On 3rd of June six of us, now known to our friends as the Waddington Six, entered RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, from where the British drones are now being operated. Our aim was to find out what was happening there and to give information, by leaving photos and descriptions, about the effects of drone warfare on innocent people. We also planted a peace garden containing a vine and a fig tree, echoing the prophets, Isaiah and Micah, who spoke of these as symbols of genuine peace.
The three reasons why I acted with my friends can be summed up thus. First, I acted because of my belief that war and preparations for war are contrary to God’s will for us. The second and third reasons are summed up in a chant heard at a public demonstration at Waddington earlier this year;
‘EVERY AFGHAN HAS A NAME:
WAR IS NOT A VIDEO GAME’
For many years I have believed that Jesus left us a powerful message of nonviolence, summed up in the Sermon on the Mount and in the example of his own life and death. He urges us to love one another and to love our enemies. This is incompatible with war and warmaking. One of the reasons I became a Quaker was because of the Peace Testimony, which, together with the Testimonies of Simplicity, Equality and Truth, form the basis of Quaker practice in daily life. It was in the spirit of the peace of Jesus given in the Gospel and the Quaker Peace Testimony that I joined the others at Waddington on that beautiful summer’s morning.
EVERY AFGHAN HAS A NAME
Over the past five years, since joining St. Francis House, I have met and got to know many refugees from Afghanistan. This, together with several direct actions I have taken part in, resisting the war on Afghanistan, led me to go with Voices for Creative Nonviolence to Afghanistan last year. The people we met through the Afghan Peace Volunteers told us many stories about the effects of thirty five years of war. The use of drones in Afghanistan is the latest in a long line of violent interventions the people of Afghanistan have had to suffer. One young man, Raz Mohammed, spoke movingly of a drone strike which killed members of his family and uttered the heartbreaking words: ‘Drones bury beautiful lives’.
WAR IS NOT A VIDEO GAME
Drone warfare is remote control warfare. The operators of the drones are thousands of miles away from their targets and so operating drones resembles the kind of computer war games which are so popular today. Because of this remote control warfare, innocent people lose their lives. The sophistication of information technology and the internet make drone wars possible. Whenever I turn on my computer or IPad I am aware that I am part of a world which idealizes and idolizes this form of communication. Even at this moment, as I write, I am admitting that I accept this kind of impersonal communication, which is often no communication at all. This can isolate and dehumanize me. Modern warfare, of which drone wars are but a part, is possible because of the devotion we have to computers. I am also complicit in this.
“We are called to live ‘in the virtue of that life and power which takes away the occasion of all wars’. Do you faithfully maintain our testimony that war and the preparation for war are inconsistent with the spirit of Christ?”
Quaker Advices and Queries n. 31
Live Adventurously 