Editor’s note: As we continue to adjust our comment policy and live into our role as a forum for the voices of Mennonite Church USA, some letters to the editor will begin to appear online. 

According to The Intercept, the United States has invaded, occupied or bombed at least 14 Muslim countries since 1980 and in each of these, American soldiers have been killed.  They are Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014 to present), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001 to present), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002 to present), Pakistan (2004 to preswent) and now Syria.

The blog Alternet reports that the U.S. dropped 23,144 Bombs on Muslim-Majority Countries in 2015. The Nobel Peace Prize-winner President Obama dropped a serious amount of ordnance last year.

Anyone who takes the time to look will see horrible gut-wrenching pictures of whole city blocks destroyed, multiple funerals and mass graves.

The U.N. states that there are now an all-time high 65 million refugees in the world; many if not most because of our wars in the Muslim world.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that a total of 7,180 persons have been killed by drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan and this does not include the persons killed by drone attacks in Afghanistan before 2015 nor does it include persons killed by drone attacks in Iraq, Libya and the Philippines.  Also, less than 2% of drone casualties are high value targets, indicating that the bulk of drone casualties have been civilians.

Besides being unlawful and criminal, our wars against Muslim countries and our weaponized drone strikes on civilians in these countries cause intense hatred against America. Ferea al Muslimi, who studied in the U.S and learned to love America, spoke of his experiences to the people of his village in Yemen who were very impressed, until the first drone struck. Later, Mr. Muslimi told the Congress of the U.S. that “Instead of first experiencing America through a school or a hospital, most people in (his village) Wessab, Yemen first experienced America through the terror of a drone strike. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.”

One might ask, why has the Mennonite Church in the U.S. not fulfilled its prophetic role in our nation? Why have we failed to have a strong corporate witness against the American Empire’s wars? Why have we as a body not taken corporate acts of resistance that would impact our society for the good of all global citizens?

Daniel Riehl
Lititz, Pennsylvania