Tag Archives: golden rule politics

The Best (and Only) Way to Solve Our Terrorism Problem

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As a history major, I know about what western corporations and governments have done to Muslim (and other) nations—exploited resources, manipulated politics, set up friendly regimes, assassinated opponents, and armed and funded those willing to serve our interests. So when Thomas L. Friedman, in his 4/7/07 New York Times column, “At a Theater Near You…” (copied below) wonders how Americans have grown so “numb to just how crazy” scattered Muslim suicide bombing attacks are,” I wonder in turn how we in the west can be just as numbly indifferent to the horrors we’ve perpetrated upon Muslims.

 

One member of Congress after another argues for withdrawal from Iraq so that not one more American life will be added to the number lost, without a word about the millions of Iraqi lives already lost or maimed or ruined, and the hundreds dying daily–those same Iraqi lives President Bush so often claimed we had come to rescue.

 

Mr. Friedman wonders, how could a doctor ever become a terrorist? Many Muslim doctors in London and elsewhere have been dealing for five years and more with the tragic effects upon almost everyone they know of the western occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. These doctors are educated humanitarians, knowledgeable about the histories of western aggression and oppression in their countries of origin, histories we certainly don’t teach or discuss here at home. They are doubtless grief-stricken, paralyzed, and hopeless enough to prefer dying to doing nothing at all. I think they intended to terrify the British into feeling their heightened vulnerabilities more personally, without harming them, hoping they would urge their new Prime Minister Brown to address Islamic concerns and stop the carnage.

 

Consider: what if an imagined, vastly more powerful Muslim alliance had invaded and occupied the United States five years ago? We wouldn’t be “generating vigorous, sustained condemnation” about an occasional American suicide bomber way over in Iraq, consumed as we would we be already, here at home in America, with simple day-to-day survival, with burying and mourning our million dead brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, with caring for five times that million beloved wounded, with desperately fleeing the violence along with the millions of our fellow Americans abandoning childhood homes and trying to pick up the pieces of shattered lives and dreams anywhere else….

 

Just who is it, Mr. Friedman, who is “erasing basic norms of civilization” by terrorizing—Islamic suicide bombers, or our own invading and occupying armies?

 

Both, of course.

 

I have no doubt that many extremist Muslims are every bit as crazy as some of our very own home-grown terrified fundamentalist Christians and Jews who stand ready to nuke whole Islamic nations right now with no more questions asked. Yes, there are violent, ignorant, vengeful people everywhere, and this is a big big problem. And adding more violence, suffering, anger, and fear to all of their lives is being done to what good purpose?

 

Islam and Christianity, as practiced by their most devout and informed followers, are both peaceful religions. To be sure, the Koran requires believers to protect Muslim lands from those who would attack, occupy, and impose different traditions upon them, just as American Christians and Jews alike pledge to defend the Constitution even to the death from all enemies foreign and domestic. That doesn’t make either of us crazy. Yet Mr. Friedman implies that crazy-fanatic-Muslims are “the problem.”

 

Surely he can’t mean to compare the terrible 9/11 attacks perpetrated by misguided young mostly-Saudi Arabian radical intellectuals, with the American government’s own calculated five-year attacks and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have resulted in the deaths of a million people, the wounding of five times that many, the loss of 3,600+ of our own precious youth, the blighted hopes of millions of refugees, and the transformation of vast swaths of culturally-rich Muslim home towns and cities into bullet-ridden ghost towns?

 

Surely Friedman can’t be comparing the current outbreaks of desperate suicide attacks, however horrific, here and there in the west, with the deliberate, incalculable damage done to Muslim countries by western governments and corporations over the last several hundred years? Only the biggest, comfiest bully on the block could get away with making up such comparisons.

 

Mr. Friedman believes Islamic countries are benighted because they haven’t embraced western modernity, and it is true that the west and the east have much to learn from one another. But if only we would get out of their way, Muslims would have a better chance to embrace what they admire about western culture, as the Japanese did after WWII. Maybe when freed of western interference, Muslims, like the Vietnamese, will amaze us not only with their productivity, but with their generosity to former enemies as well.

 

The last thing Americans want to confess is our culpability in the Middle East, so painful is it to see our own shortcomings clearly, and so comforting to chalk disastrous policies up to Muslim backwardness….just as we’ve chalked everything bad happening in China up to Chinese backwardness, until now, when, whoops, here they come too, industriously going about doing things in their own way, and the bigger and stronger for it. In fact, they’ve succeeded so well that many in the west are working to boycott attendance at the Beijing  Olympics on various pretexts, not wanting to risk letting the west see how well the Chinese are doing.

 

I wish our government would stop creating enemies out of everyone “different,” and stop encouraging well-paid radio demagogues like Rush Limbaugh to keep up their steady drumbeat of xenophobia (“fear of outsiders.”) Demonizing and colonizing distant oil-rich nations does guarantee big profits for oil and for military/industrial corporations which thrive in a political atmosphere of fear. Regrettably though, capitalizing on America’s abysmal ignorance and fear of the rest of the world will never unify or save our nation, or our planet. We are young, brash, and powerful, and we want to “be right” about everything, want to “settle” conflicts “quickly” through violent means. Both goals are fantasies. Instead, we could choose to work to befriend everyone on the planet, accepting all nations and peoples as-is along with their weaknesses and mistakes (including our own), extending a welcome hand of caring and assistance to all….

 

But unless we voters suddenly get a lot smarter before the 2008 elections, the U.S. government will continue to be run by politicians elected by money from big corporations whose only interest is making high profits for their stockholders, and with no interest at all in changing the aggressive foreign policies which so successfully fill up their bank accounts.

 

And why should such corporations care if Muslim or American innocents are killed here or there? Why would corporations want to stop endless wars, when they can reinvest their gargantuan war profits into more government lobbying, a strategy which has successfully created for them a safe, lucrative niche within this nation of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, which may yet perish from the earth. Few politicians disproportionately influenced by corporate donations will risk their powerful status to educate voters about the U.S.’s abysmal history of empire-building.

 

Friedman seems blissfully unaware of the two clear and oft-repeated “concrete political demands” which Bin Laden and his violent cohorts have stated time and again: in order to stop Islamic terrorism, the west must withdraw military forces from Islamic lands, and must stop arming and supporting Israeli anti-Islamic aggression.

 

The strategy of beating weaker nations into submission through gunboat lack-of-diplomacy and war has not proved robust. The west will be far more effective at spreading the best of our culture when we first offer generous support for popular cherished Islamic projects and problems.

 

No matter how far we fling our military forces in attempts to resolve east/west political conflicts, “our” dangerous and costly “terrorism problem” will only become worse until we withdraw our military forces from Islam, and offer generous support only to those Israeli leaders working for peaceful co-existence and equal rights for all ethnicities and religions. Until that time, grieving, patriotic, angry, jobless Muslim youth with no national military hope of prevailing against western oppression or against regional enemies newly armed and militarized amidst the lawlessness and chaos of life in a rapidly spreading war zone, will keep on choosing to throw in with terrorist/insurgent bands and militias.

 

If we continue to insist upon our American right to impose upon distant cultures our own “superior” political and economic values, multinational corporations profiting from war and terror will continue to misuse our ideals to serve their own greedy purposes:  to drive ever-deeper wedges into foreign lands, and to buy and sell (or take) whatever they want at criminal prices.

 

Friedman argues that it’s up to Muslim leaders to “remove this cancer” of terrorist violence. No. It is up to western leaders to remove this cancer of military-backed hegemony, this cancer of “might makes right,” this cancer of trampling the rights and traditions of smaller and weaker peoples.

 

Unless Mr. Friedman and I can somehow agree upon which of our children and grandchildren we’re willing to trade for a steady flow of cheap Middle Eastern oil, and which of our cities we’ll willing to exchange for bigger earnings for American stockholders, we should support leaders capable of shifting our nation and the world into to a new era of non-violent global cooperation, for the sake of all in both the east and the west.

 

 

Please send comments to Nancy Pace at njcpace@gmail.com .

 

 

 

July 4, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

At a Theater Near You …

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

London

I knew something was up when I couldn’t get a cab. Then there were sirens and helicopters whirring overhead. I stopped a passerby to ask what was going on. He said something about a car bomb outside a disco six blocks from my hotel. A few hours later, I finally found a taxi. The driver warned me that it was nearly impossible to get across town. Another bomb had been uncovered in a car park. Next day, more news: a suicide bomber had driven his Jeep into an airport and jumped out, his body on fire, screaming “Allah! Allah!”

Where was I? Baghdad? Kabul? Tel Aviv? No, I was in England. But it could have been anywhere. The Middle East: Now playing at a theater near you.

But this movie gets more confusing every time you watch it. When you watched it on 9/11 it was about America’s presence in the heart of Arabia. And when you watched it on 7/7 it was about unemployed and alienated Muslim youth in Britain. In Jordan not long ago it was about a wedding at a Western hotel. In Morocco recently it was about an Internet cafe. And two days ago in Yemen it was about seven Spanish tourists who were killed when a suicide bomber drove into them at a local tourist site. Wasn’t Spain the country that quit Iraq to get its people out of the line of fire?

Because these incidents are scattered, we’re growing numb to just how crazy they are. In the past few years, hundreds of Muslims have committed suicide amid innocent civilians — without making any concrete political demands and without generating any vigorous, sustained condemnation in the Muslim world.

Two trends are at work here: humiliation and atomization. Islam’s self-identity is that it is the most perfect and complete expression of God’s monotheistic message, and the Koran is God’s last and most perfect word. To put it another way, young Muslims are raised on the view that Islam is God 3.0. Christianity is God 2.0. Judaism is God 1.0. And Hinduism and all others are God 0.0.

One of the factors driving Muslim males, particularly educated ones, into these acts of extreme, expressive violence is that while they were taught that they have the most perfect and complete operating system, every day they’re confronted with the reality that people living by God 2.0., God 1.0 and God 0.0 are generally living much more prosperously, powerfully and democratically than those living under Islam. This creates a real dissonance and humiliation. How could this be? Who did this to us? The Crusaders! The Jews! The West! It can never be something that they failed to learn, adapt to or build. This humiliation produces a lashing out.

In the old days, you needed a terror infrastructure with bases in Beirut or Afghanistan to lash out in a big way. Not anymore. Now all you need is the virtual Afghanistan — the Internet and a few cellphones — to recruit, indoctrinate, plan and execute. Hence, the atomization — little terror groups sprouting everywhere. Everyone now has a starter kit.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, recently noted in a speech that during the cold war “the enemy was easy to find, but hard to finish,” because the Soviet Union was so big and powerful. “Intelligence was important” back then, he added, “but it was overshadowed by the need for sheer firepower.”

In today’s war against terrorist groups, said General Hayden, “it’s just the opposite. Our enemy is easy to finish, but hard to find. Today, we are looking for individuals or small groups planning suicide bombings, running violent Jihadist Web sites, sending foreign fighters into Iraq.”

I’d go one step further. The Soviet Union was easy to find and hard to kill, but once it died, it was dead forever. It had no regenerative power because it had no popular base. The terrorists of Iraq or London are hard to find, easy to kill, but very difficult to eliminate. New recruits just keep sprouting.

Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists. But it’s been widely noted that virtually all suicide terrorists today are Muslims. Angry Norwegians aren’t doing this — nor are starving Africans or unemployed Mexicans. Muslims have got to understand that a death cult has taken root in the bosom of their religion, feeding off it like a cancerous tumor.

This cancer is erasing basic norms of civilization. In Iraq, we’ve seen suicide bombers blow up funerals and schools. In England, seven out of the eight people detained in the latest plot are Muslim doctors or medical students. Doctors plotting mass murder? Could that be? If Muslim leaders don’t remove this cancer — and only they can — it will spread, tainting innocent Muslims and poisoning their relations with each other and the world.

 

 

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barack Obama, The Unforgiven, the Race Tightrope, and the Blame Game

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In a very interesting Washington Post editorial (July 6th, “Obama’s Tightrope,” copied below), Amina Luqman argues that Barack Obama must present voters with only the whitest of credentials and speaking styles, and avoid blaming whites for black problems—while other candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, remain free to stir up blacks by criticizing whites, and by using the passionate, rhythmic cadences and stirring challenges traditionally relied upon by black politicians and preachers. As Luqman watched the presidential debate at Howard University, “up seemed down and everything seemed out of sync” to her, because of this flip-flop in the rhetorical styles of these two candidates.

 

I don’t think Obama walks a race tightrope. I think he walks and talks and thinks just exactly how he walks and talks and thinks, and he doesn’t attack anyone, white or black, because that’s who he is. Somehow, Obama has learned not to bother with blaming anyone for anything, because blaming is a waste of time and spirit and resources, and besides, it only invites retaliation, which must then be defended against. Instead, Obama consistently accepts, “as-is,” all others, black and white, American and “other.”

 

Obama knows that everyone makes mistakes, and that the greater one’s power, the greater the potential for and impact of their mistakes. As Dr. King did, Obama encourages his audiences to move forward together to find solutions to unsolvable problems, to clean up impossible messes, to do better than the last generation, and he knows we can’t do it while carrying a burden of past guilt.

 

Not-blaming is a deliberate, habitual practice of Obama’s. He shares with King the best, most productive kind of humility: self-acceptance born merely—and spectacularly—from realization that they are God’s creatures, which is to say, imperfectly perfect, perfectly lovable, and forgiven.

 

In The Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood’s compadre regrets killing someone, but justifies it to himself by saying, “Well, he had it coming.” Eastwood answers him with, “We all have it coming.” We've all made mistakes, but it makes no sense to demand retribution for every mistake. Unless we’re delusional (as most of us are, now and then, including me) we can recognize our culpability in many things without insisting that each sin be punished.

 

Pointing fingers, assigning blame, piling on, creating scapegoats, and exacting revenge are all of one piece with the same fearful, guilty, hateful politics that keep us so mired down with old problems that we can’t solve anything new. Obama apparently holds to Jesus’ new covenant, which is all about forgiving, forgetting, lightening up and moving on to make things better.

 

More interested in mercy than in an eye-for-an-eye, Obama will leave worrying about others’ accountability to lesser humans. His positive, present-oriented spirit will bring him all the power he can use, and it will allow him to use all of that power for good. Of course he will make mistakes; all leaders do. Lovers of Shakespeare and classical theatre see demonstrated over and over how every person, however great, has “tragic flaws.”  But because Obama tries to overlook the mistakes of others, he won't let his own mistakes become stumbling blocks that prevent him from pressing boldly on.

 

We all want second chances to do things right, to use our misdirected and under-utilized knowledge and talents and skills for good. We all want opportunities to redeem ourselves, because most of us eventually do learn from our mistakes. Obama seems to realize that only after he accepts others, as-is, can he accept himself, as-is. His safety, in fact, like Bill Clinton’s, lies in his reluctance to waste time defending himself.

 

I hope Hillary Clinton won't choose to stir up resentments, although resentments effectively unify antagonists against one another by polarizing and dividing. Radio demagogues also use fear especially well to pit one group against another, and all too many presidential elections have been won by fear-mongering partisans. Unfortunately, accusations and recriminations can't unify a nation, and stirring up ill feelings through blame cannot save one.

 


Please send comments to Nancy Pace at njcpace@gmail.com .
 

 

 

 

Obama's Tightrope

By Amina Luqman

Friday, July 6, 2007; Page A15

 

The world felt topsy-turvy as I watched the presidential debate held at Howard University last week. Up seemed down and everything was out of sync as the front-runners for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, spoke. In this debate, as in others, we watched Obama remake the traditional persona of the black candidate and someone else take what might have been his place.

 

From the outset, it was clear that Barack Obama wasn't going to be Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. For every rhythmic alliteration Jackson would have offered, Obama gave us pauses and sentences in paragraphs. For Sharpton's quick wit and scathing candor, Obama offered even tones and grave calm. There was no push toward applause-filled endings. He begged for contemplation and understanding. Simple became complex, demands became propositions and “they” became “we.”

 

The average black American onlooker can't help feeling proud but also just a little hurt watching Obama. Proud of his ability to traverse minefields on a national political landscape and hurt by what America demands of black candidates seeking public acceptance and trust. During the debate, black Americans in the audience sat, hands poised, yearning to applaud a black candidate able to articulate our passions and sense of injustice. We wanted to hear that he understood and loved us — not in the general, “we the people” sense but in the specific. Yet we know that with each utterance about injustice, each puff of anger or frustration about racism, we lose the very thing we seek: a viable black candidate. The closer Obama comes to us, the further he would be from winning the nomination and the presidency.

 

That is a reality of race and national politics in America. Part of Obama's appeal to white America lies in his hopefulness. It's in the way he looks toward a brighter future, and it's in his promise to bring us all along.

 

Yet the subtext of his appeal is in what he does not say. It's in his ability to declare that things must get better without saying who or what has made them bad. It's how he rarely chastises and how he divides blame and responsibility evenly; white receiving equal parts with black, poor equal parts with rich. The “we” Obama has created leaves blank the space traditional African American candidates would have filled with passion or a clear articulation of the state of black Americans. It's left some black voters unfulfilled and some white voters with a sense of acceptance and absolution from past wrongs and present-day injustices.

 

We are all watching Obama's tightrope walk, his attempts to appeal to the white majority while maintaining some semblance of integrity regarding the plight of black Americans. It's a heavy burden. In contrast, Hillary Clinton is on relatively sure footing. Obama must tilt away from clarity and passion about issues disproportionately affecting blacks while Clinton is free to perform the black candidate's role. In last week's debate, it was she who took on the traditional black candidate's persona, she who was both passionate and rhythmic in her cadence. Her endings built to crescendos. Be it real or pandering, Clinton can openly connect and show solidarity with black Americans in ways that Obama cannot.

 

There is no better example than Clinton's comment about the disproportionate effect HIV has on black communities. She said that if “HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of 25 and 34, there would be an outraged outcry in this country.” For Obama to have said the same words in the same fiery manner could have been political suicide. By forfeit, Clinton essentially becomes the black candidate; it's not a space America would allow Obama to fill.

 

Not long after Obama announced his candidacy, the buzz in the media was, “Is Obama black enough?” Many black Americans privately laughed at this question. We know that it takes only a slip of the tongue about slavery's legacy or reparations, a hiccup about institutional racism or paying special attention to the needs of black Americans, and suddenly the love would be gone. We know that the question has less to do with black America than with whether white America trusts that Obama is not too black for its political taste.

 

We laugh at the question of Obama's blackness because we live with a version of Obama's tightrope dance every day. We do the same dance in our workplaces, with our supervisors, our neighbors and our college classmates. In that way we know Obama couldn't be more like us, he couldn't be more black. We along with Obama know that even the most skilled tightrope performance may not be enough to ensure that you land on your feet.

 

Amina Luqman is a freelance writer. Her e-mail address is amina.luqman@yahoo.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shall We Quibble Over Competing Ideologies? Or Choose Love Over Fear?

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President Bush stumbles over the nuances of that thorny word “ideology,” just as he struggles to understand the concept of “democracy.” Together with Humpty Dumpty, he wishes words could mean just what he chooses them to mean, neither more nor less….

 

Unfortunately, the word “ideology,” a “bad” word he once thought applicable only to evil, foreigner-type “isms” such as Communism, terrorism, extremism, Islamism, and facism, turns out to be nothing more than: “an organized collection of ideas…a comprehensive vision…a way of looking at things” (Wikipedia)— a definition far friendlier than Mr. Bush first envisioned, equally applicable to the many isms he rather approves of, such as Americanism, free market capitalism, Methodism, and certainly the organized collections of ideas constituting “democracy” or “freedom.”

 

Since all political thinking seems to fall under various ideologies, it would seem unwise to let ourselves become so caught up within our own peculiar favorite ideological flavor/s that we withdraw our support for human life anywhere in the world in the name of that ideology—whether it be democracy, freedom, liberty, utopianism, capitalism, nationalism, Islamism, fundamentalism, Zionism, Protestantism, patriotism, conservatism, liberalism…. After all, that's how all the bad guys in history justified their scummy actions, by insisting that their chosen ideologies were “righter” than others.

 

The thing is, one can go so far wrong searching for moral consistency within an ism, because isms and other ideologies always shut out some of the people some of the time, making them less than fully human, less than deserving of humanitarian concern—certainly all those who think differently than “we” do, who aren’t like “us” because “they” don’t think believe as “we” do, etc. Inevitably “we” come to oppose “them,” choosing “us” over “them.”

 

Ideologies can be a useful, interesting, creative way to organize one's thinking, but when taken too seriously–as “the truth”–they are very polarizing. 

 

It is neither possible to decide how rightly to treat other human beings by looking to ideologies and isms for one’s standards, nor safe, nor ethical, to decide on an ideological basis whether to support or reject that highest and most sacred value, the sanctity of human life.

 

“Treat all others as you would wish they would treat you” remains the most widely-accepted, time-honored, one-and-only gold-standard rule of ethical conduct ever conceived; it is found in every world religion and every moral, ethical, and justice code everywhere in the world, superseding all ideologies and isms, and consistently useful in every ethical or moral decision.

 

Ideologues of every stripe, every day, everywhere in the world, try to manipulate people into voting, killing, and even dying for whatever admirable-sounding preferred ideology their audience is familiar with, justifying their most horrific recommendations—invasions, occupations, terror, bombing, napalming, maiming, stealing, starvation, murder, neglect, torture, indoctrination, abuse, imprisonment, exploitation, coercion, manipulation—always in the name of some heart-stirring and noble-sounding aspect of a popular ideology.

 

Whenever demagogues (“those who gain political power by appealing to popular prejudices, fears, and expectations, typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda”—Wikipedia) anywhere in the world attempt to persuade fellow-citizens to act unsupportively toward others, they always cover their dark deeds with a soft, cozy, comfortable cloak of locally-popular ideologies. (H. L. Mencken called a demagogue “one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.”)

 

Whenever anyone in any country has done something injurious to any other, or left undone what could have helped another, no matter who we were, no matter in the name of what ideology we acted, no matter how noble we thought our actions, we were wrong. And whenever we chose to support human life, we were acting aright.

 

Politics is as simple—and as complicated—as that.

 

We either contribute to another’s fear, or we offer them loving support. We either perceive their anger and wrong-headedness as an anguished cry for help, or we attack and punish them. We reject them, or we contribute to their acceptance and well-being. We light a candle or leave them in darkness. We offer them war or contribute to their peace. We lift them up or we abandon them. We share their dreams or take them away. We help them or we hurt them.

 

We choose love over fear, or we quibble amongst ideologies to gain power, and end up losing shared life itself on our tiny blue planet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please send questions and comments to njcpace@gmail.com

Come listen to me sing this peace and love duet I wrote for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw….

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Not that I can sing, but these two wonderful entertainers sure can. Click on “more” below, and then, below the words to the song, click on the “Dreamin 1.wav” file to hear me sing the words and melody. And please let Tim and Faith know that you've heard a peace and love song that was made just for them (and just made for them, too…. They will know how to pick up some very nice harmonies….) I hope they love it and that you'll love it, too. (Sorry, but I ruined what voice I had cheering at my daughters' games, so now I have to almost whisper or my voice cracks!)

“Dreamin’ of Peace” – a duet written with Faith Hill and Tim McGraw in mind….

by Nancy Pace, June 07, njcpace@gmail.com

 

FAITH:  Darlin’, after supper

When story-time is done

We’re thinkin’ of you far away

And dreamin’ of peace

 

We’re holdin’ things together

We’re sendin’ up our prayers

We’re blowin’ you sweet kisses

And we’re dreamin’ of peace

 

We’re dreamin’ of peace

We’re prayin’ for peace

We’re longin’ for peace

We’re dreamin’ of peace

 

TIM:   I told you ‘bout my buddy

He’s lookin’ out for me

We’re comin’ home together

And we’re dreamin’ of peace

 

When this war is over

When all the fightin’s done

You’ll never be alone again

Just dreamin’ of peace

 

We’re dreamin’ of peace

We’re prayin’ for peace

We’re longin’ for peace

We’re dreamin’ of peace

 

FAITH:  The days are gettin' harder

The kids are getting tough

The only way I sleep at night

Is dreamin’ of peace

 

I’ll lay you down and love you

I’ll never let you go

I need you here beside me

Just dreamin’ of peace

 

We’re dreamin’ of peace

We’re prayin’ for peace

We’re longin’ for peace

We're dreamin’ of peace

 

TIM:   Here everything is crazy

It’s hard to understand

How everybody’s fightin’

And dreamin’ of peace

 

Children dream of fathers

Mothers dream of sons

Young men dream of sweethearts

Who are dreamin’ of peace

 

BOTH:   We’re dreamin’ of peace

We’re prayin’ for peace

We’re longin’ for peace

We’re dreamin’ of peace

 

I Really Like This Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Quote

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To think incisively and to think for one's self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda…. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction….The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals…. We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living. —  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., writing in college, 1947

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soldiers: Partners for Peace

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The following thought-provoking letter-to-the-editor denouncing war protesters recently appeared in our local paper. (My response, as well as the fantastic response of my friend and neighbor, Nancy Arnold, are printed below that letter.)

 

 

LOCAL PROTESTERS DESERVE RIDDANCE, by John P. Snyder

 

 On behalf of the followers of al-Qaida and militant Islamic jihadists everywhere, I would like to extend our admiration and gratitude to those extraordinary citizens who turned out downtown to show support for our efforts and to register disgust with their country’s war on terror.

 

We share a strong common bond. We each despise George Bush, the American military and Western-style democracies. It is imperative that American resolve to fight our cause be diminished. Your assistance in that regard is greatly appreciated.

 

It is, after all, the highest form of patriotism to give aid and comfort to your country’s enemies—especially when our sons and daughters are sacrificing their lives for your freedom. 

 

 

(My letter-to-the-editor, written in response to the above letter, is as follows:)

 

 

SOLDIERS: PARTNERS FOR PEACE, by Nancy Pace

 

Re Local protesters deserve riddance, May 8th:  Some patriots fight, suffer, and die in the cause of peace, while other patriots work to limit the damage incurred by the catastrophically cruel, stupid, wasteful policies of tragically misguided “expert” leaders. Soldiers and peace protesters are not opponents, but courageous, conscientious, selfless partners working together to further the same universal goal of peace. No pacifist ever desired peace more than a soldier enduring war.

 

Citizens throw away the freedom our sons and daughters sacrifice their lives for, when they sit back and trust elections alone to insure good leadership. Unfortunately, as the democratically-elected Hitler demonstrated, it doesn’t always work out that way. Eternal (def.: unending, ceaseless, unstopping, uninterrupted) vigilance (def.: alertness, wakefulness, watchfulness, awareness) is the price of liberty (def.: immunity from arbitrary exercise of authority; political independence.)

 

Wise leaders of western democracies everywhere listen attentively to their loyal oppositions, and continually change in response. We cannot avoid all injustices, but we can avoid adding to their sum, by seeking more effective ways to address terrorism, militant Islam, and al-Qaida. The real enemies of peace, the enemies we should never aid or comfort, are fear, and violence itself.

 

 

PROTEST OF IRAQ WAR IS PATRIOTIC EXERCISE, by Nancy Arnold

 

The writer of “Local protesters deserve riddance” appears to suffer from the same malady that plagues the Bush administration. This disease begins as a tiny seed of greed. It reproduces and grows by creating an image of fear and by fueling the need for revenge. Symptoms of this disease include the need to point out all of the un-American Americans who do not succumb to the furor and frenzy of the disease.

 

This tragic disease, where individuals almost instantaneously lose their ability to think rationally about the facts, numbs minds and sharpens paranoia and aggression. Those who succumb to the disease shout buzz words of fear–“traitor!” and “terrorist!”–and show great loyalty to homegrown war criminals.

 

Yes, the lives of our sons and daughters are being sacrificed because the Bush administration manipulated data and dragged us into a war planned before 9/11. Bush and company simply reshaped 9/11, fanned the sparks of fear and spread the disease. The disease now rages and destroys life around the globe. It has consumed our national integrity and made a mockery of America's good will.

 

The writer sarcastically states that, “It is, after all, the highest form of patriotism to give aid and comfort to your country's enemies.” There is tragic and costly irony in that logic: We ARE giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and we let him live in the White HOuse and let him sacrifice lives every day.

 

Americans have the right to protest. When our nation occupies another country and murders the innocent, the patriotic thing to do is protest. To shut down the voices of reason, to shut down an American's right to protest and raise concern would accomplish more than any terrorist could have ever hoped to accomplish on 9/11.

 

 

 

 

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Some Sane Policy Strategies, Both Foreign and Domestic, for a Dazed-and-Confused America

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The best strategy for insuring a reasonable share of post-war oil is for the U.S. to follow China’s admirable (and successful) approach to foreign relations: make friends with every country; don’t try to control events; don’t take sides with factions by using bribes and threats and offering weapons (all of which strategies make more enemies, while making conflicts harder to resolve); offer apologies as necessary; and spread goodwill by generously supporting, in every country, only open, popular, peaceful initiatives of selected proven-peaceful leaders with broad-based, loyal coalitions.

 

We should withdraw our troops from Iraq immediately, leaving U.N. peacekeepers to support the transition, and giving thoughtful consideration to all those we leave behind, financially supporting common goals and peaceful compromises, as well as aiding refugees, rebuilding, and easing resettlement (to the U.S.) of all those U.S.-supporters who might be at post-war risk.

 

We should abandon our war on terror, and support instead an efficient international crime-fighting network, and a peaceful international campaign to resolve future conflicts before they turn deadly. To accomplish these goals, we need to work to end economic injustice/violence, political and state violence (i.e., all forms of war and lawless incarcerations), and the spread of weapons, fully support world disarmament and other cooperative global peace and environmental initiatives, curb violence in entertainment, and aggressively prosecute hate crimes. We should also build a national and global culture of peace through the stated domestic and global initiatives of the proposed cabinet-level Department of Peace (www.dopcampaign.org) .

 

We clumsily attempted to avenge the loss of three thousand innocents murdered on 9/11 by killing and maiming many thousands more innocents (both ours and theirs) on foreign soil, and are now threatening to waste even more lives (both theirs and ours) by sword-rattling in Iran’s direction. We must find a way to forgive others and ourselves, make no more enemies, and recognize and address the grievances of the many who are presently turning from desperation and despair to violence (i.e., “terrorists”).

 

We need to attend to the real “illegals” in American life—not the immigrants who daily seek respite and freedom from the world’s violence and injustice on our shores, but the thousands of prisoners rotting forgotten in illegal dungeons throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Cuba, and elsewhere. We must find a way to bring due process of law to these imprisoned and abandoned “illegals” who have been deprived of their most basic human rights, and also end our inhumane criminalization of the inevitable south-to-north global migrants whose only crime is fleeing poverty and terror–by finding hospitable ways to assimilate them into American life.

 

We must resist the partisan temptations offered by Monica Goodling’s immunity to attack the very culpable Alberto Gonzales, Condaleeza Rice, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and other Bush administrative and military bunglers, leave vengeance and blame to God and his horde of very willing historians, and focus instead on uncovering truth, taking right action, and reconciling a nation.

 

Lee Iacocca recently urged the need for courageous leadership during this difficult time. We indeed need true leaders who can move us past our collective darkness toward solving the real problems we must now face: the ravages of disease, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, corporate accountability, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, global warming, crime, migration, poverty, war, immorality, cruelty, indifference, terrorism, and yes, violence itself.

 

All the strategies described above depend upon our growing awareness that nothing we may fear is more dangerous than fear itself, and no weapon more effective than love in all its forms—kindness, patience, understanding, acceptance….  It is not hate, but fear which builds up armies and stockpiles nuclear weapons; not hate, but fear which looses destruction upon hapless presumed enemies, and thus upon ourselves. The Golden Rule–treat others as you would be treated–works just as well in international relations as it does with individuals. Just as families and businesses must learn to accept, respect, and support others (just as they are) in order to be successful, so must all political leaders, their party members, and their followers—indeed, all citizens everywhere—learn and teach acceptance, respect, and support for all our brothers everywhere, all God’s beloved children, every one—if we are to survive and thrive together on our tiny blue planet.

 

 

 

 

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If We Don’t Welcome Immigrants Like Cho Sun-Kyung, Randa Samaha, Reema Samaha, Omar Samaha, and Cho Seung-Hui…??!!

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Once upon a time, two admirable immigrant families, the Chos and the Samahas, came to live in the same Virginia town. Their different versions of the American Dream story both ended tragically on the same day, when they each lost a child to fear, in the massacre at Virginia Tech.

 

Both families were truly remarkable. The Chos came to America with little money, managing through hard work and long hours to start their own successful business and buy a comfortable townhome; they sent their two children through college—one even went to Princeton.

 

Like the Chos, the Samahas also made the most of their opportunities, raising three remarkable children all of America now hastens to proudly claim as their own.

 

Both families made the difficult choice to leave their familiar traditions and lifestyles and the comfortable, similar faces of family and friends, for the chance to improve their children’s opportunities in a new country where they hoped to overcome suspicion and prejudice, to make friends, and somehow to find a way to feel at home.

 

When the Cho and Samaha children began attending public schools in Centreville, they doubtless met with two very different kinds of reactions. A small number of new classmates no doubt greeted them warmly and innocently, delighted to have a new playmate. The majority, however—especially as they grew older—greeted them with strained politeness at best, and too often, with suspicion, prejudice, fear, and cruelty, having learned from their parents and peers to avoid or outright reject the poor or “different.”

 

Some immigrant children (like Sun, Randa, Reema, and Omar) are able somehow to find the courage and resilience to take in stride others’ ignorance and fear, enduring such narrow-mindedness without taking it personally, persevering, smiling, reaching out. Some lucky immigrant children are born beautiful, or have pleasant, outgoing personalities. Some have understanding parents who give them time and support. Eventually, many immigrant children win over at least a few of their classmates, no doubt gaining confidence and character in the process, yet paying an enormous psychic price for their pioneering role in the slow and painful peer-to-peer lesson: “I am not your enemy.”

 

Unusually shy and insecure children, on the other hand, particularly those with “different” skin color, features, or speech, or children who are small, awkward, or unattractive, find adjustment doubly difficult, and quickly become targets of teasing and bullying. With unfriendly treatment too difficult to bear, they retreat inside themselves behind high defensive walls which guarantee permanence to their newfound pariah status, becoming impenetrable self-fulfilling little prophets of their own alienation.

 

Sadly, the parents of such quiet, introverted children don't always know how mean many American schoolchildren (themselves saddled with their own troubling sets of social and emotional vulnerabilities) can be to all but a select slice of privileged, popular students (with their own sets of pressures and fears) who nevertheless fit rather more tidily within America’s narrow, TV-driven, consumerist standards of youthful social acceptability. Many immigrant parents, like the rest of us, feel simply too overworked to be sympathetic listeners, too overwhelmed by their own challenges, too confused about their own difficult social adjustments, too sad about their own losses, too powerless to help even their own beloved children. Instead, they often tragically ratchet up the pressures on their most vulnerable and fastest-failing offspring.

 

Sometimes the friendliness and support of even a single individual makes all the difference to a sensitive immigrant. Too often, though, such support is simply not enough to compensate for the many rude, exclusive, indifferent reactions…and worse.

 

Evidently young Seung-Hui Cho was already insecure early in life because of a developmental speech problem. Undoubtedly, he received a number of friendly overtures which he soon learned to strongly reject.

 

With a chance for a do-over of Cho’s life, we’d stock his schools with structured programs especially intended for minorities, immigrants, the differently-abled, and other struggling children—strong programs every bit as financially well-supported as the many programs currently supporting our most-able students, such as sports, music, and drama programs, and other mostly-top-quartile clubs. Perhaps within such a supportive program, Cho would have found relevant and sufficient friendship. With at least one friend, maybe two, or even three, maybe a small group to hang out with when times were tough, maybe he would have come out all right. And maybe not. It’s hard to imagine not having a single friend, though.

 

We’ll never know, and neither will the thirty-two Virginia Tech classmates who will remain nameless and faceless at least to him, because he murdered them in the cold blood of a youth who had no friends, who came to believe that he was all alone, feared and hated, unlovable and incapable of loving, an unwanted “alien” in his family’s chosen promised land.

 

What we can know for sure is that we Americans–immigrants all, unless we’re Native Americans–along with the citizens of most other northern countries, will be happier and safer both as individuals and as nations when we finally come to accept the inevitability of today’s south-to-north global migrations (from starvation, terror, oppression, war…) as a fact of life–while supporting population control; and when we finally decide together how best to welcome and assimilate all the precious already-living human beings fortunate enough to arrive on our shores legally, as well as the many desperate, equally sanctified souls bravely arriving any way they can in hopes of finding the merest sustenance—or an American Dream—for their families.

 

Why do we comfortable Americans daydream about acquiring cultural breadth through travel, and yet overlook our many everyday opportunities to get to know our neighbors from afar, who always appreciate christian-spirited friendliness? Instead, we must learn to treat all others as we would wish to be treated, were we the sad wayfarers, wandering in a new land.

 

Every spiritual leader of every world religion and philosophic tradition has condemned those inhospitable to strangers, and has blessed those offering merciful welcomes. In Matthew 25: 31-46, Jesus says: “’Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me…. As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’”

 

 

 

 

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Battlefields, Monuments, Graveyards, and the Glorious Call to War!

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Recent news stories by battlefield preservationists argue that our Civil War battlefield sites are fast being lost to development. All soldiers who have ever seen action, been wounded, maimed, or killed while protecting others and acting on their highest beliefs and ideals deserve our deep respect for their idealistic, unselfish intentions, and for their patriotism and courage. For all these reasons, burial sites of fallen soldiers cut down so untimely and tragically on every side of every war are hallowed ground, and should be treated reverently.

 

Parades, picnics, and other such jovial and celebratory remembrances of war, on the other hand, are always inappropriate, even though it is true that survivors of war also share happy memories of youth and strength, camaraderie, laughter, and heroism. But even at its best, war must be remembered as a human catastrophe, a terrible tragedy, a failure of diplomacy which should be consistently remembered and mourned only as such. No one knows how horrible war is better than the soldiers who fought in one. Instead of celebrations designed to lighten or block sad memories, soldiers' reunions can be solemn events reminding all sides that every war, whether past, present, or future, is always only about innocents killing innocents, all equally motivated by loyalties, beliefs, and survival. Reconciliation reunions help everyone accept our past collective darkness, and help us commit our futures to personal and global mutual acceptance, cooperation, forgiveness, and peace.

 

Burial places of war dead, on all sides, should be visited often, and solemnly, by all citizens, who bring their horrified children with them, to show them the fruits of apathy, selfishness, aggression, hubris, ignorance, fear, aggrandizement of power, militarism, hate, violence, and greed, all of which spill so quickly into war. 

 

No glorification or glamorizing of the terrible decision to go to war is ever appropriate. In the past and future, whenever homes anywhere in the world are subject to predation and occupation, no past glorification of heroism or huge standing army is necessary to raise native sons and daughters to protecting their loved ones with their last full measure of devotion.

 

Mankind cannot solve the problems created in the twentieth century by using the same approaches that got us into all this trouble. In this twenty-first century, well-educated leaders with high ideals and loving hearts everywhere know that there are many more humane and rational ways to settle political differences than to throw young men and women, bristling with anger, vengeance, and weaponry, upon one another, until so many are killed that opposing leaders are brought finally, by force, to compromises which, except for pride and stubbornness, they would have made long ago, before killing off a generation of one another’s grandchildren.

 

The era of war is over. War is a social and political anachronism, a relic, a dinosaur, a nightmare memory forever a monument to man’s inhumanity to man. We know better than to use wars now. We know how to avoid them, how to contain them, how to end them. We lack only the political will to insist upon it, and the determination to spread cultures of peace, and non-violent means of resolving conflicts, throughout the world.

 

We need our many battlefields, our monuments, and our gravesites to some day help us remember, above all else, the monstrous insanity that once was war. One person at a time, one conflict at a time, one battlefield at a time, we are all finally learning to rise above war, and to become builders of peace.

 

During the 21st century, our patriotic energies can best be put, not into armies, but into changing our own hearts, and changing each culture of war into a culture of peace, by relying upon the many proven non-violent conflict resolution methods available now, for preventing, ameliorating, and resolving the broad range of human conflicts. We all will endure some injustices during these challenging times, but we need not add to their sum. These tried and true non-violent approaches to conflict resolution are our best, sanest, most accepting and most ethical way to share peace, with justice, with everyone upon our tiny blue planet.

 

Then we can all turn to together toward solving the real problems of the 21st century: the ravages of disease, injustice, hopelessness, hunger, greed, environmental degradation, natural disasters, ignorance, addiction, prejudice, nuclear proliferation, global warming, crime, poverty, war, terrorism, and yes, violence itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Fair Trade

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I hereby offer a hypothetical “deal” to all the many deeply caring anti-abortion activists, such that we equally concerned anti-war activists will agree to give up all violence against the unborn, in exchange for their equivalent agreement to resist the use of violence upon those already born—whether through war, torture, abuse, poverty, neglect, anger, vengeance, retaliation, punishment, or any other form of violence. When we can all agree to respect and protect human life from all forms of violence, agreeing to use only non-violent means to resolve our conflicts, we will together build a culture of peace where respect and support for human life everywhere is the highest moral value. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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