Category Archives: Mele

REFLECTION: Notes from a visit to Fukushima, Japan

Posted on April 26, 2013 | 3 Comments

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

In early December, 2012, I toured parts of Fukushima Prefecture and met with survivors of the earthquake, tsunami and accident at the nuclear plant which devastated the area in March 2011. Although nearly two years had passed since the catastrophe, the devastation was still apparent in many places, not to mention the stories of evacuees and other survivors. Here, for example, is a panoramic photo I took of a town on the seashore:

Tsunami swept village

The seemingly low wall on the horizon is the top part of a seawall reconstructed after the tsunami, a wall actually over ten feet high in this area. In the foreground, concrete foundations and garden spaces are all that remain of homes swept away by the tsunami. At the center of the seawall, and at what would have been the front entrances of the former homes, flowers mark offerings to those lost in the tragedy, as shown in this photograph:

House foundations 2

The survivors with whom we spoke were stoic about the loss of their homes, jobs and communities, and did not seem bitter about their situations. This is remarkable for several reasons, not least of them the speed with which the government, local and national, repaired roads, bridges and public structures but left homeowners who lost their homes to struggle with outstanding mortgages on houses that no longer exist because of the earthquake and tsunami or on houses that they can no longer occupy because of high levels of radioactivity from the nuclear accident caused by the earthquake and tsunami.

I was struck by the parallels with the plight of residents of coastal Louisiana and, more recently, those in poorer areas damaged by Hurricane Sandy. On first seeing the emergency housing provided to the evacuees, members of our group who had been to Haiti and before that to New Orleans were impressed with the quality of aid provided, but as we listened and learned about evacuees’ debt burdens, lack of employment, and health problems, it became clear that they had more in common with Haitian and Louisianan survivors than we initially thought. All in all, it was sobering to see the disruption to the lives of so many families and to hear of the lack of government or business efforts to address the evacuees’ difficulties.

Click here to read part two of this article on Nick’s blog.

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Bread for the Journey, Mele, Peacemakers, Reflection

Tagged , , , , ,

REFLECTION: Sex and violence

Posted on January 7, 2013 | 1 Comment

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with a woman from the Philippines, herself a former sex worker, who had founded an organization to help women in the sex trade in what was once the U.S. naval base in Subic Bay. My conversation with her reminded me of a comment I read (perhaps by Anthony Swofford in Jarhead) about the connection between pornography and the military. I wondered at the time what that connection is, and listening to Alma Bulawan of BUKLOD, I felt closer to the answer. Since our conversation, I have been pondering the connection between militarism and pornography, prostitution and rape.

In pornography, women (and men) are stripped of their personhood and humanity and become toys and fantasy objects. In prostitution, the same thing happens more directly. In the military, in order to desensitize recruits to their supposed enemy’s humanity and personhood, soldiers and sailors are similar presented with “enemies” stripped of their humanity and individual personhood. (One military officer and psychologist wrote an excellent book on this aspect of training: On Killing by Dave Grossman.) In all of the places where American troops are stationed, either combatant or combat ready, the local people are also the “enemy” and they all are given derogatory nicknames by our military, for example, “haji,” which takes a religious title of honor in Islamic cultures and reduces it to a term of caricature and contempt. This parallels the reduction of women to toys or objects in pornography and prostitution…

Click here to read the rest of this article on Nick’s blog.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Bread for the Journey, Human Rights, Mele, Peacemakers, Reflection, War

Tagged , , , , , , ,

ELECTION 2012: The questions to ask

Posted on October 16, 2012 | Comments Off

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

In his recently published Becoming Nonviolent Peacemakers, Eli S. McCarthy proposes that we think about nonviolent peacemaking in the context of virtues rather than in either of the two prevailing frameworks, just war rules or strategic choices. McCarthy’s ideas tie nonviolent peacemaking and nonviolence in general more closely into Catholic social teaching and moral theology, something that has been entering Catholic discourse on war of late through a kind of backdoor admission that violent action is no longer a viable choice in the twenty-first century. A little more than halfway through his book, McCarthy poses two key questions about moral training and practice: “Who are we becoming?” and “Who ought we to become?”

Recently, I thought of those questions when, walking across a parking lot, I noticed a bumper sticker that read “Save America! Exit 2012! Turn Right!” Whether or not one prefers the Republican platform and candidates, that first imperative set alarm bells ringing in my mind. What kind of people  view voting as salvific? Moreover, who are we becoming when we trust our political machinery with the work of salvation? Of course, a bumper sticker slogan reading “Let’s vote to make America more like my dream of it!” will not attract much serious attention, and hyperbole has long been a key feature of political discourse in our society — just watch the attack ads so freely deployed this campaign season. In one, supporting a challenger for my district’s House of Representatives seat, the worst they could find were some foolish, frivolous text messages by the incumbent’s staff—this strikes me as ridiculous, although it does highlight the problems Marie Dennis addressed in her series of essays about civil discourse.

So I have been thinking about that first question not in terms of the election but more broadly: Who are we becoming as a community? As a nation? As individuals? My answers are particularly disturbing as I look at suicide rates of discharged veterans, civilian casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rates of violent death and imprisonment of men and women of color here in America, the unemployment statistics broken out by education level and ethnicity.

Which leads to the second question, “Who ought we to become?, the starting point for deciding what actions to take to move our local community, our nation, and the global community toward becoming what I, you, we want it to be.

Click here to read other posts from Nick’s blog.

Comments Off

Posted in Bread for the Journey, Election 2012, Mele, Peacemakers

Tagged , , ,

LIBYA: The news you may not have heard

Posted on October 2, 2012 | Comments Off

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

About ten days after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, there were a few interesting follow-up articles and occasional broadcast stories about the aftermath of the attack. These were not stories about calls for revenge or what the Libyan and U.S. governments are doing to track down the people responsible for the deaths, the news reported was much more hopeful. A New York Times story reported that crowds of unarmed Libyans marched on militia compounds and the Ansar al-Sharia headquarters in Benghazi and disarmed the militias. For most part unarmed, they persisted, in some cases burning guns and ammunition, in others removing them.

Needless to say, this news did not get the intensive coverage the original incident did, and did not receive the impassioned commentaries from pundits which characterized much of the reaction to the deaths of the American officials. There was also almost no mention anywhere of a Gallup poll released a few days after the attack which found that 95 percent of Libyans believed, before the attack on the consulate, that the militias should be required to surrender their weapons to the authorities.

Part of the reason must certainly be our continuing struggle to assimilate the flood of information with which we all struggle to cope. Another is the way coverage of nonviolent events vanishes from the news, but a bigger part of the problem is our focus on violence and violent solutions to problems, indoctrinated through the news media, films, television shows and video and computer games. Yet a third is a general expectation, fostered by the same sources, that all the news from the Muslim world is bad news. The reality is very different and perhaps the best way to learn that is to read and listen to Muslim voices of tolerance, the very voices that seldom pass through the filters our media organizations impose.

Click here to read more from Nick’s blog.

Comments Off

Posted in Bread for the Journey, Libya, Libya, Mele, Peacemakers

Tagged , ,

ELECTION 2012: Paying attention

Posted on September 25, 2012 | Comments Off

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

The weeks between the two party conventions and the first of the presidential debates are a good time to consider what two candidates share. From their acceptance speeches and other statements each has made throughout the campaign, President Obama and Governor Romney believe America’s power depends on a strong military force, well-armed and well-prepared, although there are differences in their stated policies. Recent history suggests that an aggressive military policy may not be in the best short-, medium- or long- term interests of the United States, so why is this notion that we need an overwhelming military force so persistent?

One reason is the belief that military force is the reason for America’s preeminence in the global community, but that is at best a dubious proposition. Over several decades of representing the U.S. overseas as a diplomat, I never once heard any foreign official, opinion-maker or ordinary citizen praise our country for its military prowess. (In some countries, like South Korea, where there is a strong American military presence, people were at best ambivalent about our projection of military forces beyond our own borders.) Instead, people praised the United States for its advocacy of human rights, for Americans’ respect for the law in daily life, for our freedom of expression, for our community spirit and civic participation.

Another reason is the sense that our country stands alone in the world, a demonstrably silly argument. The U.S. is inextricably connected to most of the world through economic ties and to many countries by common traditions and beliefs. We do not stand alone unless we lift ourselves up arrogantly above the rest of the global community. Unfortunately, our mythology, combined with our willful ignorance of the conditions and attitudes of the people who live in other nations, reinforces a determination to go it alone, which necessitates accumulating more firepower than any other nation or likely coalition of nations.

Click here to read the rest of this article.

Comments Off

Posted in Bread for the Journey, Election 2012, Federal Budget, Mele, Military Spending, Peacemakers

Tagged , , , ,

LIBYA: Let us mourn

Posted on September 17, 2012 | Comments Off

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

As a retired U.S. diplomat, I  grieved when I heard the news from Libya about the deaths at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. I lost friends in the 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, and before that, worked with colleagues who had been held hostage in Tehran in 1979-80. I did not know any of the dead personally, but can imagine the shock and sorrow of their families and friends. Ironically, terrorists often attack diplomats because they are easy to reach and because of the symbolism of attacking representatives of a government, especially ambassadors.

Whenever a diplomat dies as a result of violence, we should remember that the role of the diplomat is to make peace and forestall conflict—they should be remembered as children of God. Cries for vengeance dishonor the mission of diplomacy and the work of the deceased. The unvoiced truth about diplomats is that we are all expendable sometimes, all vulnerable to violence. Most diplomats, especially U.S. diplomats, know this, and are reminded of it  before they embark on every overseas assignment, since they are required to take a  security awareness training seminar that focuses on threats and how to avoid and reduce them. Some diplomats receive even more thorough training depending upon their assignment.

Over the course of my career, I occasionally worked in embassy buildings that were attacked by groups armed with Molotov cocktails, paving stones and rocks. My reaction was always to seek to dialogue with the attackers. Sometimes, dialogue is not possible in the immediate aftermath of an event like the attack on the Benghazi consulate but our leaders and Ambassador Stevens’ successor should focus on dialogue with all Libyans to improve their understanding of the U.S. and tolerance for our differences, as we should improve our understanding of Libya and the ways Libyans differ from us.

In the meantime, let us mourn for the dead and offer consolation to their families and friends.

Click here to read more of Nick’s blog, The Disconnect.

Comments Off

Posted in Africa, Bread for the Journey, Islam, Libya, Libya, Mele, Peacemakers, Reflection

Tagged , , , ,

REFLECTION: Telling stories

Posted on August 24, 2012 | Comments Off

Nick Meleby Nick Mele
Pax Christi USA National Council member

The stories we tell ourselves affect our attitudes and behavior, as anyone who watched a horror film in their youth and then had trouble sleeping knows. Neurological research has proven that we “pre-load” behaviors into our brains, setting ourselves up to act on our expectations. Pre-loading of harmful behaviors is a component of addiction so that, for example, someone with a gambling addiction tells herself a story about how thrilling it is to bet money or how much money she could win with a spin of the roulette wheel.

Since the end of the Cold War, it seems the U.S./we have grown increasingly addicted to militarism. Better writers than I have offered historical explanations, especially Andrew Bacevich and Rachel Maddow, but I think one reason we are so preoccupied with war is that we tell ourselves we live in a dangerous world, surrounded by enemies—and that our only security lies in military strength. We repeat this story every time we read or watch or listen to the news, and we are thereby limiting our field of vision and our understanding of our lovely world.

I first heard the aphorism “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” from an Army Ranger officer. Unfortunately, for decades now our elected leaders and a large number of our fellow citizens seem to regard every problem as a military one. In consequence, we don’t simply outspend every individual nation on our military, we spend more than the combined expenditures of the next fourteen big spenders, including China, our main NATO allies, Russia and Saudi Arabia. We spend a higher percentage of our GDP than any nations except Chad, Eritrea, Israel and Saudi Arabia. We also see military service as the most acceptable route out of poverty. What’s wrong with the story we are telling ourselves as a nation?

One story we should be telling ourselves is that diplomacy can and does work. As a diplomat, I experienced, and sometimes contributed to, non-military solutions to problems the U.S. encountered with other nations. We need to spend some money on diplomacy that is not simply a cover for the exercise of our military might, but before we do so we have to believe that talking and compromise is a cheaper, more effective and more just method of dealing with most international problems. Or as Winston Churchill, no pacifist, once said, “To jaw-jaw is better than to war, war!” It’s not just money, of course. We also have to demonstrate some understanding, if not concern, for other nations’ interests. That, too, requires a change in a story we tell ourselves, the one about how special a nation we are.

Click here to read more of Nick’s blog, The Disconnect.

Comments Off

Posted in Bread for the Journey, Federal Budget, Mele, Military Spending, Peacemakers, Reflection

Tagged , , ,