Five Years in Iraq

Today is the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Last year I helped organize a vigil in our community when I was in El Salvador, and I wrote a prayer for peace, which I posted on my Amber en El Salvador blog. I'm re-posting it here with some minor edits.

God of Life, we pray for peace.
Let us be makers of peace
in ourselves,
in our communities,
in our country,
and in the world.
We pray for all people suffering from war,
especially the people of Iraq,
today, on the five-year anniversary of the war in that country.
We pray for all those who have died: the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens, the soldiers of Iraq, the United States, and all other countries.
We pray for those who have died trying to make peace,
and we pray for those who are still alive, trying to make peace.
We pray for the politicians of the U.S. and Iraq,
that they see the injustice of war,
put an end to the violence,
and prioritize peace and true justice,
leaving behind selfish motivations,
and giving preference to the poor.
We pray that everyone understand that "collateral damage" and "casualties" means real people, killed unnecessarily:
Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, best friends.
We pray for an end to religious conflict and civil war,
that the world may hear your call to nonviolent resolutions,
to beat our swords into plowshares,
and to love our enemies.
We pray that we learn from history,
that we do not repeat war, violence, and injustice,
that we always remember the tragedy of war.
We pray for hope and strength in the struggle for peace.

Amen.

The Iraq war costs $720 million a day. How else could it be spent? Watch this video:

Does Religion Cause War? Panel event

Another cool-looking event at USF:

"Does Religion Cause War?"

A panel discussion
March 6, 2008
Xavier Room, Fromm Hall, 5:00-6:00 p.m.

featuring

Stephen Zunes, Politics
Vincent Pizzuto, Theology and Religious Studies
Anne Bartlett, Sociology

moderated by John Nelson, Theology and Religious Studies

It is a sobering fact that a majority of students at USF and universities elsewhere have lived half their lives in the climate of war. This panel discussion will investigate whether it is credible to claim, as have bestselling authors like Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (2006), that religion is a direct cause of war and violence. Ways in which religious motivations can be steered into conflict, whether “fundamentalist” forms of religion are prone to violence, and whether teachings of peace within a religion can constrain the belligerent tendencies of its adherents will all be considered.

Sponsored by the Department of Theology and Religious Studies

Zunes is awesome, and I've heard great things about Pizzuto, including that he's attractive (extra bonus!). I don't know anything about Anne Bartlett.