Showing posts with label war and peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war and peace. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2011
Bertrand Russell's Message to the Future
Click here for short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8&feature=player_embedded
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
In a War-Loving Society, Peace Activism Takes a Lot of Guts and Bravery
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522
Monday 30 May 2011
by: Clancy Sigal, Alternet
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -- John F. Kennedy
I lost a friend recently with whom I'd grown up. As adolescents, we'd shared enthusiasms, and death-defying leaps into Lake Michigan off the Adler Planetarium, and chased the same girls. He had a puckish sense of humour, sometimes ghoulish, the kind of stuff you laugh at only when you're 15. He could crick his neck with a loud snap, as if being hanged from a gallows, a party trick that revolted grownups but we thought hilarious. He could pick out a tune on a banjo on first hearing and sing political parodies of pop songs. As we grew up, we shared a history, not only of our acne-scarred, ego-obsessed selves, but something broader and deeper I best call antifascism.
We ran wild in the streets of Chicago itching for showdowns with anyone who disagreed with us - we were young Communist fronters and couldn't wait to enlist or be drafted. In the middle of the second world war, it was patriotic to be a red - "communism is 20th-century Americanism", went the slogan. Passion, not cynicism or detachment, was our deal.
With his death, I've lost a big part of the thread, a connection to the original meaning of things. I'm not alone in this broken thread on Memorial Day.
If you're in the United States while reading this, try a little test: ask someone, anyone, what Memorial Day memorialises? I've queried several friends and none could tell me that Memorial Day, once called "Decoration Day", began in the aftermath of the civil war to honour the more than 600,000 dead Confederate and Union soldiers - the deadliest war in US history.
Once, Memorial Day was a fairly solemn occasion when local communities lowered the courthouse flag to half-mast in salute to the "fallen", with jamboree parades to follow. In the 1960s, Congress changed the date to the last Monday in May so that people might have an extra day off on the weekend. Hence the current barbecues and shopping mall mania - and national amnesia. Except for the boy and girl Scouts, who still place little American flags on grave sites in our veterans' cemeteries, like the one almost within sight of my house, and a few soldiers' and sailors' relatives who come to visit, the original meaning of it has fallen into dust.
Curious, this. Because the publishing industry continues to pump out torrents of civil war books to feed a niche audience with pop biographies of bearded generals and Pickett's charge-type battle studies. Historians continue to debate the core cause of the war, and movies get made like Glory, Gettysburg, Cold Mountain and Robert Redford's recent The Conspirator.
No matter, most of us like to go on a Memorial Day shopping spree, warm up the coals, pull out the cooler and slap shrimp tacos on the broiler.
I don't care how Memorial Day is spent, whether in a relaxed holiday mood or a visit to the dead. I've walked through the military graves at my nearest military graveyard, the 114-acre national cemetery near UCLA with its huge adjacent Veterans Administration hospital and old soldiers' home, full of sick and traumatised ex-combatants, and a homeless encampment of veteranos under the 405 freeway, a grenade's throw away from cemetery where some of their buddies lie under white crosses or stars of David.
Meaning no disrespect, but on this "war heroes' weekend", isn't it time to also honour those who have "fallen" in a different battle - against the slaughtering wars?
Over time, my attitude to conscientious objectors and deserters has shifted. Once, I held them in contempt. But the Vietnam war, when I came into contact with war resisters, changed me. I saw then, and see now, that often it takes a different kind of moral and, yes, even physical courage to resist a call to serve your country in a war you believe is a crime, when all your family, friends, teachers and the vast American majority support joining up. When I was called to my war, I went with shining eyes and revenge in my heart and couldn't wait to get my hands on a .30-calibre machine-gun to wipe out those Nazi bastards.
But what about those "cowards", "traitors" and "slackers" who don't want to kill other people? They're an odd breed who count among their number such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Sergeant York, David Hockney, three US weapon-refusing combat medics who won the medal of honour, and the 27 Israeli air force pilots who refused orders to "track and kill" civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his command - after spending $20bn on an "anti-IED" project - still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)
But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors, whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites or secular, who simply don't want to kill?
On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about the outcasts who refuse to take life.
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522
Monday 30 May 2011
by: Clancy Sigal, Alternet
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. -- John F. Kennedy
I lost a friend recently with whom I'd grown up. As adolescents, we'd shared enthusiasms, and death-defying leaps into Lake Michigan off the Adler Planetarium, and chased the same girls. He had a puckish sense of humour, sometimes ghoulish, the kind of stuff you laugh at only when you're 15. He could crick his neck with a loud snap, as if being hanged from a gallows, a party trick that revolted grownups but we thought hilarious. He could pick out a tune on a banjo on first hearing and sing political parodies of pop songs. As we grew up, we shared a history, not only of our acne-scarred, ego-obsessed selves, but something broader and deeper I best call antifascism.
We ran wild in the streets of Chicago itching for showdowns with anyone who disagreed with us - we were young Communist fronters and couldn't wait to enlist or be drafted. In the middle of the second world war, it was patriotic to be a red - "communism is 20th-century Americanism", went the slogan. Passion, not cynicism or detachment, was our deal.
With his death, I've lost a big part of the thread, a connection to the original meaning of things. I'm not alone in this broken thread on Memorial Day.
If you're in the United States while reading this, try a little test: ask someone, anyone, what Memorial Day memorialises? I've queried several friends and none could tell me that Memorial Day, once called "Decoration Day", began in the aftermath of the civil war to honour the more than 600,000 dead Confederate and Union soldiers - the deadliest war in US history.
Once, Memorial Day was a fairly solemn occasion when local communities lowered the courthouse flag to half-mast in salute to the "fallen", with jamboree parades to follow. In the 1960s, Congress changed the date to the last Monday in May so that people might have an extra day off on the weekend. Hence the current barbecues and shopping mall mania - and national amnesia. Except for the boy and girl Scouts, who still place little American flags on grave sites in our veterans' cemeteries, like the one almost within sight of my house, and a few soldiers' and sailors' relatives who come to visit, the original meaning of it has fallen into dust.
Curious, this. Because the publishing industry continues to pump out torrents of civil war books to feed a niche audience with pop biographies of bearded generals and Pickett's charge-type battle studies. Historians continue to debate the core cause of the war, and movies get made like Glory, Gettysburg, Cold Mountain and Robert Redford's recent The Conspirator.
No matter, most of us like to go on a Memorial Day shopping spree, warm up the coals, pull out the cooler and slap shrimp tacos on the broiler.
I don't care how Memorial Day is spent, whether in a relaxed holiday mood or a visit to the dead. I've walked through the military graves at my nearest military graveyard, the 114-acre national cemetery near UCLA with its huge adjacent Veterans Administration hospital and old soldiers' home, full of sick and traumatised ex-combatants, and a homeless encampment of veteranos under the 405 freeway, a grenade's throw away from cemetery where some of their buddies lie under white crosses or stars of David.
Meaning no disrespect, but on this "war heroes' weekend", isn't it time to also honour those who have "fallen" in a different battle - against the slaughtering wars?
Over time, my attitude to conscientious objectors and deserters has shifted. Once, I held them in contempt. But the Vietnam war, when I came into contact with war resisters, changed me. I saw then, and see now, that often it takes a different kind of moral and, yes, even physical courage to resist a call to serve your country in a war you believe is a crime, when all your family, friends, teachers and the vast American majority support joining up. When I was called to my war, I went with shining eyes and revenge in my heart and couldn't wait to get my hands on a .30-calibre machine-gun to wipe out those Nazi bastards.
But what about those "cowards", "traitors" and "slackers" who don't want to kill other people? They're an odd breed who count among their number such as Muhammad Ali, Mahatma Gandhi, Sergeant York, David Hockney, three US weapon-refusing combat medics who won the medal of honour, and the 27 Israeli air force pilots who refused orders to "track and kill" civilians in Gaza and the West Bank.
I continue to be amazed at the stupendous bravery of any currently serving soldier or marine who goes out on foot patrol in Afghanistan knowing beforehand that his command - after spending $20bn on an "anti-IED" project - still has no clue how to protect him from a cheap roadside bomb that causes 80% of our casualties. (On Wednesday, seven Americans on a single patrol were blown up and killed by an IED in Kandahar province.)
But what kind of guts does it take for war objectors, whether they're Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mennonites or secular, who simply don't want to kill?
On this Memorial Day, it might be a time to think about the outcasts who refuse to take life.
Source: http://www.truth-out.org/war-loving-society-peace-activism-takes-lot-guts-and-bravery/1306771522
Monday, May 30, 2011
Memorial Day, 2011, and Obama’s Selling of War and Empire
By Matthew Rothschild, May 30, 2011
Prepared remarks of Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, for delivery at the Veterans for Peace rally at James Madison Park, Madison, Wisconsin,
I’d like to thank Veterans for Peace for inviting me to speak this Memorial Day, and I’d like to thank you all for coming.
On Memorial Day, it’s customary to honor soldiers who have lost their lives. And so we do so.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to ask what did they lose their lives for, and whom did they lose their lives for.
In almost every war, they did not die for their country. They died for their country’s rulers, the politicians who lie about the real reasons for war.
They died for the corporations that profit from war and for the top 1 percent of Americans who run this country.
They died for a concept, the concept of nationalism, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for an inflated sense of their own country’s mission.
Or they died for the concept of religion, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for a phantom god.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the innocent people killed in our wars.
John Tirman’s new book, The Deaths of Others, tallies them up.
In the Korean War, about three million civilians died.
In the Vietnam War, about three million civilians died.
In Bush’s Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the duped or conscripted soldiers of our so-called enemies. The 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War, for instance, many of whom the United States mowed down in the so-called Turkey Shoot.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor not just war veterans but peace veterans who have lost their lives.
Adam Hochschild’s new book, “To End All Wars,” points out what University of Wisconsin history professor Harvey Goldberg taught us, also: that the real heroes of World War I were not the soldiers but the peace activists, like Bertrand Russell and Eugene Victor Debs.
So today I honor the memory of peace veterans whom I’ve known and who’ve had an influence on me.
I honor Clarence Kailin, veteran of the Abraham Lincoln brigade and longtime Madison peace and justice activist, who is honored in this park.
And today I honor the memory of Sam Day, the great Madison anti-nuclear activist and practitioner of civil disobedience, and Erwin Knoll, my predecessor at The Progressive and a fierce opponent of all war.
And today I honor the memory of Midge Miller, who, by organizing Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, helped bring down LBJ.
And today I honor the memory of Nan Cheney, who helped put together the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
And today, I honor the memory of Linda Farley, who stood for peace and for universal health care.
And today I honor the memory of Ben Masel, who stood for peace, and civil liberties, and the legalization of marijuana.
And in the national peace community, I honor Molly Ivins, who used all of her writing energy while fighting cancer to oppose Bush’s Iraq War.
I honor June Jordan, a warrior for peace.
I honor Andrea Lewis, a peaceful presence behind the mic at KPFA.
I honor, most dearly, Howard Zinn himself.
Please take a moment now to honor the peace activists you have known who are no longer with us. And feel free to shout their names out.
Thank you.
So where are we, this Memorial Day, as a nation?
We’re a nation that is creating more tombstones for next year’s Memorial Day.
We have a President much more adept in the rhetoric of war and more agile in the governing of empire than his gonzo predecessor.
More bombs, less bombast is Obama’s motto.
Obama has just this weekend violated the War Powers Act for the second time with his bombings in Libya.
The first time was by sending bombers there when there was no imminent risk from Libya.
And this second time was by not getting Congressional approval from Congress within 60 days, as required by statute.
He said, on Friday, the 60th day, in a letter to Congress that “it is better” to get Congressional support, but he knew it was too late for that.
And note the phrase “it is better.”
Obama acts as though getting approval from Congress is a mere option, a mere preference, not the law or the Constitution that he’s obliged to follow.
This is the audacity of power.
So that’s Libya, the third war he is waging.
The second is Afghanistan, the war he has escalated by tripling the number of U.S. troops there to 100,000. Already, 1,571 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, and the entire reasons for them being there—to overthrow the Taliban, find bin Laden, and rout Al Qaeda—have been accomplished. But we’re still there because Obama and the Pentagon see the strategic value of a country sandwiched between Iran and China.
The first is still the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of 4,442 of our soldiers and wounded more than 30,000. Today, we still have 50,000 U.S. troops there, and Obama had vowed to bring them home by now and then extended it until the end of this year, and now wants an extension on the extension. Can you say a permanent military presence, anyone?
So he’s started one war, against Libya. He’s escalated another, in Afghanistan. And he hasn’t ended the third in Iraq.
But his rhetoric has been less bellicose than Bush’s, his manner less cowboy.
Obama is a sophisticated warmonger, a smooth manager of the empire.
But like his predecessor, he feeds the American people the drivel that we are the greatest country on Earth with a “special burden” to carry the torch of freedom around the world. Unfortunately, the historical record does not bear that out and many of the graves being visited today are graves of soldiers who went not to fight for freedom but to fight for the U.S. empire.
When he won the Nobel Peace Prize Obama went to Oslo and gave one of the most inappropriate speeches ever delivered at that podium. He used the occasion to justify war. He said war is sometimes necessary “because of the imperfections of man.”
We are here today to say that war is unnecessary.
We are here today to say that wart comes about not because of the imperfections of man but because of the unequal distribution of power and the force of irrational ideas.
We can challenge that unequal distribution of power.
We can combat those irrational ideas.
So that a generation from now, or two generations from now, it won’t be necessary to salute our war dead, but it will be customary to salute our peace activists.
Source: http://www.progressive.org/wx053011.html
Prepared remarks of Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive magazine, for delivery at the Veterans for Peace rally at James Madison Park, Madison, Wisconsin,
I’d like to thank Veterans for Peace for inviting me to speak this Memorial Day, and I’d like to thank you all for coming.
On Memorial Day, it’s customary to honor soldiers who have lost their lives. And so we do so.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to ask what did they lose their lives for, and whom did they lose their lives for.
In almost every war, they did not die for their country. They died for their country’s rulers, the politicians who lie about the real reasons for war.
They died for the corporations that profit from war and for the top 1 percent of Americans who run this country.
They died for a concept, the concept of nationalism, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for an inflated sense of their own country’s mission.
Or they died for the concept of religion, which enables people to kill and to give up their own lives for a phantom god.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the innocent people killed in our wars.
John Tirman’s new book, The Deaths of Others, tallies them up.
In the Korean War, about three million civilians died.
In the Vietnam War, about three million civilians died.
In Bush’s Iraq War, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians died.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor the duped or conscripted soldiers of our so-called enemies. The 100,000 Iraqi soldiers in the first Gulf War, for instance, many of whom the United States mowed down in the so-called Turkey Shoot.
And while it may not be customary, it’s necessary on Memorial Day to honor not just war veterans but peace veterans who have lost their lives.
Adam Hochschild’s new book, “To End All Wars,” points out what University of Wisconsin history professor Harvey Goldberg taught us, also: that the real heroes of World War I were not the soldiers but the peace activists, like Bertrand Russell and Eugene Victor Debs.
So today I honor the memory of peace veterans whom I’ve known and who’ve had an influence on me.
I honor Clarence Kailin, veteran of the Abraham Lincoln brigade and longtime Madison peace and justice activist, who is honored in this park.
And today I honor the memory of Sam Day, the great Madison anti-nuclear activist and practitioner of civil disobedience, and Erwin Knoll, my predecessor at The Progressive and a fierce opponent of all war.
And today I honor the memory of Midge Miller, who, by organizing Eugene McCarthy’s campaign, helped bring down LBJ.
And today I honor the memory of Nan Cheney, who helped put together the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
And today, I honor the memory of Linda Farley, who stood for peace and for universal health care.
And today I honor the memory of Ben Masel, who stood for peace, and civil liberties, and the legalization of marijuana.
And in the national peace community, I honor Molly Ivins, who used all of her writing energy while fighting cancer to oppose Bush’s Iraq War.
I honor June Jordan, a warrior for peace.
I honor Andrea Lewis, a peaceful presence behind the mic at KPFA.
I honor, most dearly, Howard Zinn himself.
Please take a moment now to honor the peace activists you have known who are no longer with us. And feel free to shout their names out.
Thank you.
So where are we, this Memorial Day, as a nation?
We’re a nation that is creating more tombstones for next year’s Memorial Day.
We have a President much more adept in the rhetoric of war and more agile in the governing of empire than his gonzo predecessor.
More bombs, less bombast is Obama’s motto.
Obama has just this weekend violated the War Powers Act for the second time with his bombings in Libya.
The first time was by sending bombers there when there was no imminent risk from Libya.
And this second time was by not getting Congressional approval from Congress within 60 days, as required by statute.
He said, on Friday, the 60th day, in a letter to Congress that “it is better” to get Congressional support, but he knew it was too late for that.
And note the phrase “it is better.”
Obama acts as though getting approval from Congress is a mere option, a mere preference, not the law or the Constitution that he’s obliged to follow.
This is the audacity of power.
So that’s Libya, the third war he is waging.
The second is Afghanistan, the war he has escalated by tripling the number of U.S. troops there to 100,000. Already, 1,571 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, and the entire reasons for them being there—to overthrow the Taliban, find bin Laden, and rout Al Qaeda—have been accomplished. But we’re still there because Obama and the Pentagon see the strategic value of a country sandwiched between Iran and China.
The first is still the war in Iraq, which has taken the lives of 4,442 of our soldiers and wounded more than 30,000. Today, we still have 50,000 U.S. troops there, and Obama had vowed to bring them home by now and then extended it until the end of this year, and now wants an extension on the extension. Can you say a permanent military presence, anyone?
So he’s started one war, against Libya. He’s escalated another, in Afghanistan. And he hasn’t ended the third in Iraq.
But his rhetoric has been less bellicose than Bush’s, his manner less cowboy.
Obama is a sophisticated warmonger, a smooth manager of the empire.
But like his predecessor, he feeds the American people the drivel that we are the greatest country on Earth with a “special burden” to carry the torch of freedom around the world. Unfortunately, the historical record does not bear that out and many of the graves being visited today are graves of soldiers who went not to fight for freedom but to fight for the U.S. empire.
When he won the Nobel Peace Prize Obama went to Oslo and gave one of the most inappropriate speeches ever delivered at that podium. He used the occasion to justify war. He said war is sometimes necessary “because of the imperfections of man.”
We are here today to say that war is unnecessary.
We are here today to say that wart comes about not because of the imperfections of man but because of the unequal distribution of power and the force of irrational ideas.
We can challenge that unequal distribution of power.
We can combat those irrational ideas.
So that a generation from now, or two generations from now, it won’t be necessary to salute our war dead, but it will be customary to salute our peace activists.
Source: http://www.progressive.org/wx053011.html
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
A skeptical perspective on the US war on Libya
The current intervention in Libya is scripted as being a defense of human rights and human lives. Obama has said that he refuses “to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.” Skeptics like me wonder if this “values” laden narrative is not just Orwellian language for defending American “interests,” the norm in American foreign policy. This skepticism is based on the following:
First, the question that immediately comes to mind is would the United States do the same thing if the Saudi Arabian government had attacked rebels trying to overthrow its government? Somehow I find this hard to imagine. Even now gross human rights violations are committed in Saudi Arabia. I wonder why Obama finds them more acceptable than what is going on in Libya.
After the Iranian elections a couple of years ago, demonstrators who were being slaughtered by the Iranian government asked for US help to stop the Iranian government from the deadly assault it carried out against its citizens. The same president Obama said back then that he was troubled by the violence, but stressed that it was up to the Iranian people to choose their leadership. Why was that different?
Second, what is very disturbing is that the opposition to Gaddafi is always called the “rebels.” There is no face to them except for the scruffy, disorganized, chaotic bunch of men that are shown on TV. Who are these people? What is their ideology and vision for Libya? They want to be in charge, but what do they represent? Are they better than Gaddafi and, if so, how?
This immense effort launched by the US and UN to arm, support, and advise these “rebels” with ambiguous and unknown views and values is not only dangerous, but supports the skepticism about what is really behind this. Could it be that the West wants to change the map of the Middle East for the 21st century, much like colonial powers did in the 20th century? Could it be that we are searching for a new and younger generation of dictators that would uphold our interests in that region of the world?
Third, how many other countries are we going to strike militarily? Would Syria be next? How about Yemen, Bahrain, or Jordan? How about the Ivory Coast, Somalia, or Congo? What about North Korea?
Fourth, there is no political infrastructure in Libya that would allow a new democratic government to be established if Gaddafi is overthrown. What does this mean in terms of US and NATO involvement after Gaddafi goes?
After Afghanistan was invaded, NATO designed a constitution for Afghanistan that does not meet Afghan reality and has proved to be useless in terms of establishing a democratic Afghanistan. The central government in Afghanistan is dubbed as the government of Kabul (as opposed to Afghanistan) and is basically an ineffective body.
I wonder if the Libyan “rebels” who are asking for foreign military aid to overthrow Gaddafi realize that they will not be in charge when Gaddafi goes. At best, NATO will design a Libyan constitution, probably without any concern for Libyan cultural and social realities. At worst, Libya will become a haven for tribal wars, where much like Iraq, it will provide fertile grounds for Al Qaeda infiltration.
Fifth, what is the goal that this war is trying to achieve? Is it to allow the “rebels” to take over? Is it to put a democratic government in place of the Gaddafi dictatorship? No clear goal has yet been articulated. How could the U.S. and the UN militarily attack a sovereign nation without a clear goal? Perhaps a change of regime is the goal. A change for an unknown and ambiguous end is not likely to improve human rights.
Lastly, if human lives and rights were the real issue, why wouldn’t we look at the prison system in the United States, with the highest total documented prison and jail population in the world? [1]
A U.S. warship fired more than 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan air defenses in March[2]; at half a million dollars each, this is more than 50 million dollars. How many American children going to struggling public schools could benefit from these funds being applied towards their education? (According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights education is a human right.)
Why not start caring about human lives and rights at home? Don’t we Americans also deserve it?
At every instance, the world community is interconnected. This interconnection influences the various aspects of every nation and people in these nations. In Libya, the world has given Gaddafi a Carte Blanche to do as he wishes by politically isolating him as long as he has been in existence, instead of engaging him. The US habit of bombing or politically isolating countries whose leaders it doesn’t agree with or protecting dictators that it agrees with it places some responsibility on the US for events in these countries. This approach has been expensive and counter to democracy and human rights. This type of foreign policy is not based on diplomacy, but on brute force, much like what Qaddafi is employing. Obama’s assertion that this time it’s for human lives and rights appears insincere and an insult to our intelligence.
The least we deserve is that our president provides real evidence that this is improving human lives and rights.
Armineh
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
When Congress Was Armed And Dangerous
By JOANNE B. FREEMAN
New Haven
THE announcement that Representatives Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Jason Chaffetz of Utah are planning to wear guns in their home districts has surprised many, but in fact the United States has had armed congressmen before. In the rough-and-tumble Congress of the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, politicians regularly wore weapons on the House and Senate floors, and sometimes used them.
During one 1836 melee in the House, a witness observed representatives with “pistols in hand.” In a committee hearing that same year, one House member became so enraged at the testimony of a witness that he reached for his gun; when the terrified witness refused to return, he was brought before the House on a charge of contempt.
Perhaps most dramatic of all, during a debate in 1850, Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi pulled a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. (Someone eventually took it from his hand.) Foote had decided in advance that if he felt threatened, he would grab his gun and run for the aisle in the hope that stray shots wouldn’t hit bystanders.
Most famously, in 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor so brutally that Sumner had to be virtually carried from the chamber — and did not retake his seat for three years. Clearly, wielded with brute force, a cane could be a potent weapon.
By the 1850s, violence was common in Washington. Not long after Sumner’s caning, a magazine told the story of a Michigan judge who traveled by train to the nation’s capital: “As he entered the main hall of the depot, he saw a man engaged in caning another ferociously, all over the room. ‘When I saw this,’ says the judge, ‘I knew I was in Washington.’”
In Congress, violence was often deployed strategically. Representatives and senators who were willing to back up their words with their weapons had an advantage, particularly in the debate over slavery. Generally speaking, Northerners were least likely to be armed, and thus most likely to back down. Congressional bullies pressed their advantage, using threats and violence to steer debate, silence opposition and influence votes.
In 1842, Representative Thomas Arnold of Tennessee, a member of the Whig Party, learned the hard way that these bullies meant business. After he reprimanded a pro-slavery member of his own party, two Southern Democrats stalked toward him, at least one of whom was armed with a bowie knife — a 6- to 12-inch blade often worn strapped to the back. Calling Arnold a “damned coward,” his angry colleagues threatened to cut his throat “from ear to ear.” But Arnold wasn’t a man to back down. Ten years earlier, he had subdued an armed assassin on the Capitol steps.
As alarming as these outbursts were, until the 1840s, reporters played them down, in part to avoid becoming embroiled in fights themselves. (A good many reporters received beatings from outraged congressmen; one nearly had his finger bitten off.) So Americans knew relatively little of congressional violence.
That changed with the arrival of the telegraph. Congressmen suddenly had to confront the threat — or temptation — of “instant” nationwide publicity. As Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire reminded his colleagues within minutes of the Foote-Benton clash, reports were “already traveling with lightning speed over the telegraph wires to the remotest borders of the Republic.” He added, “It is not impossible that even now it may have been rumored in the city of St. Louis that several senators are dead and weltering in their blood on the floor of the Senate.”
Violence was news, and news could spawn violence. Something had to be done, but what? To many, the answer was obvious: watch your words. As one onlooker wrote to the speaker of the House shortly after Sumner’s caning, “gentlemen” who took part in the debate over slavery should “scrupulously avoid the utterance of unnecessarily harsh language.” There was no other way to prevent the “almost murderous feeling” that could lead to “demonstrations upon the floor, which in the present state of excitement, would almost certainly lead to a general melee and perhaps a dozen deaths in the twinkling of an eye.”
Unfortunately, such admonitions had little effect. The violence in Congress continued to build until the outbreak of the Civil War.
Today, in the wake of an episode of violence against a member of Congress, we’re again lamenting the state of political rhetoric, now spread faster than ever via Twitter, Web sites, text messaging and e-mail. Once again, politicians are considering bearing arms — not to use against one another, but potentially against an angry public.
And once again we’re reminded that words matter. Communication is the heart and soul of American democratic governance, but there hasn’t been much fruitful discourse of late — among members of Congress, between the people and their representatives or in the public sphere. We need to get better at communicating not only quickly, but civilly.
Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of history at Yale, is at work on a book about violence in Congress.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12freeman.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
New Haven
THE announcement that Representatives Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Jason Chaffetz of Utah are planning to wear guns in their home districts has surprised many, but in fact the United States has had armed congressmen before. In the rough-and-tumble Congress of the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s, politicians regularly wore weapons on the House and Senate floors, and sometimes used them.
During one 1836 melee in the House, a witness observed representatives with “pistols in hand.” In a committee hearing that same year, one House member became so enraged at the testimony of a witness that he reached for his gun; when the terrified witness refused to return, he was brought before the House on a charge of contempt.
Perhaps most dramatic of all, during a debate in 1850, Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi pulled a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. (Someone eventually took it from his hand.) Foote had decided in advance that if he felt threatened, he would grab his gun and run for the aisle in the hope that stray shots wouldn’t hit bystanders.
Most famously, in 1856, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on the Senate floor so brutally that Sumner had to be virtually carried from the chamber — and did not retake his seat for three years. Clearly, wielded with brute force, a cane could be a potent weapon.
By the 1850s, violence was common in Washington. Not long after Sumner’s caning, a magazine told the story of a Michigan judge who traveled by train to the nation’s capital: “As he entered the main hall of the depot, he saw a man engaged in caning another ferociously, all over the room. ‘When I saw this,’ says the judge, ‘I knew I was in Washington.’”
In Congress, violence was often deployed strategically. Representatives and senators who were willing to back up their words with their weapons had an advantage, particularly in the debate over slavery. Generally speaking, Northerners were least likely to be armed, and thus most likely to back down. Congressional bullies pressed their advantage, using threats and violence to steer debate, silence opposition and influence votes.
In 1842, Representative Thomas Arnold of Tennessee, a member of the Whig Party, learned the hard way that these bullies meant business. After he reprimanded a pro-slavery member of his own party, two Southern Democrats stalked toward him, at least one of whom was armed with a bowie knife — a 6- to 12-inch blade often worn strapped to the back. Calling Arnold a “damned coward,” his angry colleagues threatened to cut his throat “from ear to ear.” But Arnold wasn’t a man to back down. Ten years earlier, he had subdued an armed assassin on the Capitol steps.
As alarming as these outbursts were, until the 1840s, reporters played them down, in part to avoid becoming embroiled in fights themselves. (A good many reporters received beatings from outraged congressmen; one nearly had his finger bitten off.) So Americans knew relatively little of congressional violence.
That changed with the arrival of the telegraph. Congressmen suddenly had to confront the threat — or temptation — of “instant” nationwide publicity. As Senator John Parker Hale of New Hampshire reminded his colleagues within minutes of the Foote-Benton clash, reports were “already traveling with lightning speed over the telegraph wires to the remotest borders of the Republic.” He added, “It is not impossible that even now it may have been rumored in the city of St. Louis that several senators are dead and weltering in their blood on the floor of the Senate.”
Violence was news, and news could spawn violence. Something had to be done, but what? To many, the answer was obvious: watch your words. As one onlooker wrote to the speaker of the House shortly after Sumner’s caning, “gentlemen” who took part in the debate over slavery should “scrupulously avoid the utterance of unnecessarily harsh language.” There was no other way to prevent the “almost murderous feeling” that could lead to “demonstrations upon the floor, which in the present state of excitement, would almost certainly lead to a general melee and perhaps a dozen deaths in the twinkling of an eye.”
Unfortunately, such admonitions had little effect. The violence in Congress continued to build until the outbreak of the Civil War.
Today, in the wake of an episode of violence against a member of Congress, we’re again lamenting the state of political rhetoric, now spread faster than ever via Twitter, Web sites, text messaging and e-mail. Once again, politicians are considering bearing arms — not to use against one another, but potentially against an angry public.
And once again we’re reminded that words matter. Communication is the heart and soul of American democratic governance, but there hasn’t been much fruitful discourse of late — among members of Congress, between the people and their representatives or in the public sphere. We need to get better at communicating not only quickly, but civilly.
Joanne B. Freeman, a professor of history at Yale, is at work on a book about violence in Congress.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/opinion/12freeman.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
Monday, October 18, 2010
Humanist Ethics and the Problem of U.S. Militarism - by Armineh Noravian
The following is a transcript of a talk I gave at the American Humanist Association Conference in San Jose (June 2010).
___________________________________________________________
We live in a world where we see hunger, poverty, cruelty, and injustice; we see human rights violations. As humanists we have causes that are morally justifiable to fight for. But to be consistent with our humanistic values, it is obvious that just any means to that end will not do. We need to always remember the words in the humanist manifesto that define our means loud and clear. Those words are: “differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly spells out universal human rights in 30 articles. Nowhere in this document does it condone war as a means to achieving human rights. Nowhere does it suggest that the life of human beings should be jeopardized or sacrificed in defense of deeply held rigid beliefs. In fact, the whole spirit of the Enlightenment and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to preserve the rights of each individual human being, with the primary right being the right to life.
The United States is currently involved in two war fronts, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. I am going to talk about both these wars from the perspective of a humanist and attempt to put a human face on these conflicts.
Let me begin with 9/11.
9/11 was a horrific and unforgettable experience for our country and certainly for those who were directly affected by it. 2,993 people from over 90 countries lost their lives. This attack was orchestrated and carried out by Al Qaeda, a terrorist group, hiding out in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is a militarized and politicized Islamic group that developed partly as a result of CIA recruitment and training of the Mujahideen militants to defeat the Russians in the 1980s. 9/11 became President Bush’s justification for attacking Afghanistan in October 2001 and we’ve been there ever since.
Since the 9/11 attack was not carried out by the government of Afghanistan, but by a terrorist group made up of mostly Saudi citizens hiding in that country, it would be reasonable for humanists to ask, if a terrorist group hiding out in England were to have been behind the 9/11 attacks, would the United States have declared war on England and attacked England?
I don’t think so.
The attack on Afghanistan held the entire Afghan population responsible for the terror attack.
After 9 years we have not caught Bin Ladin. We have not eliminated Al Qaeda. We have not brought peace or stability to Afghanistan. We have not made Americans safer. We have not diminished the threat of terrorism.
We have however helped Al Qaeda morph into a real 21st century organization of “terrorists without borders.” We have avenged the deaths of the 2993 people who were killed on 9/11 by killing many times that number in Afghanistan.
The invasion of Afghanistan does not seem to have been based on reason, but on vengeance.
Remember, Humanists are big on reason.
The justification for this war has evolved. What began as a war against those who carried out 9/11 nine years ago, is now touted as a good war that is “liberating” the oppressed women of Afghanistan from the hands of the Taliban.
Some of the women of Afghanistan have a very different perspective on this topic. RAWA, which is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, says, “The US ‘War on Terrorism’ removed the Taliban regime in October 2001, but it has not removed religious fundamentalism, which is the main cause of all our miseries. In fact, by reinstalling the warlords in power in Afghanistan, the US administration is replacing one fundamentalist regime with another. The US government and Mr. Karzai mostly rely on Northern Alliance criminal leaders who are as brutal and misogynist as the Taliban.”
So we can pat ourselves on the back because in 9 years we have managed to replace one group of thugs with another.
The story of the war in Iraq is even worse.
The war in Iraq was begun in March 2003. President Bush repeatedly asserted that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, even though the UN inspectors said they could not find any evidence of such weapons. As humanists we are big on evidence. But even though there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, some of the supporters of this war were people who call themselves humanists. The reason for this support was obviously not evidence, but fear. This preemptive strike was a strike based on an emotional justification, not a reasoned justification.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq, to rid the country of Saddam Hussein and his two sons (a total of three people), has been the cause of over one million Iraqi deaths , and countless who have been maimed, traumatized, displaced, shell shocked, and forced to live in desperate conditions around the world.
As the war raged on and the death toll rose, and as weapons of mass destruction were not found, President Bush and all those who supported this invasion made up other reasons to justify this war, reasons that fit the myth of “spreading” democracy and human rights, to those uncivilized others, the Arabs and the Muslims.
Women and minority groups who were said to have been repressed by Saddam Hussein and who were also used as justification for the invasion, have now lost virtually all of their rights.
Some claim one of the benefits of this invasion is a democratically elected Iraqi government. But this so-called democratically elected government was elected in an atmosphere of fear, violence, and intimidation.
Let me switch gears here.
People like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi have moved mountains through peaceful means. The changes they have brought about are long lasting. Our Humanist Manifesto captures their deeds with the following words: “Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence.”
Neither the war in Afghanistan nor in Iraq has brought about a change that can be considered long lasting or for the good of humanity. Neither war has been based on reason or evidence; both have been justified by pure emotion – vengeance and fear.
King and Gandhi fought with nonviolent means, and they won. They brought about changes that improved the human condition. Compare that with the outcome of the violent, deadly and costly wars we have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although these wars have significantly improved the profits for corporations involved in the military industrial complex, they have not improved the overall human condition.
Unfortunately, I have observed that there are people who hold their belief system dearer than the lives of other people, and would kill people to defend their belief. Our humanist belief system, at its core, is fundamentally about appreciation of human life. It is therefore an absolute contradiction to kill human beings to further such a belief system. In other words, you cannot kill to further humanism.
As an ethnic Armenian, I have inherited a painful history. The Armenian Genocide, which historians call the first genocide of the 20th century, was not something that I experienced, but my grandparents did. Even so, after two generations, I find it difficult to talk about it or to look at photographs of the dead bodies of Armenian men, women, and children without feeling pain. Pain is passed along from generation to generation.
What we have done in Iraq and in Afghanistan will leave a painful legacy that will be suffered for generations to come. The grandchildren of survivors will look back and feel the pain that we, the United States, caused them. They will not forget or forgive us for what we have done.
I was born in the Middle East. I would say that I look like a typical person from the Middle East. I could pass for a person from Afghanistan or Iraq; I could pass for an Arab or a Jew from the Middle East. When I look at those people in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Palestine or Israel, when I see their photos, I think of my parents, my relatives, my cousins, my siblings; I think of them as me.
I feel for their loss as I would feel for the loss of someone who was part of my family. They are not faceless or voiceless for me.
I have two boys who are not too far off in age than the average American soldier who has been either killed or maimed for life in these wars. Our soldiers or their families are not faceless or voiceless for me.
As a humanist, I see all people on this planet as part of one gigantic family. I don’t see their lives as something that I can casually dispense with for any end.
Those who defend these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq often gloss over the lives of people who have been killed, as if they are disposable. In conversations you sometimes hear people say something like, “the deaths toll can’t be ignored, BUT, Saddam was a bad guy who killed people.” There is always the BUT, to justify the deaths of people.
Sometimes they call the killing of civilians “collateral damage”. These deaths are spoken of almost as a side issue, and often not tracked or reported. They are deemed as necessary to achieve an uncertain end.
I could have been born in Iraq or Afghanistan. Life’s circumstances could have dictated that I remained there. I could have been declared collateral damage by those who justify killing civilians in the name of liberating them. I could have been one of the women who is displaced because her home was destroyed, or her spouse and children were maimed and killed. My kids could have been those kids who saw their parents killed right in front of their eyes.
As human beings, we are limited in our ability to imagine the pain of other people. If we are not connected to the pain we cause, we can become good at inflicting pain. If all we see are images that appear like fireworks on TV when our air power is attacking Iraq at night, or dust rising in the distance from our bombs, we don’t feel the pain of those who are maimed, killed, and suffer as a result of our attacks.
As an American and a person who has her roots in the Middle East, I am deeply disturbed to see human beings killed in countries of this region funded by our tax dollars, cheered on by those who support wars, under the guise of defending human rights.
And now to close: As humanists we should remember that deeply held beliefs make it easy to accept the absurd. It can create hubris. Propaganda such as “we are going to war to liberate people” or “we are bringing democracy to people” or “we are protecting America” are the new myths that have replaced the older ones that said “we are bringing civilization and Christianity to the native Americans, or the Mexicans.”
As humanists, we should be able to differentiate between propaganda and facts: War is violence and violence does not bring about security.
As humanists, we should not outsource our moral responsibility; we should seek out those who present pseudo-rational arguments in favor of war and expose them for their lack of reasoning and lack of compassion.
There are numerous possibilities between the extremes of all out war on one hand and appeasement on the other. It is our lack of imagination and our failure to envision other possibilities that limits our options to these two extremes.
Just envision what real diplomacy could do.
Conflict is natural. Conflict resolution is natural. But war is not conflict resolution. Just imagine what a humanistic foreign policy could do.
From a humanist point of view, war is a human catastrophe. As Humanists, we should advocate diplomacy to prevent situations that ultimately lead to wars and to identify solutions that would pave the path for peaceful alternatives to war.
Lastly, one cannot be a humanist and advocate militarism.
_____________________________________________________________
Armineh Noravian was a member of the Board of Directors of the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley between 2007-2010, where she served as Vice President in 2008 and President in 2009 and 2010. She was also President of the Silicon Valley Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and state from 2005-2006, and a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU, Santa Clara Valley chapter from 2006-2008. She holds a M.S. in Engineering and a M.A. in Applied Anthropology (cultural).
___________________________________________________________
We live in a world where we see hunger, poverty, cruelty, and injustice; we see human rights violations. As humanists we have causes that are morally justifiable to fight for. But to be consistent with our humanistic values, it is obvious that just any means to that end will not do. We need to always remember the words in the humanist manifesto that define our means loud and clear. Those words are: “differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly spells out universal human rights in 30 articles. Nowhere in this document does it condone war as a means to achieving human rights. Nowhere does it suggest that the life of human beings should be jeopardized or sacrificed in defense of deeply held rigid beliefs. In fact, the whole spirit of the Enlightenment and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to preserve the rights of each individual human being, with the primary right being the right to life.
The United States is currently involved in two war fronts, one in Afghanistan and one in Iraq. I am going to talk about both these wars from the perspective of a humanist and attempt to put a human face on these conflicts.
Let me begin with 9/11.
9/11 was a horrific and unforgettable experience for our country and certainly for those who were directly affected by it. 2,993 people from over 90 countries lost their lives. This attack was orchestrated and carried out by Al Qaeda, a terrorist group, hiding out in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is a militarized and politicized Islamic group that developed partly as a result of CIA recruitment and training of the Mujahideen militants to defeat the Russians in the 1980s. 9/11 became President Bush’s justification for attacking Afghanistan in October 2001 and we’ve been there ever since.
Since the 9/11 attack was not carried out by the government of Afghanistan, but by a terrorist group made up of mostly Saudi citizens hiding in that country, it would be reasonable for humanists to ask, if a terrorist group hiding out in England were to have been behind the 9/11 attacks, would the United States have declared war on England and attacked England?
I don’t think so.
The attack on Afghanistan held the entire Afghan population responsible for the terror attack.
After 9 years we have not caught Bin Ladin. We have not eliminated Al Qaeda. We have not brought peace or stability to Afghanistan. We have not made Americans safer. We have not diminished the threat of terrorism.
We have however helped Al Qaeda morph into a real 21st century organization of “terrorists without borders.” We have avenged the deaths of the 2993 people who were killed on 9/11 by killing many times that number in Afghanistan.
The invasion of Afghanistan does not seem to have been based on reason, but on vengeance.
Remember, Humanists are big on reason.
The justification for this war has evolved. What began as a war against those who carried out 9/11 nine years ago, is now touted as a good war that is “liberating” the oppressed women of Afghanistan from the hands of the Taliban.
Some of the women of Afghanistan have a very different perspective on this topic. RAWA, which is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, says, “The US ‘War on Terrorism’ removed the Taliban regime in October 2001, but it has not removed religious fundamentalism, which is the main cause of all our miseries. In fact, by reinstalling the warlords in power in Afghanistan, the US administration is replacing one fundamentalist regime with another. The US government and Mr. Karzai mostly rely on Northern Alliance criminal leaders who are as brutal and misogynist as the Taliban.”
So we can pat ourselves on the back because in 9 years we have managed to replace one group of thugs with another.
The story of the war in Iraq is even worse.
The war in Iraq was begun in March 2003. President Bush repeatedly asserted that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, even though the UN inspectors said they could not find any evidence of such weapons. As humanists we are big on evidence. But even though there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, some of the supporters of this war were people who call themselves humanists. The reason for this support was obviously not evidence, but fear. This preemptive strike was a strike based on an emotional justification, not a reasoned justification.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq, to rid the country of Saddam Hussein and his two sons (a total of three people), has been the cause of over one million Iraqi deaths , and countless who have been maimed, traumatized, displaced, shell shocked, and forced to live in desperate conditions around the world.
As the war raged on and the death toll rose, and as weapons of mass destruction were not found, President Bush and all those who supported this invasion made up other reasons to justify this war, reasons that fit the myth of “spreading” democracy and human rights, to those uncivilized others, the Arabs and the Muslims.
Women and minority groups who were said to have been repressed by Saddam Hussein and who were also used as justification for the invasion, have now lost virtually all of their rights.
Some claim one of the benefits of this invasion is a democratically elected Iraqi government. But this so-called democratically elected government was elected in an atmosphere of fear, violence, and intimidation.
Let me switch gears here.
People like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi have moved mountains through peaceful means. The changes they have brought about are long lasting. Our Humanist Manifesto captures their deeds with the following words: “Humanists long for and strive toward a world of mutual care and concern, free of cruelty and its consequences, where differences are resolved cooperatively without resorting to violence.”
Neither the war in Afghanistan nor in Iraq has brought about a change that can be considered long lasting or for the good of humanity. Neither war has been based on reason or evidence; both have been justified by pure emotion – vengeance and fear.
King and Gandhi fought with nonviolent means, and they won. They brought about changes that improved the human condition. Compare that with the outcome of the violent, deadly and costly wars we have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although these wars have significantly improved the profits for corporations involved in the military industrial complex, they have not improved the overall human condition.
Unfortunately, I have observed that there are people who hold their belief system dearer than the lives of other people, and would kill people to defend their belief. Our humanist belief system, at its core, is fundamentally about appreciation of human life. It is therefore an absolute contradiction to kill human beings to further such a belief system. In other words, you cannot kill to further humanism.
As an ethnic Armenian, I have inherited a painful history. The Armenian Genocide, which historians call the first genocide of the 20th century, was not something that I experienced, but my grandparents did. Even so, after two generations, I find it difficult to talk about it or to look at photographs of the dead bodies of Armenian men, women, and children without feeling pain. Pain is passed along from generation to generation.
What we have done in Iraq and in Afghanistan will leave a painful legacy that will be suffered for generations to come. The grandchildren of survivors will look back and feel the pain that we, the United States, caused them. They will not forget or forgive us for what we have done.
I was born in the Middle East. I would say that I look like a typical person from the Middle East. I could pass for a person from Afghanistan or Iraq; I could pass for an Arab or a Jew from the Middle East. When I look at those people in Iraq or Afghanistan, or Palestine or Israel, when I see their photos, I think of my parents, my relatives, my cousins, my siblings; I think of them as me.
I feel for their loss as I would feel for the loss of someone who was part of my family. They are not faceless or voiceless for me.
I have two boys who are not too far off in age than the average American soldier who has been either killed or maimed for life in these wars. Our soldiers or their families are not faceless or voiceless for me.
As a humanist, I see all people on this planet as part of one gigantic family. I don’t see their lives as something that I can casually dispense with for any end.
Those who defend these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq often gloss over the lives of people who have been killed, as if they are disposable. In conversations you sometimes hear people say something like, “the deaths toll can’t be ignored, BUT, Saddam was a bad guy who killed people.” There is always the BUT, to justify the deaths of people.
Sometimes they call the killing of civilians “collateral damage”. These deaths are spoken of almost as a side issue, and often not tracked or reported. They are deemed as necessary to achieve an uncertain end.
I could have been born in Iraq or Afghanistan. Life’s circumstances could have dictated that I remained there. I could have been declared collateral damage by those who justify killing civilians in the name of liberating them. I could have been one of the women who is displaced because her home was destroyed, or her spouse and children were maimed and killed. My kids could have been those kids who saw their parents killed right in front of their eyes.
As human beings, we are limited in our ability to imagine the pain of other people. If we are not connected to the pain we cause, we can become good at inflicting pain. If all we see are images that appear like fireworks on TV when our air power is attacking Iraq at night, or dust rising in the distance from our bombs, we don’t feel the pain of those who are maimed, killed, and suffer as a result of our attacks.
As an American and a person who has her roots in the Middle East, I am deeply disturbed to see human beings killed in countries of this region funded by our tax dollars, cheered on by those who support wars, under the guise of defending human rights.
And now to close: As humanists we should remember that deeply held beliefs make it easy to accept the absurd. It can create hubris. Propaganda such as “we are going to war to liberate people” or “we are bringing democracy to people” or “we are protecting America” are the new myths that have replaced the older ones that said “we are bringing civilization and Christianity to the native Americans, or the Mexicans.”
As humanists, we should be able to differentiate between propaganda and facts: War is violence and violence does not bring about security.
As humanists, we should not outsource our moral responsibility; we should seek out those who present pseudo-rational arguments in favor of war and expose them for their lack of reasoning and lack of compassion.
There are numerous possibilities between the extremes of all out war on one hand and appeasement on the other. It is our lack of imagination and our failure to envision other possibilities that limits our options to these two extremes.
Just envision what real diplomacy could do.
Conflict is natural. Conflict resolution is natural. But war is not conflict resolution. Just imagine what a humanistic foreign policy could do.
From a humanist point of view, war is a human catastrophe. As Humanists, we should advocate diplomacy to prevent situations that ultimately lead to wars and to identify solutions that would pave the path for peaceful alternatives to war.
Lastly, one cannot be a humanist and advocate militarism.
_____________________________________________________________
Armineh Noravian was a member of the Board of Directors of the Humanist Community in Silicon Valley between 2007-2010, where she served as Vice President in 2008 and President in 2009 and 2010. She was also President of the Silicon Valley Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and state from 2005-2006, and a member of the Board of Directors of the ACLU, Santa Clara Valley chapter from 2006-2008. She holds a M.S. in Engineering and a M.A. in Applied Anthropology (cultural).
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