I distinctly remember the moment when I started paying closer attention to the Plowshares activists' provocative style of resistance. It was the winter of 1991 and President George H. W. Bush had just initiated a major bombing campaign that launched the Gulf War. Months before, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and President Bush was taking a stand. Although I felt that Hussein's tyranny and his illegal annexation of territory should be addressed by the international community, I was strongly opposed to the war and deeply disturbed by reports of thousands of civilian casualties.

One evening while I was watching the news with my friend Karl Smith, the network covered a story about an anti-war protest that occurred while George and Barbara Bush were worshipping at a church near their vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine. As the service began, the pastor welcomed the president and his family and then asked the congregation to offer prayer requests. A fifty-one-year-old man sitting near the front said, “I have a concern. Think of the eighteen million people of Iraq; half are children under the age of fifteen. They are children just like the children sitting here. We must think of what it means to be bombed by more than 2,000 planes everyday. We are called to be peacemakers. This is a vicious, immoral attack.” He then sat quietly during the sermon, but when the pastor invited everyone to sing the Lord's Prayer, the man spoke up once more.