By Steve Banko
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wbfo/local-wbfo-680086.mp3
Buffalo, NY – Since the beginning of time, societies have felt the need to recognize their distinguished warriors. Americans are no exceptions. Our national landscape is replete with thousands of monuments and memorials to those who have served, suffered and sacrificed in time of war. As a combat veteran, I understand and respect society's efforts, myopic and feeble though they often are. But as human being, I also recognize that killing, dying and maiming are not always the attributes we ought to memorialize.
So instead of weighing in on which 20th Century war hero we ought to honor, I'm asking why we must confine our discussion to warriors at all.
There are those among us who have lived lives of peace, dedicated to the love of humanity and committed to using their lives to improve the human condition.
Sister Karen Klimczak was one of those people. Her life was her testimony to the belief that love would bring us together. She died at the hands of one to whom she was dedicated. She died armed only with her understanding that this was the path she had chosen. She was buried by her killer without ceremony in an unmarked grave. She died violently. She lived peacefully, truly a hero.
Father Joe Bissonette was another of those people. He was a man who saw the injustice of elective war and allowed no authority to stop him from speaking out. He banded together with other like minded clerics who saw immorality in the carnage that was Vietnam and they stood to face a bishop who saw their commitment as cowardice. Father Joe paid the price in being exiled to outer perimeters of his diocese and honored his calling by ministering to his new flock with the same love and devotion he'd exhibited in more prestigious assignments. He was also martyred at the hands of those he sought only to help. His armor was his love and that armor will shine brightly in eternity but it was not match for the earthly blade that stole him from us.
John Granville is the most recent martyr on Buffalo's honor roll of peace. He was a many of many talents but a single vision. He could have made himself a wealthy man but wanted only to make the world a better place. He immersed himself in the suffering of Africa, a continent awash in poverty, war and disease. He started, aptly enough, in the Peace Corps. He continued as a State Department diplomat, helping the people of Darfur. He too died at the hands of those he spent his all-too-brief life trying to help; murdered on the streets of Khartoum with nothing to protect him except his belief that he must be his brother's keeper.
I am a combat survivor and as such, know the horrific price of that service and the wilting guilt of that survival. So I can appreciate and celebrate the heroism of Bill Donovan and Matt Urban. But I also know that as the 20th century was dominated by war, the 21st century must be dominated by peace. The bullets and bombs and bravery that won both world wars will not win the wars of ideas and conflicting philosophies of the new century. I am not na ve enough to think that we can defeat terrorists with kindness. I know that a strong military will be necessary to ferret out and eliminate real threats to our nation and I will always be supportive and appreciative of those who choose that course. But I also know that all our military might has done nothing to turn on the lights in Baghdad or to pump clean water to Iraqis. I also know that our bullets and bayonets have done little to abet the centuries of religious hatred and modern mistrust.
The power of ideas makes the warrior for peace so dangerous. That's why they are martyred so often. Soldiers can win wars. Ideas have to win peace. Until we recognize that we will be mired in the bloodshed of wars without end.
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. I wish that I had said that but in fact, it was a war hero of the 20th century who said it. It was John F. Kennedy.
I hope we'll remember that as we consider appropriate names for the new courthouse.
Listener-Commentator Steve Banko is field director for the Buffalo office of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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