My fingers have been tapping out of control for more than a month and a half now. Don't worry, though -- I am not falling to the symptoms of my own PTSD just yet. At the completion of the Winter Soldier event, all Iraq Veterans Against the War members in attendance received a copy of the movie soundtrack compiled by Body of War subject Tomas Young, a partially paralyzed veteran of the Iraq war. It is a two-disc eclectic ensemble of major artists such as Talib Kweli, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Franti, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Serj Tankian, and Tom Morello.

I nearly threw it away but instead hesitantly shoved the CD into my computer on the plane home. To my surprise, many of the lyrics are still stuck in my head, from Brendan James' therapeutic "Hero's Song" ("in the water, in the sand ... is the blood of an ancient people in whose holy war I stand") to System of a Down's fast-paced "B.Y.O.B." ("why don't princes fight the war, why do they always send the poor?").

If you are able to handle the recurrent explicit language, other notable tracks -- especially for evangelicals -- include Immortal Technique's scathing rebuke of religious bigotry in "The 4th Branch" ("The voice of racism preaching the gospel is devilish"), and Bright Eyes' inquisitive "When the President Talks to God" ("I wonder which one plays the better cop"). However, each of the 30 tracks has proven prophetic in its own right.

The deal was made even better when we were told that proceeds from sales do not line the pockets of music industry execs, but that 100% goes straight back to Iraq Veterans Against the War. Eddie Vedder worked directly with Tomas to secure artists' contributions for this inspiring soundtrack, and he convinced Sire Records to distribute it at-cost. He also provided his own forceful track, "No More," with Ben Harper (though Harper includes his own track, "Black Rain," about the lack of resources for New Orleans), and Pearl Jam contributed their live track "Masters of War."

Body of War is playing now in theaters throughout the country. The film follows Tomas from his enlistment in the Army through his deployment and subsequent activism to end the war through Iraq Veterans Against the War. Eddie Vedder teamed up with Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, whose show on MSNBC was cancelled due to his outspoken opposition to the Bush administration's decision to unilaterally initiate a war of aggression (as defined by Article 5.1, Rome Statute, of the International Criminal Court), to produce the hard-hitting documentary of one veteran's struggle post-Iraq.

Visit the Body of War Web site to find a screening near you and get your copy of the soundtrack. You can find Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq Veteran on iTunes or maybe in the CD or MP3 player of a local veteran or service member.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has co-founded a faith-based veterans assistance initiative called Centurion's Purse, which seeks to provide financial and spiritual relief to fellow service members in need. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

During the last four days, more than 100 Iraq Veterans Against the War combat veterans, academics, and international guests shared their experiences with the world through Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations. They offered their accounts in the hopes that they would induce a bit of accountability in the halls of Congress, and detailed the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the occupations of the few who profit, whose profession it is to ensure the longevity of this and other violent conflicts.

My own involvement was in the form of bearing witness [click here to watch the video] to the intricacies and fallibilities of the Rules of Engagement I encountered in my 14 months in combat. Many other panelists offered corroborating evidence and shared similar stories of inadequate training in the use of deadly force, and some explained the troubling, but verifiable, cases in which such restrictions were utterly ignored or outright rejected. In other panels, testifiers shared their experience with the failure of the VA system, outlined the presence of gender discrimination and racism in the military, and described corporate pillaging and war profiteering. The entire event was streamed live to the Web via IVAW's Web site and blogged live via KPFA Radio. Many news articles were written as a result, and the Department of Defense even issued a statement.

I was in the minority as a professed Christian, and I cannot blame my fellow compatriots for their occasional discomfort with the oft-misrepresented ideologies (Religious Right) of the Christian tradition. To my surprise, it was difficult to even blurt out in my own testimony that it was my faith, and not a reaction to the political, economic, or social reality of these conflicts, that inspired me to lay my weapon down. Furthermore, there was no shortage of personal courage displayed throughout the entire event: testifiers ripping off or tearing up the burdensome medals they wore, tears shed in bitter remorse and agony, and (unfortunately) failure to control one's language in frustration and angst. Our critics (whom we invited beforehand, and whom politely agreed to a rigorous code of conduct—to which they submitted faithfully and respectfully) even had some constructive, informative observations to share.

The weekend was never cast as a protest; there were no picket signs or chanting, no march or formation, and it was closed to the public (making the "Gathering of Eagles" just off campus the only actual protesters in attendance). The members and guests who gave "testimony" (a term with which we in the church are well-versed) did so only in the sense that it was an "account" of their experience.

There was one interruption, during the first panel on Friday, where an older gentleman trespassed onto the campus and shouted that people "lied and good men died." He also speculated that those testifying were betraying good men. Interestingly enough, he was NOT talking about our current commander in chief, who is not only directly responsible (according to military tradition and the UCMJ) for the 4,468 American lives lost under his watch, but also for 935 "false statements" (isn't that the same as a "lie?") his administration made in the months leading up to the invasion of a nation we ourselves armed and financed. Besides, the gospels remind us to be wary of any king of men who would reap what he does not sow, or burden his subjects with a yoke he would not carry himself.

Finally, as carefully as I chose to tread with my own faith background, the immense healing properties of confession were hard to ignore. Tears flowed and men of the highest caliber embraced unashamed and readily admitted their reliance on one another. It was an awesome experience that I will forever be proud to have been part of. These honest and humble accounts are a much-needed and too often overlooked offering that has been laid before the American people, a heavy yoke broken by the power of confession and repentance by contrite hearts.

Will America answer the call to metanoia and turn from its destructive, exploitative ways? Will we lay the idols of oil and nationalism and greed upon the altar, and seek a more firm and lasting peace with our neighbors in the global community?

Will we no longer be a reproach to the nations around us, victims of our own arrogance and unconcern?

Insha'allah; God willing.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has co-founded a faith-based veterans assistance initiative called Centurion's Purse, which seeks to provide financial and spiritual relief to fellow service members in need. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

In my last post, I illustrated my intention to participate in a collective type of confession from members of our Armed Forces. I am of course speaking of the upcoming Winter Soldier hearings in Washington, D.C., from March 13 to 16 at the National Labor College in Silver Springs, Maryland. Many readers expressed no small amount of confusion in interpreting my motivation for doing so, and for not being more clear, I apologize. Let me state unequivocally that my allegiance to Christ infinitely trumps my allegiance to our country. Upon clarifying that, I might need to express the extent to which I remain in submission to our nation.

Our government, in affirming the rights of its citizens, forfeits the claim to unconditional subordination. While I am eternally grateful for the freedom I enjoy, such gratitude must never demand that one surrender the sacrificial cross of enemy love, because the cross of our King is uncompromisingly nonviolent. In fact, if some perverse form of gratitude (fueled by what Mark Twain called 'martial dreams' and 'the holy fire of patriotism') insists that I yield blindly to the status quo, it is not appreciation at all, but coercion in disguise. We need to move away from reflex loyalty and adopt a mature, informed awareness in response to the threat of terror. First and foremost, we must know our enemies - if we even insist on having enemies at all - for they are only brothers and sisters we have failed to see as our neighbor.

To be quite forward, I am fully aware that I make oft-unwelcome allusions to WWII and Nazi Germany. This is calculated and purposeful; it serves as a response to the innumerable implications myself and countless other conscientious objectors face in stating their refusal to participate in modern combat. In fact, every GI I have counseled has had to answer questions in their CO process about how they would respond to the threat of Hitler and the Nazis. I agree that WWII makes for an effective measure of justifiable war, but we must also accurately and objectively consider how it also delegitimizes our violence (after all, don't you think Germany demanded a bit of unconditional subordination couched in patriotic fervor, and don't you think if the German army had more CO's the course of the war could have been altered dramatically?). We indeed have much to learn from that conflict, but let's not inappropriately insist that it must affirm our own preconceptions in order for such an appraisal to be valid.

From the perspectives of the Gospels, imperial Rome offers another rich context to view our current environment of terror and terrorism. Don't Rome and the U.S. both have intimate experience occupying lesser nations, ruling through the façade of a weak indigenous power structure? Just to be clear to fans of Romans 13, we must remember that Paul neither affirms the moral legitimacy of the state (only indicating that when operating in moral manner, they must be obeyed), nor lends moral authority to Rome. In fact, the same "authority" to which he was submitted later executed him! Do I detect tragic irony? Peter too states that "everyone" must be honored, whether they like to call themselves kings or not. The tax question in the synoptic Gospels ( Matt. 22, Mark 12, & Luke 20) is a thinly veiled satire of the Roman figurehead; if you look closely in the Hebrew scriptures, ALL the earth belongs to its creator ( Deut. 10:14 for example), leaving nothing owed to the emperor save love.

Despite all this, if you ask my closest friends, I remain quite pro-military. I do not believe in the abolition of the military, nor do I believe that Christianity and civil service are mutually exclusive. I respect the oath I swore and the values instilled in me in training - all of which are good and right - and in today's political atmosphere they all direct me to oppose the war of terror. One value that is absent from this list is the divine virtue of love, which is the fulfillment of God's will, and which directs me to oppose all wars. In my opposition, far from distancing myself from the duties of citizenship, I hope to bring about the end of hostilities, as the early Church did through similar intercession and prayer. David Thoreau was known to have said that a creative minority could serve the state by resisting it with the intention of improving it, and an ancient idiom reminds us that it is a nation's warriors who pray most passionately for the absence of war, since it is the battlefield that makes widows of their wives and orphans of their children. We all must discover the sense in nonviolence and realize the nonsense of violence, then we might know peace.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and has co-founded a faith based veterans assistance initiative called Centurion's Purse, which seeks to provide financial and spiritual relief to fellow service members in need. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

The sorrowful convergence of the fifth anniversary of the war and the observation of the 4000th fallen U.S. soldier in Iraq looms sadly ahead. Soon candles will be lit and vigils held, arguments will ensue as to who was right, and the meaning and value of sacrifice and the chorus of whispers, wails, and anger will be carried on wind sweeping across this country and all the gravestones of war.

The stones are silent witnesses to the failure of humans to follow the commands of the Lord of Love. The stones are places where U.S. families gather, as far as can be from the bombs and desert fears.

It is in that cold silence that my grandson and I visit his father's grave. He throws chunks of snow around the fully decorated gravesite. "My dad loves to have snowball fights" he tells me in present tense. "My dad and me always team up against my mom; she doesn't like snow." He laughs; and in this moment of transcendent playfulness I look at him with great love and will not speak of horror and lost hopes.

Head bowed, snow tears on my face, I let the chill of the day overtake me - but I do not want my grandson to see my thoughts. In spite of all my protests, I could not protect him from losing his playful, tender father. I can only hope now to be a witness to the good life lost - to all the good lives lost. I will add my voice to the wind of remembrance and faithfulness.

And I know for the rest of my life I will come to this country cemetery and visit my son who will never be older than 30. And I, like so many mothers and grandsons in this cold season, will stand amidst the stones of this country to listen in the snow for the laughter and forgiveness of our lost.

Celeste Zappala is the mother of Sgt Sherwood Baker, who was killed in action on April 26, 2004. Sherwood was killed while protecting the Iraq Survey group as they searched for the weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad. He was the first Pennsylvania National Guard solider killed in Iraq.

In March, just prior to the fifth anniversary of the war of terror in Iraq, Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) will be shaking the dust off a decades-old heritage of accountability and oversight in combat by its participants. The independent media has already reported that the gathering will focus on war crimes and atrocities; that my brethren and I plan to focus on describing gross moral negligence and criminal contempt on the part of our commanders and other leaders. While I cannot speak for the more than 75 veterans who will share their experiences during the weekend, not every vet shares those convictions.

My brothers at arms while in Iraq were largely respectable and law-abiding, and I am honored to have served with them. Of the few outright violations of international or moral law, each instance displayed a clear lapse in their character, and were quickly corrected and dealt with judiciously. At every rare opportunity, we provided relief and assistance to Iraqis and other nationals, even other combatants. I was then, and remain to this day, relieved that vigilante justice was rarely dolled out to hostile forces. My deployment to Iraq was an experience in patience and a lesson in humility (though it should be noted that not all veterans of OIF share my optimistic hindsight).

The question, then, is why are we testifying and what do we have to say if not merely to indict higher leadership?

As I have already stated, I am not concerned with war crimes and atrocities because it is my experience that the war itself is criminal and atrocious. An atmosphere of disregard to both the rule of law and the rule of the Lord pervades our society - corroding our collective consciousness and dislocating our moral center. Furthermore, I am only minimally concerned with legality, since it is too often relative and victim to misinterpretation (everything Hitler did in Germany was legally sanctioned, horrifically reminiscent of our own national leaders' ethical dyslexia). In my six years, no unit I came in contact with was briefed on the Law of Land Warfare (Army Field Manual 27-10) or the implications of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (ratified into US Law in 1959). Despite my own unit's best efforts, we could not de-criminalize the occupation in the eyes of the oppressed (which was our mission; "to win hearts and minds"). No amount of Iraqi Dinars or "As-salaam alaykums" could undo the harm our nation had caused its neighbors.

What does compel me to testify, however, is diakonia. As a soldier, it was my duty to serve the greater good. Selfless service is one of the core Army values, as well as a core discipline of Christian practice. Upon entering both the Church and the military, I made comparable covenants of obedience and submission.

Where the two allegiances intertwine, I have submitted to both Church and state. Where they have been mutually exclusive, I have obeyed God rather than men. In IVAW's Winter Soldier hearings, I have once again found that the two allegiances converge.

I, for one, am testifying in an effort to serve my country as well as the Church, to illuminate the injustice of this war based on my personal experience and reflection. For too long, I have let my heart harden and grow brittle, the painful emotions that could help heal me growing decrepit with neglect. Not long ago, I shared a bit of them here, but it has come time to really grapple with the demons and angels within me. My motivations for testifying are not unlike communion - where many of us take bread and drink wine (or grape juice) to remind us that Christ shared Himself with us; that we are not just to remember His sacrifice, but also to allow it to transform us. In the same way, I feel communion amongst us and within our communities must include not only the body and blood of Christ, but our own being as well. We are called to lives of interdependence, to lives of sharing and koinonia not unlike our communion with Him. It is in this light, and with this hope, that I will be testifying in March. It will difficult. It will be painful. However, I hope that this service, our testimony, may fuel the transformation of our country, our communities, and our Church. As precarious a path I am compelled to forge between patriotism and piety, I pray it may serve not only our fellow citizens, but the people of Iraq. After all, we ARE our brothers' and sisters' keepers.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

After more than six years of field exercises in some of the most grueling weather our country offers, I am rarely affected by even the most chilling winter rains. Months of accumulated time in the forests of North Carolina, the deserts of California, and the wetlands of Louisiana - training for war has built up in me a bit of immunity to succumbing to the shivers. However, there is one thing that pierces my calloused exterior with ease.

Tremors begin in my chest—tiny convulsions shortening my breath. They quickly spread to my upper back and neck before spreading throughout my body. Even now as I write, my fingers pause over many keys, timing the moment they may strike with relative certainty that I will not have to delete keystrokes. My breath becomes shallow and I feel warmth leave my hands and feet.

In a tab on my browser, a Washington Post article lies hidden behind my word processing program. It is a story that hits horrifically close to home. It speaks of Army Lieutenant Elizabeth Whiteside, facing court-martial—being prosecuted for attempted suicide—while rehabilitating in the Psychiatric Ward of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The same officer had served in the prison that sent Saddam to be hanged, in the Iraqi government's illusion of redemptive violence.

Days ago, another article, from AlterNet, described a recent CBS investigation that found an alarming trend in those who have served our country. I would never have believed the finding had it not been for the devastating news Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) received last Tuesday. One of our active members had taken their own life. Their spouse, another IVAW member who suffers from PTSD, had found the body the night prior.

In 2005, an average of 17 vets committed suicide every day. No, that is not a typo: 17 every day. More alarming is the response within the Armed Forces - which is disturbingly outlined in the case of 1st Lt. Whiteside, wherein a clinical diagnosis is being utterly ignored in the interest of saving face. At the same time, many of our vets' disability claims are being verifiably reduced or denied. This treatment sends one strikingly clear message to those who have served and sacrificed: you are not worth the effort. Is it any wonder why vets of all generations are more prone to homelessness and suicide than any other demographic?

The church has historically labeled suicide an unforgivable sin, as the opportunity for repentance destroys itself with the victim's final breath. However, before labeling suicide as "the coward's way out," I think we need to look at our own corporate complicity in these deaths. In our modern era, we have not learned from the ancient orthodoxy that taught warriors to remove themselves from the community for a period of reflection and healing before reentering.

Today, a soldier can move from Kirkuk to New York in a matter of hours. What does that do to their grasp of reality? When they cry out for our holistic (not superficial) support, we fumble about, feeding them gross misinterpretations of scripture such as the Just War Theory, hoping to ease their consciences with hollow justifications. When they find no solace in that, we walk away confused about why we could not "fix their problem," casting shame upon those who can find no affirmation.

I don't think a transcendently benevolent God is that insensitive. I think God feels their pain long before anyone on earth accepts the responsibility to share in Christ's saving work, which begins even before the seed of self-hatred is sown. Surely we are not so blinded by our own plank that we fail to see that if we will not share their pain, we shall share their guilt. A suicide is anything but a personal transgression; it reflects an outright failure of community. Our heart should ache for all those who have been suffocated of hope, beaten to the point of desperation by a world that offers no source of redemptive healing for the beaten and broken.

I wonder if we get so defensive because there is no room for restitution, no scapegoat upon which to place blame. We hastily label it a personal sin, as we are made impotent by the inability to cast judgment. We forget that indeed a murder has taken place, but that the stones lay in our own two hands. It is not one stone that kills a person, but many; not one sin that destroys a life, but an accumulation. The truth leaves us naked, and fig leaves held tenuously together by half-truths and moral manipulations are all that conceal us from reality.

My fingers still quiver and the quakes in my chest have not subsided. My joints ache with grief and my hands still have no warmth in them. I am sick with disgust and contempt for the systems we have in place and their utter failure in our national time of need. This frustration is sin crouching at my door, threatening to overcome me, but I can be its master. I am not incapable of overcoming anger with compassion, defeating hubris with humility. May God have mercy on me. May I rest in peace. May God enable me to be the change I wish to see, to reach those close to death's door and be Christ's heart and hands to the least among us.

May God direct us all in being the prophetic witness to our government, to help us create means of healing for those who sacrifice their mental and physical health. May the author and protector of life give us hearts of flesh and rebuke us every time we marginalize and dehumanize our brothers and sisters by casting the stones of disregard, indifference, and neglect.

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

Many conscientious service members have been speaking out despite an often oppressive and unforgiving atmosphere. Some of us have even been persecuted and attacked while exercising our civic duty of speaking truth to power in times of moral crises. The Rev. Lennox Yearwood, an Air Force chaplain, faces accusations of working against national security. Liam Madden, fellow IVAW member and co-founder of Appeal for Redress, is defending his project against comments that are similarly repeated daily to men and women in the armed forces who are speaking out; effectively demanding that our GIs remain silent and obey our leaders blindly.

In a few months, the Vatican will beatify a fellow conscientious objector who stood for peace over prejudice, humility over arrogance. Like a growing number of servicemen and women in our modern conflict, this soldier of conscience would not bend to demands that he serve the country’s militaristic intentions. He faced accusations of cowardice and outright treason, even of threatening national security. The book In Solitary Witness, by Gordon Zahn, revealed that Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, was beheaded by the Third Reich in August 1943 after refusing to serve in the German army. The Catholic Peace Fellowship reports he will be beatified on October 26, 2007, in his home country, and provides information on how Jägerstätter and countless other Christians have chosen conscientious objection, often in the face of significant harassment from Christian and secular critics alike.

The United States is not, nor will it ever be, Nazi Germany, but Jägerstätter's witness remains relevant and powerful for our current context. As Jägerstätter's testimony attests, the question of how a pacifist would address the problem of violence as manifested by Hitler has a response: The blame does not rest solely on Hitler, but is shared by the social classes (including the German church in status confessions) that enforced strict nationalism in the pursuit of economic revival, killing its own prophets, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in the process.

If every soldier obeyed God and their conscience rather than human leaders, as Jägerstätter did, the world would be spared just as much from the likes of the German war machine as we would the American military industrial complex. Franz Jägerstätter, just as Saints Maximilian of Tebessa and Martin of Tours before him, was courageous enough to stand by the conviction "Miles Christi ego sum; pugnare mihi non licet: I am a soldier of Christ; it is not permissible for me to fight."

Logan Laituri is a six-year Army veteran with combatant service in Iraq during OIF II and experience with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Israel and the West Bank. He is an active member of Iraq Veterans Against the War and currently resides in Camden, New Jersey, in an intentional Christian community called Camden House, where he continues to seek ways to wage peace wherever he goes. He blogs at courageouscoward.blogspot.com.

While we are against the war, we certainly recognize and honor the sacrifice and suffering of so many families who have lost a loved one in this war. I don’t know about you, but sometimes the news coverage and the number of lives lost (more than 3,200 American soldiers, and an estimated 500,000 Iraqi citizens or more) can be a bit mind-numbing. It’s easy to just gloss over those numbers and forget that every one of those lives had a story, a history, something that made them a unique individual created in the image of God. This video is a good reminder of that fact, and I hope will sensitize you, as it did me, to the realities of war. As the Iraq Veterans Memorial site states:

The Iraq Veterans Memorial is an online war memorial that honors the members of the U.S. armed forces who have lost their lives serving in the Iraq War. The memorial is a collection of video memories from family, friends, military colleagues, and co-workers of those that have fallen.

Let us all be mindful of the fact that until this war comes to an end, there will be many more families who will experience the suffering expressed by those profiled on this site. May the Holy Spirit remind us to keep all of these families in our prayers.

Jeff Carr is the Chief Operations Officer for Sojourners/Call to Renewal.