anywhere.  The borders with Pakistan and Iran are closed.  With the U.S. bombing, most shipments of humanitarian relief supplies into Afghanistan have been halted, and the U.S. air drops of daily food rations for 37,000 in remote regions do nothing to meet the needs of millions of starving people elsewhere in the country.  How will the agonizing deaths of thousands of Afghan civilians due to starvation and winter exposure advance the cause of justice for the victims of September 11?

President Bush, let September 11 become a day of an Epiphany of Hope, rather than of evil.  We appeal to you to exercise compassion for the people of Afghanistan.  Stop the war, end the cycle of violence, and lead the world to a new civil order for the 21st century.  Use the solid backing of the international community to bring the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks to justice under the rule of law.  Let the guns fall silent so that the world may hear freedom ring from our mountain top.

Sincerely,

Joe Volk
Executive Secretary

After Unspeakable Violence, Pacifism is Way to Healing
By Thomas H. Jeavons, general secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly
(The following article appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on September 25, 2001.)

I have had numerous phone calls and conversations with reporters, and people from all walks of life in the last 10 days who ask me how Quakers and others can maintain the tradition of pacifism in the face of the vicious and evil terrorist acts of Sept. 11.

"Yes," these people say, 'we know Jesus said to 'Love your enemies.' But confronted by an enemy who holds no regard for human life, who

will use any means to make his point, and who seems to be driven by rigid ideology, how can we think a response with anything other than force will be effective?"

How have I responded? At every opportunity I have said that I have never seen a time at which Jesus' teachings about peacemaking and reconciliation make more practical sense than they do now. The moral insight of Jesus' teachings and the practical wisdom needed to make the world better now, instead of worse, line up squarely in this context. This is true for at least three reasons.

First, no amount of force will intimidate an enemy who has no regard for human life, including his own. One of the reasons our security measures have not worked very well against these terrorists is that most of those measures assume the perpetrators of a crime want to survive it. Yet these perpetrators don't care.

Killing some of these people (and we will never get them all) with military action will only create more of them. Why? Because it only makes martyrs for the cause - and martyrdom is something to which many of these people aspire. Which leads to a second key point.

We may describe the acts of Sept. 11 as "senseless" or "crazy acts of violence," but they made sense in the  worldview of those who perpetrated them. They made sense to them because these people see the United States - and the economic and cultural powers of the West - as forces of violence, oppression and injustice. We see ourselves as offering ways out of poverty and alternatives to traditionally oppressive views in some cultures by many of our economic and cultural engagements with the wider world. They see us as "the great Satan" destroying their culture, disrespectful of their religion and willing to do whatever is necessary to sustain our opulent, materialistic lifestyle by exploiting them.