Pax Christi members demonstrate against annual Air Force “arms bazaar” in DC

On Monday, September 16, a group of peacemakers including Pax Christi USA Teachers of Peace Art Laffin (2016) and Msgr. Ray East (2005) and Ambassadors of Peace Bob Cooke, Scott Wright, and Donna Toliver Grimes, along with several Catholic Workers and local Pax Christi members, held vigil outside the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, MD which is hosting the annual Air Force Association (AFA) Air-Space-Cyber Conference and Technology Exposition — the “arms bazaar.”

This witness, organized by the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker, was in solidarity with all who are participating in the coming days in the Catholic Nonviolence Days of Action, Campaign Nonviolence, and the Warheads to Windmills campaign. 

Holding banners and signs, the demonstrators began their witness/prayer service by remembering that God and Jesus command us to renounce all killing and be nonviolent peacemakers, and calling into their presence the Holy Cloud of Witnesses. The Beatitudes in Luke’s Gospel and an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech (from April 4, 1967) were read aloud. Also offered was a reflection and response , a prayer of exorcism and conversion, a recitation of the Pax Christi Litany of Repentance and Conversion, songs, and a warm remembrance of Tom Siemer, a longtime anti-war activist who had often participated in this vigil in the past, who died this year on September 11.

Bob Cooke, who has been working to support Afghan refugees who have been relocated to Montgomery County, MD, also shared the following personal statement about the role that weapons contractors at the arms bazaar, including Lockheed Martin, have played in the suffering of the Afghan people.

My name is Bob Cooke and I with Pax Christi, the Catholic peace and justice organization. I also spend a lot of time trying to assist new immigrants to integrate quicker and better into their new environment in our country.

A lot of the people who I now work with are Afghan immigrants – most of whom worked with the US government, US NGOs and other groups for the prior 20 years, including the US armed forces and military contractors.

So I am hoping that some of the contractors here this week may hear a little of what I have to say. My words are mainly directed towards them.

I know many of the people here today are people of good will. But Pax Americana – the attempt to secure peace via violence – has never worked fully. Partially, perhaps, at times, but it is in total opposition to the teachings of Jesus.

Many people at this conference do believe that they can bring peace by violence, or the threat of violence. But the prophet Jeremiah keeps trying to speak to them and say the same things he said to the leaders of Israel in his own time: “Peace! Peace!” they say, whereas there is no peace. They should be ashamed of their loathsome deeds. Not they! They feel no shame, they do not even know how to blush. (Jeremiah 8:11–12) 

Many of the companies here have made fortunes by supplying the US government and its allies with equipment to make war from the skies. Many of these items, which have made them rich, have been used in Afghanistan and many other countries.

There are about 80,000 Afghans who have come to the United States since 2021. Some of them are doing fairly well but many (most) of them are still struggling to get a foothold in their new country. While the United States never seems to have too much money to give to the military industrial complex, it continues NOT to be able to give sufficient help to Afghans and other immigrants who have come to the US, many doing jobs that cannot otherwise be filled.

I have put in a lot of hours for many months, including 20-30 hours just this past week, trying to help avoid eviction for some of these Afghans in one of the richest counties in the United States, Montgomery County, Maryland, the home of Lockheed Martin and many other companies which have benefited greatly from their involvement in the 20 year US occupation of Afghanistan.

Federal, state and local government no longer have the money to assist these immigrants and none of the groups I have worked with have ever gotten any financial assistance from military industrial complex companies made rich by the 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

The Afghans here have assisted the United States, its military, its contractors and many others, helping to keep them safe, translating for them, teaching them the culture, etc. during the 20 years the US was in Afghanistan.

Like everyone who are the pawns of warfare, rank and file soldiers and people who assist them, such as these Afghans, they are all unfortunately forgotten by the powers to be after they give of themselves, totally in some cases, or in ways that result in profound physical, spiritual, moral and emotional damage that often stays with them for the remainder of their lives.

These corporations and their allies, led by the Lockheed Martins, Northrup Grummans and hundreds of others in the military industrial complex, who provide weapons, data and technology assistance, consulting and the myriad of other services that makes the war machine run, are here this week, giving speeches, workshops and exhibiting their latest wares.

Where are they in helping the tens of thousands of Afghans and their families who helped them and then needed to flee their country when our 20 years of useless occupation become too costly and our never-ending wars needed to come to a stop prematurely because they cost the US tax payer too much while enriching these companies?

Except for one large event at Georgetown University over two years ago, I have not seen the military, or those companies who helped keep US soldiers and others safe in their country, provide help to these Afghans using the millions in profits their war making efforts over the 20 years the US was in Afghanistan made for them and their shareholders.

Lockheed Martin, for example, has an Office of Charitable giving. They have been asked at least a few times by former Lockheed Martin employees to consider giving a tenth or a hundredth or a thousand of one percent (or less) of the massive profits they made in Afghanistan over 20 years to help those who helped the US in Afghanistan and as a result needed to flee.

Lockheed’s Charitable Giving office has been adamant that they only provide financial support to US veteran organizations or STEM programs. This does not seem to be charity to me at all. Does it to you?

Providing some financial support to US veteran organizations will likely help Lockheed Martin get more US government military contracts in the future. Providing money for STEM education will help them get more educated employees in the future that they will need to make even more lethal weapons in war.

This is just one small example of how we, and all empires, use people for their own means until they are not needed anymore and then they just discard them.

My hope is that one, or more, of those people who are involved in this arms bazaar and war making might think about this, and other ways, they make money from death – and REPENT! God forgive us all.