Tag Archives: democracy

John Brown: Good Terrorist or Bad Terrorist?

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I wonder if President Bush realizes that the very NAACP he plans to address in the near future recently honored beloved terrorist John Brown, who, despairing after futile peaceful efforts to abolish slavery, turned to murder, and assaulted a U.S. munitions factory at Harper’s Ferry, WV in hopes of arming uprising slaves. Brown’s raid so terrified southern slaveholders that they abandoned negotiations and seceded to protect their security and lifestyle. When Lincoln’s armies demanded union regardless of unresolved differences, southern insurgents fought back bitterly. By the end of the civil war, nearly 600,000 fellow-citizens were dead, more than 400,000 wounded.

 

Our esteemed revolutionary forefathers also justified as “necessary” their turn to guerilla warfare and insurgency against an uncompromising king, just as sufferers of oppression today turn to violence when no legitimate forum will redress their grievances.

 

Are terrorists ever on the right side? Is random killing of civilians ever justified? What recourse have you when your enemy has a huge army, and your small country has none, and your foes are hurting you and your family? Are all terrorists insane? Is killing only OK if you're a soldier? Whose soldier? Is John Brown admirable or despicable? Did he deserve to be hanged? Is terrorism ever justified? Is the rule of law even credible in a country which justifies indiscriminate attacks on the lives, livelihoods, possessions, loves and dreams of alleged enemies and innocent civilians alike? What would you do if you lived in a small, unrepresentative nation with an insignificant army and felt your way of life and family threatened?

 

And should President Bush, in the midst of his very black-and-white, unconditional war on terrorism, speak before an association which cherishes a famous terrorist?

 

Are our world leaders making us safer by playing polarized eye-for-an-eye politics and war, greedily holding on to the status quo, and closing their ears to emerging world voices pleading for self-determination? Aren't people everywhere just getting angrier and angrier from all the violence, and turning more and more toward extremism? Must we watch our children’s futures wash away in the blood of never-ending wars, our great wealth disappear into endless combat against terrorism?

 

We can embrace a new covenant of generosity, forgiveness, and “golden-rule politics,” by establishing a cabinet-level Department of Peace (see www.thepeacealliance.org ) to take pre-emptive, strategic steps toward peace through proven, effective, non-violent methods of preventing and resolving national and international conflicts. Nearly eighty Congressional members have already signed on to this brilliant and very specific piece of legislation; many thoughtful leaders in the Defense Department stand ready to welcome  its peaceful approaches as an essential part of our steps to security.


When we fully empower credible global venues for peace like the United Nations and other respected international non-governmental organizations, we can begin to work non-violently to defuse and address the yearnings of the world’s desperate have-nots, helping them achieve a measure of peace and justice.

 

The Bush adminstration has had amazing support from citizens and legislators for five years in its war on terrorism. Now the whole Middle East is aflame with hate, fear, anger, and vengeance. Violence is spreading around the globe. Shall we just declare mankind biologically destined to be fatally deadly to his fellow man? Must we assume a future of global thermonuclear war, and just throw up our hands? What is our alternative?

 

Proven non-violent approaches to preventing and ending deadly conflict have never been given a real chance to succeed. When is it time to risk peace, not war? When, if ever, is it time to reconsider whether our present path of war is the soundest and most practical approach to achieving peace and safety for all Americans, and for people everywhere? Does violence and hatred only beget more violence and hatred? Is there a violent way to peace? Or is peace itself the only viable way to peace?

 

Albert Einstein once said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

 

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

War Is (Unnecessary) (Wasteful) (Pointless) Hell

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Disgusting-Type-of-Liberal Unfairly Spews Appallingly Naive Garbage About Haditha, 'Military Justice', Occupations, Peace, and Other Outrages….

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A local newspaper published a letter I wrote about Iraq, along with a rather startling and intriguing reader-response. Here is my letter, followed by the response:

“Our Enemy Is Fear” (The newspaper titled my letter, “Our enemy is fear; the result, Haditha.”)

Inflamed by nationalism, demagoguery and fear, we deploy our brave grandchildren halfway around the globe, pushing them to act out our own worst nightmares, to create the very tragedies they would themselves kill and die to resist, to become the very terrorists they despise, monsters from afar who interfere, invade, oppress, exploit, torture, and slaughter innocents.

Up is down now, and black is white, as long as we continue to send our sons and daughters to distant nations to fight insane wars so morally ambiguous that even our own citizenry, even world opinion, even our own brilliant Supreme Court justices and political and military leaders cannot agree upon them.

Then we pound these same selfless young soldiers with so much confused political, psychological and military paranoia and machismo that they're half-crazed with vengeance, anger and desperation … and then goad them into untenable situations where they drop bombs on civilian populations and break down doors, killing unarmed strangers–husbands, wives, teenagers, children, and babies alike.

May the tragedy in Haditha teach us “to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” (A. Lincoln)

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Five days later this fascinating response to my letter was posted in the newspaper:

“Haditha critic has already passed judgment on troops”

I have seen some outrageous letters to the editor about Iraq from liberals, but a (recent) letter (“our enemy is fear; the result, Haditha”) is by far the most disgusting.

First of all, to call our troops monsters who exploit, torture and murder innocent civilians before there has been any proof is appalling. There is an investigation going on about the incident and I think our troops should be given the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Second, I can imagine that letter writer is the same type of liberal who would demand that a person in this country who went on a mass murder spree has the right of due process. However, she will not give that to the brave members of the military fighting in extremely difficult circumstances to give up their freedom to provide her the freedom to spew such garbage.

Granted, there may have been misdeeds in Haditha. If there were, the perpetrators will be punished in a military court. There is no such justice in the terrorists' world.

That letter writer is a perfect example of the left wing eager to stain our military without any proof. Thank goodness the majority of Americans are more fair-minded.

If the two letters could have been republished side-by-side, I would have liked to point out to my responder that, to the twenty-four Haditha slaughterees, and to the rest of the hundreds of thousands of civilian and military victims of the American invasion and occupation–many of whom were innocent of any political involvement, and the rest guilty mostly of harboring opposing political loyalties and beliefs, or of needing to make what seemed like an honest buck soldiering–to all of these victims, if the American soldiers were not terrorists, they must at least have looked like terrorists as they were climbing in windows and breaking down doors, bristling and blazing away with high-tech weaponry on women and children, or raining down indiscriminate bombs from above….

It doesn't take a military court focusing on a single narrow case like Haditha to “prove” that the west has used their military to exploit, torture and murder hundreds of thousands of middle-eastern innocents during the gulf wars. Any “just” investigation could only be about the motives and methods of the war itself, not the single “incident” at Haditha. I prefer the word “tragedy” here; I doubt whether an unexplained slaughter by “foreigners” of whole families of American women and children in their homes would have been referred to in American papers as an “incident,” had it occurred in some little rural midwestern village on “American soil.”

We Americans are too defensively insistent on being “right” and loyal, to the extent that we can't accept the possibility that we could ever make a wrong turn. We need to be more conscientious about taking the time to put ourselves in another's shoes when deciding on fairness. Turnabout truly is fair play; how would we feel about having exactly the same things happen to us?

It shouldn't matter whether something happens in Iraq or America … or Timbuktu; people everywhere have a right to live in peace, to quietly pursue life, liberty, and happiness, and to receive due process of law during conflicts. That is the only “America” worth fighting for, the America worthy of our loyalty and patriotism–the “America” that embodies our beloved American ideals. We can certainly understand and forgive the confusions of Americans, or anyone else, when they've been wrong. It's very easy to get things wrong. I'm not big on placing blame or punishing, but I do take seriously my responsibility to redirect our American course when we stray too far from our precious democratic values.

Loyalty that says “wrong is right,” as long as that wrong is an American wrong, is misguided loyalty. In the long run, misguided loyalty will always prove more harmful to our beloved country than helpful.

Could the two letters be printed side-by-side, I would also have liked to have pointed out that my responder jumped to the conclusion that I was passing hasty judgment on Haditha troops. On the contrary, I was describing how all our gulf war soldiers must appear to their victims and to the rest of the world in general (most of whom already stand in judgment of our illegal invasion, occupation, motives, and methods.) Long before Haditha, the world would have laughed uproariously at the suggestion that gulf war occupiers in general should be “presumed innocent” until “proven guilty” by a military court weighing niceties about the particular rules of engagement allegedly applied in Haditha. (And where was the “process” “due” to those innocents in Haditha?)

But because I knew our two letters could not be printed side-by-side, because I had nothing to defend, and because I hoped to use my response opportunity peacefully, I wrote the following response to my reader:

“Honor the Warrior, Not the War”

Rather than rushing to judge soldiers, I hope to slow our rush into yet another ill-conceived war, this time against Iran, a country which has not attacked us and is not an imminent threat. I also urge military consensus upon unambiguous and consistent moral and tactical guidelines for acceptable behavior during both war and peacetime. Too often, when irrefutably accused, soldiers are marginalized and victimized as “aberrant” by unaccountable leaders. We must bring our soldiers back home to defend their homeland and way of life, as others elsewhere wish to defend theirs. I am grateful that we are all still free to stay informed and engaged, and to respectfully debate the best ways to keep our beloved country free, prosperous, respected, and safe.

Wars are politics carried out by other means; they are always a failure of diplomacy. Those who fight wars aren’t responsible for this failure; their courage and sacrifice renews our faith in humanity—which is one difference between wars and those who fight them.

 

Ben Franklin said, “There was never a good war or a bad peace.” And President Eisenhower said, “Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

 

I am profoundly impressed by the vision of the many courageous women and men in our Defense Department working to find peaceful, effective, and far less costly alternative approaches to our nation’s defense, demonstrating the admirable tradition of leadership and high ideals historically associated with our military.

 

Together with such patriots, we can work to establish a U.S. Peace Academy, equivalent in honor, distinction, and service to our proud military academies, and to support the 73 Congresspersons who have already signed remarkable legislation (see www.thepeacealliance.org) to establish a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace (H.R. 3760 and S. 1756), which can provide proven and effective strategies for diminishing violence in our country and in our world.

 

Thus we honor our warriors, not the war.

 

The night before he died, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It’s nonviolence—or nonexistence.” Albert Einstein warned us: “I cannot tell you with what weapons mankind would fight WW3, but I can assure you that WW4 would be fought with sticks and stones.”

 

I received the following thoughtful and reasonable letter from the newspaper's Editor….


Thanks for writing, but your letter … is a response to a response to an earlier letter from you, and we try to avoid doing that, too. If we publish this letter, (the writer) could reasonably request that we publish a response to it from him. Letting two letter writers go back and forth in the letters section doesn't work very well, so we try to limit it to an original letter and response(s). …You are, of course, welcome to submit letters in the future that don't relate to this exchange…. 

So instead, I posted the letters here, and I hope to write a letter to the Editor next month promoting the legislation establishing a Department of Peace….

Please send your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Simple, Secular/Religious, Universal Political “Theme” that Unites and Resonates….

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I would like to suggest that progressives consider uniting under a unifying banner of “golden rule politics.”
The golden rule is a familiar universal principle embraced by a wide variety of secular philosophers and spiritual/religious thinkers alike for thousands of years; it turns out to offer not only the best guideline for human relationships, but an equally sound basis for 21st century, one-small-planet domestic- and foreign policy-making.

Golden rule politics offer candidates and elected policy- and decision-makers three key ethical guidelines/questions:

1. Does this policy treat all others as we would wish to be treated?

2. Does this policy hold us all to the same high standards we require of others?

3. Does this policy/action take as its highest guiding principle, “support and respect for the quality of human life everywhere?”

All the various platforms put forward by America's many current progressive movements, as well as all of our pressing long-term national interests, are subsumed under this simple, appealing theme. Democratic party leaders should consider adopting this memorable and media-friendly slogan/metaphor, too. (However, don't rush to claim it before the Republicans get to it; golden rule politics are anathema to all that most Republicans leaders currently stand for–which is an intriguing and useful distinction, actually.)

Americans long for and intuitively respect leadership based in values. We are all finally coming to realize that our contemporary greedy, me-first political approaches are morally bankrupt, and cannot offer us–or our beloved nation–prosperity, respect, or security.

Golden rule politics can unite us all within a party of the people, because golden rule politics turn out to be, upon thoughtful consideration, not only realistic, practical, and profound, but also genuinely hopeful and caring–a winning combination.

A new cabinet-level Department of Peace would play an important role in applying golden rule politics in support of policy- and decision-making.

 

Please send comments to nancy.pace@adelphia.net .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armed Men Are Coming from Far Away to Break Down Our Doors and Kill Our Families….

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Every animal will defend its den, family, territory—and the human animal is no exception. Our instincts insist that we stand between our families and those who would slaughter us.

 

Yet instead of intensifying our quest for international compromises that serve all the world’s citizens, too often we allow our leaders to enflame our nationalist fears, and continue to deploy our brave soldiers halfway around the globe where they are pushed to act out their own deepest terrors, create the very tragedies they most despise, and become the maniacal monsters of their worst nightmares.

 

American forces have been pushed by misguided leadership to become the very enemy they would themselves kill and die to resist, the very terrorists who come from far away to kill families, to deny human rights, to invade, occupy, torture, oppress, exploit ….

 

Up is down now, and black is white, as long as we continue to send our grandchildren away to distant nations to fight in insane wars so morally ambiguous that even our own citizenry, even world opinion, even our own brilliant Supreme Court justices and political and military leaders cannot agree upon them.

 

Then we pound these same innocent, selfless young soldiers with so much political, psychological, and military paranoia and machismo that they’re half-crazed with vengeance, anger, and desperation….

 

And put them into untenable situations where they’re goaded to drop bombs on civilian populations, break down doors, and kill unarmed strangers—husbands, wives, teenagers, children, babies alike….

 

And yet…

 

When the only family you have are your military brothers whom you’ve sworn to protect—and now they’re dead…

 

When the wife and children you love as much as life have been murdered…

 

Then nothing means anything anymore anyway except hatred. Unless we end now together, forever, war’s spiraling cycle of fear … hatred … violence … which always leads only to ever more … fear … hatred … violence….

 

The tragic voices of Haditha—including the voices of soldiers everywhere—implore each of us to find in our own hearts, and with organizations such as the Peace Alliance, FCNL,* the United Nations, and Amnesty International, better, non-violent ways “to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”** Blessed are the peacemakers.

 

*   Friends Committee for National Legislation

** Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address.

 

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Central Station, Not One Less, Children of Heaven, Autumn Spring, and Other Wonderful Movies….

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I just watched the award-winning 1998 Brazilian film, Central Station (about the importance of connecting, belonging, and giving.) Two desperate, appealing, and brilliantly acted characters in dire straits—one a recent orphan, the other a sad retiree—are thrown together, and reluctantly save one another. The story centers on a relationship that develops during a journey. This movie drives home in a touching and entertaining way, how important family, friends, and security are in life, and how fragile and easily lost they are in life’s changing circumstances, and through cynicism, defeatism, and self-isolation. This gripping, beautifully-directed movie is also a revealing snapshot of everyday lives in a variety of intriguing rural, suburban, and urban settings in today’s Brazil.

 

Among many other wonderful, critically-acclaimed foreign films I’ve seen recently through Netflix, the following are truly the best of the best….

 

For families with young children, and for every adult, these films have my highest recommendation, as entertaining, well-made, and, well…just plain wonderful. Like Central Station (above), each has great potential for discussion, for insight into different cultures and human values, and for just about every pleasure one can find in a really memorable, insightful movie:

 

Children of Heaven, a not-to-be-missed, touching slice-of-life story showcasing a child learning values while making difficult choices, is set in working-class Iran. Not One Less (the same, with an emphasis on perseverance, is set in rural China. Rabbit-Proof Fence, an Incredible Journey-sort of film, except that it’s set in historical Australia, is based on true events. The three sojourners are Aborigine children trying to return home….

 

These three movies are all gentle, touching stories of winning children/families living typical lives in far corners of the earth, all highly enjoyable for all ages. They will stay in your mind forever.

 

For teens and their families, or for any adult, I recommend The Road Home, a sweet love story set in mainland China, and the funny and moving Secrets and Lies, about a successful (black) daughter’s reunion with her troubled (white) birth mother/family, who gave her away before seeing her as an infant (set in London).

 

The Battle of Algiers is a well-made, sad, dark, and moving historical film about an Islamic uprising against French colonists. I recommend it only (but especially) for adults who, like me, are interested in politics and history. It compellingly sheds light on current Middle Eastern conflicts.

 

The Barbarian Invasions is an interesting story of a father-son reconciliation, as well as a marvelous depiction of what a “good death” might entail. You'll see some fascinating Canadian culture, strong direction, a funny, thought-provoking and touching script, and solid performances by a delightful cast … recommended for any adult who finds this synopsis appealing.

 

I not only found Autumn Spring (about a Czech retired couple) delightful; it also taught me something I had forgotten about men—that they need to feel free to be men or they’ll die inside. Right after seeing this movie, I encouraged my husband to buy the bike of his dreams, which he is simply thrilled with…. I’m so happy with his new happiness that I’m reminded, as I write this review, to keep listening for and supporting the rest of his dreams…as he does mine….

 

Finally, a sometimes slow-moving but memorable and powerful film for anyone interested in immigration, migration, and refugees in any country, including our own, is In This World, about two young Afghan cousins who undertake a secret/illegal, and very arduous journey to improve their lives in London.

 

I am so grateful to all the creative and brilliant film-industry workers who made these films, and also to Netflix, truly the bargain of the century for culture-lovers…. Thank you!

 

(Please click on “reviews” to see earlier outstanding movies I've reviewed….)

 

Please send your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s Trade in “Realpolitik” for More Realistic (Idealistic and Moral) Politics

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I just read a hasty translation of the remarkable letter written to President Bush by Iran’s President Ahmadinajad, the neocons’ newest target for demonization. In his passionate letter, this bold spiritual leader outlines his perspectives about international relations in terms of spirituality, religion, philosophy, history, and politics, courteously pointing out the west’s moral inconsistencies and asking many hard questions, while offering specific suggestions and proposals for world peace and for resolving conflicts.

 

I wonder whether President Bush will brush off his handlers’ warnings and actually dare read the letter? For just as Americans risk war by listening only to the current angry neocon drumbeat against Iran, so can Mr. Bush choose to risk peace by hearing out Mr. Ahmadinajad. Already the letter has been spun and skewed by war advocates as the usual self-serving drivel. I see it as a profound peace offering by a rising spiritual leader.

 

The letter is certainly must-reading for all wartime decision-makers such as the President, his Cabinet, and Congress. Consider the CIA’s secret overthrow of Iran’s popularly elected leader, Mossedegh, during the 1950’s, which led directly to the Iran hostage crisis; we may similarly ignore Ahmadinajad’s missive now to our peril. Americans who refuse to acknowledge our exploitative past, or to dialogue with our designated “enemies,” may regret such oversight at leisure, as we did on 9/11, when so few Americans understood—as too few do still—why America is the target of so much fear and hatred.

 

Even before this letter, our wrathful right wing media had already enthusiastically rolled out their propaganda machines to denounce Ahmadinajad’s previous speeches and writing. For indeed, our government cannot rouse our soldiers to kill and die, and our citizens to sacrifice for distant wars, unless they first convince us that each new “enemy” is the devil incarnate.

 

Joining with demagogues and fanatics in Israel, fear-mongering spinmeisters have portrayed Ahmadinajad as determined to wipe out all the Jews in Israel. To be sure, he is disgusted with the current regime and its unqualified American support. However, he has said he would support a fair referendum there, and I think he would welcome a regime which treated peaceful Jews, Christians, and Muslims with equal respect and rights.

 

Ahmadinajad has a sterling international reputation as a genuinely pious, erudite Muslim teacher and statesman. His letter to President Bush echoes many perspectives of our own American political left. Yet he is portrayed by the Bush administration as a hardliner, an extremist conservative religious fanatic.

 

This too-familiar pre-war fear-and-hate fest has been so done before, first with Saddam Hussein, then with Moqtada al-Sadr, then with bin Laden, and now with Ahmadinajad. I’m sick of watching my country rush blindly into more bullying excesses, while always draping our aggressions in saintliness.

 

I have no respect for the Bush-Cheney-Rice strategy for solving our energy crises by controlling the price and flow of oil through Mideast political and military coercion. It’s not nice, and has been far too pricey (not, of course, for oil companies) and has never really worked, especially when you count the whole cost of our lengthy dalliance with Saddam Hussein.

 

I’m not alone in my distaste for global bullies, either. No one likes schoolyard bullies who throw their weight around, thinking only of themselves, not caring who gets hurt so long as they get what they want. Powerful bullies may prevail in the short run, may even gain opportunistic allies eager to share in the spoils of easy wars against weaker opponents. But soon enough, everyone on the playground finally gets sick of being pushed around, and all gang up to confront the bully.

 

And the bigger the bully, the harder he falls.

 

Far from offering Americans security and safety, belligerent approaches to international relations create only more enemies, drain our coffers, strain our political freedoms, distract our leaders from solving our real problems, demean our integrity, lower our national pride and morale, ruin our reputation, weaken our alliances, threaten our trade, destroy untold lives, and do nothing at all to make us safer than we were before. We can stand up for our traditional rights and freedoms without insisting that hard, practical considerations and the advancement of our own expansionist national interests are the sole principles of our interactions with others.

 

It is time to retire America’s realpolitik approach to foreign policy. Even if Americans did choose to embrace such an anachronistic approach to international politics—and few thinking Americans would, for we have a strong foundation in a loving, giving Judeo-Christian ethic—even then, realpolitik makes no sense.

 

The only nations fighting defensive wars these days are those with desirable resources, or historically-contested lands of economic significance and/or strategic value. The United States is virtually alone in being so raw, young, and untouched by historical predations as to insert herself in many overt and covert distant wars of aggression simultaneously in many places. Visualize a bull in a china shop…..

 

The time is right for an international, grassroots groundswell, a spiritual/political movement insisting upon arms reduction by all parties, and a strong international policy of peaceful acceptance and coexistence. The nations which will prevail in the world of the future are those which now work cooperatively with others, strive to set a high moral example, and offer leadership in support of peaceful, productive lives for all.

 

The whole idea of fighting a war on terrorism is negative and backward. Why not throw a party instead, hosting it on age-old patriotic American and Judeo-Christian themes so dear to us—the golden rule, and respect and support for all human beings everywhere—and invite everyone? Why not co-opt all the world’s leaders by asking them to join us in fighting, not one another, but the real problems of the 21st century—disease, injustice, depravity, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, crime, poverty, war, terrorism, and yes, violence itself?

 

The peacemakers in our midst cannot hurt us, whether they be followers of Ahmadinajad or a newly chastened and hopeful George W. Bush. We need more, not fewer, experienced, visionary, peace-minded foreign policy experts, assigned to a new Department of Peace, who can help us realize the best and brightest policies of a new realism which combines hard and soft power in ways that are indeed realistic.

 

Winner-take-all is simply not a political option anymore. None of us will ever be able to climb higher than our lowliest fellow-climbers, for the world is at last far too interconnected. We cannot harm and neglect our neighbors near or far without that harm coming back, sooner than we can imagine, to haunt our own children and grandchildren, like chickens come home to roost.

 

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fair Negotiations with Iran. NOT.

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When my little sister and I would argue over a candy bar, my mom would remind us the only way to divide anything up fairly was to let one side divide, and the other side choose.

 

So the Bush administration has divvied up fairly (they say) all that is at stake in their looming war with Iran. Yet Iran still seems stubbornly “diplophobic,” as David Ignatius expresses it, and refuses to come to the negotiating table. Surely the opening terms of the negotiation are reasonable and unbiased?

 

For each of the terms of the negotiation listed below, select the ones which a nation truly committed to sovereignty, respect, and fairness within the world community of nations might choose:

 

Create the largest, most powerful military force in history, by far, and use it to advance far-flung interests;

 

Create a military force suitable to repel invaders;

 

Invade, intervene, colonize, economically exploit, set up puppet dictatorships, and politically and militarily interfere with the sovereignty of many nations near and far;

 

Attempt to repel invaders;

 

Invade and displace the residents of distant lands in order to establish military bases; 

 

Drop atomic bombs on civilian populations of other nations;

 

Develop, use, and share chemical weapons with allies; arm allies and overlook their acquisition of atomic weapons;

 

Develop and buy the natural resources of other (weaker) countries on one's own terms;

 

Invade other nations on trumped-up pretexts, blow up whatever/whomever, manipulate others' sovereignty and traditions, defy world opinion, and build huge, permanent military installations on foreign land, settling down wherever they want in order to favorably control the flow and price of scarce resources;

 

Send secret agents to assassinate or remove popular leaders and to undermine democratic elections, near and far;

 

Build thousands of conventional, chemical, and nuclear weapons, as well as secretive permanent installations, in order to study biological weapons; develop new kinds of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons—and use such weapons against any countries which “might” someday threaten their “interests,” or those of their allies;

 

Develop and use conventional weapons when actually invaded;

 

Threaten nuclear annihilation when other nations research nuclear technology; 

 

Develop nuclear energy technology for one's own energy needs;

 

Torture and hold suspected enemies indefinitely without due process of law;

 

Be the nation with the “might” that makes “right,” with the gold that makes the rules, with the freedom to disregard international opinion and world governing and legal bodies, choosing to do what it wants, when it wants, where it wants, to whomever it wants.

 

International fairness is demonstrated when individual nations hold themselves to the same high international standards of behavior they expect from others. America is the biggest and strongest nation among equals, established under the highest principles, ideals and values; we can also choose to become the humblest, the most respected, even the most loved nation, by reflecting in our international policies our deeply-held belief that all men truly are created equal, with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and by living the golden rule–treating all others as we would like to be treated.

 

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Have Seen the Future of Latino Immigration—and It Is Good

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The hair on my arms stood up as I tuned in my car radio to the raucous enthusiasm of the immigrant protest rally aired recently on C-Span. It was “déjà vu all over again” as I recalled my own youthful experiences with immigrants and racism in the very hispanic city of San Antonio.

 

For I have seen the future of Latino immigration in America before, and it is good.

 

My military family moved to San Antonio during the late 1950’s, my middle school years. We had already moved eight times before, and I spent five of those years learning in overseas post schools along with a multiracial and multiethnic group of classmates all living middle-class lives. Transferring now into a San Antonio off-post public school situated in a sharply divided socioeconomic setting, I was surprised to be suddenly thrown in among a very large number of poor latinos, and shocked to see how unkindly they were treated by my anglo classmates.

 

My youthful ideals and sensibilities were greatly offended by such discrimination, but like many—perhaps most—youthful innocents, I was confused and easily led by the mean immoral majority, who quickly taught this eager new girl that “we” didn’t “like” “them”—and certainly didn’t mix with them.

 

My parents weren’t much help either. When I protested the injustice I saw so clearly at school, they lamely agreed with my moral indignation against racism, but also strongly registered their preference that I not choose to socialize with children who weren’t “like us”—i.e., clean, educated, privileged, advantaged.

 

A few of my teachers treated all students respectfully, but the general consensus about “meskins” in my school was a sweeping generalization that they were, as a race, all dirty, poor, immoral, violent, sneaky, and “too stupid” to know how to speak English. The convenient filter of race soon blurred my eyes to the many differences among these children, and eventually I clumped them all, even the occasional middle-class and native-English speaking exceptions, into the same rejected bunch I thought of as “mexican.”

 

Through whispered conversations, I soon “knew” what my schoolmates “knew”—that all these kids were children of “illegals” who had snuck across the river, and were now sneaking around in bushes and backrooms doing filthy jobs our parents wouldn't dream of doing, living in hovels, and probably stealing and breaking other laws too. We exchanged warnings about their poor side of town: don’t go near the San Antonio River unless you want to get knifed by a “mex”…. The wealthiest among my friends claimed to “own a ‘wet’ (‘wetback’) or two,” whom their parents kept hidden away on distant ranches in shacks stocked with sacks of beans, to chop cedar and clear brush in the searing sun, at the cost of pennies a day.

 

My classmates generally viewed the influx of Mexican immigrants with suspicion and disgust. Sometimes we sneered at them, even fought them as they grouped together defensively—but mostly we ignored them. I went, too quickly, from feeling righteously indignant, to apathy, to feeling more “in the know” about the “appropriate” way to feel and act—that is, prejudicially.

 

Of course, I knew nothing about how hard it can be to get ahead when you’re poor, or the immense barriers of linguistic disadvantage, or the challenges of a new life in a different culture, especially an illegal life. I saw without recognizing only the commonalities of poverty; indeed, many of my Latino classmates were very dirty, their clothes were smelly, they did seem ignorant, and they spoke English poorly.

 

I’m especially sad when I remember how kind many of the Latino children were to me when I first enrolled. Many seemed friendly, attractive, and fun to this lonely new girl. Too quickly, though, I “knew better” and pulled away from them, frightened by the strong social prohibition against socializing with “mexes.” I had already begun to make friends with some who were probably pleasantly surprised to be greeted initially with no prejudice; I’m sure my transformation and confused withdrawal hurt many feelings.

 

Fast-forward now forty years, to the year my family returned to San Antonio to care for my dying father. To my delight, I found San Antonio completely changed, a bright, working city ornamented by a proud Hispanic cultural heritage. During that difficult year of family losses, all of my childhood prejudices were firmly replaced with admiration and deep gratitude, as I worked my way through a long line of outstanding care-giving and service professionals, nearly all native-English speaking, educated, middle and upper-class Latinos.

 

From that ragtag bunch of schoolmates of yesteryear, no doubt themselves largely parented by penniless, ignorant laborers who dared their way across the border, had come this impressive line of smiling, capable, courteous, faith-driven professionals. Where “mexicans” had previously been relegated only to San Antonio’s lowest social classes, now they were the home-care aides who tenderly washed and fed my father, the capable nurses who treated him, the orderlies who gently attended him in hospital, the capable doctors who set his broken hip, the hospice workers who comforted us, the owners of the funeral home, and the directors who helped us plan his funeral.

Latinos now ably ran much of the city, blending in with the anglo minority attractively—and patriotically. As I hurried through busy days, helpful Latino faces sold me groceries and hardware, delivered our packages, repaired our dishwasher, patrolled the streets, and repaired phone wires. My father’s accountant was hispanic, as was his attorney.

 

I remember my childhood astonishment when I overheard comments about a local “mexican,” Henry B. Gonzalez, was became an influential national politician. Later, I learned that another “Chicano,” Henry Cisneros, had worked to transform the whole city for Hemisfair, refurbishing the San Antonio River Walk, which later became one of the world’s safest and most colorful international tourist draws. A multitude of Hispanic civic and political leaders followed in their footsteps. As an ignorant young girl, however, I found it all much too confusing. How could these apparently benevolent leaders possibly be drawn from that same lowly pool of apparent lowlifes which I had tragically learned to exclude from my own personal repertoire of “nice people”—or, perhaps, “human beings?”

 

The San Antonio of today is a multicultural treat, largely run by courteous, ambitious Latinos. All those I met during that painful year resembled, in their work ethic and attitude, our Attorney General Alberto Gonzales—genial, earnest, hard-working, well-intentioned, people of faith.

 

Welcome to the America of the future, and more power to it.

 

Immigrants break no law they ever had a chance to democratically vote upon. Immigrants are doing exactly what any of us would do for ourselves and for our families, were we faced with an impossible present and future—if only we could find the daring and the support necessary to pick up, move on, and start over.

 

No other country is spending billions to guard its borders from terrorists, although quite a few nations are presently scrambling to arm themselves against our American invasions. No expensive walls are being built to keep terrorists out of Canada, China, Norway, or Sweden? And why not? Each of these countries has a similarly long, porous border, like ours, but unlike the U.S.A., these countries have friendly, cooperative foreign policies—i.e., fewer enemies.

 

When our politicians decide to create fewer deadly enemies with unkind trade and foreign policies, and focus instead on offering generous, accepting policies which embrace the world’s problems as our own, we won’t waste so much money protecting our borders from terrorists. Maybe we’ll pour some of that money into a better life for ourselves and for the immigrants we need to help make this country great again.

 

When I turned off my radio, I said a prayer for all persistent immigrants, for their admirable struggle to make a better life, and for the America we will all work to build together. Because someday soon these adventurers will claim for themselves the same bright prize their audacious countrymen have claimed throughout our history, the grandest lottery ticket gamble of all, the chance to win U.S. citizenship.

 

Please send your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ninety Lives … For What They’re Worth

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My favorite news source is newspapers, but every few weeks I get my ironing done with the Sunday weekly news roundup shows on television. Yesterday, watching George Stephanopoulos, Inside Washington, Face the Nation, and Meet the Press, I became painfully aware that not a single mention had been made, even in passing, of the ninety lives lost in a Baghdad mosque earlier in the week.

 

Reporters and interviewees droned on about “not one more American soldier,” while George Stephanopoulos thoughtfully rolled his register of American lives tragically cut short thousands of miles from home. Hours were devoted to gleeful analysis of what Libby knew and what Bush didn’t. Bernadette Peters made a generous appeal for one of my favorite causes, adoption of America’s homeless pets.

 

Yet during those three hours on ABC, CBS, and NBC, not a single image or voice was raised to note the horrific loss of those ninety lives in Baghdad.

 

The American media—and Americans in general—are simply missing the point. The point is, respect and support for human life everywhere, not just for Americans. It’s as if, by example, we somehow imagine it to be in our best interest to urge all nations everywhere to adopt our own peculiar brand of tunnel-visioned “me-first” patriotism.

 

Apparently, Americans see planet Earth as a tidy jigsaw puzzle where self-sufficient clumps of humanity are divided perpetually into impermeable nations separated by high, immutable stone walls that God himself built, instead of a tiny and fragile living planet where we are all so interdependent that we share the very air we breathe, and every drop we drink.

 

Nationalism and patriotism are just fine and dandy in their place–a very limited place of proud achievement, unique traditions, and dedication to local civic responsibilities. But patriotism and nationalism go too far when they pander to the illusion that human life elsewhere is somehow less important than the lives of “we Americans”—as if it could be possible that lives in one nation could somehow be of greater value than other lives.

 

Since when do traditional American values speak only for American citizens? Since when do our philosophies declare all men created equal, with Americans just a little more equal than all the rest? Since when does Jesus love the little children of the world, especially American children?

 

What does it mean to be an American, a patriot? If it means some kind of Orwellian doublespeak where we turn our backs on the rest of the world, I don’t want any part of it.

 

Americans couldn’t have been more touched by the international outpouring of empathy when our twin towers fell. Attention was paid. Moments of silence were shared. Candles were lit. Prayers from every religious faith were invoked in every language. Helping hands reached across the waters. Schoolchildren collected pennies for victims’ families.

 

For that one moment, everyone cared—not because of, or even in spite of the fact that the victims were Americans—but because human beings were at one moment peacefully pursuing happiness and the next moment they were dead. Human beings. Not Americans, or Chinese, or Hutus, or Shiites. Human beings, upon whom all the highest moral values of every religious and ethical system have forever been built.

 

Every day, in every corner of the world, far more people die hourly from the consequences of economic and political violence—curable diseases, starvation, poverty,  war—than died in that mosque, or in the twin towers, for that matter.

 

But that’s not the point. The point is, it’s not about Iraqis, or Jews, or Americans. It’s about people who are needlessly dying from human violence and indifference, people whose bodies are mangled and lives shattered. People with faces and names, of every nationality, who once had families and dreams and prayers and work that needed to be done. They're all gone.

 

News analysts have a dual role, to both reflect and create public attitude. This Sunday’s weekly news roundup created and reflected total American indifference to the suffering of human beings in the Middle East. Our otherwise distinguished news analysts were so busy interrupting each other over the fall of DeLay and the immigration gridlock in Congress that they couldn’t spare a moment to mention the fact that last week, the equivalent of a whole Shiite village was blown to hell as they gathered to pray to the very same God America prays to, even if we call Him by a different name.

 

And Americans are by no means unaccountable. Because no matter how you read the tea leaves, our violent hand has left its mark indelibly on that anguished region. The tyrannical power of Saddam Hussein was an American creation. The nation of Iraq itself was an arbitrary western notion forcefully assembled from three historically distinct ethnicities. The very fact that these three mutually-distrustful factions are at this very moment bristling with high-tech arms they can hardly resist using to annihilate each other in a civil war, out of sheer desperation and despair, is almost entirely due to the generosity of the American military-industrial complex and its imported violent solutions to the region’s problems.

 

What will it take for the west to recognize and support the majority of Muslims who repeatedly pay the price of decades of violent occupation and interference with almost inhuman endurance, responding stoically with non-violence, forbearance, order, and faith? What does it take to earn American respect and compassion for this vast majority peacefully enduring the fires of hell through no fault of their own?

 

And what kind of unholy armageddon will it take for George Bush to stand up and say, This is not right. This is wrong. This is evil. This will not stand.

 

Americans claim to have democratically decided to throw $500 billion of our hard-earned taxpayers’-dollars—not to mention our darling children and grandchildren—toward the goal of bestowing freedom and democracy upon our beloved Iraqi friends. Or has a tiny extremist group of neocon warmongers managed to misuse our democratic processes so as to herd American citizens around like sheep, in hopes that when Iraq is similarly safely “democratized,” we will be able to commandeer Iraqi oil by riding herd on those citizens, as well.

 

If this is not the case, if we so love the Iraqis that we're willing to put our economy and our progeny's lives on the line, why can’t we manage to come up with just one silent moment of programming time during three hours of major-network weekly news roundups in order to show the minimum of respect for the ninety murdered souls on whose behalf we’re supposedly fighting and dying?

 

The American media goes absolutely crazy, and the American people spare no expense, when a single American miner can be rescued from an explosion, when an American child is pulled from the rubble of a well or a hurricane, a lost American pilot plucked from the ocean. But we harden our hearts, press our lips together, and look away when the victims are “others.”

 

Our own violent culture is the one which stands to lose the most from this terrible attitude. What is it with us? Are we getting bored? Have we seen too many damn mosque bombings to move us anymore? Is it like, ho-hum, more collateral damage, another suicide bombing, please change the channel to a good Schwarzenegger movie? Is this the kind of coldhearted, narrow-minded, mean-spirited world that American parents want to leave their bereft children alone in someday, a meaningless, terrifying one that hates each other?

 

Perhaps some sense can come from this mosque bombing if Americans and all other nations consecrate the ground of these martyrs by insisting that this be the last bombing, the one which finally turns the violence around, that makes everyone realize that enough is enough. Are we waiting for global thermonuclear war to force us into that decision?

 

It’s time to bind up all nations’ wounds, to care for the widow and the orphan, and to dedicate ourselves to a new birth of freedom from human violence, not just for the people of the Middle East, but for all of us, for all our children, everywhere.

 

The world is not the economic and geopolitical chessboard of some tiny extremist splinter group, with winner-take-all the unfair object of their game. If Americans care about all people, as I know we do, we need to play a different game entirely, one with a golden rule which treats all others everywhere just exactly as we would like to be treated. The object of the game is respect and support for the quality of human life everywhere. 

 

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.com