Sunday, January 31, 2010
Powerful Howard Zinn Quote
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A Just Cause, Not a Just War
Published on Thursday, January 28, 2010 by The Progressive
A Just Cause, Not a Just War
by Howard Zinn
[1]Editor's note: The following essay appeared in the December issue of The Progressive [2] in 2001, and was reposted here at CommonDreams.org [3] shortly after, just three months following the events of September 11th. As Rudyard Kipling long ago and famously observed, you can recognize wisdom amidst crisis by locating those who 'keep their heads when all about are losing theirs.' Zinn's work is too vast and too incalculable to paraphrase or compile, but when you read his Violence Doesn't Work [4] or Changing Obama's Mindset [5] you easily recognize the wisdom and integrity of a man who saw beyond the hysteria of a moment. Howard Zinn, as Daniel Ellsberg has said [6], "was the best human being I've ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life." We could not agree more.
A Just Cause, Not a Just War (December, 2001)
I believe two moral judgments can be made about the present "war": The September 11 attack constitutes a crime against humanity and cannot be justified, and the bombing of Afghanistan is also a crime, which cannot be justified.
And yet, voices across the political spectrum, including many on the left, have described this as a "just war." One longtime advocate of peace, Richard Falk, wrote in The Nation that this is "the first truly just war since World War II." Robert Kuttner, another consistent supporter of social justice, declared in The American Prospect that only people on the extreme left could believe this is not a just war.
I have puzzled over this. How can a war be truly just when it involves the daily killing of civilians, when it causes hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to leave their homes to escape the bombs, when it may not find those who planned the September 11 attacks, and when it will multiply the ranks of people who are angry enough at this country to become terrorists themselves?
This war amounts to a gross violation of human rights, and it will produce the exact opposite of what is wanted: It will not end terrorism; it will proliferate terrorism.
I believe that the progressive supporters of the war have confused a "just cause" with a "just war." There are unjust causes, such as the attempt of the United States to establish its power in Vietnam, or to dominate Panama or Grenada, or to subvert the government of Nicaragua. And a cause may be just--getting North Korea to withdraw from South Korea, getting Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, or ending terrorism--but it does not follow that going to war on behalf of that cause, with the inevitable mayhem that follows, is just.
The stories of the effects of our bombing are beginning to come through, in bits and pieces. Just eighteen days into the bombing, The New York Times reported: "American forces have mistakenly hit a residential area in Kabul." Twice, U.S. planes bombed Red Cross warehouses, and a Red Cross spokesman said: "Now we've got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with nothing at all."
An Afghan elementary school-teacher told a Washington Post reporter at the Pakistan border: "When the bombs fell near my house and my babies started crying, I had no choice but to run away."
A New York Times report: "The Pentagon acknowledged that a Navy F/A-18 dropped a 1,000-pound bomb on Sunday near what officials called a center for the elderly. . . . The United Nations said the building was a military hospital. . . . Several hours later, a Navy F-14 dropped two 500-pound bombs on a residential area northwest of Kabul." A U.N. official told a New York Times reporter that an American bombing raid on the city of Herat had used cluster bombs, which spread deadly "bomblets" over an area of twenty football fields. This, the Times reporter wrote,"was the latest of a growing number of accounts of American bombs going astray and causing civilian casualties."
An A.P. reporter was brought to Karam, a small mountain village hit by American bombs, and saw houses reduced to rubble. "In the hospital in Jalalabad, twenty-five miles to the east, doctors treated what they said were twenty-three victims of bombing at Karam, one a child barely two months old, swathed in bloody bandages," according to the account. "Another child, neighbors said, was in the hospital because the bombing raid had killed her entire family. At least eighteen fresh graves were scattered around the village."
The city of Kandahar, attacked for seventeen straight days, was reported to be a ghost town, with more than half of its 500,000 people fleeing the bombs. The city's electrical grid had been knocked out. The city was deprived of water, since the electrical pumps could not operate. A sixty-year-old farmer told the A.P. reporter, "We left in fear of our lives. Every day and every night, we hear the roaring and roaring of planes, we see the smoke, the fire. . . . I curse them both--the Taliban and America."
A New York Times report from Pakistan two weeks into the bombing campaign told of wounded civilians coming across the border. "Every half-hour or so throughout the day, someone was brought across on a stretcher. . . . Most were bomb victims, missing limbs or punctured by shrapnel. . . . A young boy, his head and one leg wrapped in bloodied bandages, clung to his father's back as the old man trudged back to Afghanistan."
That was only a few weeks into the bombing, and the result had already been to frighten hundreds of thousands of Afghans into abandoning their homes and taking to the dangerous, mine-strewn roads. The "war against terrorism" has become a war against innocent men, women, and children, who are in no way responsible for the terrorist attack on New York.
And yet there are those who say this is a "just war."
Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end. I can see an immediate objection to this equation: They (the terrorists) deliberately kill innocent people; we (the war makers) aim at "military targets," and civilians are killed by accident, as "collateral damage."
Is it really an accident when civilians die under our bombs? Even if you grant that the intention is not to kill civilians, if they nevertheless become victims, again and again and again, can that be called an accident? If the deaths of civilians are inevitable in bombing, it may not be deliberate, but it is not an accident, and the bombers cannot be considered innocent. They are committing murder as surely as are the terrorists.
The absurdity of claiming innocence in such cases becomes apparent when the death tolls from "collateral damage" reach figures far greater than the lists of the dead from even the most awful act of terrorism. Thus, the "collateral damage" in the Gulf War caused more people to die--hundreds of thousands, if you include the victims of our sanctions policy--than the very deliberate terrorist attack of September 11. The total of those who have died in Israel from Palestinian terrorist bombs is somewhere under 1,000. The number of dead from "collateral damage" in the bombing of Beirut during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was roughly 6,000.
We must not match the death lists--it is an ugly exercise--as if one atrocity is worse than another. No killing of innocents, whether deliberate or "accidental," can be justified. My argument is that when children die at the hands of terrorists, or--whether intended or not--as a result of bombs dropped from airplanes, terrorism and war become equally unpardonable.
Let's talk about "military targets." The phrase is so loose that President Truman, after the nuclear bomb obliterated the population of Hiroshima, could say: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
What we are hearing now from our political leaders is, "We are targeting military objectives. We are trying to avoid killing civilians. But that will happen, and we regret it." Shall the American people take moral comfort from the thought that we are bombing only "military targets"?
The reality is that the term "military" covers all sorts of targets that include civilian populations. When our bombers deliberately destroy, as they did in the war against Iraq, the electrical infrastructure, thus making water purification and sewage treatment plants inoperable and leading to epidemic waterborne diseases, the deaths of children and other civilians cannot be called accidental.
Recall that in the midst of the Gulf War, the U.S. military bombed an air raid shelter, killing 400 to 500 men, women, and children who were huddled to escape bombs. The claim was that it was a military target, housing a communications center, but reporters going through the ruins immediately afterward said there was no sign of anything like that.
I suggest that the history of bombing--and no one has bombed more than this nation--is a history of endless atrocities, all calmly explained by deceptive and deadly language like "accident," "military targets," and "collateral damage."
Indeed, in both World War II and in Vietnam, the historical record shows that there was a deliberate decision to target civilians in order to destroy the morale of the enemy--hence the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, the B-52s over Hanoi, the jet bombers over peaceful villages in the Vietnam countryside. When some argue that we can engage in "limited military action" without "an excessive use of force," they are ignoring the history of bombing. The momentum of war rides roughshod over limits.
The moral equation in Afghanistan is clear. Civilian casualties are certain. The outcome is uncertain. No one knows what this bombing will accomplish--whether it will lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden (perhaps), or the end of the Taliban (possibly), or a democratic Afghanistan (very unlikely), or an end to terrorism (almost certainly not).
And meanwhile, we are terrorizing the population (not the terrorists, they are not easily terrorized). Hundreds of thousands are packing their belongings and their children onto carts and leaving their homes to make dangerous journeys to places they think might be more safe.
Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a "war against terrorism."
We might examine the idea of pacifism in the light of what is going on right now. I have never used the word "pacifist" to describe myself, because it suggests something absolute, and I am suspicious of absolutes. I want to leave openings for unpredictable possibilities. There might be situations (and even such strong pacifists as Gandhi and Martin Luther King believed this) when a small, focused act of violence against a monstrous, immediate evil would be justified.
In war, however, the proportion of means to ends is very, very different. War, by its nature, is unfocused, indiscriminate, and especially in our time when the technology is so murderous, inevitably involves the deaths of large numbers of people and the suffering of even more. Even in the "small wars" (Iran vs. Iraq, the Nigerian war, the Afghan war), a million people die. Even in a "tiny" war like the one we waged in Panama, a thousand or more die.
Scott Simon of NPR wrote a commentary in The Wall Street Journal on October 11 entitled, "Even Pacifists Must Support This War." He tried to use the pacifist acceptance of self-defense, which approves a focused resistance to an immediate attacker, to justify this war, which he claims is "self-defense." But the term "self-defense" does not apply when you drop bombs all over a country and kill lots of people other than your attacker. And it doesn't apply when there is no likelihood that it will achieve its desired end.
Pacifism, which I define as a rejection of war, rests on a very powerful logic. In war, the means--indiscriminate killing--are immediate and certain; the ends, however desirable, are distant and uncertain.
Pacifism does not mean "appeasement." That word is often hurled at those who condemn the present war on Afghanistan, and it is accompanied by references to Churchill, Chamberlain, Munich. World War II analogies are conveniently summoned forth when there is a need to justify a war, however irrelevant to a particular situation. At the suggestion that we withdraw from Vietnam, or not make war on Iraq, the word "appeasement" was bandied about. The glow of the "good war" has repeatedly been used to obscure the nature of all the bad wars we have fought since 1945.
Let's examine that analogy. Czechoslovakia was handed to the voracious Hitler to "appease" him. Germany was an aggressive nation expanding its power, and to help it in its expansion was not wise. But today we do not face an expansionist power that demands to be appeased. We ourselves are the expansionist power--troops in Saudi Arabia, bombings of Iraq, military bases all over the world, naval vessels on every sea--and that, along with Israel's expansion into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has aroused anger.
It was wrong to give up Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler. It is not wrong to withdraw our military from the Middle East, or for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, because there is no right to be there. That is not appeasement. That is justice.
Opposing the bombing of Afghanistan does not constitute "giving in to terrorism" or "appeasement." It asks that other means be found than war to solve the problems that confront us. King and Gandhi both believed in action--nonviolent direct action, which is more powerful and certainly more morally defensible than war.
To reject war is not to "turn the other cheek," as pacifism has been caricatured. It is, in the present instance, to act in ways that do not imitate the terrorists.
The United States could have treated the September 11 attack as a horrific criminal act that calls for apprehending the culprits, using every device of intelligence and investigation possible. It could have gone to the United Nations to enlist the aid of other countries in the pursuit and apprehension of the terrorists.
There was also the avenue of negotiations. (And let's not hear: "What? Negotiate with those monsters?" The United States negotiated with--indeed, brought into power and kept in power--some of the most monstrous governments in the world.) Before Bush ordered in the bombers, the Taliban offered to put bin Laden on trial. This was ignored. After ten days of air attacks, when the Taliban called for a halt to the bombing and said they would be willing to talk about handing bin Laden to a third country for trial, the headline the next day in The New York Times read: "President Rejects Offer by Taliban for Negotiations," and Bush was quoted as saying: "When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations."
That is the behavior of someone hellbent on war. There were similar rejections of negotiating possibilities at the start of the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the bombing of Yugoslavia. The result was an immense loss of life and incalculable human suffering.
International police work and negotiations were--still are--alternatives to war. But let's not deceive ourselves; even if we succeeded in apprehending bin Laden or, as is unlikely, destroying the entire Al Qaeda network, that would not end the threat of terrorism, which has potential recruits far beyond Al Qaeda.
To get at the roots of terrorism is complicated. Dropping bombs is simple. It is an old response to what everyone acknowledges is a very new situation. At the core of unspeakable and unjustifiable acts of terrorism are justified grievances felt by millions of people who would not themselves engage in terrorism but from whose ranks terrorists spring.
Those grievances are of two kinds: the existence of profound misery-- hunger, illness--in much of the world, contrasted to the wealth and luxury of the West, especially the United States; and the presence of American military power everywhere in the world, propping up oppressive regimes and repeatedly intervening with force to maintain U.S. hegemony.
This suggests actions that not only deal with the long-term problem of terrorism but are in themselves just.
Instead of using two planes a day to drop food on Afghanistan and 100 planes to drop bombs (which have been making it difficult for the trucks of the international agencies to bring in food), use 102 planes to bring food.
Take the money allocated for our huge military machine and use it to combat starvation and disease around the world. One-third of our military budget would annually provide clean water and sanitation facilities for the billion people in the world who have none.
Withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia, because their presence near the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina angers not just bin Laden (we need not care about angering him) but huge numbers of Arabs who are not terrorists.
Stop the cruel sanctions on Iraq, which are killing more than a thousand children every week without doing anything to weaken Saddam Hussein's tyrannical hold over the country.
Insist that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, something that many Israelis also think is right, and which will make Israel more secure than it is now.
In short, let us pull back from being a military superpower, and become a humanitarian superpower.
Let us be a more modest nation. We will then be more secure. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism.
Such a fundamental change in foreign policy is hardly to be expected. It would threaten too many interests: the power of political leaders, the ambitions of the military, the corporations that profit from the nation's enormous military commitments.
Change will come, as at other times in our history, only when American citizens-- becoming better informed, having second thoughts after the first instinctive support for official policy--demand it. That change in citizen opinion, especially if it coincides with a pragmatic decision by the government that its violence isn't working, could bring about a retreat from the military solution.
It might also be a first step in the rethinking of our nation's role in the world. Such a rethinking contains the promise, for Americans, of genuine security, and for people elsewhere, the beginning of hope.
A Just Cause, Not a Just War
by Howard Zinn
[1]Editor's note: The following essay appeared in the December issue of The Progressive [2] in 2001, and was reposted here at CommonDreams.org [3] shortly after, just three months following the events of September 11th. As Rudyard Kipling long ago and famously observed, you can recognize wisdom amidst crisis by locating those who 'keep their heads when all about are losing theirs.' Zinn's work is too vast and too incalculable to paraphrase or compile, but when you read his Violence Doesn't Work [4] or Changing Obama's Mindset [5] you easily recognize the wisdom and integrity of a man who saw beyond the hysteria of a moment. Howard Zinn, as Daniel Ellsberg has said [6], "was the best human being I've ever known. The best example of what a human can be, and can do with their life." We could not agree more.
A Just Cause, Not a Just War (December, 2001)
I believe two moral judgments can be made about the present "war": The September 11 attack constitutes a crime against humanity and cannot be justified, and the bombing of Afghanistan is also a crime, which cannot be justified.
And yet, voices across the political spectrum, including many on the left, have described this as a "just war." One longtime advocate of peace, Richard Falk, wrote in The Nation that this is "the first truly just war since World War II." Robert Kuttner, another consistent supporter of social justice, declared in The American Prospect that only people on the extreme left could believe this is not a just war.
I have puzzled over this. How can a war be truly just when it involves the daily killing of civilians, when it causes hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to leave their homes to escape the bombs, when it may not find those who planned the September 11 attacks, and when it will multiply the ranks of people who are angry enough at this country to become terrorists themselves?
This war amounts to a gross violation of human rights, and it will produce the exact opposite of what is wanted: It will not end terrorism; it will proliferate terrorism.
I believe that the progressive supporters of the war have confused a "just cause" with a "just war." There are unjust causes, such as the attempt of the United States to establish its power in Vietnam, or to dominate Panama or Grenada, or to subvert the government of Nicaragua. And a cause may be just--getting North Korea to withdraw from South Korea, getting Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait, or ending terrorism--but it does not follow that going to war on behalf of that cause, with the inevitable mayhem that follows, is just.
The stories of the effects of our bombing are beginning to come through, in bits and pieces. Just eighteen days into the bombing, The New York Times reported: "American forces have mistakenly hit a residential area in Kabul." Twice, U.S. planes bombed Red Cross warehouses, and a Red Cross spokesman said: "Now we've got 55,000 people without that food or blankets, with nothing at all."
An Afghan elementary school-teacher told a Washington Post reporter at the Pakistan border: "When the bombs fell near my house and my babies started crying, I had no choice but to run away."
A New York Times report: "The Pentagon acknowledged that a Navy F/A-18 dropped a 1,000-pound bomb on Sunday near what officials called a center for the elderly. . . . The United Nations said the building was a military hospital. . . . Several hours later, a Navy F-14 dropped two 500-pound bombs on a residential area northwest of Kabul." A U.N. official told a New York Times reporter that an American bombing raid on the city of Herat had used cluster bombs, which spread deadly "bomblets" over an area of twenty football fields. This, the Times reporter wrote,"was the latest of a growing number of accounts of American bombs going astray and causing civilian casualties."
An A.P. reporter was brought to Karam, a small mountain village hit by American bombs, and saw houses reduced to rubble. "In the hospital in Jalalabad, twenty-five miles to the east, doctors treated what they said were twenty-three victims of bombing at Karam, one a child barely two months old, swathed in bloody bandages," according to the account. "Another child, neighbors said, was in the hospital because the bombing raid had killed her entire family. At least eighteen fresh graves were scattered around the village."
The city of Kandahar, attacked for seventeen straight days, was reported to be a ghost town, with more than half of its 500,000 people fleeing the bombs. The city's electrical grid had been knocked out. The city was deprived of water, since the electrical pumps could not operate. A sixty-year-old farmer told the A.P. reporter, "We left in fear of our lives. Every day and every night, we hear the roaring and roaring of planes, we see the smoke, the fire. . . . I curse them both--the Taliban and America."
A New York Times report from Pakistan two weeks into the bombing campaign told of wounded civilians coming across the border. "Every half-hour or so throughout the day, someone was brought across on a stretcher. . . . Most were bomb victims, missing limbs or punctured by shrapnel. . . . A young boy, his head and one leg wrapped in bloodied bandages, clung to his father's back as the old man trudged back to Afghanistan."
That was only a few weeks into the bombing, and the result had already been to frighten hundreds of thousands of Afghans into abandoning their homes and taking to the dangerous, mine-strewn roads. The "war against terrorism" has become a war against innocent men, women, and children, who are in no way responsible for the terrorist attack on New York.
And yet there are those who say this is a "just war."
Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end. I can see an immediate objection to this equation: They (the terrorists) deliberately kill innocent people; we (the war makers) aim at "military targets," and civilians are killed by accident, as "collateral damage."
Is it really an accident when civilians die under our bombs? Even if you grant that the intention is not to kill civilians, if they nevertheless become victims, again and again and again, can that be called an accident? If the deaths of civilians are inevitable in bombing, it may not be deliberate, but it is not an accident, and the bombers cannot be considered innocent. They are committing murder as surely as are the terrorists.
The absurdity of claiming innocence in such cases becomes apparent when the death tolls from "collateral damage" reach figures far greater than the lists of the dead from even the most awful act of terrorism. Thus, the "collateral damage" in the Gulf War caused more people to die--hundreds of thousands, if you include the victims of our sanctions policy--than the very deliberate terrorist attack of September 11. The total of those who have died in Israel from Palestinian terrorist bombs is somewhere under 1,000. The number of dead from "collateral damage" in the bombing of Beirut during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 was roughly 6,000.
We must not match the death lists--it is an ugly exercise--as if one atrocity is worse than another. No killing of innocents, whether deliberate or "accidental," can be justified. My argument is that when children die at the hands of terrorists, or--whether intended or not--as a result of bombs dropped from airplanes, terrorism and war become equally unpardonable.
Let's talk about "military targets." The phrase is so loose that President Truman, after the nuclear bomb obliterated the population of Hiroshima, could say: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
What we are hearing now from our political leaders is, "We are targeting military objectives. We are trying to avoid killing civilians. But that will happen, and we regret it." Shall the American people take moral comfort from the thought that we are bombing only "military targets"?
The reality is that the term "military" covers all sorts of targets that include civilian populations. When our bombers deliberately destroy, as they did in the war against Iraq, the electrical infrastructure, thus making water purification and sewage treatment plants inoperable and leading to epidemic waterborne diseases, the deaths of children and other civilians cannot be called accidental.
Recall that in the midst of the Gulf War, the U.S. military bombed an air raid shelter, killing 400 to 500 men, women, and children who were huddled to escape bombs. The claim was that it was a military target, housing a communications center, but reporters going through the ruins immediately afterward said there was no sign of anything like that.
I suggest that the history of bombing--and no one has bombed more than this nation--is a history of endless atrocities, all calmly explained by deceptive and deadly language like "accident," "military targets," and "collateral damage."
Indeed, in both World War II and in Vietnam, the historical record shows that there was a deliberate decision to target civilians in order to destroy the morale of the enemy--hence the firebombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, the B-52s over Hanoi, the jet bombers over peaceful villages in the Vietnam countryside. When some argue that we can engage in "limited military action" without "an excessive use of force," they are ignoring the history of bombing. The momentum of war rides roughshod over limits.
The moral equation in Afghanistan is clear. Civilian casualties are certain. The outcome is uncertain. No one knows what this bombing will accomplish--whether it will lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden (perhaps), or the end of the Taliban (possibly), or a democratic Afghanistan (very unlikely), or an end to terrorism (almost certainly not).
And meanwhile, we are terrorizing the population (not the terrorists, they are not easily terrorized). Hundreds of thousands are packing their belongings and their children onto carts and leaving their homes to make dangerous journeys to places they think might be more safe.
Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a "war against terrorism."
We might examine the idea of pacifism in the light of what is going on right now. I have never used the word "pacifist" to describe myself, because it suggests something absolute, and I am suspicious of absolutes. I want to leave openings for unpredictable possibilities. There might be situations (and even such strong pacifists as Gandhi and Martin Luther King believed this) when a small, focused act of violence against a monstrous, immediate evil would be justified.
In war, however, the proportion of means to ends is very, very different. War, by its nature, is unfocused, indiscriminate, and especially in our time when the technology is so murderous, inevitably involves the deaths of large numbers of people and the suffering of even more. Even in the "small wars" (Iran vs. Iraq, the Nigerian war, the Afghan war), a million people die. Even in a "tiny" war like the one we waged in Panama, a thousand or more die.
Scott Simon of NPR wrote a commentary in The Wall Street Journal on October 11 entitled, "Even Pacifists Must Support This War." He tried to use the pacifist acceptance of self-defense, which approves a focused resistance to an immediate attacker, to justify this war, which he claims is "self-defense." But the term "self-defense" does not apply when you drop bombs all over a country and kill lots of people other than your attacker. And it doesn't apply when there is no likelihood that it will achieve its desired end.
Pacifism, which I define as a rejection of war, rests on a very powerful logic. In war, the means--indiscriminate killing--are immediate and certain; the ends, however desirable, are distant and uncertain.
Pacifism does not mean "appeasement." That word is often hurled at those who condemn the present war on Afghanistan, and it is accompanied by references to Churchill, Chamberlain, Munich. World War II analogies are conveniently summoned forth when there is a need to justify a war, however irrelevant to a particular situation. At the suggestion that we withdraw from Vietnam, or not make war on Iraq, the word "appeasement" was bandied about. The glow of the "good war" has repeatedly been used to obscure the nature of all the bad wars we have fought since 1945.
Let's examine that analogy. Czechoslovakia was handed to the voracious Hitler to "appease" him. Germany was an aggressive nation expanding its power, and to help it in its expansion was not wise. But today we do not face an expansionist power that demands to be appeased. We ourselves are the expansionist power--troops in Saudi Arabia, bombings of Iraq, military bases all over the world, naval vessels on every sea--and that, along with Israel's expansion into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has aroused anger.
It was wrong to give up Czechoslovakia to appease Hitler. It is not wrong to withdraw our military from the Middle East, or for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, because there is no right to be there. That is not appeasement. That is justice.
Opposing the bombing of Afghanistan does not constitute "giving in to terrorism" or "appeasement." It asks that other means be found than war to solve the problems that confront us. King and Gandhi both believed in action--nonviolent direct action, which is more powerful and certainly more morally defensible than war.
To reject war is not to "turn the other cheek," as pacifism has been caricatured. It is, in the present instance, to act in ways that do not imitate the terrorists.
The United States could have treated the September 11 attack as a horrific criminal act that calls for apprehending the culprits, using every device of intelligence and investigation possible. It could have gone to the United Nations to enlist the aid of other countries in the pursuit and apprehension of the terrorists.
There was also the avenue of negotiations. (And let's not hear: "What? Negotiate with those monsters?" The United States negotiated with--indeed, brought into power and kept in power--some of the most monstrous governments in the world.) Before Bush ordered in the bombers, the Taliban offered to put bin Laden on trial. This was ignored. After ten days of air attacks, when the Taliban called for a halt to the bombing and said they would be willing to talk about handing bin Laden to a third country for trial, the headline the next day in The New York Times read: "President Rejects Offer by Taliban for Negotiations," and Bush was quoted as saying: "When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations."
That is the behavior of someone hellbent on war. There were similar rejections of negotiating possibilities at the start of the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the bombing of Yugoslavia. The result was an immense loss of life and incalculable human suffering.
International police work and negotiations were--still are--alternatives to war. But let's not deceive ourselves; even if we succeeded in apprehending bin Laden or, as is unlikely, destroying the entire Al Qaeda network, that would not end the threat of terrorism, which has potential recruits far beyond Al Qaeda.
To get at the roots of terrorism is complicated. Dropping bombs is simple. It is an old response to what everyone acknowledges is a very new situation. At the core of unspeakable and unjustifiable acts of terrorism are justified grievances felt by millions of people who would not themselves engage in terrorism but from whose ranks terrorists spring.
Those grievances are of two kinds: the existence of profound misery-- hunger, illness--in much of the world, contrasted to the wealth and luxury of the West, especially the United States; and the presence of American military power everywhere in the world, propping up oppressive regimes and repeatedly intervening with force to maintain U.S. hegemony.
This suggests actions that not only deal with the long-term problem of terrorism but are in themselves just.
Instead of using two planes a day to drop food on Afghanistan and 100 planes to drop bombs (which have been making it difficult for the trucks of the international agencies to bring in food), use 102 planes to bring food.
Take the money allocated for our huge military machine and use it to combat starvation and disease around the world. One-third of our military budget would annually provide clean water and sanitation facilities for the billion people in the world who have none.
Withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia, because their presence near the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina angers not just bin Laden (we need not care about angering him) but huge numbers of Arabs who are not terrorists.
Stop the cruel sanctions on Iraq, which are killing more than a thousand children every week without doing anything to weaken Saddam Hussein's tyrannical hold over the country.
Insist that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, something that many Israelis also think is right, and which will make Israel more secure than it is now.
In short, let us pull back from being a military superpower, and become a humanitarian superpower.
Let us be a more modest nation. We will then be more secure. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism.
Such a fundamental change in foreign policy is hardly to be expected. It would threaten too many interests: the power of political leaders, the ambitions of the military, the corporations that profit from the nation's enormous military commitments.
Change will come, as at other times in our history, only when American citizens-- becoming better informed, having second thoughts after the first instinctive support for official policy--demand it. That change in citizen opinion, especially if it coincides with a pragmatic decision by the government that its violence isn't working, could bring about a retreat from the military solution.
It might also be a first step in the rethinking of our nation's role in the world. Such a rethinking contains the promise, for Americans, of genuine security, and for people elsewhere, the beginning of hope.
Eve Tetaz, long-time D.C. activist, profiled in Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/25/AR2010012502341_pf.html
At 78 years, lifelong protester racks up convictions, marches on
By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 25, 2010; 3:03 PM
It's a familiar scene for Eve Tetaz. She sits in the cold, damp holding cell, crammed together with other women. Some, like her, were arrested for protesting. Others are locked up for drugs, assault or prostitution.
The other women in the D.C. jail affectionately call her grandma. Her cellmates, or as she calls them, her "sisters in chains," let her sleep on the bottom bunk so the 78-year-old doesn't have to climb to the top. Instead of letting her stand in line to get her jail-issued bologna or cheese sandwiches, many of the women bring them to her.
"These are women I probably even wouldn't see passing on the street.
They are very gracious to me," Tetaz says.
With her white hair and black glasses, Tetaz is a familiar figure to the Capitol police and at the courthouse. Since 2005, court records show, she has been arrested 20 times and convicted 14 times of various offenses, including unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct, contempt and crossing a police line. As she and other demonstrators march around various parts of the District, from the White House to the Supreme Court to the Capitol, her protests center around the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Most District judges who have heard her cases either dismissed them with a citation or fine or sentenced her to time served, usually one or two days in jail, and sent her home. But her repeated arrests have left prosecutors and some D.C. Superior Court judges exasperated.
Last Thursday, just days before a D.C. Superior Court judge was scheduled to sentence her in another case, Tetaz picked up her 21st arrest when she and about 40 other protesters were charged in a war demonstration on the Capitol grounds. A hearing was scheduled for March.
On Monday, an obviously frustrated Judge Lynn Leibovitz sentenced Tetaz to 25 days in jail and placed her on probation for a year after a jury found her guilty of disorderly conduct in October. Prosecutors say Tetaz and at least three other demonstrators attended a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing May 21, stood up as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) began to speak and yelled out: "No more blood money. Stop the war." Police said Tetaz and the other protesters then threw dollar bills into the aisle of the Senate chamber. The money had been covered in Tetaz's blood as well as the blood of the other demonstrators, drawn from each by a physician friend.
Standing next to Jack Baringer, her court-appointed attorney, and wearing a T-shirt that read, "I'm not disturbing the peace, I'm disturbing the war," Tetaz often smiled as Leibovitz criticized her decision to disrupt a Senate speech and pass out blood-tainted dollars. The move, Leibovitz said, "demeaned the action of protest" and bordered on assault. "Ms. Tetaz has repeatedly over time ignored court orders and our laws," the judge added. She sentenced Tetaz to
75 days in jail, but suspended 50 days -- unless Tetaz is arrested again while on probation over the next 18 months.
Tetaz, whose supporters in the audience risked being kicked out of the courtroom for cheering her on, read from a statement, vowing to continue to "give voice" to nonviolent protest. "I believe that nonviolent protest against government policies will continue to be the only authentic form of individual political action," she said.
Just eight months from turning 79, Tetaz is one of the oldest demonstrators of the District- and New York-based group Witness Against Torture. Matthew Daloisio, one of the organizing volunteers, said police, noticing her frailty, often offer Tetaz the option of receiving a citation and release from jail, but she declines, choosing to remain locked up with other demonstrators. "Eve lines up her life with how she thinks the world should be," Daloisio said. "She has a spirit that transcends her age and her physical limitations."
And it is her physical limitations that concern her attorney and family members. She carries bags of medications for glaucoma and heart trouble. She also has leukemia, which doctors said they can treat with medication. Judges must speak loudly or she has to wear headphones to be able to hear the proceedings.
Widowed since 1995 and with no children, Tetaz says she's the perfect demonstrator. She has no responsibilities. She is retired after spending 30 years teaching English in D.C. public schools such as Eastern and Dunbar, as well as a brief time in 1948 when she taught school in Harlem, N.Y.
Protesting isn't new to Tetaz. During the Vietnam War, she and other demonstrators were arrested on the steps of the Capitol. She spent three days in jail.
"It's often the poor, uneducated, inner-city kid who has no other recourse than the streets or the Army. I'm fighting for him," she said, days before Monday's sentencing. "This is a terrible waste."
Tetaz, like many of her fellow demonstrators, is very spiritual. She often speaks of wanting to "follow Jesus" and lives a simple life in an Adams Morgan apartment with her two cats and pet bird. "In everything I do," she said, flashing her large smile, "I want to be a reflection of my faith."
At 78 years, lifelong protester racks up convictions, marches on
By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 25, 2010; 3:03 PM
It's a familiar scene for Eve Tetaz. She sits in the cold, damp holding cell, crammed together with other women. Some, like her, were arrested for protesting. Others are locked up for drugs, assault or prostitution.
The other women in the D.C. jail affectionately call her grandma. Her cellmates, or as she calls them, her "sisters in chains," let her sleep on the bottom bunk so the 78-year-old doesn't have to climb to the top. Instead of letting her stand in line to get her jail-issued bologna or cheese sandwiches, many of the women bring them to her.
"These are women I probably even wouldn't see passing on the street.
They are very gracious to me," Tetaz says.
With her white hair and black glasses, Tetaz is a familiar figure to the Capitol police and at the courthouse. Since 2005, court records show, she has been arrested 20 times and convicted 14 times of various offenses, including unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct, contempt and crossing a police line. As she and other demonstrators march around various parts of the District, from the White House to the Supreme Court to the Capitol, her protests center around the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Most District judges who have heard her cases either dismissed them with a citation or fine or sentenced her to time served, usually one or two days in jail, and sent her home. But her repeated arrests have left prosecutors and some D.C. Superior Court judges exasperated.
Last Thursday, just days before a D.C. Superior Court judge was scheduled to sentence her in another case, Tetaz picked up her 21st arrest when she and about 40 other protesters were charged in a war demonstration on the Capitol grounds. A hearing was scheduled for March.
On Monday, an obviously frustrated Judge Lynn Leibovitz sentenced Tetaz to 25 days in jail and placed her on probation for a year after a jury found her guilty of disorderly conduct in October. Prosecutors say Tetaz and at least three other demonstrators attended a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee hearing May 21, stood up as Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) began to speak and yelled out: "No more blood money. Stop the war." Police said Tetaz and the other protesters then threw dollar bills into the aisle of the Senate chamber. The money had been covered in Tetaz's blood as well as the blood of the other demonstrators, drawn from each by a physician friend.
Standing next to Jack Baringer, her court-appointed attorney, and wearing a T-shirt that read, "I'm not disturbing the peace, I'm disturbing the war," Tetaz often smiled as Leibovitz criticized her decision to disrupt a Senate speech and pass out blood-tainted dollars. The move, Leibovitz said, "demeaned the action of protest" and bordered on assault. "Ms. Tetaz has repeatedly over time ignored court orders and our laws," the judge added. She sentenced Tetaz to
75 days in jail, but suspended 50 days -- unless Tetaz is arrested again while on probation over the next 18 months.
Tetaz, whose supporters in the audience risked being kicked out of the courtroom for cheering her on, read from a statement, vowing to continue to "give voice" to nonviolent protest. "I believe that nonviolent protest against government policies will continue to be the only authentic form of individual political action," she said.
Just eight months from turning 79, Tetaz is one of the oldest demonstrators of the District- and New York-based group Witness Against Torture. Matthew Daloisio, one of the organizing volunteers, said police, noticing her frailty, often offer Tetaz the option of receiving a citation and release from jail, but she declines, choosing to remain locked up with other demonstrators. "Eve lines up her life with how she thinks the world should be," Daloisio said. "She has a spirit that transcends her age and her physical limitations."
And it is her physical limitations that concern her attorney and family members. She carries bags of medications for glaucoma and heart trouble. She also has leukemia, which doctors said they can treat with medication. Judges must speak loudly or she has to wear headphones to be able to hear the proceedings.
Widowed since 1995 and with no children, Tetaz says she's the perfect demonstrator. She has no responsibilities. She is retired after spending 30 years teaching English in D.C. public schools such as Eastern and Dunbar, as well as a brief time in 1948 when she taught school in Harlem, N.Y.
Protesting isn't new to Tetaz. During the Vietnam War, she and other demonstrators were arrested on the steps of the Capitol. She spent three days in jail.
"It's often the poor, uneducated, inner-city kid who has no other recourse than the streets or the Army. I'm fighting for him," she said, days before Monday's sentencing. "This is a terrible waste."
Tetaz, like many of her fellow demonstrators, is very spiritual. She often speaks of wanting to "follow Jesus" and lives a simple life in an Adams Morgan apartment with her two cats and pet bird. "In everything I do," she said, flashing her large smile, "I want to be a reflection of my faith."
Roberto Zamora, Costa Rican Hero
Roberto Zamora on Disarmament for Peace
Submitted by Lisa on Thu, 12/11/2009 - 14:27
Mexico’s Historic Center was the venue for this year’s UN DPI/NGO Conference. For the second time in history, the conference took place out of New York (last year it took place in Paris), and on this occasion, extensively covered the issue of disarmament as a way to achieve peace and development. As a matter of fact, more than a way to peace, disarmament is a requirement in order to achieve it.
Nevertheless, I believe the conference made a stalwart choice to focus on an issue currently so important. Since the end of WWII, military expansionism unveiled itself as obsolete and unsuitable for the new world stage. Meanwhile, military growth skyrocketed with the upcoming of the “cold war” and the struggle for supreme and sovereign power, raising military expenditure to absurd figures: 1.3 trillion dollars for 2007. About twentyfold the amount needed to achieve the millennium development goals for 2006. Disarmament is indeed an important contribution to peace and development.
In my home country of Costa Rica, 1948 saw a domestic revolution. Following this an Assembly was called upon to create a new constitution. This modern constitution established in article 12 the abolishment of the army as a permanent institution in the country. The funds usually wasted in military expenditures were reallocated and reinvested in education and health care. As a result, the Human Development Index (HDI) in Costa Rica skyrocketed, and not because the country got wealthier, but because the money was invested in the human needs that are essential for development – those which lead to peace. The country is now well known around the world for its maintained healthy environment and peaceful way of life, as it continuously scores high ranking countries for HDI indexes, among rich and better organized societies.
Having said this, I believe it was an accurate choice to have a Costa Rican deliver the keynote speech at the closing ceremony of the conference. What was surprising was the decision of the committee to invite me as speaker, being the youngest of all guest speakers at the conference.
Not that I’m not aware of my accomplishments, just because I see nothing extraordinary about them. I was at the University of Costa Rica in my second year of Law when war broke out in Iraq. When Costa Rica announced their support for the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq invasion, I sued. When I won, the support for the war was withdrawn. When President and Nobel Peace Laureate Arias allowed the manufacturing of nuclear fuel and reactors for war purposes, I sued again. When I won this case it spurred the Supreme Court into action, widening the prohibitions related to weapons derived from our national peace commitments and international obligations. I do see peace in a very special way, but I don’t think of that way as unique… any Costa Rican with a knowledge of history, love for their country and understanding of the privileges of our condition is capable of reaching the same conclusions given the time and conditions to reflect on the issue.
Reflecting on the conference, I must say that while it unveiled the evils of weapons, military and so on, it failed to adequately link military and armaments with the current environmental issue. In my particular case, I have to be honest and say that I’ve gone through a transformation process. Not being an environmentalist or ecologist myself, I came into peace affairs and the more I learned and understood about peace; the greater my attraction to nature; its importance in relation to keeping the peace and the need for peace for its protection.
There’s nothing as destructive to nature as armed conflict.
Costa Rica’s Supreme Court was aware of this, and when delivering on the nuclear reactors case, it ruled that weapons and substances with uncontrolled areas of damage are illegal in the country due to the possibility of environmental harm: a great achievement indeed.
The Conference gathered people from more than 60 countries and hundreds of NGOs. Its general outcome was positive and the events were filled with important facts and information. I had the honor of closing the event, for some reason people felt astonishment in hearing the “truth withheld among the words”, but I don’t see in them anything newsworthy. I do not intend to impose my opinions onto anybody, but to make evident the truth that weapons and militarism have no room in a developed world. I closed the conference with the following words:
“This year’s conference focused on world disarmament as a way to achieve peace and development. Coming from Costa Rica, I’m a witness that disarmament is one of the paths to peace and development.
We live in a time when resources are enough but distribution is deficient, wealth is wasted in weapons valued as much as some small countries debts, while human priorities, worthy of worldwide efforts, remain pending solution.
The world armament reality alarmingly highlights to us two sides of the situation. On one side, the situation of underdevelopment creates social and living conditions where peace is an unreachable dream due to situations of dreadful misery and want. On the other hand, world powers are aiming to secure a bigger share of the world’s wealth in order to secure the expense resulting from military protection of their power … ironically, in a world that has proven unable to keep up militaristic policies as cornerstones of international relations.
All the aforementioned is clearly a reflex of both our incapacity and reticence to deliver an end to a couple of old rusty problems. Specifically I am referring to the ‘rule of law’ and the proliferation of small weapons, and to the reduction of military expenditures through the production and commercialization of weapons in and from developing states. The role of neutral states must be highlighted however since those who have acquired a condition of neutrality cannot produce weapons for foreign country use.
Concerning the rule of law
The creation of the UN and the establishment of its Charter as a form of supreme international rule appeared to mark the definite start of a new era in international relations and international law, aimed at realizing, through peaceful means for dispute settlement, the so long desired international peace and stability.
The idea was to materialize all the achievements in International Law into reality with a framework that would allow the purposes of the Charter. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal would be truncated due to many reasons, two in particular. First, the immoral, unjust and arbitrary Veto Power belonging to the Permanent Members of the Security Council. As long as the Stalinist veto exists, the rule of law will never find ruling or create lawful conduct and international democracy will never be achieved. Second, State breaches of International Law. We have seen time and again, how States go their own way, openly disobeying International Resolutions and avoiding Jurisdiction of International Courts. Treaties and Resolutions are violated without any existing mechanism of enforcement that will revert the lack of will to honor acquired binds. Maybe it’s time to make use of articles 5 and 6 of the UN charter. It is compulsory to suspend or expel from the UN all those States who disrespect the Charters. It is inexorable to take the UN out of the US.
Initiatives towards stricter and stronger regimes concerning weapons control are worthy of support, yet, it has to be said that the effort would be fruitless if we keep holding our struggle without the creation of mechanisms to enforce the legal framework, both at a domestic and international levels.
Domestically, it’s important to support the initiative to establish peace enforcing constitutions as a way to prevent armed conflicts. For that to occur, there must be a judicial system that will grant respect for constitutional principles, just as happened in the case of Costa Rica where the Peace Constitution and the UN Charter were used before the Supreme Court to invalidate the support given by the Costa Rican government to the Coalition that invaded Iraq. Since 1948, Costa Rica abolished the army and bid on human development investment, raising into one of the poor countries with better HDI. Indeed, Costa Ricans are witness to disarmament’s contribution to peace and development.
At the international level, the Rule of Law must be re-established as a guiding principle of international obligations, forcing States to found through the UN, all the necessary mechanisms to give effectiveness to International obligations freely acquired. Those concerning weapons would require special obligation, aiding reforms to be designed in the pursuit of a real right to peace. This is longing to become a convention.
I don’t know how many treaties we need to simply disarm. The worst part of it is that we err by specifying… we go against biological, against chemical, against nuclear, against cluster… can’t we just go against weapons?! ALL weapons must be eliminated. Saying this, and without setting aside the human rights violations that President Arias commits to within Costa Rica, I believe it important to support initiatives favoring social investment over military expenditure, just as the model for the “Costa Rica Consensus” promotes. This initiative must be analyzed, completed and supported.
At this point, it is important to stress the absurdity of small armies. What do small countries, like Central Americans, gain by having armies? Who are they going to fight, if their offensive potential is ridiculous? Military coups are what small armies are for. The elected Honduras’ president is still in exile due to small armies
About small arms and the civil arms race
The second problem pending solution is that referred to the constant rise in civil arming. Some 1134 companies in 98 countries produce the weapons that kill our civilians, both in developed as well as in developing countries, both in conflict zones as in “peaceful” areas. Civilians own at least 380 million guns… legally. Worse that that, 80% of the weapons produced by these companies are bought every year by civilians – a situation that exposes a broad market that will keep growing unless we change. Unless we change, today’s kids, our children, will become tomorrow’s murderers.
WE must call upon our Governments to improve domestic civilian security, preventing people accessing weapons to “protect” themselves. Maybe, just maybe, if the States invested some of the money wasted on military and domestic security, people could use those resources for properly prioritized needs, in some places, essentials as basic as food and water.
Domestic civilian security is a DUTY of all governments towards their citizens. An effective state security policy would make possible the call to civilians to get rid of weapons. It is evident that to solve the problem the root causes must be addressed and here is where we can see the real dimension and effects of governments deficiencies in the fulfillment of their natural obligations in terms of health, education, wealth distribution, housing, water, environmental protection, and so on.
Finally it is necessary to strengthen and augment the requirements and controls for the possession of guns and ammunition. It’s completely unacceptable that in the dawn of the 21st century, it was possible in countries like Uganda, to trade AK-47 machine guns for the price of a whole chicken. Recalling our point concerning mechanisms for law enforcement, it is important to call upon the states to join the Arms Trade Treaty process, but at the same time, call upon the governments to impose production quotas, raise costs and taxes, and make guns difficult to access for civilians. It also has to be called upon the UN to enforce weapons embargoes, since its breach feeds illicit trafficking, weapons always ending up in the wrong hands.
The problem is not the amount of weapons nor the money wasted on them. The problem is guns themselves.
The problem is not what the law says; the problem is what is done with the law. The five permanent members of the Security Council are the biggest weapons producers…. How can it be that Permanent Members are the countries that produce the guns that destroy international peace and security? What authority do they have to decide on peace and international stability if they ground their international policy on the constant threat of the use of force by the establishment of military bases all over the world and by possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction? Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia are at the edge of a war due to the US bases in Colombia. What do the US need military bases on the continent for?
Maybe we should look back at the Security Council and revise it’s written role as well as its practical role.
About gun production in developing countries (BTW, aren’t all the countries… developing?)
Finally and to bring my words to an end, I believe it superbly important to call attention to a new threat that might scramble our efforts for military reduction and weapons eradication.
The weapons industry is a highly lucrative activity. Like many other industries, the guns industry is facing the challenge of an economical crisis, thus, they are looking for a mechanism to produce their product cheaper.
Growing and constant bellicose clashes that we see year after year, which are denounced and exposed by NGOs and their work, have the atrocity of world in which we live in exposed to the global society. This has created consciousness for the urgent need to abolish war and weapons now.
Civil society actions have forced governments to look back at resource allocation, calling of the ridiculously minute sums granted to human rights when compared to the exorbitant abundance placed in military and violence.
Evidently, before reducing the amount of force bought every year, states and governments will be looking forward to buying the same amount of weapons for cheaper. The same force for less money. This is the dangerous situation that we must stop before it begins.
Just as many companies moved their plants to developing countries, in order to produce cheaper weaponry by paying unjust wages. The weapons industry is already looking for places to produce high tech weapons at reduced costs. Alarming but true is the case for Costa Rica. Costa Rica was the only Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) signing country that included in its lists weapons and war machinery. If chipset giant INTEL and other high tech companies have moved their operations to this country, due to its peace and human resource… why wouldn’t these war industries also move to Costa Rica? Raytheon Company has already bought five hectares in the country. Unluckily for them, President Arias’ authorization to these companies was declared unconstitutional. I’m sure he’ll try again.
We must prevent small countries under heavy economic pressure and wants from falling victim to this vicious cycle and becoming producers and suppliers of weapons for those countries with economic power. We must avoid and prevent the establishment and creation of military sweat-shops. For this it is fundamental to start a process for the creation of international instruments that will prohibit states in the production of weapons or machinery that they cannot have for their own military. We must avoid armament to become a development model for developing countries.
As fundamental as it is to attack current problems it is equally important to prevent future situations that will threaten or destroy peace.
I would like bring this speech to close by congratulating and thanking both organizers and all the participant for making a conference on the truth behind the issues possible. The importance of this could not be emphasized enough. Debates, ideas and contacts made here are essential for the creation of actions and proposals that will bring us closer to the peaceful world that we imagine. Thank you very much.”
Of course, the Conference covered a broader array of topics that were not mentioned in the speech, like toys, television, victim relief, amnesties, and so on. All of the issues touched at this conference are fundamental and urgent.
We need to start thinking.
We need to realize the truths and act upon them, since one of those truths is, as things are and seem to be, our own extinction. I don’t’ think we can have a closer connection between offensive power and nature. Unfortunately they relate in a reversely proportionate relationship.
The bigger the offensive power we have, the bigger the threat to the environment. The bigger the power we use, the bigger the harm we do to nature and in it, ourselves.
Submitted by Lisa on Thu, 12/11/2009 - 14:27
Mexico’s Historic Center was the venue for this year’s UN DPI/NGO Conference. For the second time in history, the conference took place out of New York (last year it took place in Paris), and on this occasion, extensively covered the issue of disarmament as a way to achieve peace and development. As a matter of fact, more than a way to peace, disarmament is a requirement in order to achieve it.
Nevertheless, I believe the conference made a stalwart choice to focus on an issue currently so important. Since the end of WWII, military expansionism unveiled itself as obsolete and unsuitable for the new world stage. Meanwhile, military growth skyrocketed with the upcoming of the “cold war” and the struggle for supreme and sovereign power, raising military expenditure to absurd figures: 1.3 trillion dollars for 2007. About twentyfold the amount needed to achieve the millennium development goals for 2006. Disarmament is indeed an important contribution to peace and development.
In my home country of Costa Rica, 1948 saw a domestic revolution. Following this an Assembly was called upon to create a new constitution. This modern constitution established in article 12 the abolishment of the army as a permanent institution in the country. The funds usually wasted in military expenditures were reallocated and reinvested in education and health care. As a result, the Human Development Index (HDI) in Costa Rica skyrocketed, and not because the country got wealthier, but because the money was invested in the human needs that are essential for development – those which lead to peace. The country is now well known around the world for its maintained healthy environment and peaceful way of life, as it continuously scores high ranking countries for HDI indexes, among rich and better organized societies.
Having said this, I believe it was an accurate choice to have a Costa Rican deliver the keynote speech at the closing ceremony of the conference. What was surprising was the decision of the committee to invite me as speaker, being the youngest of all guest speakers at the conference.
Not that I’m not aware of my accomplishments, just because I see nothing extraordinary about them. I was at the University of Costa Rica in my second year of Law when war broke out in Iraq. When Costa Rica announced their support for the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq invasion, I sued. When I won, the support for the war was withdrawn. When President and Nobel Peace Laureate Arias allowed the manufacturing of nuclear fuel and reactors for war purposes, I sued again. When I won this case it spurred the Supreme Court into action, widening the prohibitions related to weapons derived from our national peace commitments and international obligations. I do see peace in a very special way, but I don’t think of that way as unique… any Costa Rican with a knowledge of history, love for their country and understanding of the privileges of our condition is capable of reaching the same conclusions given the time and conditions to reflect on the issue.
Reflecting on the conference, I must say that while it unveiled the evils of weapons, military and so on, it failed to adequately link military and armaments with the current environmental issue. In my particular case, I have to be honest and say that I’ve gone through a transformation process. Not being an environmentalist or ecologist myself, I came into peace affairs and the more I learned and understood about peace; the greater my attraction to nature; its importance in relation to keeping the peace and the need for peace for its protection.
There’s nothing as destructive to nature as armed conflict.
Costa Rica’s Supreme Court was aware of this, and when delivering on the nuclear reactors case, it ruled that weapons and substances with uncontrolled areas of damage are illegal in the country due to the possibility of environmental harm: a great achievement indeed.
The Conference gathered people from more than 60 countries and hundreds of NGOs. Its general outcome was positive and the events were filled with important facts and information. I had the honor of closing the event, for some reason people felt astonishment in hearing the “truth withheld among the words”, but I don’t see in them anything newsworthy. I do not intend to impose my opinions onto anybody, but to make evident the truth that weapons and militarism have no room in a developed world. I closed the conference with the following words:
“This year’s conference focused on world disarmament as a way to achieve peace and development. Coming from Costa Rica, I’m a witness that disarmament is one of the paths to peace and development.
We live in a time when resources are enough but distribution is deficient, wealth is wasted in weapons valued as much as some small countries debts, while human priorities, worthy of worldwide efforts, remain pending solution.
The world armament reality alarmingly highlights to us two sides of the situation. On one side, the situation of underdevelopment creates social and living conditions where peace is an unreachable dream due to situations of dreadful misery and want. On the other hand, world powers are aiming to secure a bigger share of the world’s wealth in order to secure the expense resulting from military protection of their power … ironically, in a world that has proven unable to keep up militaristic policies as cornerstones of international relations.
All the aforementioned is clearly a reflex of both our incapacity and reticence to deliver an end to a couple of old rusty problems. Specifically I am referring to the ‘rule of law’ and the proliferation of small weapons, and to the reduction of military expenditures through the production and commercialization of weapons in and from developing states. The role of neutral states must be highlighted however since those who have acquired a condition of neutrality cannot produce weapons for foreign country use.
Concerning the rule of law
The creation of the UN and the establishment of its Charter as a form of supreme international rule appeared to mark the definite start of a new era in international relations and international law, aimed at realizing, through peaceful means for dispute settlement, the so long desired international peace and stability.
The idea was to materialize all the achievements in International Law into reality with a framework that would allow the purposes of the Charter. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal would be truncated due to many reasons, two in particular. First, the immoral, unjust and arbitrary Veto Power belonging to the Permanent Members of the Security Council. As long as the Stalinist veto exists, the rule of law will never find ruling or create lawful conduct and international democracy will never be achieved. Second, State breaches of International Law. We have seen time and again, how States go their own way, openly disobeying International Resolutions and avoiding Jurisdiction of International Courts. Treaties and Resolutions are violated without any existing mechanism of enforcement that will revert the lack of will to honor acquired binds. Maybe it’s time to make use of articles 5 and 6 of the UN charter. It is compulsory to suspend or expel from the UN all those States who disrespect the Charters. It is inexorable to take the UN out of the US.
Initiatives towards stricter and stronger regimes concerning weapons control are worthy of support, yet, it has to be said that the effort would be fruitless if we keep holding our struggle without the creation of mechanisms to enforce the legal framework, both at a domestic and international levels.
Domestically, it’s important to support the initiative to establish peace enforcing constitutions as a way to prevent armed conflicts. For that to occur, there must be a judicial system that will grant respect for constitutional principles, just as happened in the case of Costa Rica where the Peace Constitution and the UN Charter were used before the Supreme Court to invalidate the support given by the Costa Rican government to the Coalition that invaded Iraq. Since 1948, Costa Rica abolished the army and bid on human development investment, raising into one of the poor countries with better HDI. Indeed, Costa Ricans are witness to disarmament’s contribution to peace and development.
At the international level, the Rule of Law must be re-established as a guiding principle of international obligations, forcing States to found through the UN, all the necessary mechanisms to give effectiveness to International obligations freely acquired. Those concerning weapons would require special obligation, aiding reforms to be designed in the pursuit of a real right to peace. This is longing to become a convention.
I don’t know how many treaties we need to simply disarm. The worst part of it is that we err by specifying… we go against biological, against chemical, against nuclear, against cluster… can’t we just go against weapons?! ALL weapons must be eliminated. Saying this, and without setting aside the human rights violations that President Arias commits to within Costa Rica, I believe it important to support initiatives favoring social investment over military expenditure, just as the model for the “Costa Rica Consensus” promotes. This initiative must be analyzed, completed and supported.
At this point, it is important to stress the absurdity of small armies. What do small countries, like Central Americans, gain by having armies? Who are they going to fight, if their offensive potential is ridiculous? Military coups are what small armies are for. The elected Honduras’ president is still in exile due to small armies
About small arms and the civil arms race
The second problem pending solution is that referred to the constant rise in civil arming. Some 1134 companies in 98 countries produce the weapons that kill our civilians, both in developed as well as in developing countries, both in conflict zones as in “peaceful” areas. Civilians own at least 380 million guns… legally. Worse that that, 80% of the weapons produced by these companies are bought every year by civilians – a situation that exposes a broad market that will keep growing unless we change. Unless we change, today’s kids, our children, will become tomorrow’s murderers.
WE must call upon our Governments to improve domestic civilian security, preventing people accessing weapons to “protect” themselves. Maybe, just maybe, if the States invested some of the money wasted on military and domestic security, people could use those resources for properly prioritized needs, in some places, essentials as basic as food and water.
Domestic civilian security is a DUTY of all governments towards their citizens. An effective state security policy would make possible the call to civilians to get rid of weapons. It is evident that to solve the problem the root causes must be addressed and here is where we can see the real dimension and effects of governments deficiencies in the fulfillment of their natural obligations in terms of health, education, wealth distribution, housing, water, environmental protection, and so on.
Finally it is necessary to strengthen and augment the requirements and controls for the possession of guns and ammunition. It’s completely unacceptable that in the dawn of the 21st century, it was possible in countries like Uganda, to trade AK-47 machine guns for the price of a whole chicken. Recalling our point concerning mechanisms for law enforcement, it is important to call upon the states to join the Arms Trade Treaty process, but at the same time, call upon the governments to impose production quotas, raise costs and taxes, and make guns difficult to access for civilians. It also has to be called upon the UN to enforce weapons embargoes, since its breach feeds illicit trafficking, weapons always ending up in the wrong hands.
The problem is not the amount of weapons nor the money wasted on them. The problem is guns themselves.
The problem is not what the law says; the problem is what is done with the law. The five permanent members of the Security Council are the biggest weapons producers…. How can it be that Permanent Members are the countries that produce the guns that destroy international peace and security? What authority do they have to decide on peace and international stability if they ground their international policy on the constant threat of the use of force by the establishment of military bases all over the world and by possessing Weapons of Mass Destruction? Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia are at the edge of a war due to the US bases in Colombia. What do the US need military bases on the continent for?
Maybe we should look back at the Security Council and revise it’s written role as well as its practical role.
About gun production in developing countries (BTW, aren’t all the countries… developing?)
Finally and to bring my words to an end, I believe it superbly important to call attention to a new threat that might scramble our efforts for military reduction and weapons eradication.
The weapons industry is a highly lucrative activity. Like many other industries, the guns industry is facing the challenge of an economical crisis, thus, they are looking for a mechanism to produce their product cheaper.
Growing and constant bellicose clashes that we see year after year, which are denounced and exposed by NGOs and their work, have the atrocity of world in which we live in exposed to the global society. This has created consciousness for the urgent need to abolish war and weapons now.
Civil society actions have forced governments to look back at resource allocation, calling of the ridiculously minute sums granted to human rights when compared to the exorbitant abundance placed in military and violence.
Evidently, before reducing the amount of force bought every year, states and governments will be looking forward to buying the same amount of weapons for cheaper. The same force for less money. This is the dangerous situation that we must stop before it begins.
Just as many companies moved their plants to developing countries, in order to produce cheaper weaponry by paying unjust wages. The weapons industry is already looking for places to produce high tech weapons at reduced costs. Alarming but true is the case for Costa Rica. Costa Rica was the only Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) signing country that included in its lists weapons and war machinery. If chipset giant INTEL and other high tech companies have moved their operations to this country, due to its peace and human resource… why wouldn’t these war industries also move to Costa Rica? Raytheon Company has already bought five hectares in the country. Unluckily for them, President Arias’ authorization to these companies was declared unconstitutional. I’m sure he’ll try again.
We must prevent small countries under heavy economic pressure and wants from falling victim to this vicious cycle and becoming producers and suppliers of weapons for those countries with economic power. We must avoid and prevent the establishment and creation of military sweat-shops. For this it is fundamental to start a process for the creation of international instruments that will prohibit states in the production of weapons or machinery that they cannot have for their own military. We must avoid armament to become a development model for developing countries.
As fundamental as it is to attack current problems it is equally important to prevent future situations that will threaten or destroy peace.
I would like bring this speech to close by congratulating and thanking both organizers and all the participant for making a conference on the truth behind the issues possible. The importance of this could not be emphasized enough. Debates, ideas and contacts made here are essential for the creation of actions and proposals that will bring us closer to the peaceful world that we imagine. Thank you very much.”
Of course, the Conference covered a broader array of topics that were not mentioned in the speech, like toys, television, victim relief, amnesties, and so on. All of the issues touched at this conference are fundamental and urgent.
We need to start thinking.
We need to realize the truths and act upon them, since one of those truths is, as things are and seem to be, our own extinction. I don’t’ think we can have a closer connection between offensive power and nature. Unfortunately they relate in a reversely proportionate relationship.
The bigger the offensive power we have, the bigger the threat to the environment. The bigger the power we use, the bigger the harm we do to nature and in it, ourselves.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Howard Zinn 1922-2010
Please read the following obituary, read all of his books, and watch all of his movies. This man was one of a kind, and the nation is in poor shape without him.
Toward a New American Peace Movement
January 25 2010
America Needs a Patriotic, Broad-Based and Politically Independent Opposition to War
By Kevin Zeese
In his first year President Obama broke several war-making records of President George W. Bush. He passed the largest military budget in U.S. history, the largest one-year war supplementals and fired the most drone attacks on the most countries. He began 2010 asking for another $30 billion war supplemental and with the White House indicating that the next military budget will be $708 billion, breaking Obama’s previous record.
While some commentators on MSNBC hailed Obama as the peace candidate, he has done more for war in a shorter time than many other commanders-in-chief. U.S. attacks on other countries are not challenged in any serious way even if they result in consistent loss of innocent civilian life. It is not healthy for American democracy to allow unquestioned militarism and put war budgets on a path of automatic growth despite the U.S. spending as much as the rest of the world combined on weapons and war.
Anti-war opposition has failed and needs to begin anew. The peace movement which atrophied during the election year now must re-make itself.
What would successful anti-war peace advocacy look like?
The vast majority of Americans widely opposes war and wants the U.S. to focus its resources at home. Their initial reaction to wars and escalations, before the corporate media spin propagandizes them in a different direction, is to oppose war. But, these views are not reflected in the body politic and certainly not in the DC discourse on war. Rather than anti-war opposition being broad-based, it has been a narrow. It is a leftish movement that does not include Middle America or conservatives who also see the tremendous waste of the bloated military budget and the militarism of U.S. foreign policy.
Being opposed to war is not considered mainsteam in American politics. Opposition to war and support for peace needs to become a perspective that is included in political debate on the media and in the Congress. It is currently excluded. Successful anti-war advocacy needs to be credible and well organized so it cannot be ignored. This begins by recognizing the broad, legitimate opposition to war and the long-term anti-war views of Americans across the political spectrum.
There is a long history of opposition to war among traditional conservatives. Their philosophy goes back to President Washington’s Farewell Address where he urged America to avoid “foreign entanglements.” It has showed itself throughout American history. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed the colonialism of the Philippines in the 1890s. The largest anti-war movement in history, the America First Committee, opposed World War II and had a strong middle America conservative foundation in its make-up. The strongest speech of an American president against militarism was President Eisenhower’s 1961 final speech from the White House warning America against the growing military-industrial complex.
In recent years the militarist neo-conservative movement has become dominate of conservatism in the United States. Perhaps none decry this more than traditional conservatives who oppose massive military budgets, militarism and the American empire. Anti-war conservatives continue to exist, speak out and organize. Much of their thinking can be seen in the American Conservative magazine which has been steadfastly anti-war since its founding in 2002 where their first cover story was entitled “Iraq Folly.”
Of course, the left also has a long history of opposition to war from the Civil War to early imperialism in the Philippines, World Wars I and II through Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes socialists, Quakers, social justice Catholics and progressives. Indeed, the opposition to entry into World War I was led by the left including socialists, trade unionists, pacifists including people like union leader and presidential candidate Eugene Debs, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams and author and political activist Helen Keller. This movement was so strong that Woodrow Wilson ran a campaign to keep the U.S. out of the Great War (but ended up getting the U.S. into the war despite his campaign promises). Opposition to Vietnam brought together peace advocates with the civil rights movement, highlighted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s outspoken opposition to the war.
Uniting anti-war opposition is an urgent initial step to developing strong anti-war, peace advocacy. The cost of U.S. militarism in lives and dollars has become so great that Americans who oppose U.S. militarism need to join together to create an effective opposition to the military industrial complex that profits from war. Yes, there will be disagreements on other issues but when it comes to war and American empire there is broad agreement that needs to be built on.
A successful anti-war peace movement cannot give up the flag of patriotism. It needs to grab hold of America’s patriotic impulses and show the United States can be the nation many imagine us to be – leading by positive example, helping in crisis, being a force for good, rather than propagating military dominance and hegemony. A successful anti-war movement needs to be a place where veterans, from grunts to generals, can openly participate, share their stories and explain the lessons they learned from American militarism. While the left has been able to include the lower level grunts and officers, it has not been a safe haven for generals and admirals who have become opposed to extreme militarism. A safe place, a patriotic, broad-based anti-war movement, will allow more former military to speak out in a cohesive and effective manner.
And, a patriotic anti-war peace movement will also be able to attract the support of business leaders who recognize that war undermines the American economy as well as hurting national security, undermining national and international law and weakening the U.S. economy. When the United States is spending one million dollars per soldier in Afghanistan it is evident to anyone focused on the bottom line that a teetering U.S. economy cannot afford the cost of war.
Indeed, a well organized anti-war movement will have committees not only reaching out to military and business, but to academics, students, clergy, labor, nurses, doctors, teachers and a host of others. Outreach and organization needs to be an ongoing priority. And, organization must be designed around congressional districts so it can have a political impact. This demonstrates one reason for the need for a right left coalition; the anti-war movement cannot allow “red” states or districts to go unorganized.
Successful anti-war advocacy will also need new tactics. The government and media have adjusted to 1960s tactics. Mass marches and disruption of Congress reached all time highs during the build up and fighting of the Iraq war but with little effect. The government has learned how to handle these tactics and avoid media attention. There certainly will continue to be roles for these tactics but they cannot be central and more is needed.
Anti-war advocates need to use voter initiatives and referenda to raise issues that legislators will not confront. This strategy is a way to break though the power of the military industrial complex and bring issues to the people. It forces a public debate and pushes voters to confront how extreme militarism affects their lives. The U.S. has already spent a trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan when care for the wounded and lost productivity is included the cost is more than doubled. In a decades long “Long War” military expenditures will cripple the U.S. economy. Effective opposition to war will show how the cost of war affects every American’s life.
Around the world other tactics have been successfully deployed on issues that U.S. advocates are not well organized enough to deploy. These include general strikes where people take off work for hours or days to send a message that the people are organized in opposition to government policy. Similarly slow downs in the nation’s capitol that bring the business of government to a halt demonstrate that the people will not let the business as usual go on without interruption. We can see the beginnings of such efforts in the U.S. peace movement in Cindy Sheehan’s “Peace of the Action” that recently protested drones at the CIA and seeks to block the business of Empire in the nation’s capitol in 2010.
Finally, and of critical importance, is for the anti-war peace movement to be truly non-partisan and politically independent. Recently peace activists have been drawn into silence when John “Anybody but Bush” Kerry ran a campaign where he called for escalation of the Iraq War and expansion of the military. And, when candidate Obama promised to escalate the Afghanistan war, attack Pakistan, only partially withdraw from Iraq and expand the U.S. military – many in the peace movement remained silent or criticized his policies but promised to support him anyway. The peace movement needs to protest candidates from any party who call for more militarism, larger military budgets and more U.S. troops and demand real anti-war positions for their votes.
Movements cannot stop and start for elections, nor allow party loyalty to divide them. They must continue to build through the election. Indeed, elections can be prime opportunities to build the movement and push candidates toward the anti-war peace perspective. Peace voters must be clear in their demands: end to the current wars, no more wars of aggression and dramatic reductions in the military budget so that it is really a defense budget not a war budget. This does not mean leaving the U.S. weak and unable to defend itself, but it should not be a budget that allows aggressive misuse of the U.S. military as the primary tool of foreign policy.
Developing an effective anti-war peace movement is a big task that will take years. U.S. Empire can be traced back to the late 1800s and President Eisenhower warned America of the military industrial complex fifty years ago. The U.S. is currently engaged in a “Long War” supported by neocons, neo-liberals and corporatist politicians. The pro-militarist establishment has deep roots in both major parties and undoing the military machine will take many years of work. Advocacy against war and militarism needs to be persistent; constantly educating the American public that war undermines national security, weakens the rule of law and contributes to the collapsing economy. We need to show how investment in militarism rather than civil society undermines livability of American communities, weakens the economy and puts basic necessities like education and health care financially out of reach.
The facts are on the side of the anti-war peace advocates, now we must build organizations that represent the patriotic, anti-militarist impulses of the American people.
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace (www.VoterForPeace.US).
America Needs a Patriotic, Broad-Based and Politically Independent Opposition to War
By Kevin Zeese
In his first year President Obama broke several war-making records of President George W. Bush. He passed the largest military budget in U.S. history, the largest one-year war supplementals and fired the most drone attacks on the most countries. He began 2010 asking for another $30 billion war supplemental and with the White House indicating that the next military budget will be $708 billion, breaking Obama’s previous record.
While some commentators on MSNBC hailed Obama as the peace candidate, he has done more for war in a shorter time than many other commanders-in-chief. U.S. attacks on other countries are not challenged in any serious way even if they result in consistent loss of innocent civilian life. It is not healthy for American democracy to allow unquestioned militarism and put war budgets on a path of automatic growth despite the U.S. spending as much as the rest of the world combined on weapons and war.
Anti-war opposition has failed and needs to begin anew. The peace movement which atrophied during the election year now must re-make itself.
What would successful anti-war peace advocacy look like?
The vast majority of Americans widely opposes war and wants the U.S. to focus its resources at home. Their initial reaction to wars and escalations, before the corporate media spin propagandizes them in a different direction, is to oppose war. But, these views are not reflected in the body politic and certainly not in the DC discourse on war. Rather than anti-war opposition being broad-based, it has been a narrow. It is a leftish movement that does not include Middle America or conservatives who also see the tremendous waste of the bloated military budget and the militarism of U.S. foreign policy.
Being opposed to war is not considered mainsteam in American politics. Opposition to war and support for peace needs to become a perspective that is included in political debate on the media and in the Congress. It is currently excluded. Successful anti-war advocacy needs to be credible and well organized so it cannot be ignored. This begins by recognizing the broad, legitimate opposition to war and the long-term anti-war views of Americans across the political spectrum.
There is a long history of opposition to war among traditional conservatives. Their philosophy goes back to President Washington’s Farewell Address where he urged America to avoid “foreign entanglements.” It has showed itself throughout American history. The Anti-Imperialist League opposed the colonialism of the Philippines in the 1890s. The largest anti-war movement in history, the America First Committee, opposed World War II and had a strong middle America conservative foundation in its make-up. The strongest speech of an American president against militarism was President Eisenhower’s 1961 final speech from the White House warning America against the growing military-industrial complex.
In recent years the militarist neo-conservative movement has become dominate of conservatism in the United States. Perhaps none decry this more than traditional conservatives who oppose massive military budgets, militarism and the American empire. Anti-war conservatives continue to exist, speak out and organize. Much of their thinking can be seen in the American Conservative magazine which has been steadfastly anti-war since its founding in 2002 where their first cover story was entitled “Iraq Folly.”
Of course, the left also has a long history of opposition to war from the Civil War to early imperialism in the Philippines, World Wars I and II through Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes socialists, Quakers, social justice Catholics and progressives. Indeed, the opposition to entry into World War I was led by the left including socialists, trade unionists, pacifists including people like union leader and presidential candidate Eugene Debs, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams and author and political activist Helen Keller. This movement was so strong that Woodrow Wilson ran a campaign to keep the U.S. out of the Great War (but ended up getting the U.S. into the war despite his campaign promises). Opposition to Vietnam brought together peace advocates with the civil rights movement, highlighted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s outspoken opposition to the war.
Uniting anti-war opposition is an urgent initial step to developing strong anti-war, peace advocacy. The cost of U.S. militarism in lives and dollars has become so great that Americans who oppose U.S. militarism need to join together to create an effective opposition to the military industrial complex that profits from war. Yes, there will be disagreements on other issues but when it comes to war and American empire there is broad agreement that needs to be built on.
A successful anti-war peace movement cannot give up the flag of patriotism. It needs to grab hold of America’s patriotic impulses and show the United States can be the nation many imagine us to be – leading by positive example, helping in crisis, being a force for good, rather than propagating military dominance and hegemony. A successful anti-war movement needs to be a place where veterans, from grunts to generals, can openly participate, share their stories and explain the lessons they learned from American militarism. While the left has been able to include the lower level grunts and officers, it has not been a safe haven for generals and admirals who have become opposed to extreme militarism. A safe place, a patriotic, broad-based anti-war movement, will allow more former military to speak out in a cohesive and effective manner.
And, a patriotic anti-war peace movement will also be able to attract the support of business leaders who recognize that war undermines the American economy as well as hurting national security, undermining national and international law and weakening the U.S. economy. When the United States is spending one million dollars per soldier in Afghanistan it is evident to anyone focused on the bottom line that a teetering U.S. economy cannot afford the cost of war.
Indeed, a well organized anti-war movement will have committees not only reaching out to military and business, but to academics, students, clergy, labor, nurses, doctors, teachers and a host of others. Outreach and organization needs to be an ongoing priority. And, organization must be designed around congressional districts so it can have a political impact. This demonstrates one reason for the need for a right left coalition; the anti-war movement cannot allow “red” states or districts to go unorganized.
Successful anti-war advocacy will also need new tactics. The government and media have adjusted to 1960s tactics. Mass marches and disruption of Congress reached all time highs during the build up and fighting of the Iraq war but with little effect. The government has learned how to handle these tactics and avoid media attention. There certainly will continue to be roles for these tactics but they cannot be central and more is needed.
Anti-war advocates need to use voter initiatives and referenda to raise issues that legislators will not confront. This strategy is a way to break though the power of the military industrial complex and bring issues to the people. It forces a public debate and pushes voters to confront how extreme militarism affects their lives. The U.S. has already spent a trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan when care for the wounded and lost productivity is included the cost is more than doubled. In a decades long “Long War” military expenditures will cripple the U.S. economy. Effective opposition to war will show how the cost of war affects every American’s life.
Around the world other tactics have been successfully deployed on issues that U.S. advocates are not well organized enough to deploy. These include general strikes where people take off work for hours or days to send a message that the people are organized in opposition to government policy. Similarly slow downs in the nation’s capitol that bring the business of government to a halt demonstrate that the people will not let the business as usual go on without interruption. We can see the beginnings of such efforts in the U.S. peace movement in Cindy Sheehan’s “Peace of the Action” that recently protested drones at the CIA and seeks to block the business of Empire in the nation’s capitol in 2010.
Finally, and of critical importance, is for the anti-war peace movement to be truly non-partisan and politically independent. Recently peace activists have been drawn into silence when John “Anybody but Bush” Kerry ran a campaign where he called for escalation of the Iraq War and expansion of the military. And, when candidate Obama promised to escalate the Afghanistan war, attack Pakistan, only partially withdraw from Iraq and expand the U.S. military – many in the peace movement remained silent or criticized his policies but promised to support him anyway. The peace movement needs to protest candidates from any party who call for more militarism, larger military budgets and more U.S. troops and demand real anti-war positions for their votes.
Movements cannot stop and start for elections, nor allow party loyalty to divide them. They must continue to build through the election. Indeed, elections can be prime opportunities to build the movement and push candidates toward the anti-war peace perspective. Peace voters must be clear in their demands: end to the current wars, no more wars of aggression and dramatic reductions in the military budget so that it is really a defense budget not a war budget. This does not mean leaving the U.S. weak and unable to defend itself, but it should not be a budget that allows aggressive misuse of the U.S. military as the primary tool of foreign policy.
Developing an effective anti-war peace movement is a big task that will take years. U.S. Empire can be traced back to the late 1800s and President Eisenhower warned America of the military industrial complex fifty years ago. The U.S. is currently engaged in a “Long War” supported by neocons, neo-liberals and corporatist politicians. The pro-militarist establishment has deep roots in both major parties and undoing the military machine will take many years of work. Advocacy against war and militarism needs to be persistent; constantly educating the American public that war undermines national security, weakens the rule of law and contributes to the collapsing economy. We need to show how investment in militarism rather than civil society undermines livability of American communities, weakens the economy and puts basic necessities like education and health care financially out of reach.
The facts are on the side of the anti-war peace advocates, now we must build organizations that represent the patriotic, anti-militarist impulses of the American people.
Kevin Zeese is executive director of Voters for Peace (www.VoterForPeace.US).
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