Jim's Peacemaking

Jim's Sharing #5 Warm greetings, friends, I just returned from seven days with our sister community Valle Nuevo in El Salvador. This visit included visiting with friends of many years, and also seeing signs of new growth. One of the most significant things was to find out about the big change in their internal relationships. It seems for years now they have been having trouble with bickering amongst themselves about how to proceed with titling the 265 acres of land we helped them buy. The bickering had made any progress almost impossible. Seems an act of God that they have been able to draw together the many factions of their leadership and come to agreement on major decisions like the land titling process. Many confirmed this new direction. At this point there have not been any concrete decisions, though things look more hopeful than they have in a long time. A major surprise to me was their concern about the war in Iraq, even though it doesn't directly affect them. Many,...

Jim Fitz and Jim Foxvog of Plow Creek helped get this ad run in the local papers. War with Iraq? According to top army and intelligence off cials, attacking Iraq is a bad idea. It won’t make us safer. It’s a distraction from the war on terrorism. It’ll alienate our closest allies. According to United Nations estimates, a war with Iraq will kill up to 500,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, and cost U.S. taxpayers as much as $1,600,000,000,000 Tough weapons inspections can disarm Saddam Hussein without costing a single life. That’s why over 90 U.S. city councils are saying: Inspections Work. War Won’t. “Successful disarmament of Iraq is possible without Baghdad’s active cooperation...” Hans Blix Chief UN Weapons Inspector Feb. 7, 2003 Reuters “All the generals see it the same way, and all the others who have never fired a shot, and are hot to go to war, see it another... We are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever ...