Military Intervention — For the Flu?

October 8, 2005

h3. By Johann Christoph Arnold
“If we had an out­break some­where in the Unit­ed States, do we not then quar­an­tine that part of the coun­try? And how do you, then, enforce a quar­an­tine? …One option is the use of the mil­i­tary… I think the pres­i­dent ought to have all…assets on the table to be able to deal with some­thing this sig­nif­i­cant.” — Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, news con­fer­ence, Octo­ber 4, 2005
For years, health offi­cials have warned that a vir­u­lent strain of avian influen­za could rapid­ly spread the globe, killing mil­lions. Head­lines about such an out­break now seem to pop up dai­ly, and there is rea­son for increas­ing con­cern. But Pres­i­dent Bush’s recent request to Con­gress, ask­ing for the author­i­ty to call in the mil­i­tary as part of the gov­ern­men­t’s response to such a dis­as­ter, is wrong.
To start with, call­ing in the troops would set a wor­ry­ing prece­dent, and not only because it would be yet one more step to a ful­ly mil­i­ta­rized state.
We already have pub­lic health sys­tems at both the state and fed­er­al lev­els, which, though weak­ened by years of under­fund­ing, could still be quick­ly strength­ened and expand­ed by an infu­sion of con­gres­sion­al aid. These agen­cies have been oper­a­tive for years, and the peo­ple who direct them are trained and expe­ri­enced in deal­ing with infec­tious disease.
This is more than a med­ical issue. Have we learned noth­ing from the recent spate of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters that has wracked our shores? Have we not con­sid­ered that in the end, dis­ease, pesti­lence, and floods might be an inescapable part of life?
I am not sug­gest­ing that we should stand idly by. I myself have chil­dren and grand­chil­dren and friends whom I dear­ly love, and would be the first to call for pro­fes­sion­al med­ical assis­tance should such a dis­as­ter strike my fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty. But aren’t we a lit­tle auda­cious in think­ing, in the after­math of two ter­ri­ble hur­ri­canes, that we can some­how avert or pre­vent such a tragedy?
Quar­an­tine and iso­la­tion may indeed be a nec­es­sary part of our response, but let us not for­get that fam­i­lies and pas­toral care­givers must also be part of the equa­tion when many peo­ple are dying. Does our gov­ern­ment real­ly care for human beings, or does it wor­ry more about the dev­as­ta­tion such a pan­dem­ic could wreak on the glob­al economy?
If wide­spread death is tru­ly immi­nent (some sources sug­gest that 150 mil­lion peo­ple could die of avian flu) would­n’t it be bet­ter to pre­pare our­selves by pay­ing at least some atten­tion to the fact that we all must die one day, and that dying is going to be ter­ri­bly lone­ly, and fright­en­ing, if we are quar­an­tined? We need to con­cern our­selves with this issue because one day death will claim each one of us.
If we die alone, under the con­trol of the mil­i­tary, who will pro­vide the last ser­vices of love for us, and who will com­fort the loved ones we leave behind? Are we going to sit back while we are denied the chance to lay down our lives for each oth­er, which Jesus says is the great­est act of love we can ever per­form? A mil­i­tary response will not bring out the best in peo­ple, but only mag­ni­fy the fear and anx­i­ety we already have about death.
Why are we so ter­ri­bly afraid of dying? Only when we are ready to suf­fer – only when we are ready to die – will we expe­ri­ence true peace of heart. Dying always involves a hard strug­gle, because we fear the uncer­tain­ty of an unknown and unknow­able future. We all feel the pain of unmet oblig­a­tions, and we all want to be relieved of past regrets and feel­ings of guilt. But it is just here that we can reach out and help one anoth­er to die peacefully.
Once we rec­og­nize this, the specter of a world­wide flu epi­dem­ic will not make us fear death, but give us pause to con­sid­er how we can use our lives to show love, while there is still time.
Again, enforced iso­la­tion is wrong: sick and dying peo­ple are often lone­ly as it is, even in sit­u­a­tions where they have a fam­i­ly and friends. How will they feel when the gov­ern­ment forces us to treat them like lep­ers? How will they find com­fort, if they are not even allowed to talk about what is hap­pen­ing to them?
We should see it as a priv­i­lege to stand at their bed­sides at the hour of death, not a dan­ger – even if this means that we are even­tu­al­ly tak­en by the same plague. That is why I feel mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion would be such a tragedy.

Johann Christoph Arnold (“www.ChristophArnold.com”:www.ChristophArnold.com) is an author and a pastor with the Bruderhof Communities (“www.bruderhof.com”:www.bruderhof.com).

NVA: US Military Draft Probably Isn’t Coming Back

August 26, 2004

Rick Jahnkow argues in May’s _Nonviolent Activist_ that there’s a “Decreased Like­li­hood of Draft”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm. There are many aging paci­fists that have become obsessed late­ly with the idea that com­pul­so­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice might be return­ing to the Unit­ed States. For exam­ple, I’ve watched the leader of one annu­al anti-draft work­shop pre­dict the draft’s immi­nent return year after year, in ever more excit­ed terms and won­dered what evi­dence this orga­niz­er has seen that I haven’t.
Jahnkow watch­es this issue as much as any­one in his work for the San Diego-based “Com­mit­tee Opposed to Mil­i­tarism and the Draft”:http://www.comdsd.org/ and he’s been watch­ing the hype build as he’s become more skeptical:
bq. Warn­ings about an impend­ing draft have been cir­cu­lat­ing on the Inter­net for months now. Some are tying a pos­si­ble draft to the elec­tion and pre­dict­ing with bold cer­tain­ty that con­scrip­tion will be intro­duced in 2005… The ener­gy that�s been gen­er­at­ed on this top­ic has been both amaz­ing and, I have to con­fess, some­what seduc­tive to anti-draft orga­ni­za­tions like the one for which I work.
Most of the peo­ple I’ve seen get excit­ed by a pos­si­ble return of the draft were in their teens back in the Viet­nam War era. Their orga­niz­ing some­times seems almost nos­tal­gic for the issues of their youth. They’re try­ing to save the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion from hav­ing to go through the same trau­ma. But the old­er activists’ anti-draft work is often patro­n­is­tic and self-congratulatory, for it does­n’t take into account the fact that younger Amer­i­cans don’t need saving.
The bot­tom line truth is that the Pen­ta­gon sim­ply could­n’t rein­state the draft. Jahnkow cites a recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll that found that 88 per­cent of peo­ple 18 – 29 oppose a return of the draft. There would be mass may­hem if the draft returned. While some young men would sure­ly obey, a huge per­cent­age would active­ly defy it. Even if only 10% dra­mat­i­cal­ly refused, the sys­tem would break down. This is a gen­er­a­tion raised in a post-punk cul­ture and many of its mem­bers aggres­sive­ly ques­tion author­i­ty. They were raised by par­ents who lived through the six­ties and saw wide­spread lies and abuse of pow­er, includ­ing the Viet­nam War and the Water­gate scan­dal. The media mythol­o­gy around sixties-era rad­i­cal­ism has kept us from real­iz­ing that there’s a base­line of every­day rad­i­cal­ism today that far over­shad­ows much of what was going on thir­ty years ago. The Pen­ta­gon knows this bet­ter than the peace move­ment does.
It’s not the only nos­tal­gic protest­ing this gen­er­a­tion is engag­ing in these days and I’ve com­pared revived orga­niz­ing around “phone war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000230.php to “recy­cling dead hors­es.” I agree with Rick that today’s teens and twenty-somethings have real issues which we need to address. He says it so well:
bq. The lat­ter point leads me to the sec­ond rea­son why I have some neg­a­tive feel­ings about the cur­rent con­cern over the draft: Much of the anx­i­ety is com­ing from peo­ple who are ignor­ing the more press­ing prob­lem of aggres­sive mil­i­tary recruit­ing, which, among oth­er things, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affects non-affluent youths and peo­ple of col­or. In essence, there has been a draft for these individuals�a pover­ty draft�and yet it has drawn rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle atten­tion from anti­war activists. There is a race and class bias reflect­ed in this that needs to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered and addressed by the gen­er­al peace movement.
“Here’s the link to his arti­cle again”:http://www.warresisters.org/nva0504‑3.htm
h4. Related:
* Last Novem­ber we pub­lished a provoca­tive arti­cle by paci­fist Johann Christoph Arnold argu­ing that “A Mil­i­tary Draft Would be Good for Us”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php and a per­son­al response piece I wrote about how the “pres­sures of a mil­i­tary draft”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000231.php can force an eigh­teen year old to real­ly think hard about issues of war and peace.
* Non​vi​o​lence​.org has guide to issues of “mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion and con­sci­en­tious objection”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/conscience.php. We also watch issues of the “peace movement”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/cat_peace_movement.php, and tend to high­light gen­er­a­tional issues a lot.
* The Urban Leg­end debunkers at Snopes​.com have tracked and researched the “draft fear emails going around”:http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/draft.asp. They don’t think a draft is com­ing back and any time soon, cit­ing many sources.

Arnold: Losing Our Religion

December 31, 2003

Johann Christoph Arnold has an inter­est­ing piece on the inter­sec­tion of peace activism and reli­gion [orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Non​vi​o​lence​.org]. Here’s a taste:

The day before Mar­tin Luther King was mur­dered he said, “Like any­body, I would like to live a long life…But I’m not con­cerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” We must have this same desire if we are going to sur­vive the fear and vio­lence and mass con­fu­sion of our time. And we should be as unabashed about let­ting peo­ple know that it is our reli­gious faith that moti­vates us, regard­less of the set­ting or the consequences.

Many peace activists are dri­ven by reli­gious moti­va­tions, which is often all that keeps them going through all the hard times and non-appreciation. Yet we often present our­selves to the world in a sec­u­lar way using ratio­nal arguments.

It took me a few years to real­ly admit to myself that Non​vi​o​lence​.org is a min­istry inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with my Quak­er faith. In the eight years it’s been going, thou­sands of web­sites have sprung up with good inten­tions and hype only to dis­ap­pear into obliv­ion (or the inter­net equiv­a­lent, the line read­ing “Last updat­ed July 7, 1997”). I have a sep­a­rate forum for “Quak­er reli­gious and peace issues” [which lat­er became the gen­er­al Quak­er­Ran­ter blog] In my essay on the Quak­er peace tes­ti­mo­ny, I wor­ry that mod­ern reli­gious paci­fists have spent so much effort con­vinc­ing the world that paci­fism makes sense from a strict­ly ratio­nal­ist view­point that we’ve large­ly for­got­ten our own moti­va­tions. Don’t get me wrong: I think paci­fism also makes sense as a prag­mat­ic pol­i­cy; while mil­i­tary solu­tions might be quick­er, paci­fism can bring about the long-term changes that break the cycle of mil­i­tarism. But how can we learn to bal­ance the shar­ing of both our prag­mat­ic and reli­gious motivations?

 

A Military Draft Would be Good for Us

November 12, 2003

From Johann Christoph Arnold, a “provoca­tive argu­ment that a mil­i­tary draft might not be a bad idea”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/1003-arnold.php. “Decid­ing which side to stand on is one of life’s most vital skills. It forces you to test your own con­vic­tions, to assess your per­son­al integri­ty and your char­ac­ter as an individual.”
It’s a pret­ty dras­tic wish. I don’t real­ly wish it on today’s youn­gins’ (I’m not sure Arnold is quite con­vinced either). But I will give a snip­pet of my own per­son­al sto­ry, since it’s kind of appro­pri­ate to the issue: when I was a senior in high school my father des­per­ate­ly want­ed me to attend the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my. I went on inter­views and even took the first phys­i­cal. The pres­sure to join was sort of akin to the pres­sure young peo­ple of ear­li­er gen­er­a­tions have faced with a mil­i­tary draft (except more per­son­al, as I was essen­tial­ly liv­ing with the chair of the draft Mar­tin Kel­ley board). I was forced to real­ly think hard about what I believed. I had to rec­on­cile my romati­cism about the navy with my gut instincts that fight­ing was nev­er a real solu­tion. My father’s pres­sure made me real­ize I was a paci­fist. With my deci­sion to forego the Naval Acad­e­my made, I start­ed ask­ing myself what oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions fol­lowed from my peace stance. Almost twen­ty years, here’s Non​vi​o​lence​.org.
Arnold’s argu­ment, right or wrong, does reflect my story:
bq. A draft would present every young per­son with a choice between two paths, both of which require courage: either to heed the call of mil­i­tary duty and be rushed off to war, or to say, “No, I will give my life in the ser­vice of peace.”