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2009-05-05 issue:

Good Friday vigil challenges air strikes

Twenty Mennonites, Catholics, Quakers gather at an Air Force base in Idaho.

by Peter Lumsdaine

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A Good Friday vigil held at the gates of Mountain Home Air Force Base April 10 was the first peace witness since the Vietnam War to be held at this key launch point for U.S. global air strikes.


Pam Piper-Ruth (left), a member of Hyde Park Mennonite Fellowship, Boise, talks to Tamara Masarik, member of Saint Mark’s Catholic Church, Boise, during the peace vigil at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho,  April 10. Photo by Leonard Nolt.

Supersonic F-15E jets from Mountain Home Air Force Base (AFB), located in the high desert some 50 miles southeast of Boise, Idaho, regularly carry out ground-attack missions in Afghanistan, where last year more than 500 civilian men, women and children were killed by U.S. air strikes against tribal villages suspected of harboring insurgents. 

A stream of cars entering and leaving the base slowed down to view the vigil, where a plain wooden cross and several signs were held by about 20 people from Mennonite, Catholic and Quaker congregations in southern Idaho. 

The vigil was intended by its organizers to help spark church and community action at facilities across the country, to challenge the escalating war in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other areas of Southwest Asia.

Vigil participants had the opportunity to discuss the religious and social issues of war and nonviolence with some base residents or employees who disagreed with the peace witness.

“I felt at peace during the vigil,” said Tamara Masarik, a member of St. Mark’s social justice committee in Boise. “I prayed for those coming and going through the gates that they, too, might find peace.”

Plainclothes military police, unable to prevent the gathering on public-access Bureau of Land Management terrain just outside the base’s formidable black steel fence line, warned vigilers not to take pictures with the base in the background—though they could cite no law that forbade such photography.

Signs and banners that vigil participants held for some three and a half hours near the wooden cross, included ones that read: “Jesus tells us all to love our enemies (Luke 6:27),” “The deaths of 552 to 680 Afghan civilians in ’08 air strikes will not hurt the Taliban,” “Bring U.S. troops home now” and “Pray for peace, act for peace.”

Some members of Hyde Park Mennonite Fellowship in Boise initiated the vigil, joined by members of Saint Mark’s Catholic community and Quakers from Boise Friends Meeting. Organizers in the Idaho chapters of Veterans for Peace and of Iraq Veterans Against the War expressed their support for the vigil.

The vigil was intended to begin a process of contemplation and continuing action in southern Idaho and across the country, to challenge the deadly air strikes on Afghan villages and rural areas.

Mountain Home AFB has been a significant part of the U.S. air wars in Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the first “GI coffeehouses” for troops questioning or opposing the Vietnam War was started in the town of Mountain Home.

In 1999, Mountain Home AFB’s 391st Expeditionary Squadron dropped more bombs on Iraq than any other military unit to that date since the end of Operation Desert Storm.
During the first year of American air strikes in Afghanistan, Mountain Home’s planes dropped more bombs on that country than any other unit of the U.S. military.

On April 7, three days before the Good Friday vigil, the New York Times included information that the U.S. government is planning to intensify the drone attacks on Pakistani villages in the weeks and months ahead, despite the opposition of even the U.S.-supported Pakistani government to such attacks.

If current policies go forward, with 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops being readied for deployment to Afghanistan, Mountain Home’s nuclear-capable warplanes will play a key role in the government’s officially announced escalation of the war.

By Peter Lumsdaine, interim co-pastor at Hyde Park Mennonite Fellowship, Boise, Idaho.

Editor’s note: Peter Lumsdaine’s sources for this article include U.S. military Web sites, GlobalSecurity.org, Wikipedia articles and the Center for Defense Information. His email address is megl2008@ live.com.

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