THOMAS MERTON CENTER UPDATED STATEMENT
ON AMERICA’S RESPONSE TO CRISIS OF SEPTEMBER 11

Dedicated to nonviolence and social justice, Pittsburgh’s Thomas Merton Center works vigorously to advance just and lasting peace in the world. The horrors of September 11 continue to cause deep grief among members of the Center, and that sense of devastating loss is shared all over the nation and the globe.  Great work is at hand for all of us to sow the seeds of hope and compassion. Great work is needed to truly achieve Peace on Earth.  

Although some are claiming victory in Afghanistan, this is no victory for humanity. The great peacemaker Jeannette Rankin stated that you can no more win a war than win an earthquake.  The military response in Afghanistan has ended or maimed uncounted innocent lives, and cruelly increased the number of civilians jeopardized by starvation and exposure. The Afghan people are suffering shock after shock of our earthquake.  UN experts believe 7 million Afghans are at risk of starvation.  Deaths due to lack of shelter and exposure to the elements are occurring.

Where is the victory in actions that worsened an already immense suffering?
Has the military response made us safer from terrorism? 

The Center endorses the courageous work by the Revolutionary Assn. of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).  Afghan women have experienced years of brutal suffering and denial of their human rights while the world watched and did too little. The Center supports these RAWA recommendations for resolution of the Afghanistan humanitarian crisis:

  • Self-determination for the Afghan people, with a secular, broad-based, democratic government that includes full and equal participation of women
  • The exclusion of Taliban and other criminal Jehadi factions from political power due to the crimes they have committed on the Afghan people
  • Prosecution of terrorists under international law

In addition the Center strongly urges a sustained commitment on the part of all nations to provide immediate and long-term humanitarian aid desperately needed by the Afghan people to recover from years of drought and war. Any UN involvement in post-Taliban Afghanistan, including UN peacekeeping forces, must reflect the diversity of nations within the UN, and not be dominated by the United States government.

The Center’s initial statement on the crisis of September 11 addressed five important concerns: the safety of individuals sharing a national or ethnic heritage with the attackers; protracted violence within Afghanistan and retaliation against the United States; loss of innocent lives; loss of civil freedoms; and apathy toward the hostility against the United States.

Those five concerns have deepened, and the Center’s fears sadly realized.  Americans of Mideastern and Indian descent have faced murder, violence, and threats. Our government rushed to a military response, made no meaningful effort to pursue channels of peaceful international law enforcement, and failed to produce evidence as to why Afghanistan should pay the price of September 11. Our rush has a human toll. The shameful euphemism “collateral damage” is meant to convince us that the deaths of innocents are necessary and acceptable concomitants of war. The Thomas Merton Center asserts that the deaths of innocents are precisely why war should never be a first option. War does indeed kill innocent people. It always has. It always will. It also engenders hatred and provides the basis for future killing.  If war brought peace, we would have had peace on Earth long ago.

The Center’s concern for civil freedoms has also deepened. In our rush to protect our freedoms from outside attack, we have assailed them from within. Our congressional representatives have hurriedly adopted federal legislation at an excessive cost to our proud legacy of civil liberty protections of freedom from search. Our freedom of speech is evaporating under the scathing glare cast upon those who dare to express dissent.  Our executive branch is attempting to circumvent our long cherished constitutional protections of due process in criminal proceedings by establishing secret tribunals unimpeded by concerns of individual rights of liberty.

In our wave of compassion toward our American victims of terror, many of us have neglected the grave need for compassion toward other peoples. The stab of terror is not new to many of our fellow humans. As the world’s most powerful and wealthy nation, America’s continued ignorance of the sources of suffering prevents reaching lasting solutions to suffering. Unfortunately, the American mass media have been complicit in keeping the American public in the dark, disgracefully putting a veil on American foreign and military policies and actions. Other nations’ citizens are more informed on America’s policies than are many Americans.  We cannot truly become global citizens when we lack vital information on matters of international consequence.

The Thomas Merton Center expresses its deep gratitude to the many thousands of strong, courageous, and compassionate people in our midst who have spoken and acted in support of human rights, civil liberties, humanitarian assistance, social justice and peace.

“Civilized countries talk about human rights and then they bomb us. Give my message to the Pentagon: This is our village. This is our only place for living.”    (Statement by Afghan elder Muhammad Tahir, NYT, 12/3/01.)

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© Thomas Merton Center 2009