Sanctimonious History Overthrown in Stephen Kinzer’s OVERTHROW: AMERICA'S CENTURY OF REGIME CHANGE FROM HAWAII TO IRAQ

Posted on September 10, 2006 by Nancy Pace

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Sanctimonious History Overthrown in Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

People like to feel good about themselves, and Americans are no exception; so only a relative handful of scholarly Americans are even aware of their government’s direct historical responsibility for a century of violent regime changes in fourteen countries from Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras, to South Vietnam, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Kinzer offers a compelling case that, without exception, all this violent meddling has worked against the overall best interests of Americans, and—with the possible exception of Grenada—against the citizens of all these exploited nations.

Kinzer’s brilliant decision to summarize the colorful particulars of who-what-when-where-how leading up to, during, and following each overthrow, give range to his best journalistic talents, while reducing his biographer’s breadth and historian’s bounty of facts, figures, places, and times into fourteen short, lively, memorable tales of derring-do, intrigue, overreaching, ignorance, prejudice, greed, and mayhem.

Reading Overthrow brought to mind the darker aspects of Margaret Meade’s assertion, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has,” while adding credibility to the mounting evidence that the tragedy of today’s Middle East is indeed directly traceable to the benighted machinations of a few dedicated, powerful, and sorely misguided neocons in Washington, D.C. For each case of regime change, Kinzer implicates a small group of daring individuals usually acting for corporate interests, and always acting with presidential authority.

Kinzer’s reasonable-length history is backed by over twenty pages of end notes, as well as an impressive international, multilingual twentieth-century bibliography of nearly five hundred on-the-spot memoirs, biographies, government documents and news accounts, and a twenty-page index. Kinzer definitely entertains, but more importantly, he connects the dots and fills in the necessary details of significant historical events which many would prefer to erase, to our nation’s peril.

I’m very grateful for the years of persistent and generous scholarship necessary to produce this readable summary which surely deserves wide consideration. Overthrow fills in the many gaps and blanks left by incomplete reporting-at-the-time, and offers an opportunity for synthesis, analysis, and reconsideration of the patterns, results, and morality of our past violent involvements in the political, economic, and social lives of people in faraway nations, as well as their implications for the present and future:

“There is no stronger or more persistent strain in the American character than the belief that the United States is a nation uniquely endowed with virtue…. This view is driven by a profound conviction that the American form of government, based on capitalism and individual political choice, is, as President Bush asserted, ‘right and true for every person in every society.’…By implication, it denies that (culture) changes only slowly, and that even great powers cannot impose their beliefs on others by force… For more than a century, Americans have believed they deserve access to markets and resources in other countries. When they are denied that access, they take what they want by force, deposing governments that stand in their way. Great powers have done this since time immemorial….When the United States intervenes abroad to gain strategic advantage, depose governments it considers oppressive, or spread its political and religious system, it is also acting in its commercial self-interest….Most American-sponsored ‘regime change’ operations have…weakened rather than strengthened American security. They have produced generations of militants who are deeply and sometimes violently anti-American; expanded the borders that the United States feels obligated to defend, thereby increasing the number of enemies it must face and drawing it ever more deeply into webs of foreign entanglement; and emboldened enemies of the United States by showing that despite its awesome power, it has a soft and vulnerable underbelly….Most of these adventures have brought (Americans), and the nations whose histories they sought to change, far more pain than liberation.”

These are important lessons we need to learn, and Kinzer has assembled the foundational stories, facts, and figures necessary to establish their credibility.

Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent with reporting experience in more than fifty countries on four continents, including service as New York Times bureau chief in Turkey, Germany, and Nicaragua. He has previously written four well-received histories focusing on Iran, Turkey, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.

Kinzer prefers patient diplomacy to violent regime-change, pointing to the efficacy of our productive continuing dialogues with China, the former Soviet Union, South Korea, and countries in South Africa. While he asserts that nations always act in their own self-interest, I wish he had also concluded that, on today’s tiny, interconnected, fragile blue planet, everyone’s national self-interests are irretrievably tied to the interests of everyone else, everywhere else. Pragmatically, we can no longer afford to think in terms of “them,” but only “us.”

I pray that President Bush will soon decide to become presidential, Christian, politically astute, humble, and visionary enough to boldly shift from a doomed-to-fail, self-centered foreign policy based on international competition, to one of enlightened, self-interested global cooperation. Neither approach is simple, obvious, or guaranteed, but only one has any chance of succeeding.

Please send your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

Creative Fun by Eppy

Posted on September 9, 2006 by Nancy Pace

Here are some of my hobbies (painting, cartooning, etc.) as well as a self-portrait, and a portrait of me by my five-year-old friend, Alexa. Look for them elsewhere in my website to see/learn more…. Thank you for visiting my website! -eppyharmon

A Fog of War Movies and Books

Posted on September 6, 2006 by Nancy Pace

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A few months ago, I decided to watch some of the best-received war movies that came out of the Vietnam era—The Deer Hunter, The Killing Fields, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and Coming Home, as well as some recent and older ones—The Battle of Algiers, Crimson Tide, Saving Private Ryan, The Enemy Below, and Black Hawk Down.

Although I’m definitely a quality-movie buff, I’m not easily entertained by violence, which explains why I avoided all of these movies when they first came out, despite a deep childhood curiosity about (and fear of) war.

I’m currently writing about the immorality of war, so feel compelled to watch such movies to help fill in my (fortunate) experiential gaps. I also watch them out of respect for their creators’ passion, dedication, and achievements in uniquely sharing their own war experiences.

Despite the fact that my father was a war hero and bird colonel with thirty-three years in the service (Silver Star, Purple Heart, and many more) he always firmly refused to share with us his sad or frightening WWII memories.

So after I left my military-brat life on-post, I dipped my toe into the vast body of quality literature coming out of Vietnam and other wars, admiring and enjoying Fields of Fire (go Jim Webb!), Dispatches, The Things They Carried, as well as War and Peace, Silent Flows the Don, and All Quiet on the Western Front. More recently, I loved Cold Mountain, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Blowback, An American Requiem, and the wonderful Patrick O’Brian Aubrey/Maturin series.

I found amazing agreement in all these books and movies in their moral conclusions about war, even as each offered me a unique personal perspective and story unlike any other.

Over and over, every work expressed or implied the point of view that “their” particular war had been insane, cruel, hard, sad, misguided, and stupid, and that it had seemed to create far more problems than it resolved. Their actual acts of war—the killing parts—were consistently experienced as pointless, chaotic, numbing, unreasonable, inhumane, confusing, wrong–and often thrilling, in that the pointy end of the sword had actually gone into the other guy.

Each work of art also revealed war’s most appealing reality: war, like any other deeply challenging experience from marriage to sports, offers stirring opportunities for revelation and nobility, compassion and achievement, faith and idealism.

The “highs” of war remembered in these works were based in youth’s vitality, resiliance and resourcefulness, in the belongingness, common cause, and humor of bands of young brothers, and of course, in the bittersweet exhilaration following survival in battles in which, although others died, you didn’t.

Nearly every work used war’s bleak, terrified, often mutilated children to emphasize the meaninglessness and tragedy of war. And they all made the point that fear for oneself and for one’s friends drove them to acts of cruelty and immorality unimaginable during peacetime.

War, in these books and movies, turns out to be not at all what was expected, nor what they were trained or prepared for—although with works of art like these, perhaps the next generation will be better informed.

None of these soldier/artists, with the exception of O’Brian, ever found a way to make killing feel psychologically acceptable, although they all killed as necessary, “doing their duty” and protecting one another; their childhood moral conditioning in human compassion too strongly resisted killing other people. (Jack Aubrey’s disciplined and enthusiastic patriotism and militarism overruled his compassion, as happens sometimes with seasoned soldiers, if less often, with artists, but Maturin’s disgust with war offered a thoughtful foil.)

All authors implied how indelibly their training in the hate and fear which is necessary to kill enemies in cold blood had carved black chasms in their psyches, changing them (and their families) forever in ways they could not express to anyone who hadn’t shared similar experiences—mixed as war memories are with both pride and shame.

When at war, every soldier longed for home, and when finally back home, missed the “highs” mentioned above.

Most celebrated the rare beauty of the foreign lands being fought over, and condemned the environmental and human waste, and the high costs of war.

Another interesting commonality was how universally fascinated all were with how soldiers react to fear, and, most specifically, with how they would perform under fire. (Although I didn't care much for The Red Badge of Courage, it merits attention primarily for this focus.) Much consideration was given in each of these works to the fact that every soldier reacts differently to fear, and to the impossibility of hiding one’s unique sensibilities during war. Like vocation, parenting, friendship, scholarship, accident, disease, death, and every other peacetime human trial, war reveals much too clearly the best and the worst in each person’s character and personality, while offering, as all difficult challenges do, ample opportunities for growth and wisdom.

I feel deeply privileged (and emotionally gutted) to have read and watched these great works, and will continue to see and read more. Some of the war-related books I want to read (and review) next are: Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq; Carroll’s House of War; Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers; and perhaps Keegan’s The Second World War. The movies next on my list are, first, war documentaries: Why We Fight, The Fog of War, The War on Iraq, Hearts and Minds, and Protocols of Zion, followed by Foyle’s War, The War Within, and Casualties of War.

Do you have any other suggestions for quality war movies and books? I’ll gladly share them with my readers.

CUTTING (Off Communication) AND RUNNING (From Dialogue)

Posted on September 1, 2006 by Nancy Pace

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Messrs. Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld are so right in their recent complaints that pervasive modern media has made their war-making job a lot harder, because what media does best is disseminate information and instigate dialogue. And the more one knows and understands, the less one is likely to fear, hate, and make war on other humans.

Happily, we can watch, on one channel, various national and international leaders patiently strive to work through peaceful diplomatic channels in search of just, compassionate solutions to deadly conflicts, or flip over to another channel and watch Rumsfeld lambaste these same statesmen as unpatriotic pacifiers, appeasers and sympathizers.

Thank goodness for our networked globe, where millions of ordinary citizens daily exchange email with friends in every nation, sharing their hopes and plans for peaceful alternatives to war, even when our leaders haven’t the heart or common sense to do so.

The only reason these three cut off communications and run away from dialogue is to silence opposing voices and logic—whether partisan competitors' or foreign foes'–all of whom are trying to inject some sanity into the drumbeat toward never-ending war, whether in Iraq, Iran, or a slew of other places. I wish George Bush would learn that global clashes of ideologies are not won by guns, but by goodness.

Since our present administration's anti-war “foes” are easily capable of poking gaping holes in their justifications for war, unsurprisingly, they are all simultaneously (and disingenuously) being painted with the broad brush of fascism/Nazism in what appears to be a pre-emptive attack designed to ward off an anticipated similar, if more legitimate, accusation. Fascism as defined is authoritarian, corporatist, demagogic, anti-liberal, jingoist, militarist, expansionist…. Does anything sound familiar?

How could it be in our best interests for our leaders to refuse to talk with the very enemies we've been told (by those same leaders) to hate, because (as our leaders have also told us) they hate us. Why have expert diplomats if only to talk with our friends? If hate and fear are so dangerous—and they certainly are—why wouldn’t we try to improve such relationships by listening to our “adversaries'” grievances and hearing their suggestions for peaceful solutions? As Abraham Lincoln said, “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

We could at least choose to be generous enough to listen to our enemies, even if we can‘t manage Jesus’ admonition to love them. Despite our leaders’ continual propaganda marginalizing and demonizing them (so we won’t listen to what they have to say) we shouldn’t forget that they are still human beings with perspectives that at least deserve a respectful hearing before we blow them away.

No doubt our leaders have already made their own peace with the damage they intend to inflict upon enemy populations, but they haven’t yet described to us even a small portion of the grisly and manifold inevitable injustices that will be visited upon us.

Only war resisters venture to estimate the possible extent of war’s predictable losses, for both sides, or ever dare to question its final outcome. By silencing such opposition, our leaders muddy constiuents' views of the potential calamity they’re getting us into. Historically, these particular three have proved themselves incapable of assessing what they passionately jump into; they anticipate quick easy victories and warm welcomes from cheering victims, blithely dismiss vague unspecified future losses as “necessary,” and assure us that “winning” the war will be “worth it.”

Participants in every 20th century war, both “winners” and “losers,” have consistently admitted to researchers that, had they known in advance the costs of those wars, they would have, in retrospect, settled their grievances peaceably, making the compromises and concessions necessary to avoid war’s costs to human lives and infrastructure.

Wars are never initiated by popular pressure, never fought from the bottom-up, but always from the top-down, at the whims of leaders who work hard to maintain their intricate ideological justifications. The task of selling war is indeed more difficult in what the Dalai Lama calls “the century of dialogue,” because dialogue is exactly what is fostered and nurtured by today’s free press—our beloved televisions, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, and internet.

The Defense Department is currently attempting to manipulate our freedom of the press by demanding equal time for its pro-war propaganda. Happily, our free press neither answers to nor agrees with such self-serving ideas about what the job of the press should be.

And while we’re on the subject of freedom of the press, if you want to see exemplary presidential press access in action, check out any of the frequent, unscripted, free-wheeling, no-topics-barred press conferences held by President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Considering the number of public words he utters both at home and in his busy international speaking rounds, it’s not surprising that extremists have managed to extract a few to twist, spin, and mistranslate.

One would think the Defense Department would find our state of constant war sufficient public distraction from the embarrassing truth that we may have as much to fear from an administration capable of embracing its foes with nuclear arms, as we have from their confusingly shape-shifting “enemies”. Perhaps they hope that once we finally have a clear “enemy” to hate and fear, maybe we won’t notice that a significant contributor to our state of national insecurity is our unrepresentative, repressive, empire-building government. 1984 has indeed arrived, but apparently too late to completely manipulate a media-gorged nation which is so finally past buying into 20th century war insanities.

No one can avoid suffering some injustice in this well-armed and very frightened post-9/11 world, but the risk of injustice should not rush us into pre-emptive wars which always only add to the sum of the world’s injustices, while creating ever more global enmity and danger.

A far better and safer way to defend ourselves is through increased communication and dialogue among all peoples and nations.

Peace and justice can only be attained through dialogue, mutual understanding, compromise and compassion. No violent path ever leads to peace and justice. “Peace” treaties at war’s ends merely divide up losers’ spoils among still-squabbling “winners,” and inevitably sow seeds of bitterness our children will harvest.

Tragically, it is still possible in America for a small group of arrogant militants to act out their darkest fears and limited understandings by sending other people’s grandchildren off to unnecessary wars, whether or not their constituency agrees with them. In such a democracy, we could wake up tomorrow in the middle of World War III, whether arbitrarily initiated in Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Korea, Syria….

And if that happens, all our lives, and life itself on this fragile blue planet, will change irrevocably.

Our best hope is to work together to establish a cabinet-level United States Department of Peace, as beautifully specified in H.R. 3760 and S. 1756, which can support proven and effect strategies for diminishing violence in our country and in our world.

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

Security and Peace in a Post-9/11 World

Posted on August 25, 2006 by Nancy Pace

Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, and other similarly militant organizations and individuals will never stop “terrorizing” until the far more wealthy, powerful, and better-armed leaders of nation-states stop sending their military and espionage forces to invade, occupy, assassinate, murder, war against, oppress, exploit, direct, victimize, and otherwise “terrorize” them. Terrorists are those who have given up on dialogue, diplomacy, and compromise, and have instead resorted to war and other kinds of violence to achieve their political goals. People who courageously stand beside their homes, defending them from invading outsiders who would threaten their way of life, are not terrorists.

We are too quick to believe what we read and hear about so-called madmen and lunatics. Powerful demagogues and fear-mongers in every land misquote, marginalize, and demonize—and make a lot of war-profits—by convincing people to hate and fear various international leaders, whether they be George Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Nasrallah, Moqtada al-Sadr, or Ahmadinejad.

On this small, fragile planet, our only hope for safety and peace is for each of us to independently investigate such charges for ourselves, and to then elect and support only those visionary local, national, and world leaders whose lives, words, and actions, like Gandhi’s and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, have been consistently peaceful, and whose international reputations reflect their devotion to compassion, empathy, acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Only such leaders can unify all the world’s peoples, lifting them away from war and other forms of violence by fundamentally changing hearts and minds.

In this heavily-armed world, only one enemy presses for world domination, ceaselessly striving to throw every nation into never-ending inhumane war. That enemy is neither terrorist nor fanatic nor extremist, neither Muslim nor Jew nor Christian, neither Fascism nor Nazism nor Communism nor globalization.

The common enemy of mankind, the one ever urging us all toward overreaction and war and torture and every other kind of terror, is fear in all its forms: fear of change, fear of failure, fear of disgrace, fear of the unknown and unfamiliar and different, fear of want, loss, and death, fear of despair, fear of the past and future, fear of abandonment, of guilt and blame, of losing control, of being helpless and hurt, fear of being wrong….

And what is fear’s remedy? Love, in all its forms: caring, ideas, faith, hope, trust, dialogue, cooperation, generosity, cultural exchange, understanding, knowledge, kindness, negotiation, compromise, diplomacy, peace….

Instead of “allies” and “enemies,” we could choose to see all people everywhere, our own selves included, as alternately falling from one moment to another into either one of two interchangeable camps–people currently offering (us) help, and people currently needing (our) help.

No one can completely avoid suffering some injustice in this post-9/11 world; however, we need not add to its sum.

Patriotism and nationalism will not work so long as people continue to see “others” of different nations, beliefs and cultures as less valuable, less important, and somehow separate from “us.” Nationalism will fail if it stands in opposition to the highest universal human value–support and respect for the quality of human life everywhere–because the only rule which works in human relations, both personal and global, is the Golden Rule: Treat all others as we would want all others to treat us.

Until, one-by-one, we each courageously stand up in perfect love to cast out fear, until we proudly support the unselfish values which unite us all—the democratic ideals proclaiming the equality of all men and the inalienable right of all people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—we will all continue to be vulnerable to a relentless battery of twenty-first century storms.

Please write comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

America’s Oldest Enemy Batters the Flag

Posted on August 15, 2006 by Nancy Pace

A sudden thunderstorm caught me as I walked in my neighborhood recently, some weeks after Independence Day. In the calm following the wind and rain, I found myself ducking in and out of yard after yard to indignantly prop up and replant all the little made-in-China plastic flags which had blown over into undignified little crash-sites. I felt a deep sadness at the thought that my country relies upon such a thin, flag-waving kind of patriotism to keep it safe and prosperous in such stormy times. Shallow nationalism can never protect us from the coming tumults of the twenty-first century, because nationalism too often puts short-term national greed and safety above the very reasonable right of all peoples everywhere, ourselves included, to live life in peace, and to build within our own cultural traditions and with the generous and peaceful support of others, ever more justice, freedom, and opportunity.

America recently has had a difficult time getting its arms around that oh-so-important concept of a universally agreed-upon, despisable national “enemy.” “Terrorists” and “terrorism” worked for a while, at least so long as people could conceive of unprovoked armies of irrational suicidal Islamic extremist nutcases eager to kill innocents for world domination. Thanks to our still-free press and internet, we are finally learning that what Islam wants most is to be left to live and conduct their own affairs in peace. Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Iranians, Syrians, Lebanese, even members of Hamas and Hezbollah, are not the maniacal fanatics we were once convinced were so envious of our freedoms that they continually plotted to invade America, to randomly kill, destroy, steal our resources, and ravage our way of life.

Unfortunately, too many Muslims believe that this is exactly what American leadership is about.

Because by flag-waving and fear-mongering, by arguing specialized expertise and inside knowledge, by offering leaky rationales about why America should aggressively “protect” not only our own country but others’ as well, narrow-minded and unrepresentative American leaders sometimes do indeed seem bent upon terrorizing everyone everywhere—Americans included.

Who gains from this insanity? A handful of wealthy political insiders and war profiteers who pocket the billions in war money our citizenry pours out—along with our children’s blood—tax money which should have been spent on worthwhile causes at home and abroad, and which is instead buying more fear, and its progeny—anger, vengeance, guilt, cruelty, misery, hatred. Soon, even more of our hard-earned money will be required to restore good will and rebuild destruction, money which will once again fill the coffers of rich opportunists.

A tragic result of American expansionism is a generation of angry, fearful, vengeful, polarized American citizens who have swallowed a steady diet of Limbaughesque propaganda justifying endless wars and goading a steady supply of soldiers. I recently heard a caller assert on C-Span that “America has the right to kill every man, woman and child in Lebanon because….” Whatever nonsense followed the word “because,” I shudder to think any human could place his faith in a theory which morally or legally justifies wiping out a whole country. And yet, to many Americans, “Nuke ‘em!” is the final solution to all our political problems.

We live in the richest, best-armed, most powerful nation the world has ever known, and yet we have become convinced that we should be the most frightened and the most belligerent.

Wiser leaders would work to create a peaceful, helpful, cooperative foreign policy and educational system (beginning by passing the excellent legislation establishing a cabinet-level Department of Peace—(see www.thepeacealliance.org .) We could sustain a patient, accepting American citizenry skilled in peace-making in both their personal and political lives, rather than continually advocate for the morality of threatening and killing as a solution for political challenges. As Islamic nations do, we should condemn all wars except those against invaders who violently attempt to invade and conquer our homelands.

Many Christians hope their faith will spread around the world (and many proselytize to spread it); just so do many Muslims hope their faith will eventually prevail globally. No one knows what the future holds, and only time will tell. So far, though, no Muslims (unless you count allies the West selects, empowers, and backs, like Saddam Hussein) violently invade and occupy others’ countries, nor commandeer others’ valuable resources, nor force changes in others’ institutions at the point of a gun.

In this heavily-armed world, as in all previous worlds, only one enemy has ever pressed for world domination, only one enemy strives ceaselessly to throw every nation into never-ending inhumane wars. That enemy is neither terrorist, nor fanatic, nor extremist, neither Christian, nor Jew, nor Muslim, neither Fascism, nor Nazism, nor Communism, nor globalization.

The common enemy of mankind, the one ever urging us toward war and torture and every other kind of terror, is fear—in all its forms—fear of change, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, fear of the unknown and unfamiliar and different, fear of want, fear of death and loss, fear of despair, fear of the past, fear of abandonment, fear of guilt and blame, fear of losing control, fear of being helpless and hurt, fear of being wrong….

This universal enemy of all mankind—this eternal enemy of Islam and the West alike—will always be fear itself (one name for what many traditional religions call “the devil.”) And what is fear’s remedy? Love, in all its forms—diplomacy, dialogue, negotiation, ideas, faith, hope, trust, cooperation, cultural exchange, understanding, love, kindness, acceptance, forgiveness, peace….

The very concept of the word, “enemy,” is itself a fear-based mistake. Instead of “allies” and “enemies,” we could choose—both personally and nationally—to see all people everywhere, ourselves included, as variously falling intermittently into either of two very similar camps—people currently offering help, and people who currently need help.

Human beings everywhere quite reasonably wish to preserve what they see as their good old ways, to expand their influence and power, and insure their future security. Yet patriotism/nationalism cannot work, on this small, interconnected, fragile planet, so long as people see “others” of different nations as less valuable, less important, and somehow separate from “us.” Patriotism/nationalism can only fail whenever it stands in opposition to the highest universal human value—support and respect for the quality of human life everywhere. The only rule which works in human relations—both personal and international—is the Golden Rule, treating all others as we would want all others to treat us.

Until Americans stand up together in perfect love to courageously cast out fear, until we proudly support the unselfish ideals which unite us all as Americans—the values proclaiming the equality of all men and the inalienable right of all people everywhere to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—America will continue to be vulnerable to a relentless battery of fearful twenty-first century storms.

Please send your comments to epharmon@adelphia.net

Putting On and Taking Off the Pretty Face of War

Posted on July 30, 2006 by Nancy Pace

The heartrending recent news coverage about the ghastly deaths of defenseless civilians, mostly children, in Qana, Lebanon, tells the real story of the mideast wars: random slaughter, and the relentless ruin of the loves, livelihoods, work, and hopes of thousands of innocent civilians on all sides. Nevertheless, true believers in the necessity, efficacy, and morality of war still churn out article after article arguing war's fairness and positive aspects (“Israeli Military Service Unites Generations;” “'Disproportionate' in What Moral Universe;'” “For Troops, A Sense of Moral Clarity.”) For, in order to sustain the important illusion that war is moral, and to divert public attention away from war's inevitably bloody means and ends, pro-war propagandists shamefully exploit every one of the heart-swelling, toe-tapping, chest-beating moments which arise in the midst of horrific wars—all the gentlemanly charitable acts, the selfless patriotism and bravery, the beauty and idealism of youth….

Although “might” cannot make right, fear and influence can be combined fairly successfully to shape public perception to thinking that “our” wars are primarily about camaraderie, adventure, skill, professionalism, physical prowess, pride, and masculinity…and to thinking that wars can be fought cleanly, judiciously, even kindly, in order to rescue the downtrodden, promote democracy, and protect our homes, families, and way of life.

Even well-intentioned efforts to ameliorate war’s devastating effects, such as banning nuclear weapons and landmines, and instituting war crimes trials, can be exploited, and held up as proof that war is just and humane.

But the fact that war has moments of fineness and decency should not lull us into deluding ourselves that repeated indiscriminate acts of violence against one’s fellow man are anything except wrong. As in Qana, ninety percent of the victims of modern wars are civilians. Soldiers, politicians, and private citizens alike must choose to abandon their consciences for the duration of wars, because war itself is a crime against humanity.

Although “wars of self-defense,” a highly ambiguous and arguable term, are still considered to be legal, all that is legal is not necessarily moral. Wars are fundamentally about the use of force to achieve political goals, not about morality. But moral or not, all fighting must relentlessly be made palatable to its funding and fighting public. Any politician or general worth his pay-grade knows well how to drape war in the colors and images of respectability and tradition. Yet no gallantly waving flag, no proud anthem, pledge, nor crisp salute can ever promise that war’s processes or outcomes will be representative, humane, or moral.

Every soldier who ever shot, tortured, or pushed a captive out of a plane in order to obtain information necessary to protect his own knows that the cruel reality of war makes a mockery of the prettified versions held up for public viewing, the ones giving lip service to human rights, morality, and a rule of law which rests on due process, presumption of innocence, the right to legal counsel, and a fair and speedy trial..

Any soldier who ever fought in a real shooting war knows that legal and moral niceties are suspended during the life-and-death situation that is war, hauled out only as convenient for public viewing. Snipers, for example, act instantaneously as judge, jury, and executioner to their random, anonymous suspects. Bombardiers, and missile and rocket launchers unleash hell, raining fire down equally upon all their anonymous, hapless victims.

To hear tell, war crimes are rare aberrations perpetrated by atypical rogues, stray criminal elements within otherwise pristine organizations. The truth is, crimes against humanity happen all the time, on both sides, during all wars, a direct result of the bloody training, means, conditions, and ends of war.

When top military leaders find themselves irrevocably trapped in the unwelcome spotlight of undeniable war crimes, they immediately stage a big show of fairness and due process. Military defenders make feeble attempts to drum up sympathy for the scapegoats, calling attention to inadequate training and terrible conditions of battlefield stress, while prosecutors demonize the poor sad crazy grunts who were so foolish as to get caught tarnishing the honor of their noble units, and promise harsh punishments for any freakish renegades who may have mysteriously insinuated themselves into their otherwise holier-than-everyone-else squeaky-clean corps.

Officers always protect themselves and one another, limiting, placing, and holding blame as far down the chain of command as possible, leaving a poor few marginalized dupes to twist publicly in the wind. In every war crime trial, the viewing public—soldiers especially—must be newly convinced once again that “our” wars are conducted honorably, that our soldiers are unusually fine and pure, and that the rights of all civilians and combatants alike are protected by doily-white-gloved military justice.

Anonymous military judges always announce shockingly lenient sentences, horrifying victims’ families and their countrymen, but comforting fellow-soldiers who require reassurance that they, too, when forced into similar or worse acts, will not be abandoned. Other leniencies are later quietly extended under the table to prisoners who gallantly lie, or who fall upon their own swords to protect the honor (and butts) of comrades and superiors.

Although soldiers' advocates repeatedly plead for clarity in Rules of Engagement, Geneva Conventions, and so on, top government and military officials prefer to keep all military rules as fuzzy and vague as possible, not wishing to be handcuffed during wartime. But no amount of “clarity” will ever change the fact that real war is always immorally indiscriminate in its victims. Generals don’t aspire to leading a band of ethicists; they want naïve, malleable young recruits, trainable into lock-step killers able to withstand the moral confusion necessary to blood-letting, troops who will follow any order, march into any hell, and do what they’re told, which is to win wars by remorselessly killing vast swaths of human beings. To prevail in war, soldiers must believe that all is fair, that anything goes, if necessary to accomplish their mission and protect their buddies.

Signatories of the Geneva Conventions hope to receive equivalent courtesies when their guys fall into enemy hands. But reciprocity has no value when rules are always discarded as inapplicable during every new war, just because this new latest incarnation of a monster-of-the-moment—whether Kraut, Jap, terrorist, whatever—is touted to be the coldest, least reasonable, most dangerous enemy ever to threaten anyone, deserving of torture, murder, in fact complete annihilation from the earth, along with their families and other similar scum, as quickly as possible by all available means including chemical, biological, and nuclear.

After war’s end, forgotten conventions prove once again useful in punishing the losing side and propping up the flagging resolve of a public weary from manning and funding the last war. War crimes trials help portray war’s most recent victors as the most legitimately aggrieved, gentlemanly, and honorable—and not just the most effectively brutal—while urging new spending on military rebuilding against the next, greater foe as once again sweet, necessary, and good.

Respect and support for the quality of human life everywhere is the highest value we can hold. This value reinforces every other precious value we may embrace—all conceptions of God, duty, honor, country, organization, mission, brotherhood, freedom, democracy, justice. The business of indiscriminately maiming and killing human beings for profit and power (under however many pretty guises) can never stand up to close moral scrutiny.

I would defend myself, my family, and neighbors from armed enemies breaking down our doors and coming in our windows, and would willingly fund armed local militias well-trained in peaceful conflict resolution for that purpose. Other than that, and rather than risk adding to the sum of injustice in the world by going to war, I would instead risk suffering a certain amount of injustice ourselves (a risk always taken in going to war) by devoting the rest of our current defense budget to building understanding and good will among all the earth’s peoples through proven peaceful and generous methods. My first step would be to pass the very specific and impressive proposed legislation (Bills H.R. 3760 and S. 1756) authorizing and funding a cabinet-level Department of Peace.

Please send comments to epharmon@adelphia.net .

John Brown: Good Terrorist or Bad Terrorist?

Posted on July 15, 2006 by Nancy Pace

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

Posted on July 3, 2006 by Nancy Pace

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

Posted on June 24, 2006 by Nancy Pace

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….