Stopping the Next War Now: More Victims Won’t Stop the Terror

October 7, 2001

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Non​vi​o​lence​.org

The Unit­ed States has today begun its war against ter­ror­ism in a very famil­iar way: by use of ter­ror. Igno­rant of thou­sands of years of vio­lence in the Mid­dle East, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush thinks that the hor­ror of Sep­tem­ber 11th can be exor­cised and pre­vent­ed by bombs and mis­siles. Today we can add more names to the long list of vic­tims of the ter­ror­ist air­plane attacks. Because today Afgha­nis have died in terror.

The deaths in New York City, Wash­ing­ton and Penn­syl­va­nia have shocked Amer­i­cans and right­ly so. We are all scared of our sud­den vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. We are all shocked at the lev­el of anger that led nine­teen sui­cide bombers to give up pre­cious life to start such a lit­er­al and sym­bol­ic con­fla­gra­tion. What they did was hor­ri­ble and with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. But that is not to say that they did­n’t have reasons.

The ter­ror­ists com­mit­ted their atroc­i­ties because of a long list of griev­ances. They were shed­ding blood for blood, and we must under­stand that. Because to under­stand that is to under­stand that Pres­i­dent Bush is unleash­ing his own ter­ror cam­paign: that he is shed­ding more blood for more blood.

The Unit­ed States has been spon­sor­ing vio­lence in Afghanistan for over a gen­er­a­tion. Even before the Sovi­et inva­sion of that coun­try, the U.S. was sup­port­ing rad­i­cal Muja­hadeen forces. We thought then that spon­sor­ship of vio­lence would lead to some sort of peace. As we all know now, it did not. We’ve been exper­i­ment­ing with vio­lence in the region for many years. Our for­eign pol­i­cy has been a mish-mash of sup­port­ing one despot­ic regime after anoth­er against a shift­ing array of per­ceived enemies.

The Afghani forces the Unit­ed States now bomb were once our allies, as was Iraq’s Sad­dam Hus­sein. We have rarely if ever act­ed on behalf of lib­er­ty and democ­ra­cy in the region. We have time and again sold out our val­ues and thrown our sup­port behind the most heinous of despots. We have time and again thought that mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism in the region could keep ter­ror­ism and anti-Americanism in check. And each time we’ve only bred a new gen­er­a­tion of rad­i­cals, bent on revenge.

There are those who have angri­ly denounced paci­fists in the weeks since Sep­tem­ber 11th, angri­ly ask­ing how peace can deal with ter­ror­ists. What these crit­ics don’t under­stand is that wars don’t start when the bombs begin to explode. They begin years before, when the seeds of hatred are sewn. The times to stop this new war was ten and twen­ty years ago, when the U.S. broke it’s promis­es for democ­ra­cy, and act­ed in its own self-interest (and often on behalf of the inter­ests of our oil com­pa­nies) to keep the cycles of vio­lence going. The Unit­ed States made choic­es that helped keep the peo­ples of the Mid­dle East enslaved in despo­tism and poverty.

And so we come to 2001. And it’s time to stop a war. But it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly this war that we can stop. It’s the next one. And the ones after that. It’s time to stop com­bat ter­ror­ism with ter­ror. In the last few weeks the Unit­ed States has been mak­ing new alliances with coun­tries whose lead­ers sub­vert democ­ra­cy. We are giv­ing them free rein to con­tin­ue to sub­ject their peo­ple. Every weapon we sell these tyrants only kills and desta­bi­lizes more, just as every bomb we drop on Kab­ul feeds ter­ror more.

And most of all: we are mak­ing new vic­tims. Anoth­er gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren are see­ing their par­ents die, are see­ing the rain of bombs fall on their cities from an uncar­ing Amer­i­ca. They cry out to us in the name of peace and democ­ra­cy and hear noth­ing but hatred and blood. And some of them will respond by turn­ing against us in hatred. And will fight us in anger. They will learn our les­son of ter­ror and use it against us. They cycle will repeat. His­to­ry will con­tin­ue to turn, with blood as it’s Mid­dle East­ern lubri­cant. Unless we act. Unless we can stop the next war.

Burnished Polaroids

January 28, 1997

Look­ing south from the Wal­nut Street Bridge, Philadel­phia. This is a favorite site of mine to pho­to­graph because of the right­ward sweep of the riv­er, rail­road tracks and highway. Fire hydrant, Walt Whit­man Cen­ter, Cam­den. I was wait­ing to ush­er for a Allen Gins­berg read­ing and combed the block look­ing for appropriately-phallic cel­e­bra­tion of the day. East side of the Wis­sahick­on Creek, Philadel­phia. A favorite place to walk and con­tem­plate life.

This is a style of pho­tog­ra­phy I got into a few years ago. It’s appeal is sim­ple: it takes lit­tle tech­ni­cal exper­tise and the process itself is lim­it­ed in time. Every­thing boils down to basic form: a suc­cess­ful pho­to depends on set­ting up a good shot and then bring­ing it’s poten­tial out in the burnishing.

HOW IT’S DONE:

Any­one who used Polaroids as a kid will remem­ber the wait. When the film comes out of the cam­era, it’s still black. With­in a few min­utes a ghost of the pho­to begins to appear, a image which is fleshed out in about ten min­utes time. Dur­ing this time, the pho­to is devel­op­ing inside of it’s plas­tic cas­ing. If you press hard on the plas­tic before the pho­to comes out, all sorts of effects can be achieved. Depend­ing on the pres­sure and tem­per­a­ture, you can get col­ors to bend, scratch­es to streak across the pho­to, etc. If done well, the bur­nish­ing can take on the effect of brush strokes and cre­ate an impres­sion­is­tis­tic photograph.


This is not a bur­nished Polaroid of course. I took this with more tra­di­tion­al pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment in the sum­mer of 1991. I was on British Columbia’s Gabri­o­la Island for the annu­al meet­ing of my employ­er, New Soci­ety Pub­lish­ers, a meet­ing place which allowed for won­der­ful out­door dis­trac­tions. One was sea kyack­ing through the pass­es around the island.

What we didn’t know was that one par­tic­u­lar chan­nel served as the take-off strip for the island’s sea­planes. I was safe­ly onboard a boat at the end of the pass when I saw the plane start out of the docks you see in the dis­tance. Two work­mates were leisure­ly pad­dling their way toward us when they heard the sound behind them. As Bar­bara relates, she knew if that plane didn’t get air­borne in time she’d be goners. Luck­i­ly it made it and so did they…
 Last updat­ed Jan­u­ary 28, 1997

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Uprooting Racism publisher’s note

December 1, 1995

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, by Paul Kivel.
In 1995, I worked on one of my last books for New Society Publishers,
Uprooting Racism, by Paul Kivel. I was both editor and typesetter. It was in my capacity as the former that I wrote this publisher’s note.

 

In this book, Paul Kiv­el is tak­ing on a lot. He’s speak­ing to white peo­ple as a fel­low white per­son about a hush-hush sub­ject: racism. He’s speak­ing with an hon­esty that allows for con­fu­sion and for admis­sion of his own inner prej­u­dices. In an era when many whites express pride of the advance­ment of the civ­il rights move­ment, he asks why so much of our world is still racial­ly proscribed.

Our soci­ety has been built upon a foun­da­tion of racism for so long that it’s become part of the land­scape: always there, sel­dom acknowl­edged. In this book, Kiv­el acknowl­edges and he ques­tions. He asks us where we came from, he asks us what we know. He’s resist­ed the temp­ta­tion to make this a man­u­al of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and has instead allowed us to share our own prej­u­dices with him as we read.

Kiv­el chal­lenges us to look at our place in soci­ety. Just because we’ve begun to unlearn racism does­n’t mean the per­son wash­ing the dish­es of a favorite restau­rant isn’t still African Amer­i­can. Or that the edi­tor of a favorite mag­a­zine isn’t still a white per­son. Or that the taxi dri­ver we hail isn’t still clas­si­fied an ille­gal alien by a gov­ern­ment restrict­ing immi­gra­tion from darker-skinned regions of the world.

Paul Kiv­el does­n’t give us pat answers to these dilem­mas. He knows there will be no point at which we can sit back and con­sid­er our job com­plet­ed. We must con­tin­ue to wres­tle with these ques­tions, and in the con­fu­sion find moments of con­nec­tion and clarity.

Uproot­ing racism is of course a large task, much larg­er than any one of us. But by work­ing in our com­mu­ni­ties, and by engag­ing with our neigh­bors, work­mates, and friends, we can make a dif­fer­ence. May this book inspire and con­fuse you!

Mar­tin Kel­ley, for the New Soci­ety Publishers


June 2016: Found in the Pendle Hill library:2D02AB99-CB27-4A0E-A1EB-DB33AF5F5A7B