Holy Innocents Retreat Opening Reflection
Steve Baggarly and the Norfolk Catholic Worker
On September 16 in Nisoor Square in Baghdad , employees of Blackwater USA , a private military company based in North Carolina and hired to protect State Department personnel in Iraq , killed 17 Iraqis and wounded 27 others.
(The following is from a Washington Post article of Sept. 29, 2007 by Sudarsan Raghavan & Karen DeYoung)
Three Iraqi traffic policemen and two maintenance workers were eyewitnesses. They describe a Blackwater convoy of four armored vehicles that rolled into the circle against the flow of traffic. Such a move made it more difficult for the traffic policemen to slow down vehicles that were driving directly into the convoy. The Backwater guards threw water bottles in the circle to halt traffic. Suddenly, guards fired on a white sedan that did not slow down quickly enough. The car kept moving forward despite its dead driver because it had an automatic transmission. "The car went on rolling slowly. But they kept on shooting," said traffic officer Ali Khalaf, who then heard loud booms and the vehicle burst into flames, killing the cars other passenger.
In seconds, there was shooting in all directions. Blackwater guards concentrated fire at one point on a red bus as passengers were kicking out the windows in a desperate attempt to escape. "There were many on this bus. They were hardly able to walk and they were screaming," Khalaf said. Blackwater operatives shot from all four vehicles. Whoever stepped out of their car was shot at immediately. People were fleeing their cars and running for cover. Blackwater helicopters arrived and gunmen shot down in to the square. Afterward, dead and wounded were found in almost every direction, police said.
(The following is from a Washington Post article dated October 4, 2007, by Sudarsan Raghavan)
Among those killed were Ahmed Haithem Ahmed, a twenty-year-old medical student and his mother Mohassin, a 46-year-old allergist, who were in the white sedan out running errands. Ahmed was shot through the head and died instantly, Mohassin died in the explosion as she cradled her dead son, their charred bodies melded together.
Ali Khalil, a 54 year old blacksmith rode his motorcycle into the square on that morning. He was the father of six children and had felt safe enough in the capital to reopen his shop three days earlier. He was shot several times in the chest and later died in the hospital.
Madhi Sahib, a 25 year old taxi driver who was the sole provider for his parents and seven siblings was shot through the upper left side and bled to death.
10-year-old Ali Hafiz. His father, Mohammed Hafiz explained, “We were six persons in the car, me my son, my sister and her three sons. The four children were in the back seat. My car was hit by about 30 bullets, everything was damaged, the engine, the windshield, the back windshield, and the tires. When the shooting started, I told everyone to get their heads down. I could hear the children screaming in fear. When the shooting stopped, I raised my head and heard my nephew shouting at me, ‘Ali is dead! Ali is dead!' When I held him, his head was badly wounded, but his heart was still beating. I thought there was a chance and rushed him to the hospital.” A bullet had hit ten-year-old Ali in the head, shattering his skull. Muhammed picked up the pieces of his son's skull and brains with his hands, wrapped them in cloth, and later buried them along with his body in Najaf.
Usama Fadhil Abbas, a 40-year-old car dealer, and father of four, was shot multiple times in the head and upper back as he dove out of his car and ran.
A young boy fleeing the bus was shot to death, as was his mother who tried to catch him.
An old man trying to go around the traffic jam was shot to death.
A laborer working on the square testified “Blackwater kept on firing randomly at people, starting with the people walking or working in the street, even the traffic policemen. They kept shooting at all the cars. I remember people strewn on the street: children, elderly people. This is what I saw with my own eyes. The street turned into the street of the dead.”
Pharmacist Zina Fadhil, witnessed the massacre crouched inside her store. After the shooting stopped she cautiously walked into the square. Cars with blown-out tires were moving slowly. For a few minutes, an eerie silence filled the air. Then she saw police pickup trucks fly by, carrying the wounded and the dead, stacked on top of one another. “I could only see their legs”, she recalls.
Nearby Yarmouk Hospital was soon overwhelmed with wounded people.
The Iraqi Government and the US Military concluded that the Blackwater gunmen fired without provocation on unarmed civilians.
A few minutes later, the same Blackwater guards, after driving about 150 yards from Nisoor Square , fired into a crush of cars killing one more person and wounding two.
Matthew 2: 1-18:
When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem , saying, “Where is the newborn King of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.'”
Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage.” After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.
When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt , and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt . He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet: “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.”
(The following is from “The Hope and Cost of Advent” by Ched Myers, edited and with a couple changes)
From friends at Jonah House I first learned that the two liturgical events on the Church's calendar, Christmas (December 25) and the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28) are profoundly connected—a unity. Biblically these stories are found in the gospel of Matthew and his use of prophecies from both Micah (5:1-3) and Jeremiah (31:15,16) in his Advent account (Mt 2: 6,18). The message of the gospel is manifest: the connection between Bethlehem and Ramah is essential, the hope and the cost of the Incarnation are one.
To understand more fully this Biblical paradigm and its implications, one needs to look at the birth narratives of Moses (Exodus 1:6-2:10) and Jesus (Mt. 2. Luke 2). The similarities are remarkable and striking.
Moses and Jesus were the two great representatives of Yaweh in Biblical history. To these two prophets was given the supreme mandate for the liberation of the people of God. Biblical history tells us that the respective births of Moses and Jesus evoked virtually unprecedented political reactions. There may have been much more than an incidental connection between the two. The birth narratives seem to suggest that the advent of God's liberators provoked the wrath of the power elite.
The Bible sets the scenario for the dramas straightforwardly, in political terms. The ancient Hebrew people were a prosperous minority in an Egyptian empire. Their prosperity was perceived as a threat to “internal security,” characteristically understood in military terms. The official policy toward the Hebrews was “oppression…forced labor…and reduction to cruel slavery.” In the first century we find a similar plight for the Jewish people, an occupied, subject, tribute-paying people, essentially slaves within a vast Roman empire . Matthew focuses upon a local Roman puppet ruler, Herod, who, like Pharaoh, was renowned for his political cunning and opportunism, as well as his great accomplishments in building.
In both the ensuing Exodus and gospel narratives, the drama between Power and Advent is first pictured as Imperial concern over the stirrings of solidarity and messianic expectations among the Israelites. Herod and Pharaoh appear particularly astute at sensing hope on the part of an expectant people. Thus babes, ear-marked for a vocation of proclaiming God's word and gathering a faithful people, become targets for the paranoia of political realists.
Because the powerful know only power and ever attempt to force peace with a sword, Herod and Pharaoh come up with identical solutions to the perceived threat to their monopoly over souls: wholesale slaughter of the opposition. The parallels are astounding. The first official step is that of finding accomplices for the art of slaughter (the victims in both cases-Hebrew male children). For Pharaoh, it is the Hebrew midwives, for Herod, some astrologers from the East. In deathly polite, diplomatic terms the rulers take on a sudden piety: “When you have found Him, report it to me, so that I too might go and offer him homage.”
It is an absurd mismatch: kings against infants. Yet here the illogic of God's salvation for humanity most clearly manifests itself. While the powerful in their perverted and fearful perspective foam and rave if one child escapes (if one German Jew escapes, if one suspected terrorist escapes), God's messenger enters the drama at the time of highest risk: floating down the Nile in a reed basket, laying tucked in a feed trough in a Bethlehem barn. As disarmed as ducks on a pond, as threatening as the truth. Such is the Biblical picture: amid the overwhelming presence of power comes the providential power of presence—the divine presence in the world, Word incarnate, hope of the people, Yeshua—God with us.
Pharaoh and Herod are alert to the Presence, and scheme its destruction. Their accomplices, the midwives, the eastern sages, assume center stage. The accomplices perceive the royal mandate as a test of allegiance: they recognize the conflicting claims of God and Cesar. Exodus 1:17 reports that “the midwives feared God and did not do as the King of Egypt had ordered them and let the boys live.” Likewise the wise men from the East understood God's word—they disobey Herod by secretly fleeing the country. Can two more consequential acts of conscience, of civil disobedience be found anywhere in Bible or in history?
While Pharaoh was interested in securing the well being of his society for which a few thousand Hebrew children were expendable, the midwives were in fear of God. Is it too simplistic an equation—obedience to God equals refusing to cooperate with murder, albeit officially sanctioned? Again with Herod, the sages, too, refused to play obedient accomplices to official schemes. They had found the Lord. It assaults the sense of reasonable civic order—that Biblical characters would sooner ignore the law of the land, would sooner cover up their act by lying to the investigators, than participate in the slaughter of innocents; would sooner obey God than Cesar.
Pharaoh and Herod, frustrated by God-fearing upstarts, now turn to their militia, their patriots, to assure the orders are carried out. Official intent is suddenly unmasked. All Hebrew boys must be murdered, now by law. All young male infants of Bethlehem are to be massacred, by imperial decree, for the good of the State. The Bible tells us that Pharaoh and Herod were furious when their covert efforts at maintaining internal security failed, and the innocents paid in their blood for that royal fury. It seems the same in every age. At Auschwitz, Hiroshima , or Nisoor Square , it is the innocents who are expendable factors for official purposes.
Permit an interpretation from our story. Is it possible that the Bible is hinting (if not blatantly announcing) that the state knows only power and self-preservation? And that power is seen in its truest form—violence toward the powerless—when exposed by the presence of truth? When the overbearing presence of power is confronted by the power of God's presence, there is violent reaction.
Put another way, we might say that the power of the weakness of God in a manger exposes the weakness of power on a throne. We are talking about the depths of a theology of the crucified God replete in its folly. The advent story foreshadows Golgotha , and the glory and agony of the cross; the angels on high singing “Peace on Earth” and the voices crying in Ramah are one.
The advent story is debased by those who appeal to a theology of glory. We too often choose not to see it as a painful paradigm of the universal scenario of struggle between the suffering servant and the crusading patriot. It puts the concept of peace based on mutual threats of nuclear holocaust and of national security based on calculations of acceptable damage to innocents in a cold light: pretense, lie, blasphemy. It reminds us that God's peace is a costly peace, with Cesar as often as not he who exacts the price: the blood of children, the blood of Christ, the blood of martyrs.
The lesson, too, is that advent is not a time for losing our problems in the euphoria of feigned religious good will. It is, rather, an event that will, as Luke puts it, “lay bare the thoughts of many hearts…a sign that will be opposed.” It is a time to test allegiances and scrutinize political realities in light of God's truth.
The treatment of prisoners in the “War on Terrorism” is one current test of such allegiances. In a report released by the Center for Constitutional Rights, 21-year-old Yousef Al-Shehri, described the treatment of hunger striking prisoners who were protesting their indefinite and abusive confinement at Guantanamo Bay prison without charges:
“ These large tubes – the thickness of a finger, he estimated–were viewed by the detainees as objects of torture. They were forcibly shoved up the detainees' noses and down into their stomachs. No anesthesia or sedative was provided to alleviate the obvious trauma of the procedure. Yousef said that he could not breath with this thick tube inserted into his nose (which was so large it caused his nostril to distend). When the tube was removed, it was even more painful, and blood came gushing out of him. He fainted, and several of the other detainees also lost consciousness. The detainees were told by the guards: ‘we did this on purpose to make you stop the hunger strike.' They were told that this tube would be inserted and removed twice a day, every day until the hunger strike ended. Yousef described the pain as ‘unbearable.' Yousef explained that doctors were present as the Initial Reaction Force forcibly removed these [nasal gastric] tubes by placing a foot on one end of the tube and yanking the detainee's head back by his hair, causing the tube to be painfully ejected from the detainee's nose. When the detainees saw this happening, they begged to have the tubes remain, but the guards refused and continued to forcibly remove the tubes.
Then, in front of the Guantánamo physicians--including the head of the detainee hospital – the guards took nasal gastric tubes from one detainee, and with no sanitization
whatsoever, re-inserted it into the nose of a different detainee. When these tubes were re-inserted, the detainees could see the blood and stomach bile from other detainees
remaining on the tubes.”
This Guantanamo vignette is a taste of a modern day massacre of the innocents known as the “War on Terrorism.” The majority of the over 1000 known prisoners that have passed through Guantanamo were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the covert “War on Terror” the US regularly assassinates suspects around the globe without trial, and kidnaps and disappears people. President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address stated, “3000 suspected terrorists…arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. They are no longer a problem for the United States .” The US has kidnapped family members of suspects in order to coerce the suspects to surrender, has created a network of secret prisons around the world, and routinely tortures people. The CIA has taken prisoners to third countries like Jordan , Egypt , Syria , and Yemen to be tortured. Many innocents have been swept up in this global dragnet.
Likewise, the Nisoor Square massacre is a microcosm of the Iraq War. A joint study released a year ago by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad estimated Iraqi casualties from the March 2003 US invasion to July 2006 at 655,000. Using internationally accepted methods for determining casualties in war zones, the study found that about 2.5% of Iraq 's population died as a consequence of the war up to that point. During that time, Iraq suffered the equivalent of 17 Virginia Tech massacres per day. The 17 months since, the violence has continued. It stands to reason that several times the number of fatalities have been wounded, orphaned, widowed, blinded, raped, tortured, or driven mad by the war. Add to that some 4.2 million Iraqi refugees and one gets a picture of an entire nation being destroyed, its people killed, maimed, and forced out.
And the Nisoor Square massacre is a metaphor for the whole war. Any determined invader and occupying force must be ready to destroy whoever gets in the way in order to protect themselves and eradicate the guerilla fighters in their midst. Blackwater, like all armed civilian contractors and their military counterparts, performs missions in such an atrocity-generating environment. The US invasion of Iraq created a climate of violence and abuse against all of Iraq 's people that the US occupation sustains daily. The war has been characterized by indiscriminate bombing of Iraqi neighborhoods, mass arrests, shooting to death people who merely act or drive differently, terrorizing families with midnight home invasions, and widespread abuse and torture of prisoners, all in pursuit of an elusive enemy. All Americans are responsible to millions of Iraqis for the destruction of their lives, families, and homes. It is immoral, barbaric, and must end today.
Such are the innocents caught in the struggles of the great powers throughout the ages. Such are the inevitable result of wars for control of oil, resources, and people, for geopolitical advantage, and for empire.
(The following is taken from Jon Sobrino's book “Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity and Hope”)
Jesuit Jon Sobrino writes from El Salvador :
“ Iraq has made it clear that there is an empire and today's empire is the United States . It imposes its will on the whole planet, with immense power. Its mystique is its triumph over all others, with cruel selfishness and in every sphere of reality: an economy with no thought for the poor; an arms industry with no thought for life; international trade under iniquitous rules with no thought for fairness; the destruction of nature with no thought for Mother Earth; manipulated and false information with no thought for the truth; a cruel war with no thought for the living and the dead; contempt for international law and human rights in Guantanamo—and most shamelessly in Abu Ghraib…”
Sobrino goes on to suggest that there is fear at the root of it all; that “the countries of the North have attained a high level of ‘the good life' and would give anything in the world to avoid losing or reducing this level; that the manifest destiny of the empire is ‘the good life;' that ‘the good life' is like a divinity, untouchable; that the fear is that a world order different from the present one might take shape, that ‘a different world is possible' in which everyone can eat, even if it means that affluent countries have to eat less. To put today's good life at risk, to reduce it significantly, is too much to ask. The fear is that this might happen.”
And, of course, the ultimate protectors of “the good life” of our empire are our weapons of mass destruction. For 65 years the United States has led the world in the development, deployment, and proliferation of WMD. We have 10,500 nuclear warheads, thousands of which are on launch-on-warning status and which have the explosive power of 4 trillion tons of TNT or 667 pounds for each child, woman, and man on earth. The Departments of Energy and Defense are pursuing Complex Transformation SEIS which will upgrade and refurbish our entire nuclear weapons complex in the next 20 years, ensuring its violability for decades to come. We still have 30,000 tons of chemical weapons and are expanding our biological weapons programs in the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the Department of Energy. Modern technology has made it possible for us to raise the massacre of the innocents to omnicidal levels including Mother Earth herself as target.
(The following is taken from “The Advent of the God of Peace: Reflections for Advent 2007” by John Dear, SJ)
So, like the Hebrew midwives and like the magi, we face the question of “What do we do as disciples of God when the laws of the land are murderous?” Like the magi we must ponder, “How do we worship the God of Peace? Have we gone home a different route after meeting God? How have we changed direction? How do we disobey the political, warmaking authorities that want to kill Christ all over again today in the world's children, in the world's poor, in our enemies?
Like the magi, may we too meet the Christ, offer our hearts and our lives, and set off on a new journey of nonviolent resistance, disarmed, transfigured, and transformed into peacemakers, heralds of a new world order without war, injustice, poverty, or nuclear weapons, a new world of nonviolence, the coming of ‘peace on earth' at last.”