National Conference of Viet Nam Veteran Ministers



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Steadily Increasing Violence:

A Peace and Justice Statement
October 16, 1998




The National Conference of Viet Nam Veteran Ministers, an organization composed of clergy and full time religious workers who served in Vietnam , meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico October 12-16, 1998, in anticipation of the Jubilee Year 2000 (Leviticus 25), issued the following plea about steadily increasing violence in the world.

As veterans we are not strangers to the violence of war; we know what it is like. We encourage and commend those organizations which, using all forms of media, are seeking to awaken the powerful of the world to the growing plight of those hurt by the trauma of war, as well as other forms of violence. Out of our own experience, we are especially concerned with those who are often forgotten victims of war, and who endeavor to live during and after times of war and armed conflict.

Among these victims we would number the following:

  • the parents, mothers and fathers, and siblings and other family members of the ones who are called to fight, of the ones who are taken prisoner, of the ones who are killed in battle, of the ones who simply disappear.
  • the children who are orphaned and crippled, deprived of a parent or parents, of care and love, of hope and of life itself.
  • those who are yearly maimed by land mines and unexploded ordinance of conflicts long past.
  • the poor of many nations who have borne the financial burden, and bear it now, of national expenditures for weaponry.
  • the veterans, maimed, wounded both physically and mentally, who return to less than grateful nations which soon forget their sacrifice, and the families of veterans who receive back their loved ones, but find that they have inexplicably changed into different people.


    • We cry out to give voice to those who are forgotten; we cry out so that the needless violence of war may cease for the coming generations. We cry out of despair, for the casualty list rises higher and higher each year.

    We call out in the name of all that is sacred asking the leaders of the world to enter a season of change and repentance, foregoing claims of national pride and property in favor of the mutual claims of humanity. For the sake of all creation and all that is sacred, let us break the cycle of international violence.

    As veterans of the military institutions of the United States of America , we call upon our nation's leaders to model this season of change and repentance.

    Return to Peace and Justice Statements.


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