The Soldiers At My Front Door

by John Dear

CommonDreams.org

I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished, three block
long town in the desert of northeastern New Mexico.
Everyone in town—and the whole state—knows that I am
against the occupation of Iraq, that I have called for
the closing of Los Alamos, and that as a priest, I have
been preaching, like the Pope, against the bombing of
Baghdad.

Last week, it was announced that the local National
Guard unit for northeastern New Mexico, based in the
nearby Armory, was being deployed to Iraq early next
year. I was not surprised when yellow ribbons
immediately sprang up after the press conference. But I
was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers
singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down
Main Street, passed our St. Joseph’s church, back and
forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m., and they
woke me up with their war slogans, chants like "Kill!
Kill! Kill!" and "Swing your guns from left to right;
we can kill those guys all night."

Their chants were disturbing, but this is war. They
have to psyche themselves up for the kill. They have to
believe that flying off to some tiny, remote desert
town in Iraq where they will march in front of
someone’s house and kill poor young Iraqis has some
greater meaning besides cold-blooded murder. Most of
these young reservists have never left our town, and
they need our support for the "unpleasant task"
before them. I have been to Iraq, and led a delegation
of Nobel Peace Prize winners to Baghdad in 1999, and I
know that the people there are no different than the
people here.

The screaming and chanting went on for one hour. They
would march passed the church, down Main Street, back
around the post office, and down Main Street again. It
was clear they wanted to be seen and heard. In fact, it
was quite scary because the desert is normally a place
of perfect peace and silence.

Suddenly, at 7 a.m., the shouting got dramatically
louder. I looked out the front window of the house
where I live, next door to the church, and there they
were—all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front
door, in the street right in front of my house and our
church, shouting and screaming to the top of their
lungs, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Their commanders had planted
them there and were egging them on.

I was astonished and appalled. I suddenly realized that
I do not need to go to Iraq; the war had come to my
front door. Later, I heard that they had deliberately
decided to do their exercises in front of my house and
our church because of my outspoken opposition to the
war. They wanted to put me in my place. This, I think,
is a new tactic. Over the years, I have been arrested
some 75 times in demonstrations, been imprisoned for a
"Plowshares" disarmament action, been bugged, tapped,
and harassed, searched at airports, and monitored by
police.But this time the soldiers who will soon march
through Baghdad and attack desert homes in Iraq,
practiced on me. They confronted me personally, just as
the death squad militaries did in Guatemala and El
Salvador in the 1980s, which I witnessed there on
several occasions.

I decided I had to do something. I put on my winter
coat and walked out the front door right into the
middle of the street. They stopped shouting and looked
at me, so I said loudly, publicly for all to hear, "In
the name of God, I order all of you to stop this
nonsense, and not to go to Iraq. I want all of you to
quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and not
to kill anyone. I do not want you to get killed. I want
you to practice the love and nonviolence of Jesus. God
does not bless war. God does not want you to kill so
Bush and Cheney can get more oil. God does not support
war. Stop all this and go home. God bless you."

Their jaws dropped, their eyeballs popped and they
stood in shock and silence, looking steadily at me.
Then they burst out laughing. Finally, the commander
dismissed them and they left.

Later, military officials spread lies around town that
I had disrupted their military exercises at the Armory,
so they decided to come to my house and to the church
in retaliation. Others appealed to the archbishop to
have me kicked out of New Mexico for denouncing their
warmaking. Then, a general called the mayor and asked
him to mediate "negotiations" with me, saying he did
not want the military "in confrontation" with the
church. Really, the mayor told me, they fear that I
will disrupt the gala send-off next month, just before
Christmas, when the soldiers go to Iraq.

This dramatic episode is only the latest in a series of
confrontations since I came to the desert of New Mexico
in the summer of 2002 to serve as pastor of several
poor, desert churches. I have spoken out extensively
against the U.S. war on Iraq, and been denounced by
people, including church people, across the state. I
have organized small Christian peace groups throughout
the state. We planned a prayer vigil for nuclear
disarmament at Los Alamos on the anniversary of
Hiroshima this past August, but when the devout people
of Los Alamos, most of them Catholic, heard about it,
they appealed to the archbishop to have me expelled if
I appeared publicly in their town. In the end, I did
not attend the vigil, but the publicity gave me further
opportunities to call for the closing of Los Alamos. I
receive hate mail, negative phone calls and at least
one death threat for daring to criticize our country.
But New Mexico is the poorest state in the U.S. It is
also number one in military spending and number one in
nuclear weapons. It is the most militarized, the most
in need of disarmament, the most in need of
nonviolence. It is the first place the Pentagon goes to
recruit poor youth into the empire’s army.

If we are to change the direction of our country, and
turn people against Bush’s occupation of Iraq, we are
going to have to face the ire and persecution of our
local communities. If peace people in every local
community insisted that our troops be brought home
immediately, that the U.N. be sent in to restore Iraq,
that all U.S. military aid to the Middle East be cut,
and that our arsenal of weapons of mass destruction be
dismantled, then we might all find soldiers marching at
our front doors, trying to intimidate us. If we can
face our soldiers, call them to quit the military and
urge them to disobey orders to kill, then perhaps some
of them will refuse to fight, become conscientious
objectors and take up the wisdom of nonviolence. If we
can look them in the eye and engage them in personal
Satyagraha as Gandhi demonstrated, then we know that
the transformation has begun.

In the end, the episode for me was an experience of
hope. We must be making a difference if the soldiers
have to march at our front doors. That they failed to
convert me or intimidate me, that they had to listen to
my side of the story, may haunt their consciences as
they travel to Iraq. No matter what happens, they have
heard loud and clear the good news that God does not
want them to kill anyone. I hope we can all learn the
lesson.

John Dear is a Catholic priest, peace activist,
lecturer, and former executive director of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation. His latest books include
"Mohandas Gandhi" (Orbis) and "Mary of Nazareth,
Prophet of Peace" (Ave Maria Press). For info, see
http://www.johndear.org