Peace! Be Still

a quick watch to make you think

2,688 days-- not too shabby

Here is a sobering article--- In spite of mistakes in office and all the abuse he fielded from the world, nevertheless George Bush implemented policies and institutions that kept the US safe from the constant threat of Al Quaeda--policies that while campaigning, Obama promised to do away with.  Bush left office having kept America safe from perpetual terrorist threats for 2,688 days.  The article discusses that if Obama wants to leave office with a similarly successful record, then he had best rethink his sonorous, idealistic promises to the American public, step out of liberal la-la land, and demonstrate his loyalty to the protection of the America public like he swore he would.

During the campaign, Obama described the techniques used to prevent these attacks as "torture." He promised that if elected, he would "have the Army Field Manual govern interrogation techniques for all United States Government personnel and contractors." If he follows through, he will effectively kill a program that stopped al-Qaeda from launching another Sept. 11-style attack. It was easy for Obama the candidate to criticize the CIA program. But as president, what will he do when the next senior al-Qaeda leader -- with actionable intelligence on plots to strike our homeland -- is captured and refuses to talk? Will the president allow the CIA to question this terrorist using enhanced interrogation techniques? If Obama refuses and our country is attacked, he will bear responsibility.

Consider also the National Security Agency's program to monitor foreign terrorist communications. In the Senate, Obama voted against confirming then-NSA Director Michael Hayden to lead the CIA because, in Obama's words, Hayden was "the architect and chief defender of a program of wiretapping and collection of phone records outside of FISA oversight." In 2007, Obama voted against the Protect America Act, which temporarily authorized the NSA program. Last year, he promised to filibuster a long-term authorization but at the last minute switched his vote. He explained that he still wanted to make changes to the law, including stripping out immunity for telecommunications companies for their cooperation with the NSA -- which would effectively kill the program. And he promised that "once I'm sworn in as President . . . my Attorney General [will] conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and . . . make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties."

March For Life, 2009

Today in this freezing weather, Washington DC's Constitution Ave is PACKED with prolife Americans who've arrived from all over to attend the 2009 March for Life.  49,551,703 children have been lost to abortion's violent "right."  Please pray for the Marchers today, pray for the condemned unborn they are attempting to protect,  pray for the already brutalized 50 million, and pray that the stirring, poignant sight of the March will change hearts. 

Unlike the saturation of media coverage at the historical inaugueration just two days ago, our dependably shady media will pretend like this huge turnout never even happened.  Its injustice is disgusting, but hopefully not disheartening.  With the advent of this new administration, now is the time for us, as individuals, to sususpend our inhibitions, to clearly and bravely (but, ahem, politely)  speak out for what we know is true.  In absolutely any way we can! 

READY SET GO

Merry Belated Christmas!

It has been a rough couple months, but I'm hereby calling Peace Be Still back into frequent action. It will be buzzing like never before, I promise you that.

To kick Peace's new beginning and the newly unwrapped year off right, I'm turning things over to the absurdly talented and poignant work of Alison Townsend. This poem is like nothing I've read before, and I hope it carves its message into your heart the way it did to mine.

be seeing you,
--Peace

What I Never Told You About the Abortion

That it hurt, despite the anesthetic,
which they administered with a long needle, shot straight into the womb.

That they hit the vagus nerve the first time and I fell down when I tried to stand.
That after the second shot my legs snapped shut--

instinctively as any wild mother protecting chick, kit, cub.
That I held the hand of a young Hispanic nurse and wept

when she said, "You know, hon, you don't have to do this."
That I believed I did, though I nearly got up and left.

That the doctor was crude, saying (when he saw me conscious),
"It's always the ones who want to be awake who should be put out."

That dilation and curettage is exactly what it sounds like:
opening, scraping, digging out a scrap of tissue that clings.

That mothers both create and take life. That I crossed a picket line
to get into the clinic. That I wanted to come back another day

but knew if I left then I wouldn't return. That my mind was not,
as I let you believe made up that night at Planned Parenthood,

the positive lab slip shining in my hand like a ticket to heaven.
That this was where the deep root of sadness began to take hold.

That I stood in our bedroom a few days before the "procedure,"
my blouse open and bra undone, looking at my breasts, marveling

at the way they swelled, even at eight weeks, like fruit I'd never seen,
remembering the rise and fall of my mother's body as she nursed my sister.

That I felt inhabited then. Incarnate, the cells of my skin glowing,
bright and scared. That I wished we were married, though it seemed uncool.

That I wished you'd said "A baby? Let's do it!"
instead of "It's your body. You decide."

That it was all surgical and neat, not even
any blood afterward on the Kotex that made me feel fourteen.

That I dreamed of it for weeks. That we married years later, that dream
torn between us. That I had wanted to feel the hard bowl of my belly.

That I believed it was practical--you in grad school,
no health insurance, me the one with a job.

That the table I lay on was cold. That there was a poster
of a kitten dangling from a tree limb, with the words "Hang in there, baby"

on the ceiling above me. That I turned names
over and over in my head like bright stones:

Caitlin, Phoebe, Rebecca, Siobhan.
That the nurse wept with me, like some twentieth-century

Southern Californian fate, midwife to death
in her uniform printed with flowers.

That she wrapped my hands in her navy blue sweater.
That I described the thumb-size embryo inside me in all the obvious ways --

shrimp, peanut, little bud-wanting-to-open.
But not baby, never baby.

That I saved the paperwork as proof I'd been admitted
to the college of mothers. That I told you a good story,

letting you believe I believed I might not be able to write with a child,
that this was the beginning of the end of us.

That though we are kind now, and always cordial when we meet,
a decade after our divorce, it is the one thing I cannot forgive you.

That it has taken me twenty years to find words for this story.
That no matter how many thats I write, there are not--will never be--enough.

-Alison Townsend