Anti-nuclear weapon protesters convicted in Tacoma

[markomalley]

From the AP:
A federal jury on Monday convicted five anti-war activists, including octogenarians and Jesuit priests, who cut fences at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in 2009 to protest submarine nuclear weapons.
Members of the group could face up to 10 years in prison when they are sentenced in March.
The five defendants were convicted of conspiracy, trespass and destruction of government property, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The group includes 82-year-old Jesuit Rev. Bill Bichsel of Tacoma; 60-year-old Jesuit Rev. Stephen Kelly of Oakland, Calif.; 84-year-old Sister Anne Montgomery of Redwood City, Calif.; 67-year-old retired teacher Susan Crane of Baltimore; and 60-year-old social worker Lynne Greenwald of Bremerton.
I think that Obama should apologize to them and pardon them immediately.

 

[ishii]

From the AP:
A federal jury on Monday convicted five anti-war activists, including octogenarians and Jesuit priests, who cut fences at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in 2009 to protest submarine nuclear weapons.
Members of the group could face up to 10 years in prison when they are sentenced in March.
The five defendants were convicted of conspiracy, trespass and destruction of government property, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The group includes 82-year-old Jesuit Rev. Bill Bichsel of Tacoma; 60-year-old Jesuit Rev. Stephen Kelly of Oakland, Calif.; 84-year-old Sister Anne Montgomery of Redwood City, Calif.; 67-year-old retired teacher Susan Crane of Baltimore; and 60-year-old social worker Lynne Greenwald of Bremerton.
I think that Obama should apologize to them and pardon them immediately.

Why?

I was there at the George Bush speech at Seattle University when the Jesuit priest Bill Bichsel stood up and heckled Bush. He actually wore his clerics so everyone would recognize him as a priest (he does not normally wear clerics). Although he claims to be anti-abortion, he is clearly more concerned about nuclear arms than abortion. How many people have been killed by abortion since it has been legalized? Millions. How many have been killed by nuclear arms since abortion was legalized? None. People like Bichsel are very misguided - they rant about nuclear arms but turn a blind eye to the injustice of the unborn. It is indicative of the incompatibility of the political left with the value of the sanctity of life. In considering the dangers of radical pacifism, I think its appropriate to consider a quote from the Screwtape Letters:

*“Whichever he adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating the Patriotism or the Pacifism as a part of his religion. The let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him onto the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the ‘cause’, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the British war-effort or of Pacifism. The attitude which you want to guard against is that in which temporal affairs are treated primarily as material for obedience. Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours — and the more ‘religious’ (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.” *

I am not suggesting that the Jesuit Bill Bichsel is necessarily near that cageful, but a life that focuses more on civil disobedience and leftist pacifist politics, and less on personal morality, responsibility, sacraments, etc. is one that would seem to be ignoring the danger of sliding toward that cageful.

Ishii