On 9/11, We Remember That War Does Not Work

Excerpt from a talk given by Mary Lord at the Annual Meeting of FWCC

March 15, 2002

“​​Friends, as events unfold in the world around us, I very much fear that we are on the eve of a new and terrible global war. Even now it could be stopped, but there is not the will to stop it. There is rather the will to threaten and to fight, either by design or lack of thought, blundering forward in a manner reminiscent of the events that led up to World War I. The consequences of the war now beginning will bring immense suffering to many peoples. We as Friends need to do what we can to stop the wars that are already spreading or intensifying.  But we also need to be prepared to be Quakers in wartime — never an easy experience. […]

Of course, the U.S. was attacked on our own soil in a despicable act that left more than 3,000 dead in New York and Washington. These terrible attacks affected the children of my own home meeting, Adelphi, which is near Washington DC. It was not widely reported that there were a number of school children on the plane that went into the Pentagon. Some of those children were playmates of the children in our meeting, and the adults at Adelphi had the task of trying to help our children understand what happened to some of their friends. Like me, you may have watched the CBS documentary a few days ago about the firemen in the World Trade Center. It gave us a small sense of the horror of the day close up. The attacks had to be answered — but how? What might we have done instead of going to war? […]

On September 12th, the U.S. immediately began to prepare for war. There was another road that might have been taken — the road of international law, working together with other nations to find and arrest the members of the criminal conspiracy. In fact, many individuals were identified, arrested, and await trial in a number of countries, using just such methods. […]

This is, of course, the way of war. Once started, wars are almost impossible to control. They tend to spread. There are always unintended consequences. We cannot know where the path we are now on will lead.  What we do know is that hatred and greed always breed violence, and that violence always begets violence.

Pacifism has been called naïve and unpatriotic. But I ask you, which is the greater naiveté — to believe that the frustrating but productive path of using and strengthening international law is the path of safety, or to believe that a never-ending worldwide war against loosely defined terrorism fought with weapons of mass destruction will make us safe and secure in our gated communities?”

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