FCNL Statement on the U.S. Bombing of Afghanistan

October 10, 2001

The Friends Committee on National Legislation urges President Bush to stop the bombing, stand down the U.S. military, feed the hungry, and work diligently through peaceful means to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people and other peoples throughout that region to the cause of justice for the victims of September 11.

We continue to grieve for those several thousand unique, precious and irreplaceable people who were murdered in the September 11 attacks on the airliners, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Our outrage at those acts of terrible violence is rooted in our profound belief that every human being is a creature of God and has been put here for a very special purpose. Those who helped in planning and carrying out the attacks have violated the most fundamental laws of a civil society. They should be held accountable under those laws.

We seek President Bush's leadership to end the downward spiral of attacks and reprisals, a spiral begun long before September 11 but propelled by those attacks. U.S. bombing and a war on terrorism will not bring justice for the victims of the September 11 attacks. Terrorism is not a person, place, or thing. You cannot blast it out of this world. On the contrary, terrorism is a vicious type of human conduct provoked by hatred or greed and carried out by fanatics and by governments. Violent retaliation by the U.S. will only sow more seeds of hatred and reap a new harvest of terror. We call on President Bush to help lead the world out of the wilderness of war and terror and into a new world where people everywhere choose life by exercising a reverence for life.

President Bush has said that the attacks of September 11 changed everything. Perhaps, but the thinking of our government officials and their response to violence remains unchanged. The U.S.-led military campaign is merely a high tech and more destructive version of a 19th century military strategy, and promotes the law of force over the force of law. By leading a military campaign in Afghanistan, the U.S. has fallen from its internationally recognized moral high ground to a much more morally ambiguous position in the eyes of many around the world. This response is inadequate to the demands of the 21st century and is unbecoming to America.

While we know that the administration's intent is not to harm innocent civilians with its bombing, Afghan civilians have already suffered this unintended effect. Weapons inevitably malfunction, are misdirected, or put civilians adjacent to the intended targets in harm's way. Already dozens of civilians, including four UN workers, have been killed by U.S.-led military attacks. We cannot simply consign those people who were killed to the category of "collateral damage" or an "accident of war." They, too, were unique and precious human beings who will never be replaced. The U.S. government had no right to sacrifice their lives in its pursuit of justice.

We also know that the administration's intent is not to compound a humanitarian catastrophe in Afghanistan through military action. However, the U.S. military actions are escalating the suffering and putting ever more thousands of innocent people in jeopardy. Afghan civilians have been fleeing their homes in fear. Winter is fast approaching. Little food or shelter exist anywhere. The borders with Pakistan and Iran are closed. With the U.S. bombing, most shipments of humanitarian relief supplies into Afghanistan have been halted, and the U.S. air drops of daily food rations for 37,000 in remote regions do nothing to meet the needs of millions of starving people elsewhere in the country. How will the agonizing deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians due to starvation and winter exposure advance the cause of justice for the victims of September 11?

We call on President Bush to let September 11 become a day of an Epiphany of Hope, rather than of evil. We appeal to the President to: exercise compassion for the people of Afghanistan, stop the war, end the cycle of violence, and lead the world to a new civil order for the 21st century. He should use the solid backing of the international community to bring the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice under the rule of law. Let the guns fall silent so that the world may hear freedom ring from our mountain top.