Casualties

The city was still blanketed in early-morning drowsiness. The sun, an orange glint on the eastern horizon, shone through broad-leafed trees. A stooped man in a gray uniform swept discarded candy wrappers and crushed soda cans into a container.

I imagined it was like the start of every other day on Capitol Hill, though I wasn't sure. I had never been there before at dawn.

Some of our small group had spent all night on the east steps of the Capitol. Others arrived at various hours throughout the night to take part in a round-the-clock vigil during the days preceding the second contra aid vote in the House of Representatives.

There was less attention than usual paid to a group of Christians praying for the people of Nicaragua and lifting up the names of the victims of the contra war. As the president had hoped, America's attention was focused elsewhere. It was April 15—the day after the U.S. air strike on Libya.

We were told that the attack was intended to put an end to terrorism. But even the president himself seemed not to believe his words. During the night huge dump trucks were parked across the entrance roads to the Capitol. The orange and white trucks dotted our view and stood as a last line of defense against potential retaliatory suicide-bombing missions on the Capitol by angry Libyans. As the usual flood of tour buses began to enter the Capitol plaza, German shepherds were guided out of police wagons bearing the K-9 insignia and set loose to sniff at luggage compartments for bombs.

No one in the vicinity seemed assured that the air strike had put an end to terrorism. In fact, a world that was already terrifying suddenly seemed several degrees more so.

ONE SOJOURNERS COMMUNITY member, in all-too-typical Sojourners style, was engaged in a last-minute filling out of his income tax form, right there on the steps of the Capitol. It felt like as appropriate a time and place as there would ever be to refuse to pay the portion of taxes that goes to support our country's wars.

Another community member related an encounter he had had with a photographer the day before, during the large rally that began the vigil. The photographer was scanning the crowd, clicking pictures as quickly as his highly automatic camera could advance the film. The Sojourners member approached him and asked, "Are you with the FBI or the Secret Service?"

The photographer hesitated and then answered, "I'm a freelancer."

"Isn't it odd that you're taking so many pictures of the crowd?"

"Film is cheap," he responded.

"So is truth."

Truth was a casualty in the U.S. bombing mission. During the post-bombing press conference, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz flatly denied that U.S. bombs had hit the French Embassy, contending that only "hard targets" had been struck. They went through elaborate rhetorical gymnastics to try to hide the fact that none of our European allies, with the exception of Britain, supported the attack. As they traced on a map the U.S. planes' route that took them 2,800 extra miles around the European continent, reporters pressed the point that perhaps our mission lacked support among our friends. After several evasions, one of the administration officials finally offered, "That's an appropriate conclusion."

But there were other casualties as well. As I tried to focus that morning on the faces of the children I had met in Nicaragua, I pictured another child as well: an infant girl who had no choice of fathers, the daughter of Qaddafi, killed in the blast that targeted his home. She was on my mind that morning, along with wounded women and children in a crowded Tripoli hospital. "Collateral damage."

The shame I felt was overwhelming. Never before had such a day that dawned so bright seemed so dark. There was nothing to do but pray.