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News :: Miscellaneous |
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you're either with us or against us |
Current rating: 0 |
by giles larsen
(No verified email address) |
05 Oct 2001
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The first is a poem, based on a real conversation I had with someone about war. The second is a rant about the fascist implications of war hysteria. |
His honest rage singed my eyebrows to attention
I'm sick and tired of listening to you whiners
about how sick America is
he said, as if spitting out the truths
I just served him like an unsavory foreign side dish
I don't give a damn about the world
For once, I'm going to stand behind my country 100%
Black and white
Legions form a quilt of helmets and bayonets
Armored formations are muted by the roar of the crowd, flags waving 100%
What would you do
if they called the draft?
I'm willing to die for what I value
but I won't kill, I said
You see, then you don't belong here...
Black and white concentration camps
people stacked on cots like baking sheets in an oven
behind curtains in torture chambers
within wallets buried under lives of delusion
A photo clipping
a blind folded face
a revolver point blank
It's my face...
because I refuse to believe that up is down
The truth is where I belong
You're either with it or against it.
Lessons of Aggression Lost on Old Generation of War Supporters
Although most Americans seem to understand the complexity of the situation that terrorism has put us in - and the need for some serious democratic dialogue, even if that means bringing US foreign policy skeletons out of the closet - there are still those who insist on leaping before they look into the bowels of a volcano. In the forefront is the Bush administration which has embarked on a "crusade" to eradicate terrorism. But in pursuit of this noble cause, there are others, who are old enough to know better, who are repeating the same fascist military credo of the 1930s that set the stage in Germany for a totalitarian regime that crushed internal dissent and set forth on the road to conquest.
Syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell says that we should look at the 20th century pacifists who "had a lot of blood on their hands for weakening the western democracies in the face of rising belligerence and military might in aggressor nations like Nazi Germany and imperial Japan." We should condemn the pacifists for "encouraging" the axis powers to war because they fostered an image of national vulnerability. Of course, a careful appraisal of recent events proves quite the contrary, but to engage the war-supporters on this level is to overlook the sinister message within their argument.
As they proceed to point out the supposed immoral or irrational nature of pacifism, they inadvertently resurrect a cacophony of central fascist tenets. It is astonishing to see the equation of support for military action with the standard of integrity of a nation's citizenry, at this late date and in this context. It was precisely this kind of thinking, which hands over all allegiances and moral authority to a jingoist agenda (an aggressive foreign policy), creating a brutally dualistic "You're either with us or against us" nationalism, which fueled the German military expansion and resulted in the extermination of 6 million Jews. Moreover, the "currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim in them," which Hitler was ostensibly driven by, would have gotten him no further than the mental institution, if not for an entire country standing behind him in the same fashion as the war supporters openly advocate for us to do today.
Herein lies the ugly, opportunistic character of militarism: political dissent is regarded as "unpatriotic" and in relation to recent events, anti-America. A typical example of this kind of mental bondage can be found in an editorial by Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly: "The Nazis wished the British to not fight. If the British did not fight, the Nazis would conquer Britain. The British pacifists also wished the British to not fight. The British pacifists, therefor, were on the side of a Nazi victory over Britain. They were objectively pro-Fascist. An essentially identical logic obtains now… To not fight [the terrorists] in this instance is to let the attackers live to attack and murder again; to be a pacifist in this instance is to accept and, in practice, support this outcome."
Like Sowell, Kelly believes that such logic is unassailable. But an underlying assumption is made that popular resistance to the development and use of military potential is warranted within a nation which wages war for "manifestly evil purposes." But, when "one's own nation has been attacked," any military action is granted full moral impunity, and the same popular resistance of the first case is rendered "evil." In other words, the same act, be it violent or anti-violent, can be rendered just or unjust depending on whether one's own government is acting for good or evil purposes, and whether one's own government originated the conflict. Thus, far from unassailable, the war supporters' argument relies on a moral relativist position that amounts to a playground ethic of good guys vs. bad guys and the "he started it" excuse. Such an ethical system may work with pre-schoolers. But the real world, with its assortment of nation-states, each with its own diverse, even competing interests, is much more dynamic. And the history of terrorism, formed through conflict, counter insurgency and endless retaliation, is a convoluted cycle of violence in which the "original" act of aggression is negated in the generations of bloodshed that follow.
What pacifists understand and war supporters do not, is that because armed conflict is essentially deemed necessary for survival under certain circumstances, war is not an intellectual or spiritual exercise, and the victor may triumph physically, but may ultimately adopt the same belligerent attitudes of the enemy. Thus, while the forces of fascism were defeated in WW II, those that fought them and the generations that followed have, in response to recent events, espoused the same ignorant arrogance and submission to jingoism as the Nazis. How easily we forget that democracy empowers precisely those who would critisize the government and its potential for violence, leading many to regress into a dangerous and contradictory rationale that pretends to value the principles of democracy ("Pacifists are lucky they can express their views because America is the bastion of freedom"), but abhors their actual practice ("I wish these peace protesters would do something to help their fellow citizens"). The most deplorable instance of this mindset manifested itself with the numerous death threats to Rep. Barbara Lee, the only member of Congress to recently vote against the blank check use of force by President Bush. Without respect for dissent, there is no democracy.
Deceptively, the war supporters of the 21st century also excavate a central tenet of pacifist (and democratic) philosophy which holds that silence and inaction expresses tacit approval, even complicity, with acts of horror. But they only apply this fundamental truth as it suits their argument, leading them to posit the Orwelian notion that those who act for peace are responsible for war. The truth of the matter is, endless military buildup (and the ensuing tension and ever-present potential for global annihilation) is a predictable outcome of a foreign policy based on moral relativism, because the right to defend oneself must escalate in proportion to the "defensive" arsenal of other children on the playground. As a result, militarism expects nothing of the population except that they have an unshakeable faith in the pure intentions of their government. Once achieved, the funding and staffing of the military machine will follow of natural course, and for the most part, the population passively participates in the perpetual war effort.
Evidently, the general criticism of pacifists as "do-nothings" rightfully belongs to the war supporter category. In fact, pacifism has nothing to do with inaction or silence. The pacifist is the American who lives side-by-side with indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico, to keep the paramilitaries at bay; the participant on a "ploughshares" action who infiltrates a military installation to symbolically hammer the tools of war into tools of sustenance; the Quaker who places his body between the Israeli bulldozer and the Palestinian homes; the Peace Corp volunteer who builds an outdoor toilet at a school in Nepal; the "Food Not Bombs" kid who serve the homeless in the park; and the citizen who speaks out for the pursuit of justice under the rule of law (another democratic principle which some war-supporters currently regard with disdain) for those responsible for the atrocities of September 11th. If more of us would commit ourselves to nurturing, life-affirming practices like these, we would build a world without the need for war.
On the other hand, nationalistic militarism has always been a mere "statement" about one's ideals that pays little attention to actual implications and consequences. Before gathering for a silent peace walk at which over 100 Utahns attended in Salt Lake City on Saturday, September 29th, a passerby chastised participants for not "standing behind their country." One of the participants asked him, "Would you accept more innocent causalities as a result of a war?"
The reply was, "They came to us! They bombed us! And now we have to bomb them back." In other words, the issue is about making a "statement" - that is, jumping off the edge of a volcano, without any consideration of ethics, options or historical context. Such a disregard of critical thinking permits even the victim of terrorism to effectively adopt the modus operandi of the terrorist: in the pursuit of a cause, the loss of innocent lives is an acceptable notion, because "we can't let them get away with this." What a shame that some would define the above as the model citizen.
In contrast, the pacifist is the individual who thinks for herself, who listens to her conscience before she listens to the Commander in Chief. That is the real point. The practical and historical arguments for nonviolence are sound, but highly debated, and ultimately irrelevant. The pacifist is a soldier in the eternal cause of true freedom: the ability to act in accordance to the dictates of one's inner light. Until those who deride pacifism as immoral or irrational come to recognize this, freedom will remain forever a soundbite on the 10 o'clock news. This inner light speaks to our common sense: to reduce conflict, we need less nationalism, less militarism, less jingoism, less racism, less historical selectivity, and more democracy, more pacifism, more compassion, more awareness of our nation's international behavior, and more people around the world donating substantial portions of their lives on all these fronts.
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See also:
http://saltlake.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=1113&group=webcast
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