Call Your President Today -- Dial 202-456-1111

Some FOR members have asked if FOR and other faith-based organizations have access to the President Obama's assessment process concerning his Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. The answer is yes on a number of levels.

The digital world provides a field of communication which makes it much easier to test and construct messages and bring many individuals and organizations into line behind consensus messages. This means that almost anyone can direct a message to the President's team, or gather signers to statements and documents. We do that with increasing frequency and we also use this path to leverage our support across collections of allies like UFPJ and PeaceAction for example, or Christian Peace Witness (CPW) and the Olive Branch Interfaith Peace Partnership (OBIPP). Letters and statements are typically signed by dozens if not hundreds of individuals and groups. Petitions are signed by thousands. Telephone and email campaigns may generate still more responses.

These forms of expression have largely replaced public gatherings and marches (though the Rockland Coalition for Peace & Justice celebrated seven years consecutive Saturday vigils this week). They reflect a fragmentation, proliferation and diversification of positioning within the movement. What we don't know is if this dilutes the impact of messages and perspectives or intensifies the impact. Let’s trust it intensifies the impact. At the moment we are a part of a campaign joined by many groups to call the White House over the next three days to encourage a decision which leads to an immediate departure from Afghanistan, an on time withdrawal from Iraq, and a strong investment in humanitarian works in both countries.

Call the White House. Tell the President, demobilize, dismantle, disengage militarily. Allow the region to organize around solutions to conflicts in the Middle East. Be prepared to provide development aid and humanitarian support. Dial 202-456-1111.

As one talking point see the letter signed by 77 United Methodist Bishops call for disengagement. http://www.umc- gbcs.org/ Bishops4AfghanPe ace.

The letter was one of the many related messages delivered last Thursday to the White House Office of Public Engagement where we joined more than 20 representatives from Christian and Muslim organizations to talk with six members of the executive branch about the Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy, (two national security council members and four staff from the office of public engagement including Chief of Staff Tina Chin.)

Other faith traditions may have been invited but unable to attend, or may have been invited separately. There was clear evidence that there were groups almost every day in recent weeks. For an hour the White House staff listened to the recommendations and preferences of this corner of the peace movement for an end to military engagement and pursuit of diplomatic efforts. Beyond asserting that there was no decision yet and would be no announcement for perhaps another week or two, there was no suggestion of what the forthcoming position would be.

There was a fairly clear and broad consensus as we went around the table, already captured in joint letters, denominational statements, web and blog sites, and other publications. There is no support for a continuing military presence in Afghanistan. There is a clear argument that there is no military solution to the problems of Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is a deep concern that development plans and practices are blurring an important distinction between the military and civil society. Humanitarian agencies are hearing from close relationships on the ground that this practice is creating suspicion and danger within the private, civil sector. For example, the failure to distinguish responsibilities for training armed military forces and police forces suggests a lack of appreciation for the differences in their roles in society.

The importance of promoting regional solutions that bring all parties to the table, in particular Iran but also India and Pakistan was underscored, with an appreciation that such recommendations are also coming from within the executive branch including the Department of Defense and the Ambassador to Afghanistan.

The gathering brought to mind two historical echoes which, as much as any thing, tell us how the world has changed. In Nicholson Baker's book Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, the chronicle is retold of occasional visits to FDR by a small circle of voices representing the Quakers, FOR, WRL, WILPF and the historical peace churches, warning the President of the risks of entering the war. Today the voices have multiplied many-fold and even while the issues of this strategy are being debated the President is traveling freely around the world testing still larger issues and consequences of empire, and in his spare moments drafting a speech for a ceremony in Oslo, Norway at which he will receive the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10th. The world is more complex, the ironies richer.

Nor was the fact that we were meeting, on Thursday, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building lost on me as I wondered who else was “at the table” receiving polite and sincere attention and assurances that their points of view were important and would be taken in to consideration as the new policy is constructed. Certainly we have a sense that the military and diplomatic points of view have been more transparent than we are used to as General Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry offer competing arguments.

Certainly the President is modeling a promised openness and a demonstrated intelligence. But I wondered where the industrial complex was voicing its preferences? I would guess they are so fully present to every member of Congress and the executive chambers that they require no special invitation or hour long session. Eisenhower's predictions have been so fully realized that they are invisible in their pervasiveness. We live and breathe a predisposition to militarism, a corporate investment in warfare. Hold your breath. Speak out. Call your President right now – 202-456-1111.