Global Peace Index

The Global Peace Index, now in its second year, ranks 140 countries according to their relative states of peace, based on factors such as military expenditure, respect for human rights, and number of homicides.

See where your country ranks here...

Not Malicious???

The chief U.S. commander in Baghdad issued a formal apology today for an incident in which a soldier used the Quran -- Islam's holy book -- for target practice. The soldier, whose name was not released, shot at a copy of the Quran on May 9. The bullet-riddled book was discovered two days later by an Iraqi policeman, but the U.S. military did not make the incident public until today.

Major General Jeffery Hammond apologized to local officials in Radhwaniya in the western outskirts of Baghdad, and read a letter of apology from the shooter in which he wrote, "I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together. My actions were shortsighted, very reckless and irresponsible, but in my heart the actions were not malicious."

Not malicious? I suspect that the shooter got lots of help from his commanding officers with his letter. They also relieved him of duty. He will be redeployed to the United States for reassignment.

And we wonder why they hate us.

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Irena Sendler

One of the greatest heroes of the 20th century died this week, but most people have never heard of her. Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic social worker, saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi occupation of World War II. She smuggled them out of the ghetto, gave them non-Jewish aliases, and placed them in convents, orphanages, and homes. She kept detailed records of their true identities and preserved the records in jars buried in a friend's garden.

She was eventually captured by the Nazis and tortured, but she refused to divulge any information about the children or about the underground organization with which she worked. Miraculously spared from execution herself, she worked diligently after the war to reunite the children with their families, only to find that most of their relatives had been deported and exterminated. Most of the children were adopted by Polish families or emigrated to Israel.

She died on Monday in a Warsaw nursing home at the age of 98. After living in obscurity for most of her life, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize last year. But she never thought of herself as a hero. She once said, "Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this earth and not a title to glory."

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Mother Teresa of Baghdad

Madeeha Hasan Odhaib is a diminutive, 37-year-old seamstress whom some people have begun calling the Mother Teresa of Baghdad. Since 2003, she has been working tirelessly to assist thousands of Iraqis driven from their homes by the war, especially in her Karada district where some 30,000 displaced Iraqis live. With almost no help from occupying forces or the Iraqi government, she has put together one of the few effective aid operations in Baghdad.

Read more about the efforts of this remarkable woman...

Nakba

When Israel observes the 60th anniversary of its declaration of statehood on May 14, Arabs who make up 20 percent of its citizens will not be joining in the celebration. Instead thousands will gather in their former villages, which they have been barred from occupying for sixty years, to protest what they call the nakba, or catastrophe, of their displacement from their homeland.

In the civil strife that marked the beginning of the modern state of Israel, nearly a million Palestinians fled to neighboring countries, where they were housed in crowded refugee camps. Their children and grandchildren, now numbering over 4 million, are still in those refugee camps today.

Others who remained in the new state of Israel were displaced from their villages. They were granted citizenship but relegated to second-class status. The Israeli government seized their land to make room for new Jewish arrivals from Europe and the former Soviet Union. And although much of the seized land has sat idle all these years, the Israeli government refuses to allow former owners to return to it.

One such former owner is Jamal Abdulhadi Mahameed. Now age 69, he wants nothing more than to return to the land owned by his family for generations and tend to the pomegranate bushes planted long ago by his father.

In every respect Jamal is a solid citizen. His children include a doctor, two lawyers, and an engineer. But he is prohibited from returning to his own land because it is reserved for Jewish settlement. He notes that his daughter the doctor makes no distinction between Jewish and Arab patients. So he asks, "Why should the state treat me differently?"

Add one more issue to the many injustices to be redressed before the Middle East can even dream of living in peace.

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Mission Accomplished?

Five years ago today, George W. Bush pulled his tailhook landing stunt on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared: "Mission Accomplished!"



Five years later...

More than 4,000 U.S. troops have lost their lives in Iraq, along with more than 300 from the so-called "coalition of the willing".

Almost 30,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in action.

According to conservative estimates, more than 90,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. The actual number will never be known.

An estimated 2 million Iraqis have fled their country and are living as refugees in appalling conditions in Syria and Jordan. Almost none have been allowed entry into the United States.

An unknown number of Iraqis - upwards to 3 million by some estimates - are displaced within their own country because of sectarian violence.

More than 100 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the conflict.

U.S. troop levels in Iraq are currently at 160,000 with no immediate plans to reduce that number.

In a recent Gallup poll, 59% of Americans said that "the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq."