and the brightest lights. The activists here were trying to poke
through the assumptions that the war story and the narrow view of neighbor are
the only options.
I know those involved. They are friends, and I was tipped off to
the action. I bought my ticket to see what they would do.
For more than a month of Wednesdays before the luncheon they had
met to pray and to discuss the action. These are not impetuous firebrands or
malcontents seeking publicity.
Knebel, mother of five and grandmother of seven, knows the ache of
watching a child with an incurable condition. One of her daughters was
paralyzed in an auto accident at age 16. She died when she was 35. Knebel said
through that experience she has a deep sympathy for the mothers in Iraq whose
children are dying for lack of medicine and equipment from maladies that prior
to the sanctions would have easily been remedied.
At 67, she is retired from a 19-year-career at Hallmark Cards,
which is headquartered here. You know something else? she asked
during an interview before the protest. When you get as old as I am,
theres a whole sense of freedom to go ahead and do what has to be done. I
dont have any responsibilities, except the ones I choose -- and this is
one of them, she said about opposing the sanctions.
So when Mary K. Meyer, the organizer of the protest, came
knocking, Mary Knebel didnt hesitate to say yes.
Meyer is 70 years old and long ago dedicated her life to God and
the work of peace and reconciliation. A deeply prayerful woman, her life is a
constant demonstration of reverence for all life. She runs the Shalom Catholic
Worker House, which provides food for up to 25 homeless men in one of the
poorest sections of Kansas City, Kans.
Sensing that this is obscene
A year ago, she traveled with a delegation of Catholic Workers on
a trip to Iraq sponsored by the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness. She saw
the dying children, the helpless mothers, the disintegrating culture, the
results of the bombs of 10 years ago and the bombs that have fallen since.
When she read the small article announcing that Schwarzkopf was to
receive the Good Neighbor Award, I had a gut sense -- thats where
it came from -- that this is obscene, she said. This is not what
good neighbors do, not how good neighbors act. Good neighbors help one
another, she said.
When we were in Iraq, so many times we were asked,
Would Americans do this if they knew how we were suffering? and I
would always say, No, they wouldnt, said Meyer.
Now another years gone by, 60,000 more [children] have died, and it
still goes on. So she went and she sat with God, as she calls it, and she
had really good prayer, as she does each day, and she decided to do
something to try to poke through the complacency. She called on a
small circle of friends to join her.
Russell, 68, and Combo, 76, have been friends and members of the
same order for years. Today they both work on social justice issues for the
order, and Russell also teaches English as a second language. A veteran of
actions taken on behalf of a host of issues, Russell was quick to
agree to join in Meyers effort.
So was Sanger, a pastoral associate at Guardian Angels Parish in
Kansas City, Mo., who has taken his place with a group of local Catholic
Workers and others who for years have kept a regular presence opposing the war
and the sanctions at a prominent corner in Kansas Citys Plaza area.
Combo was not so quick to sign on. A Sister of Charity of
Leavenworth for 52 years and social justice coordinator for the order for the
past 13 years, she is familiar with the world of political realities, of give
and take. She has joined protests and actions in the past, the kind that are
organized and signaled ahead of time, so everyone knows whats going on.
But she also has spent a fair amount of time in the corridors of power and with
legislators who help fashion national policies, understanding the pressures
they work under and figuring out how best to lobby on behalf of the
orders issues.
Surprising those attending the award luncheon is not the
kind of thing that I would choose to do, she said, because I think
it is disruptive. I dont mind crossing lines and getting arrested, but
this seems so impolite. But then you think about how impolite our treatment of
the people of Iraq is and you cant ignore that.
She prayed about it, took up the issue with her spiritual
director, and decided to join the protest. She saw it as an opportunity
to speak for the people of Iraq to people who may not know all of what is going
on there.
She prayed about it some more, alone and with her friends, for the
people of Iraq, for the people who would be at the luncheon and she eventually
felt confident that the group had been drawn by the Spirit together to do
this.
Almost as quickly as the protest began, it was over. The
diners most common assessment, heard in the lobby on the way out, apart
from disagreement with the sentiment of the protesters, was that the tactic was
all wrong. Did they really think they would get us to listen by doing
that?
Meyer, days before the protest, had given the answer. This
little episode, she said, is not going to let all the American
people know, but on this day here it will be a few people who will hear and who
will have to think about it. Its just something that needs to be done,
and then let God take it where he will.
Tom Roberts is NCRs managing editor. He can be
reached at troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, May 19,
2000
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