Attacks a sign of our success

October 28, 2003

I could­n’t believe it when a friend told me the news. In the wake of four coor­di­nat­ed sui­cide attacks in iraq that killed 30 and injured 200, Pres­i­dent George Bush claimed that the “attacks were mere­ly a mark of how suc­cess­ful­ly the U.S. Occu­pa­tion is going”:www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/27/sprj.irq.main/index.html :
bq. “There are ter­ror­ists in iraq who are will­ing to kill any­body in order to stop our progress. The more suc­cess we have on the ground, the more these killers will react — and our job is to find them and bring them to justice.”
This is real­ly his way of explain­ing away all oppo­si­tion to the U.S.: peo­ple must be jeal­ous of all we have and all we do. But maybe iraqis con­tin­ue to be angry that we invad­ed their coun­try; maybe they’re angry that we’ve only rein­stalled many of their gen­er­als and many of Sad­dam’s hench­men. Maybe they’re wait­ing for a democratically-elected coun­cil. I’m sure many iraqi’s con­demn yes­ter­day’s bomb­ings. But it’s still way too ear­ly to declare vic­to­ry in the war of iraqi pub­lic opinion.

Where’s the grassroots contemporary nonviolence movement?

October 17, 2003

I’ve long noticed there are few active, online peace sites or com­mu­ni­ties that have the grass­roots depth I see occur­ring else­where on the net. It’s a prob­lem for Non​vi​o​lence​.org [update: a project since laid down], as it makes it hard­er to find a diver­si­ty of stories.

I have two types of sources for Non​vi​o​lence​.org. The first is main­stream news. I search through Google News, Tech­no­rati cur­rent events, then maybe the New York Times, The Guardian, and the Wash­ing­ton Post.

There are lots of inter­est­ing arti­cles on the war in iraq, but there’s always a polit­i­cal spin some­where, espe­cial­ly in tim­ing. Most big news sto­ries have bro­ken in one month, died down, and then become huge news three months lat­er (e.g., Wilson’s CIA wife being exposed, which was first report­ed on Non​vi​o​lence​.org on July 22 but became head­lines in ear­ly Octo­ber). These news cycles are dri­ven by domes­tic par­ty pol­i­tics, and at times I feel all my links make Non​vi​o​lence​.org sound like an appa­ratchik of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty USA.

But it’s not just the tone that makes main­stream news arti­cles a prob­lem – it’s also the gen­er­al sub­ject mat­ter. There’s a lot more to non­vi­o­lence than anti­war expos­es, yet the news rarely cov­ers any­thing about the cul­ture of peace. “If it bleeds it leads” is an old news­pa­per slo­gan and you will nev­er learn about the wider scope of non­vi­o­lence by read­ing the papers.

My sec­ond source is peace move­ment websites

And these are, by-and-large, unin­ter­est­ing. Often they’re not updat­ed fre­quent­ly. But even when they are, the pieces on them can be shal­low. You’ll see the self-serving press release (“as a peace orga­ni­za­tion we protest war actions”) and you’ll see the exclam­a­to­ry all-caps screed (“eND THe OCCUPATION NOW!!!”). These are fine as long as you’re already a mem­ber of said orga­ni­za­tion or already have decid­ed you’re against the war, but there’s lit­tle per­sua­sion or dia­logue pos­si­ble in this style of writ­ing and organizing.

There are few peo­ple in the larg­er peace move­ment who reg­u­lar­ly write pieces that are inter­est­ing to those out­side our nar­row cir­cles. David McReynolds and Geov Par­rish are two of those excep­tions. It takes an abil­i­ty to some­times ques­tion your own group’s con­sen­sus and to acknowl­edge when non­vi­o­lence ortho­doxy some­times just does­n’t have an answer.

And what of peace blog­gers? I real­ly admire Joshua Mic­ah Mar­shall, but he’s not a paci­fist. There’s the excel­lent Gut­less Paci­fist (who’s led me to some very inter­est­ing web­sites over the last year), Bill Connelly/Thoughts on the eve, Stand Down/No War Blog, and a new one for me, The Pick­et Line. But most of us are all point­ing to the same main­stream news arti­cles, with the same Iraq War focus.

If the web had start­ed in the ear­ly 1970s, there would have been lots of inter­est­ing pub­lish­ing projects and blogs grow­ing out the activist com­mu­ni­ties. Younger peo­ple today are using the inter­net to spon­sor inter­est­ing gath­er­ings and using sites like Meet­up to build con­nec­tions, but I don’t see com­mu­ni­ties built around peace the way they did in the ear­ly 1970s. There are few peo­ple build­ing a life – hope, friends, work – around pacifism.

Has “paci­fism” become ossi­fied as its own in-group dog­ma of a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion of activists? What links can we build with cur­rent move­ments? How can we deep­en and expand what we mean by non­vi­o­lence so that it relates to the world out­side our tiny organizations?

Scandal du Jour: Vice President leaking CIA Names

October 2, 2003

In the last year scan­dals seem to fol­low a curi­ous pat­tern: they rise up, get a lot of talk in Wash­ing­ton but lit­tle else­where and then dis­ap­pear, only to come back three months lat­er as mas­sive pub­lic news.

Back in July, we post­ed a num­ber of entries about White House dirty tricks against a whistleblower’s wife. For those who missed the sto­ry, diplo­mat Joseph Wil­son had trav­eled to the African nation of Niger to inves­ti­gate the sto­ry that that Iraq had tried to buy ura­ni­um from it. Wil­son eas­i­ly deter­mined that the sto­ry was a hoax and report­ed this infor­ma­tion back to Wash­ing­ton. Despite the debunk­ing, Pres­i­dent Bush used the alle­ga­tion in his State of the Union address and Wil­son lat­er came out and told reporters the Pres­i­dent knew the infor­ma­tion was false. A short time lat­er some­one in the White House let a con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist know that Wil­son was mar­ried to an oper­a­tive for the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, expos­ing her name and endan­ger­ing both her mis­sion and the lives of those help­ing her.

We called this a trea­son­able offense but the news blew over and few peo­ple out­side Wash­ing­ton seemed to fol­low the sto­ry. Last week it blew up big again and it’s been cre­at­ing head­lines. Rumor has it that the White House leak came from very high up in the Vice President’s office and the ques­tions have mounted:

  • who leaked the information?
  • what did the Vice Pres­i­dent know?
  • what did the Pres­i­dent know?
  • did the Pres­i­dent and his advi­sors know the Niger sto­ry was false when he addressed the nation and use it to call for war in Iraq?

The in’s and out’s of the renewed scan­dal are being ably tal­lied by Joshua Michal Marshall’s Talk­ing Points Memo. He’s sit­u­at­ing the leak in the back­drop of an ongo­ing war between the Vice President’s office and the CIA. As we’ve been doc­u­ment­ing for a year now, the Vice Pres­i­dent has been pres­sur­ing the CIA to skew their find­ings to suit the polit­i­cal needs of Admin­is­tra­tion. Most of the pre-war reports from the CIA found no evi­dence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion, for exam­ple, which made Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney furi­ous and he was some­what sucess­ful in get­ting them to rewrite their sto­ry. Now of course we know the CIA was right, and that Sad­dam Hus­sein didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction.

We have inde­pen­dent intel­li­gence ser­vices pre­cise­ly so we will have the best infor­ma­tion pos­si­ble when mak­ing deci­sions of nation­al secu­ri­ty. To politi­cize these ser­vices to serve the agen­das of a pro-war Admin­is­tra­tion (who sali­vat­ed over an Iraq inva­sion long before the 9/11 bomb­ings) is wrong. It’s the kind of thing a banana repub­lic dic­ta­tor does. It’s not some­thing that the Amer­i­can peo­ple can afford.

Big Lies & Mass Hysteria

September 11, 2003

It was Adolf Hitler, the world’s most notri­ous dic­ta­tor, who told us that The great mass of peo­ple … will more eas­i­ly fall vic­tim to a big lie than to a small one.

And it is in the vein that I will pass along the lat­est poll by MS-NBC, that has found that 70% of Amer­i­can peo­ple think Hus­sein and 9/11 are linked. This is per­haps the biggest lie of my life­time. I fear for the very soul of my nation, that so many of my fel­low Amer­i­cans would deny all evi­dence to allow them­selves to go along with this myth. There has been no evi­dence of any con­nec­tion. Most of the hijack­ers were Sau­di nation­als, opposed to the U.S.-backed rul­ing Sau­di fam­i­ly. Al Qae­da is a group of reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists trained in part with CIA mon­ey who have always been opposed to the sec­u­lar social­ist regime of Sad­dam Hus­sein. There’s no mys­tery who the hijack­ers were or why they chose the U.S. as their tar­get. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries aren’t need­ed to explain the events of two years ago.

So why then do we believe Sad­dam blew up the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers? Maybe there are too many of us who love our lives of con­ve­nience, who love our big cars, our big homes, our opu­lent lifestyles and maybe we know that deep down our lifestyle is based on con­trol of Mid­dle East oil. Or per­haps Sad­dam Hus­sein has become the demon we pour all our world­ly fears and guilt into, so that we think all the world’s trou­bles must come from him.

What­ev­er the rea­son, the results are a kind of mass hys­te­ria. Sev­en our of ten Amer­i­cans believe in a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry so divorced from any evi­dence that his­to­ry sure­ly pre­pares to mock us. Every so often I’ll read of the out­landish con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries run­ning through the Arab world — like the one that the planes were manned by Israelies and that all the Jews who worked in the tow­ers were warned not to come to work — and I’ll won­der how a peo­ple could live in such a state of unre­al­i­ty. But then I see American’s myths: just as incred­i­ble, just as based on our own demons. We have based a war and a for­eign pol­i­cy on the boogie-men of our sub­con­sciences. We have killed for our fears. What if we were to wake up to real­i­ty: could we still jus­ti­fy the war and occu­pa­tion of Iraq with the impe­ri­ous­ness and sure­ty that we’ve shown so far?

Weapons? no. Program? no. Scientists? no. High School Calc? A‑ha!

September 5, 2003

Okay, so the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the war on Iraq was the weapons of mass destruc­tion Sad­dam Hus­sein had ready to use against the U.S.. The U.S. knew where the weapons were and a war would find them. Well, the war came and no weapons were found. So the sto­ry changed. The U.S. attacked Iraq because Sad­dam Hus­sein was devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion, which he would then sure­ly use against the U.S. The U.S. knew where the weapons were being devel­oped and they would be uncov­ered any day now. But five months of inspec­tors comb­ing Iraq have found nothing.

So now a new sto­ry. The U.S. under­sec­re­tary of state for arms con­trol tells us that whether Hus­sein had the weapons “isn’t real­ly the issue.” But the war is still jus­ti­fied because Sad­dam had sci­en­tists who might some­day work on a weapons pro­gram that might some­day build a weapon that might some­day be used against the U.S. or one of its allies

Bolton said that Sad­dam kept “a coterie” of sci­en­tists he was pre­serv­ing for the day when he could build nuclear weapons unhin­dered by inter­na­tion­al constraints.

I’m per­son­al­ly just wait­ing for the next lev­el of Bush Admin­is­tra­tion retreat. Wait for Bolton to announce next month that it didn’t mat­ter if Sad­dam didn’t actu­al­ly have any trained nuclear sci­en­tists, as occu­pa­tion inspec­tors had uncov­ered evi­dence that North Badg­dad High taught cal­cu­lus for its eleventh graders. “They might go on to work on a weapons pro­gram some­day, we had to invade before Sad­dam could teach them Calc II.”

The excus­es just get more pathet­ic as the truth becomes hard­er to ignore: the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion lied to the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The only win­ners in this war are the ener­gy com­pa­nies rebuild­ing the Iraqi infra­struc­ture with U.S. tax­pay­er dol­lars. It’s time to con­nect the dots, to stop pay­ing inves­ti­ga­tors to comb Iraq for the non-existant weapons. The inspec­tors should be recalled to Wash­ing­ton to inves­ti­gate the very real bam­boo­zle (dare I say “con­spir­a­cy”?) that foist­ed a war on the Amer­i­can peo­ple. We’ve been played for chumps.

Pacifism and the Congo Dilemma

August 25, 2003

From the War Resisters League’s Judith Mahoney Paster­nak, “an hon­est look at the chal­lenge paci­fism faces in places like the Congo”:www.warresisters.org/nva0703‑1.htm:
bq. There are those who chal­lenge the paci­fist posi­tion with such ques­tions as, “A man with a gun is aim­ing it at your moth­er. You have a gun in your hand. What non­vi­o­lent action do you take?” Our usu­al answer is, “I’m a paci­fist. I don’t have a gun in my hand. Next ques­tion.” But at least once in every gen­er­a­tion — more fre­quent­ly, alas, in these violence-ridden years — the chal­lenge is a hard­er one to shrug off with a flip answer.
The answer of course is to stop wars before they start, by stop­ping the arms trade, the dic­ta­tor­ships, and the crush­ing eco­nom­ic reforms demand­ed by West­ern banks _before_ these forces all com­bine and erupt into war. Paster­nak out­lines four parts to a blue­print that could end much of the vio­lence in the Congo.
I’ve always been impressed that the folks at War Resisters are will­ing to talk about the lim­its of non­vi­o­lence (see David McReynolds seven-part “Phi­los­o­phy of Nonviolence”:www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php). While war is nev­er the only option (and arguably nev­er the best one), it’s much more effec­tive to stop wars ten years before the bul­lets start fly­ing. In each of the wars the U.S. has fought recent­ly, we can see past U.S. poli­cies set­ting up the con­flict ten, twen­ty and thir­ty years ago.
The largest peace march­es in the world can rarely pre­vent a war once the troops ships have set sail. If U.S. pol­i­cy and aid had­n’t sup­port­ed the “wrong” side in Iraq and Afghanistan twen­ty years ago, I don’t think we would have fought these cur­rent wars. Paci­fists and their kin need to start ask­ing the tough ques­tions about the cur­rent repres­sive regimes the U.S. is sup­port­ing – places like Sau­di Ara­bia and Pak­istan – and we need to demand that build­ing democ­ra­cy is our coun­try’s num­ber one goal in the Iraq and Afghanistan occu­pa­tions (yes, pri­or­i­tize it _over_ secu­ri­ty, so that we “don’t replace Sad­dam Hus­sein with equal­ly repres­sive thugs”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/000130.php.

U.S. taking on Hussein Strongman Role

August 24, 2003

It should­n’t be a sur­prise but it makes me sick any­way. The _Washington Post_ reports that the “U.S. occu­pa­tion is hir­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein’s ex-spies”:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37331-2003Aug23.html.
It must be a good job mar­ket for mid-level Sad­dam Hus­sein loy­al­ists. Back in June, we learned that the U.S. had put “ex-Iraqi gen­er­als in charge of many Iraq cities”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000027.php (at the same time the U.S. can­celed promised elec­tions). The U.S. trum­pets cap­ture of big-name Iraqi lead­ers like “Chem­i­cal Ali”:www.msnbc.com/news/955391.asp?vts=082120030615 but then qui­et­ly hires their assis­tants. The major­i­ty of the new U.S. intel­li­gence recruits come from Sad­dam Hus­sein’s Mukhabarat, an agency whose name is said to inspire dread among Iraqis.
The infra­struc­ture of Sad­dam Hus­sein’s repres­sion appa­ra­tus is being rebuilt as a U.S. repres­sion appa­ra­tus. The stat­ues of Sad­dam Hus­sein go down, the “play­ing card” Iraqi fig­ure­heads get caught, but not much changes.
The arti­cle says that the new spy hir­ing is “covert” but it’s appar­ent­ly no secret in Iraq. even the Iraqi Gov­ern­ing Coun­cil, a dum­my rep­re­sen­ta­tive body hand­picked by U.S. forces, has expressed “adamant objec­tions” to the recruit­ment campaign:
bq. “We’ve always crit­i­cized the pro­ce­dure of recruit­ing from the old regime’s offi­cers. We think it is a mis­take,” Mah­di said. “We’ve told them you have some bad peo­ple in your secu­ri­ty apparatus.”
No, the “covert” audi­ence is the U.S. pub­lic, who might start feel­ing quesy about the Iraq War if they knew how eas­i­ly the U.S. was slip­ping into Sad­dam Hus­sein’s shoes.