The End is Just the Beginning

“I grew up during the Vietnam War, but I never protested it and never had my lottery number called to go fight,” said David Quinly, a 54-year-old carpenter from Prairie Village, Kan., who arrived here Friday night with about 50 others after a 23-hour bus ride.“In my view, this one is a war of choice and a war for profit against a culture and people we don’t understand,” Mr. Quinly said. “I knew I had to speak up this time.”

That's from the New York Times report on today's antiwar demonstration in Washington, where "tens of thousands" of protestors focused on the Iraq war. From the podium, Susan Surandon said, according to the Times:

“We need to be talking not just about defunding the war but also about funding the vets,” Ms. Sarandon said, adding that more than 50,000 veterans had been injured while benefits for them continue to be cut.

The Washington Post has this quote:"When I served in the war, I thought I was serving honorably. Instead, I was sent to war ... for causes that have proved fraudulent," said Iraq war veteran Garett Reppenhagen.

Reuters reports that similiar demonstrations in Los Angeles and San Francisco today were attended by thousands.

For those of us who were antiwar activists during Vietnam, it all has a familiar ring. What apparently we did not learn sufficiently then was that the end of a war does not mean peace. Peace is an ongoing, relentless process requiring skills, attention and care.

The Iraq war can serve to illustrate the role of the skills of peace--of inner, outer and interface skills. I hope to make that case in this space in the future.

For today, we rightly concentrate on ending this war. War is inferno that keeps growing until resources are exhausted, and with the weaponry of today, this war could rage much longer and spread much farther, and be that harder to stop before its destruction becomes overwhelming. We're already going to be paying for this for generations.

Stop the war. But even before that happens, we need to begin the peace.