This past year we enjoyed special celebrations in our family:  Rose’s mom’s 90^th birthday party and Jeff’s parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary.  We also enjoyed several days camping with the Eby’s in western New York, with a day trip to Niagara Falls.

We are continually amazed at how our children are growing, both physically and spiritually.  Before long, we’ll have three teens in our house!  We thank God daily for them!

Daniel is really enjoying middle school (grade 8).  He continues to love math and science.  We were thrilled with Daniel’s decision to be baptized this fall!  He really enjoys Wii games, football, piano and his week at camp this summer.  He had a great time on Penn View’s science trip to Florida in June.  Daniel won 1^st place in the zoology category in the science fair with his rat experiment!

Hannah is in sixth grade.  She loves reading and math in school, and drawing anytime.  The children enjoy their pets: Lightning the parakeet and two rats (Dawn and Dusk).  Hannah also likes Wii games, but not football!  The transition to middle school has been a good challenge for both girls.

Heidi is in sixth grade.  She loves writing and reading.  Heidi has written several pieces of fiction.  Both girls continued flute lessons.  The girls and Daniel do offertory at church occasionally.

Rose continues to excel in the face of the challenges of being mother, wife, career woman, school volunteer and church member!  She is in her seventh year at Towamencin Mennonite Church, where she is part-time congregational coordinator.

Jeff is enjoying his tenth year of teaching at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School.  Between economic turmoil and the wars, it has been another eventful year for social studies.  He continues to help plan peace and justice activities at school and at church.   He also enjoys genealogical research, astronomy and photography.

We look forward to reading letters or emails from many of you this Advent.  We hope you have a blessed Christmas, and we wish you a wondrous 2012!  While times may be tough in light of wars, economic uncertainty and other problems, we strive to let our faith in God’s provision grow.

Now, may the Almighty bless you from God’s exceeding abundance of mercy, love and grace.  May we be equipped to serve each other.  Now, and throughout the New Year, let us share the bounty of God with our neighbors—both near and far!

By late 2011, we will reach the $1.3 Trillion mark in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’re adding about $2.5 billion more to that total each week. These wars are now the second most expensive in US history (only World War II cost more).

How much money is $1,300,000,000,000? How much is even one billion?

How long does it take for a billion seconds to pass? There are 86,400 seconds in a day. There are 31,536,000 (31.5 million) seconds in a year. It takes about 31.7 years for one billion seconds to pass. (Contrast this with only about 11 days for one million seconds to pass.)

OK, we’re 1/1,300^th of the way there.

If you are able to live 100 years, you will experience a little over 3 billion seconds. There are 3,153,600,000 (3.15 billion) seconds in a century. There have been about 63 billion seconds since Jesus’ birth (2000 years). There have been about 126.14 billion seconds since Abraham’s birth (4000 years).

Are we at $1.3 trillion yet?

Some creationists believe the earth is about 6000 years old. If that is true, then about 189.2 billion seconds have passed since Creation. In other words, even if you spent a dollar every second since the first day of Creation, you’d be less than one-sixth of the way toward spending $1.3 trillion!

Let’s try this: if you spent $10.30 a second, every second of every day, since the day of Abraham’s birth, then you would have spent $1.3 trillion by now. What can you buy for $10.30? About three gallons of gas. Think about spending that money, every second of every minute, every minute of every hour, every hour of every day, every day of the year, for 4000 years. Get it?

Of course, more important than the financial cost is the human cost. Over 6,300 Americans have died; about 45,000 have been wounded. The Iraqi and Afghan human cost is less precise: perhaps as many as one million dead; countless thousands homeless, wounded, etc. And what of the long term costs? For how many generations will Iraqis and Afghans associate America with the destruction of their families? One report estimated that each Afghan civilian we kill creates six potential terrorists.

At what point is the price too high? It is already way too high for Afghans and Iraqis. The price for America in treasure, in lives lost, in lives devastated, in hostility created, is also too high!

Pray for peace, act for justice!

Check this web address for an update: http://costofwar.com

October 15, 2011

In the last several years, I’ve spent many hours researching in my family tree. Lately I’ve been sensing an answer to the “why” question: Why spend time and effort learning about people in the past?

There are a number of reflections that are part of the answer. Here are several.

In September, my son was baptized into the Mennonite Church, USA. My research has shown that he has joined a chain of Anabaptist believers in the Hackman family that goes back at least 14 generations. While bloodlines mean nothing in terms of salvation, it is compelling to realize that the link to a peculiar denomination can last so long. And of course it raises the question: will his children continue that heritage?

The research connects many living persons into a wider community. For 18 years, I lived in a town where I was the only Hackman in the phonebook. In a sense that was cool, but there’s also a special feeling since we’ve settled here in Pennsylvania and know the extended Hackman family is close at hand (as well as scattered). On October 1, 2011 the descendants of Joseph W. Hackman (my great-grandfather) got together. I’ve never been around so many Hackmans. It was curious to see how different we are. On the other hand, as cousins shared, it was remarked how certain characteristics were coming up over and over. One was an interest in Christian ministry—both locally and globally.

I have found connections between persons in my family tree and “famous” persons. These connections are usually quite remote, but fascinating nonetheless. Some connections I welcome, others, not so much. Bishop Herman Isaaks Opdengraf lived in Krefeld, Germany in the early 1600s. He signed the Dordrecht Confession of Faith in 1632. This was one of the earliest Mennonite confessions published. If that wasn’t enough, His grandson Abraham was one of the 13 families to come on the Concord to Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1683. He and his brother Dirk signed the first anti-slavery petition in the US, at the Germantown Meetinghouse in 1688! Is that where I got my passion for social justice?

The Opdengraf saga keeps going. There is a distant connection between Bishop Herman and William Penn. The identity of Herman’s father is somewhat in dispute, but one theory has his father as a famous nobleman who is descended from Holy Roman Emperors.

I am a history teacher (that is one part of why I’m interested). This fall I’ve asked my sophomores to do a family history project. They could do a family tree, research an immigration story or relate a family story that is handed down. One student interviewed her grandfather. A few weeks later, he died suddenly. She thanked me for a project that allowed her to connect with him before he went. We have stories to tell, wisdom to pass on. Let’s choose to communicate those treasures sooner rather than later.

Another effect has been an awareness of a “holy geography” to southeastern Pennsylvania. As I drive past the plot of land that the Hackman immigrant settled on, I wonder what it was like to be a pioneer. A few weeks ago I had the privilege of being in the house that my great-grandparents raised a family in. I pray that that landmark will remain; that the name of the builder etched into the front door won’t be lost. Historic preservation of certain places must be a priority.

Perhaps the deepest meaning of family history is to challenge me about the legacy I am leaving to my descendents (both my biological and educational descendents). What stories will be told about me in 50 years? Or in 400 years? I pray that I will be faithful to my calling in Christ, the church, and my family.

The most important change the US could make to deny fuel to the fire of terrorism is to change the US-Israel relationship. America has tremendous pull with Israel (though probably not as much as we used to). The US gives more aid to Israel than to any other country. There should be more accountability gained through this aid. The US must hold Israel to the same international standards of rule of law as any other country. Israel does have the right to exist, but it doesn’t have the right to bully and oppress. An example of this is the settlement issue. Israel continues to flaunt UN resolutions as it expands on land whose status has not been established. American commitment to justice would go a long way on the Arab (and the world for that matter) street if Israel faced real consequences for illegal acts.

There are many other issues too. Three others would be the blockade on Gaza, the use of state-sponsored assassinations and daily humiliation of checkpoints on the West Bank. Until the world sees the US using its influence in ways that push the Israeli government toward responsible citizenship in its region, America will be an easy target for those seeking justice and co-existence between Arabs and Israel.

In the broader search for a peace settlement between Palestinians and Israelis, the US must be seen as an honest broker. Currently there are no “peace talks”. Resumption of negotiations must be a higher priority. The perceived lack of commitment to the Palestinians is in large part what led to the rise of Hamas on the Palestinian political scene.

A similar dynamic of responsibility can apply to US relations with corrupt and brutal Arab regimes as well. American support of dictators like Mubarak and Qaddafi (in recent years) has become a huge liability as these regimes began to crumble in 2011. A consistent ethic of human rights and democratic principles will benefit all peoples of the region.

The US military footprint in the region must be reduced. Military bases in the region encourage corruption in host countries and create an impression of imperialism loathe to any proud people.

US foreign aid policy in the region and globally must be radically changed. The US gives less than 0.2% of its GDP in foreign aid. The US and the West in general have reneged on promises to increase aid to 0.7% of GDP. Instead of cutting foreign aid, the US must increase it greatly. And instead of much of the aid being weaponry, the US must encourage health, education, economic development, alternative energy and civil society in the region. The oil of the Middle East will not last forever, and they like us need to transition to cleaner energy. The end of the West’s obsession with oil will reduce tensions in the region. Let’s get moving!

Finally, an attitude of respect and equality toward the great civilizations of the greater Middle East must be cultivated. Instead of sending threats to Iran, let’s send and accept students. Instead of assassinating persons we don’t like, let’s use diplomatic procedures to address such problems. Instead of garrisoning 100,000 troops in Afghanistan to keep the Taliban at bay (they were defeated in 2001, remember?), let’s build schools through civilian organizations.

911 was a terrible day. But it was not a unique event. On September 11, 1973, planes appeared over the skies of Santiago, Chile as a coup toppled the democratically elected government. The US was behind those planes, setting up a regime that killed over 3000 people. May that never happen again. America has the potential to be a tremendous force for good in the world. If we don’t act in accord with our great principles, there will be other such infamous dates.

Soon after the horrific events of 911, I saw a bumper sticker that read: “To Stop Terrorism, Stop Terrorizing”. What does this mean? Is the US involved in terrorizing other people?

The bumper sticker tried to address another question heard so often in September and October 2001, but not heard much now: “Why do they hate us?” It seems that that genuine search for understanding was too quickly replaced by simple payback.

On August 6, 2011, a “militant” shot down a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan, killing 30 US soldiers including members of the US Navy Seals. Was this person aware of who was on the chopper and wanted revenge for the Seals’ killing of Osama bin Laden a few months earlier? Or was this person—yes, he was a person—fighting a foreign occupation of his country? We’ll probably never know. A few days after the Chinook went down, the US military claimed that F-16 jets had “taken out” the exact “militant” who did it. This is the never ending cycle of death we are now entangled in.

Few Americans read bin Laden’s actual words to try to understand the hate he had for the US in particular, and the West in general. He railed against several actions of the US in the 20^th century: posting US troops on the holy soil of Saudi Arabia, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and probably most prominently the US support for Israel—the state that many Arab nationalists view as an invasion of the West into the turf of their brothers the Palestinians.

Some tried to answer the question by saying that radical Islam hates the ideas of democracy, equal rights for women and materialism. There is some truth to that. No one will ever know the exact mix of beliefs that drove bin Laden to his path of destruction.

His critique of US foreign policy has merit however. It is understandable how Arabs might feel the West and the US have encroached on their land and people. It began with the Allied powers of World War I breaking up the Ottoman Empire in a way that divided the Arab nation and enabled them to profit more from the oil resources of the region than the people who actually lived above “our” oil.

Then after World War II, the powers-that-be decided that Israel would be created in Palestine. In the years after 1948, the US funded Israel’s military with billions of dollars of aid. That aid continues today, to the tune of $10 million each and every day.

Besides the argument that Israel is not legitimate to the Middle East region, there’s the way Israel has treated the Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab countries. Israel is now the bully of the region, bombing countries hundreds of miles from its borders:  Iraq, Tunisia and even Sudan.  We must be clear that the Israelis have legitimate fears of attack, but the overreaction to those fears has only served to amplify the existential threat to the Jewish state.

Cold War dynamics were superimposed on the Arab-Israeli dispute, making the stakes even higher. The Cold War morality (sic) guiding US foreign policy—anything goes—led the US to despicable behavior throughout the region for decades. The CIA was involved in overthrowing the government of Iran. The US propped up corrupt and brutal regimes from Mubarak to Saddam to the Saudi royal family. The US assassinated rulers, bombed Arab states, and intrigued to keep a stranglehold on the control of the region’s vast oil reserves.

Although the Cold War era is over, the anti-terrorism era continues to motivate the US to interfere: more and more military bases in the region, increasing use of drones to assassinate individuals it considers to be a threat, and of course continuing to prop up despots from Sanaa to Manama and Kabul.

Of course, one wrong does not justify more wrongs. The cycle of violence is unacceptable. But we need to look at the history of the US and the Middle East with realistic eyes if we want to understand the response.

Ten years after 911, the US must look to “drain the swamp” of terrorism, rather than assume that bombing the mosquitoes will end terrorism. If the US continues to terrorize the region by propping up dictators, raining death from the skies indiscriminately and building more bases, it can expect more “blowback”.

Some said in the wake of 911, “the world has changed”. Actually, the US joined the world on 911. We now know what it is like to be the victim of terrorism. Unless the US changes its ways in the Middle East, the terror of life in that region will rebound to America’s shores again and again. Several specific examples of what that change would look like will be the subject of part two of this post.

This fall, when I ask my sophomore students to tell stories of September 11, 2001, they’ll be reaching back to kindergarten days! Those young people can’t really remember a time when the US wasn’t at war in multiple countries. We’ve been “living with war” (title of Neil Young’s anti-war album in 2006) for 10 years now. It has become the new normal. What does that mean for peace education? What does it mean for the followers of Jesus to live in a country permanently at war?

Just a quick review of what the last 10 years have meant:

• $1.25 Trillion spent, and we continue to spend at a rate of $5000 per second
• Over 6000 Americans dead; tens of thousands physically wounded; hundreds of thousands spiritually and emotionally traumatized
• Only God knows how many divorces, suicides, assaults, foreclosures, lost jobs
• Close to one million Iraqi and Afghan deaths
• Increased toleration of despots anywhere, as long as they are allies in the war on terror
• Millions of refugees—one-half of the world’s refugees today are running from US wars
• Disregard for Constitutional protections, if it is part of “fighting terror”
• Loss of privacy; racial profiling; hate crimes
• War by video game: drones killing from air conditioned comfort
• US government deciding it can assassinate anyone, including US citizens
• Increased tolerance of the practice of torture—if it “stops the bad guys”
• A more paranoid, militarized and cruel culture

What has the church of Jesus Christ said and done in response to the horrific changes the wars have brought here and in so many other places around the world? It’s a mixed picture. Some have done a lot of praying, protesting and lobbying. Others just continue to deal with daily life issues and struggles, believing the wars are “over there”. Are we just accepting this new normal, or are we confessing that all the above changes are ones that we will continue to resist?

September 11, 2011 will be a time of reflecting on the losses of that bright crisp Tuesday morning when some say Americans lost their innocence. That will be very appropriate. But in this upcoming season of remembrance, let us also reflect on what the US has become as a result. Let us be willing to reflect and pray, asking the age-old question—who are we really following? And, let’s seek God’s Spirit as we pray, vote and act in these next 10 years.

June 23, 2011

In March, the US began a bombing campaign in Libya. The reason given was that Qaddafi is a brutal tyrant, bent on killing thousands of his countrymen who simply wanted to join the Arab Spring and establish a more humane rule in Tripoli.

Soon thereafter, the US turned command of the air war over to NATO, with the US in support roles. It was hoped that with the cover of air support and a no-fly zone, the Libyan rebels would quickly topple Qaddafi.

That was over two months ago, and the Colonel shows no sign of packing his bags. The US is increasingly involved in the war. Just this week, it was revealed that the US has continued combat missions over Libya after the hand off to NATO. On June 20, we found out the US lost a navy drone over Libya—replacement cost: $16 million. As to “no boots on the ground”—does that include Special Forces, or black ops? Who really knows?

The overall cost of this action, which Obama refuses to call a “war” (more on that later) is increasingly becoming an issue in Congress. This is the summer of fiscal doomsday—which, unlike the Camping non-event, is real. The price tag for Libya is miniscule compared to the other wars the US is fighting—it is estimated at about $600 million so far, headed toward $1.1 billion by September. Nevertheless, a lot of good could come of that money here at home as we struggle with a very sluggish jobs picture.

The legality of the war is also an issue. Under War Powers Act, the President can engage in military action for 60 days without Congressional approval. Well, that marker came and went over a month ago. Some in Congress are actually suing the president, saying the war is now illegal. Obama’s response is: this is not a “war”, therefore it doesn’t fall under the War Powers Act.

The last debate my students did this year in their Debate Club was centered on this resolved statement: The US should send ground troops into Libya to hasten the fall of Qaddafi. I was the only person in the room born before Q (just as shifty as the Star Trek character of the same name) shot his way into power in 1969, some 42 years ago. Since some students were gone, I had to pinch hit. I had to argue the affirmative. This was a good experience—arguing a position that I personally disagreed with.

I researched Obama’s speech when this all started. He was adamant about Q’s evil nature. The president stated that Q was no longer the legitimate ruler of Libya. Given the rhetoric of his speech, you’d think he was announcing a holy crusade against the tin-plated dictator. But he was announcing a “half war”.

My mind went back to Hitler. If indeed the opponent was as bad as Obama claimed, why indeed weren’t we going in to kick him out? I’ve never heard that adequately explained. At any rate, why wouldn’t I support the war in real life? (BTW, the affirmative side narrowly lost the debate on points; kudos to our opponents.)

My study of Jesus’ teachings leads me to conclude that all wars are wastes of fiscal, physical and spiritual resources. My study of US history tells me Americans get involved in overseas conflicts when strategic interests or resources are in play, not to defend freedom or democracy. My study of economics tells me the US would not be involved if Libya’s main export was myrrh. (Though the share of world oil reserves controlled by Libya is quite small, even if of a high quality.)

My own conclusion given the contradictory policies and statements about Libya, is that the US is involved because there are profits to be made for the military-industrial complex. Each Tomahawk cruise missile sent into Libya costs a little over $1 million to replace. I didn’t check, but I’m pretty sure the manufacturer’s stock (Raytheon) went up the day the war started. Actually this half-war might indeed be the wave of the future: the companies get their contracts and there are no body bags to dampen the spirits.

The US doesn’t care about human rights, democracy or Q’s excesses. It is controlled by a corporate-military elite that only cares about the bottom line, and getting its puppets re-elected. As Gen. Smedley Butler said so long ago: “War is a Racket”.

Probably the best thing the US could do is quietly, multilaterally, build a civil society in eastern Libya (where the rebels are based). Also reconstruction aid is very much in order. This could be a model for the rest of Libya to see. Eventually Q will leave. But a war or even a half-war is the only thing that will make his reign a little longer and the suffering of the Libyan people a little worse.

She said as much on ABC’s Good Morning America on April 20, 2011. Here’s an excerpt of her conversation with host George Stephanopoulos:

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN: If we taxed 100 percent of what everyone made who make $250,000 or more — everything they made — that would get us about six months worth of revenue.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: But every bit helps, doesn’t it?

REP. BACHMANN: Well, but it wouldn’t be enough. I think that’s what’s shocking.

We could take 100 percent of the profits of every Fortune 500 company and that would give us 40 days worth of revenue. We could also take 100 percent of everything that the billionaires in this country own, and that wouldn’t be enough to solve the problem.

So it’s really a matter of having everyone involved. Part of the problem, George, is that 47 percent of all Americans pay virtually no federal income tax, so we need to broaden the base.

There it is: “we need to broaden the base”. Nearly half of all taxpayers get all their Federal income taxes back in the form of a refund. That’s many of you reading this post. Bachmann is clearly stating the principle behind the Tea Party: the rich pay too much in taxes, that’s what is holding back the economy. The solution? Make you and I pay more, make the public sector employees pay more, make welfare recipients pay more!

Despite the obvious cruelty of this principle (can I get a witness?), does it make economic sense? Does it work that way? We’ve tried it Bachmann’s way for a while. Let’s look at the data. We have cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations for about 30 years. How has our economy performed? The first decade of the 21^st century saw overall Americans’ income go down for the first time since the 1930s, and that was before the great recession. Job growth in the Bush years was incredibly slow. At the same time, corporate profits soared.

A huge shift of wealth has gone to the richest Americans in the past generation. The richest 1% owned about 22% of the wealth in 1976, by 2010 it was nearly 40%! Has that wealth been re-invested in jobs and business expansion? Apparently not.

The tax codes at both the Federal and state levels have gotten less progressive, more flat. In my home state of Pennsylvania, the richest 1% only pay 5% of their income in local and state taxes, while the poorest 20% pay 11% of their income in taxes! Many state tax structures are getting more and more regressive—with the poor paying a higher percentage than the rich.

The top marginal tax rate for the wealthiest in the US used to be 90% (back in the 1950s), now it is 35%, and the Republicans in Congress want to reduce it to 25%. Corporate taxes used to be 33% of government revenue, now they are only 7%. We have indeed shifted the tax burden from the rich and corporations to the middle class. Look at what’s happened to our balance sheet.

Now, to be fair, other factors have affected government revenue. Also, there is a lot of waste in government spending that can be trimmed. That would need to be another post. But, many economists feel that the trickle-down theory simply has not generated sufficient jobs to declare it a success. According to the Financial Times, there are now more people living in poverty in the US than at any time in the last 50 years.

I also take issue with some of Bachmann’s assertions about the potential revenue of the rich and corporations. Let’s start with the rich individuals. Here’s her statement:

If we taxed 100 percent of what everyone made who make $250,000 or more — everything they made — that would get us about six months worth of revenue.

This may be factually true. But the context is missing. Six months’ worth of revenue would be about $1 Trillion. That amount would be the vast majority of this year’s budget deficit. Now, I don’t advocate taxing them at that rate. I’d advocate a progressive set of brackets getting up to about a 65% rate.

Here’s the second assertion:

We could take 100 percent of the profits of every Fortune 500 company and that would give us 40 days worth of revenue.

Sounds like a pittance, right? But the dollar amount would be $219 billion in revenue. That would solve most of the states’ collective budget shortfalls! Again, I’m not for 100% on those companies. However, I’m also not for giving billions in tax rebates to profitable companies like General Electric either! I would like to research her facts there. For 2009, the Fortune 500 lifted earnings to $391 billion (CNN Money). Also, any serious corporate tax increase would affect all profitable companies, not just the top 500. In 2010, corporate profits were surging, growing at annualized rates of over $1.6 Trillion (curious, that’s the same amount as the 2011 Federal deficit).

I am for common sense, progressive tax policies like we had 50 years ago. If corporations and households making $1 million or more were now paying federal income taxes at the same rate they paid 50 years ago, the Institute for Policy Studies calculates, the federal treasury this year would be collecting an additional $716 billion in revenue. That change alone would cut the Federal deficit in half.

Finally it was fascinating to hear Bachmann claim that it was President Obama’s idea to extend the tax cuts for the rich in December 2010. Candidate Obama wanted to raise the top rate from 35% to 39%. He couldn’t do it because he lost so many votes in the Congressional election of 2010. It wasn’t his idea; it was the Republicans’ idea.

Also I see what some might call generational warfare going on here. The huge increases in Medicare costs to the individual will only affect persons under the age of 55. What a cynical ploy to avoid the tsunami of angry senior citizen voters! We’ll make the young pay the vast majority of this bill.

Of course Stephanopolous didn’t raise any of these points. He also didn’t mention a poll showing a vast majority of Americans want the Afghan War to end. Stopping the wars and making common sense defense cuts (see Time magazine’s recent issue) could also produce savings in the hundreds of billions per year.

I disagree that the worst crisis facing the country is the deficit. Jobs, wars, health care costs and soaring poverty hit us much harder. The insanity in the tax codes favoring the wealthy exasperates many of those other problems. Above all, it seems that greed is our problem. Government can’t solve that, but it can make some rational decisions to have the greedy pay a bit more to give back to the communities that they take so much from.

Remember Iraq? That ancient land—once in the headlines every day—is once again forgotten and neglected by the American people.

It was eight years ago this month that the US invasion began. Today, the US is preparing to, supposedly, bring the last troops home by the end of 2011. There are increasing signs that some, if not all, of the 50,000 US soldiers in Iraq will remain after December 2011. Also, base construction goes on. The Green Zone is certainly not being dismantled; indeed it still gets shelled occasionally!

But more importantly, the breezes of Arab aspirations for a life better than one dominated by strongmen and inadequate public services and pathetic job creation are now being felt throughout Iraq like sandstorms that ignore national boundaries. Iraq is awakening, and she is in a bad mood.

While most Iraqis are genuinely glad that Saddam is gone, they also expected the US to actually live up to its promises of political pluralism and well-funded reconstruction. Those expectations have been cruelly dashed.

Many of the demonstrators shouting in Iraq’s streets today are fed up with the lack of electricity, the inadequate health and educational infrastructure that the US and the Maliki administration kept assuring them was about to come online.

As to the so-called democracy the US established, minus adequate security, it has been found wanting due to extreme corruption and petty infighting. Remember last year’s parliamentary elections? It took the political parties eight months to form a government, while public facilities continued to languish.

As to human rights, the refusal on the part of the US to commit sufficient forces to truly establish security has fostered a culture of fear, sectarianism and vigilantism. The result has been a massive humanitarian crisis the likes of which the Middle East hasn’t seen since 1948. Many refugees refuse to come home; others who have come home have left a second time. We dare not forget the civil war and instability the US unleashed (some think deliberately) on Iraq took hundreds of thousands of lives. Some claim the total is well over one million. Political violence, although reduced from the horrific rates of 2006-7, continues.

The Maliki regime is increasingly looking like a mini-Mubarak, headed toward full fledged authoritarianism. Journalists trying to cover protests are attacked by police. According to a recent report from Human Rights Watch, “the rights of Iraq’s most vulnerable citizens, especially women and detainees, are violated with impunity, and those who would expose official malfeasance or abuses by armed groups do so at enormous risk.” The rights of women are now less secure than any time in the past 30 years. Torture continues in Iraqi prisons and Maliki deliberately looks the other way. Iraqi Christians are persecuted with impunity. Recent protests were put down with live ammunition, killing about 30 people across the country. These protesters weren’t even demanding regime change—they wanted electricity, jobs and an end to official corruption.

The US has spent over $775 billion on Iraq over the past eight years, about another $50 billion this year. Despite this mammoth investment, probably surpassing even the Marshall Plan, today Iraq is nearly a failed state. An incredible amount of money has been wasted—given away to contractors who took the money and ran. Reconstruction aid is only right—since the US broke the country. However, oversight must be stepped up!

The last eight years have been a shattering disaster for Iraq, unleashing an era even more tragic than the despotic reign of Saddam. While it is different from Saddam, it is also clearly worse for the vast majority of Iraqis. The US can not claim victory for democracy, nor for the human rights of Iraqis. About the only upside of the fiasco is the US now has bases on the territory of the second largest oil reserves in the world–which is what some of us identified as the true goal of the invasion from day one.

So, what’s a peacemaker’s advice regarding Iraq in 2011? Just walk away? Leave them to the chaos we’ve unleashed? Stage of coup—get rid of Maliki and start all over? Perhaps send in more troops to create true security? That would be impractical and politically untenable. To be honest, I don’t have any hints of a solution.

We shouldn’t forget about Iraq, and we dare not walk away. The US bears an enormous responsibility for healing that wondrous land. But it won’t come by propping up a new despot or enabling an incompetent bureaucracy. American leaders and the American people need to pray for wisdom as I’m sure the longsuffering people of Iraq do. Eight years on, Iraqis deserve better; and should expect better from America.

As a teacher, I am usually suspicious of simple answers to huge problems.  However, in the case of state budget deficits, the numbers are there.  If the US would bring defense spending back to the level the people want, the deficits would be gone.

Let’s take Pennsylvania as an example.  The state is projecting a $5 billion deficit for the 2011-12 budget year. According to the National Priorities Project, the people of Pennsylvania will pay $4.1 billion this year to keep the nine-and-a-half-year-old Afghanistan War going for one more year.  Cut the F-22 jet fleet of over 200 planes by five aircraft, and there you are: a savings of $5 billion. 

If you think the Afghan War shouldn’t end, there are plenty other ways of cutting a few billion from a defense-related budget that is closing in on the one Trillion (per year!) mark.  The US spends as much on so-called defense as nearly all other countries combined.

It is time to bring home the troops, and bring home the dollars (at least a few billion of them).  We could use them here.  Go to congress.org, find your Representative and Senators and let them know your thoughts.