First hearts, then minds
Kownacki, Mary Lou
of Iraq and will do little to add to the impressive political stature that Saddam Hussein has already achieved. Therefore, the next few weeks may see him ready to accept a version of the...
...Her employers, the "Little Brothers," had a motto---"Flowers before food...
...A radio station that sponsors a vote for bad guys during a human tragedy is wasting its time...
...The half-time extravaganza at the Super Bowl gives us a clue...
...cluster bomb...
...It wasn't attending a seminar on Catholic social teaching...
...Someone did an excellent job of marketing patriotism, of making millions feel pride in their country and support for the war...
...A peace movement that relies on rhetoric rather that making present the human face of war is wasting its time...
...Bonaventure, a Franciscan college in Olean, New York, she knew that she did not want the business world that she experienced during her summer intemships...
...Test it in Erie and you'll have a good read of the tempo of the country...
...It was literature class, when I had them lie on their backs on the classroom floor and imagine being buried six feet underground while they reverently recited: We are the dead...
...And it's that child's story we must tell...
...Money is not the answer to our problem," she noted more than once...
...Maureen visited, talked, shopped with, did chores with, and helped them with daily trials...
...By resorting to war the U.S...
...Someone knew that to move the masses you must touch the heart...
...She learned how to walk quickly past British soldiers toting machine guns at the ready position, and how to try to understand the connection between economic injustice and selfish political interests...
...The military-industrial complex has as its subject war and the patriotism of war...
...First, major companies consider Erie one of the top cities in the nation for testing new products...
...Hard-liners led by Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney will argue that it would be folly to stop the war with victory so close...
...Saddam Hussein because he's Hitler's clone and the target of our Tomahawk missiles...
...A church that prays for peace but justifies war is wasting its time...
...So far our approach to the Persian Gulf war is an appeal to reason or to radical faith...
...And how much time can we afford to waste...
...ROBERT E. WHITE Robert E. White, U.S...
...Before you chalk it up to small-town narrowmindedness, keep two things in mind...
...a beautiful blond-haired boy sang a special song to the soldiers...
...The Pentagon knows what turned average U.S...
...The contest was a cliff-hanger, but the Benedictine Sisters squeaked out a victory...
...Second, Erie is about 65 percent Catholic...
...Artists, poets, storytellers, and songwriters can help us...
...We understood when she told us that she was leaving for Belfast, Ireland, to work with children tom apart by intolerance, economic injustice, and hate...
...Maureen's first work was with elderly people in Boston...
...It was reading All Quiet on the Western Front...
...MARY LOU KOWNACKI Mary Lou Kownacki, O.S.B., is national coordinator of Pax Christi USA, the national Catholic peace movement headquartered in Erie, Pennsylvania...
...I know what convinced me to give my life to the peace movement...
...of a young Vietnamese girl running down a highway, naked and screaming, her back ablaze with napalm...
...The Little Brothers target lonely, elderly people with no relatives or close friends at hand...
...To be taken seriously in the Persian Gulf debate by the military, political, and academic communities, the church and the peace movement seem to be sacrificing legitimate appeals to the heart: symbols and stories that put a human face on war...
...Am I missing something here...
...Erich Remarque made me feel deeply for Paul, a young German soldier in World War I, an "enemy" of my country...
...It was vivid pictures of endless body bags holding eighteen-year-old boys from Tacoma and Tempe and Cleveland...
...of the dusty village of My Lai strewn with bloody bodies of old women and young children...
...Maureen accepted a full-time position counseling teen-age runaways...
...For two-and-a-half years she has held onto her idealism...
...Points and counterpoints on whether or not a war is just will never touch people's hearts like yellow ribbons on trees and flags on car hoods...
...Call 292-456-1111, ask for George hen Maureen finished her studies at St...
...THE GULF WAR FIRST HEARTS, THEN MINDS TACTICS FOR PEACEMAKERS radio station in my hometown ran a poll for "Bad Guy of the Day...
...It wasn't the release of the Pentagon Papers...
...the scene was too close to my brother Joe's homecoming from Vietnam, right down to both mothers going to the stove to fry potato pancakes for their war-weary sons...
...Or if enough pacifists shout "love your enemies" loud and long enough, the crowds will convert...
...there was inspiring martial music, an all-American Mickey Mouse, flags and fireworks galore...
...leadership...
...If Saddam Hussein were to accept a version of the BakerBe.ssmertnykh peace proposal, he would present the Bush administration with a stark choice...
...citizens against Vietnam...
...The two contestants were Saddam Hussein and the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, Pennsylvania...
...When the Franciscans called Maureen and asked her to run a soup kitchen back in Olean, she left Boston and bonded her love and hard work to the poor of Olean...
...Short days ago we lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow loved and were loved, and now we lie in Flanders Fields...
...What an awakening...
...public feel the honor and glory of the Persian Gulf war...
...With many more kids lost to drugs, pimps, and the street than success stories of boys and girls going back home, or accepted by caring foster parents, she has clung to hope...
...Is the Catholic peace movement...
...The characters became real life to us when she had the rare opportunity to come home for a short visit...
...Secretary of State Baker will insist that to reject the peace plan would divide the coalition, divide the United States from its allies, and give substance to the charge that the United States regards the United Nations only as a tool to advance its own interests...
...the Benedictine Sisters because we've spoken and acted against the Gulf war...
...It wasn't discussing the commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill...
...So can ordinary people like Coast Guard Lieutenant J.G...
...The "enemy" had a family, best friends, favorite foods, loved reading, wrote poems...the "enemy" was just like me...
...The United States will almost surely pay a huge price for abandoning the sanctions policy that offered the best hope of bringing down Saddam Hussein and insuring that a moderate government would take over...
...A people that seeks a new world order without first recognizing how precious is life and how pitiful is war is wasting its time...
...As if getting enough Catholics to memorize and apply the just war theory will set them afire for peace...
...When the final note sounded, you couldn't find a dry eye in the stadium or in TV rooms around the country...
...Her mother took her to a low-overhead discount store where they bought underwear for the girls coming from the street...
...Therefore, the next few weeks may see him ready to accept a version of the joint U.S.-Soviet statement that calls for an end to the war if Iraq agrees to leave Kuwait...
...Is the church...
...Promoters flew in hundreds of children of servicemen and women to parade around the football field holding flags...
...Even my heart was pounding...
...has inflamed Arab nationalism, and made it unlikely that the United Nations will ever again unite effectively against an aggressor under U.S...
...120: Commonweal...
...Over a twoyear period she became family with a group of forty or more regulars who came to share meals she prepared and served...
...It was a life...
...Always hoping to do more for the poverty-stricken families, she complained that resources were always sparse...
...Why such passion for patriotism and such disdain and misunderstanding toward those who want to rid the world of war...
...It's up to the churches and the peace movement to make the people feel the poetry and pity of it...
...Will Little Caesar's pizza sell better with two layers of mozzarella or three...
...When I started working with the first prisoner, I saw the fear in his eyes and saw him shaking...
...Her stories were always warm, full of humor, love, and sadness...
...ambassador to El Salvador during the Carter administration, is president of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C...
...Dissecting fine points on what constitutes indiscriminate bombing is meaningless rhetoric to a five-year-old Iraq girl blown apart by a U.S...
...They will point out that if Saddam Hussein survives he wins and that now is the time to crush a ruthless tyrant before he becomes the premier leader of the Arab world...
...The plan is all the more attractive to Iraq because it links this withdrawal to a promise to deal with the "cause of instability and the sources of conflict, including the Arab-Israeli conflict...
...Working with the Society of Friends (Quakers), she deepened her respect for that marvelous group who taught her Irish history, culture, and horror...
...The poetry is in the pity...
...I think I would have the same fear if I was in his situation:" Westin continued, "Here's the enemy, but for me, at that time, it wasn't...
...Her letters from Belfast were both chilling and comforting...
...When I taught junior high school, I knew what made my students passionate about peace...
...Money was just not available...
...So far they've done an excellent job of making the U.S...
...Home from Ireland, it was only a few days before she was off to another wartom city, a place of guns, murders, drugs, and economic injustice--New York City...
...I sobbed when 22 Februaly 1991:119 Paul went home for a brief furlough...
...Someone, in other words, knows more than the church or the peace movement...
...The English poet Wilfred Owen, who was himself killed in World War I, wrote, "My subject is war and the pity of war...
...Yet, she complained to her mother of the lack of clothing at the New York City funded shelter where she works...
...Spending a few dollars is better than having to separate angry girls fighting over pants and bras," she said...
...I had an image of fierce, ruthless fighters, but, really, these men weren't different from you or me," he told the Washington Post...
...Oh, that we would all grasp that insight and stop wasting time...
...Walter Westin, twenty-eight, of Richmond, Virginia, a crewman on the Nicholas, the Navy guided-missile frigate that captured the first twenty-three Iraqi prisoners of war...
Vol. 118 • February 1991 • No. 4
