If the U.S. public looked long and hard into a mirror reflecting the civilian atrocities that have occurred in Afghanistan over the past 10 months, we would see ourselves as people who have collaborated with and paid for war crimes committed against innocent civilians...
Tough Minds and Tender Hearts
I spent Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday in Washington, D.C., as part of the Witness Against Torture fast, which campaigns to end all forms of torture and has worked steadily for an end to the indefinite detention of people imprisoned in Guantanamo, Bagram, and...
Speaking Truth to Power
There's a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: "Speak truth to power." One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the presidential administration of the United States. This past October, students at...
An Open Letter to The Norwegian Nobel Committee
On December 10, you will award the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, citing "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people." We the undersigned are distressed that President Obama, so close...
Now We See You, Now We Don’t
In early June, 2009, I was in the Shah Mansoor displaced persons camp in Pakistan, listening to one resident detail the carnage which had spurred his and his family's flight there a mere 15 days earlier. Their city, Mingora, had come under massive aerial bombardment....
Visitors and Hosts in Pakistan
In Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark and Termite, the skies over Korea in 1950 are described in this way: "The planes always come like planets on rotation. A timed bloodletting, with different excuses." The most recent plane to attack the Pakistani village of...


