Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 12:00:29 -0400
From: Randy Schutt <rschutt@vernalproject.org>
Subject: Alternatives to War, Part II
Dear
friends,
Here is
a collection of four articles compiled by my friend Tom Atlee <cii@igc.org> that also suggest alternatives to
war. I find the last one especially useful.
At the
end, I’ve added a short piece providing background about the World Court.
·
Randy
Dear
friends,
Here are
four good articles about how to approach our current situation, and the reasoning
behind them. These articles are all
creative variations of the “stop the bombing” approach. It has been pointed out by Doug Carmichael
and others, however, that any effort to advocate stopping military action MUST
include a realistic alternative on how to deal with the terrorist threat. Changing U.S. foreign policy to reduce
America’s earned resentment is necessary, but this approach does not address
the issue of what will ease the threat NOW—for that is what the US public is
obsessed with and what the Bush administration’s military/security approach --
as intensely problematic as it is—is (at least publicly) designed to
handle. Much more and better thought
has to be put into actively dealing with this threat.
Much
legitimate disagreement right now among well-intentioned people has to do with
whether current military actions increase or decrease the threat. Although many alternatives have been
suggested, none seems to yet be compelling enough to meet people’s need for
urgent response....
Coheartedly,
Tom
_ _ _ _
_
The
Inescapable World
October 20,
2001 New York Times
By ANTHONY
LEWIS
After Sept.
11 it was said by many that our world had
irrevocably
changed. That is true in a sense that we have
not yet
grasped.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/20/opinion/20LEWI.html?ex=1004599760&ei=1&en=aa39ea7b9bdd7920
_ _ ___
No
Glory in Unjust War on the Weak
LA
Times, Oct 14, 200
By
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-000081943oct14.story?coll=la%2Dnews%2Dcomment%2Dopinions
_ _ _
__
10
Reasons to Stop Bombing Afghanistan
Don
Hazen
October 19,
2001
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11764
Despite
almost universal agreement that America “needs to do something” in response to
terrorism, our heavy bombing of Afghanistan increasingly looks like a bad idea.
While virtually all of us feel that strong steps should be taken to apprehend
anyone behind the massive murders on September 11, when you add up all the
facts, the pulverizing of a battered country just doesn’t make a whole lot of
sense. Instead, by bombing Afghanistan, we are ...
1.
Creating new terrorists. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent civilians have
already been killed by U.S. bombing in pursuit of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon
has confirmed numerous instances of “collateral damage,” including a
2,000-pound bomb that struck a residential area near Kabul.
The
United States’ perceived disregard for collateral damage may lead many to
conclude that we are waging a war against Muslims writ large. In so doing, we are losing the battle for
the hearts and minds of people who are necessary in the fight against
terrorism.
2.
Generating refugees. Our attacks on population centers are causing a huge
refugee problem that neighboring countries can’t handle. By October 12, 350,000
people had amassed in the northern Panjsher Gorge and over 150,000 had fled to
the provinces of Tahor and Badakhshan.
United Nations officials predict that 1.5 million will leave their
homes, risking mass starvation in the brutal Afghan winter to escape the
bombings.
Moreover,
the U.N. refugee agency has been forced to halt work at six planned refugee
camps on the Pakistan border because of opposition from Afghan tribal groups.
Food convoys that previously entered Afghanistan by truck have been forced to
indefinitely halt their shipments.
3.
Ushering in regime as bad as the Taliban. The bombing campaign may well usher
into power the Northern Alliance, a group some say is even more brutal than the
already brutal Taliban. To many, this is a proposition fraught with peril.
During their brief time in power from 1992 to 1996, the Northern Alliance
scored poorly in the peaceful governance and human rights departments. And
while intense efforts are underway at forming a broad pan-Afghan political
coalition of anti-Taliban parties, some veteran diplomats and intelligence
officers are skeptical that such a confederation would survive after a victory
over the Taliban.
4.
Increasing drug flow from Central Asia. A corollary to #3 -- if the Northern
Alliance takes power, experts predict a new flood of heroin across the globe.
According to U.N. officials, Afghanistan produces about 75 percent of the
world’s opium, which is used to make heroin.While the Taliban government
attempted to slow down heroin production in large parts of Afghanistan (and
largely succeeded), the Northern Alliance has continued to distribute heroin to
help fund their efforts. If our bombing campaign helps ousts the Taliban, opium
growth and sales will instantly soar.
5.
Aiming at the wrong target. The suicidal hijackers who crashed into the World
Trade Center and Pentagon where all from Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not
Afghanistan. Rich Saudis fund and encourage the violent, fundamentalist breed
of Islam from which the hijackers came.
The religious schools that breed the radical mujahdeen, including many
who have joined the Taliban Army, are mostly in Pakistan. Iraq and Iran fund
and support terrorists. In other words, the terrorists are spread across many
nations and not all harbored in Afghanistan.
Furthermore,
numerous experts link the September 11 hijackers to an Egyptian group, Gama’at
al-Islamiyya. Founded by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, currently serving a life
sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Gama’at al-Islamiyya is best
known for the November 1997 massacre of 62 tourists at the Temple of Luxor in
Egypt and the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
6.
Destabilizing Pakistan. Our bombing raids are destabilizing Pakistan, our
reluctant ally with nuclear capabilities to the South and East of Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, has presented his country as
wholly allied with the U.S. against
terrorists, but in fact many of his top officials remain dependent on a
little-known but powerful fundamentalist party called Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam.
Known more simply as JUI, this group helped incubate the Taliban—and it may now
spark civil war in its home country.
7.
Turning bin Laden into a media superstar. By focusing huge amounts of energy on
demonizing and pursuing one person (despite the existence of thousands of
terrorists in the al Queda network), we have made Osama bin Laden larger than
life.
Among
many groups, bin Laden is viewed as a strong and powerful person who has evaded
U.S. capture in the three years following his suspected involvement in the 1998
bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. People’s affection for him
lies not in his alleged terrorist activities, but in the strong anti-American
sentiment that grips this part of the world. If our bombs finally strike him,
or he is otherwise killed, he will become a celebrated martyr of the Muslim
world.
8.
Unfairly punishing a helpless population. To bring one man and his small band
of followers to justice, we are heaping devastation on a powerless population
that is already completely impoverished by war. Nobody in Afghanistan voted the Taliban into power in 1994; they
seized and now maintain power by force. To “pressure” the Afghan people with a
deadly bombing campaign, when they have no political power anyway, defies
America’s sense of fairness.
9. Being
lured into a trap. Afghanistan is historically a quagmire, the only Central
Asian country never conquered by Europeans. From 1979 to 1989, the Soviet Union
poured untold monies and lives down the drain in an unwinnable guerilla war
against Afghanistan. By being sucked into investing huge resources to find bin
Laden, we could find ourselves stuck, ambushed and preoccupied, while
terrorists go on with their work from many other Muslim countries.
10.
There are smarter ways of fighting terrorism. Call it what you want—“blowback,”
the law of unintended consequences, bad karma— but we continue to dismiss the
long-term impact of our powerful desire to find bin Laden. Lots of smart,
experienced people suggest that the large-scale, clumsy, overkill approach of
the U.S. military is the opposite of what we need to contain terrorism and find
bin Laden.
Why not
treat terrorists like the criminals they are, building a long-term, world-wide coalition
to stop terrorism that includes the U.N.
and world court? If we use the media more effectively instead of
operating in secret, and invest the billions of dollars we are spending to
pulverize Afghanistan to address social and economic needs around the globe, we
will be on a more productive path toward making the world safer from terrorism.
_ _ _ _
_
Hearts and
Minds: Avoiding a New Cold War
By Rahul
Mahajan and Robert Jensen
http://www.nowarcollective.com/hearts.htm
This is
a different kind of war. That much of what we are being told, at least, is
true. And because of that, a different kind of analysis is required.
The
single most common question antiwar activists are confronted with is, “What’s
your solution?”
Although
many elements of a sensible solution have been offered, the antiwar movement
has reached no general consensus on the fundamentals.
In the
past, activists who critiqued and/or resisted unjust U.S. foreign policy and militarism faced three
main scenarios in which U.S. actions were blatantly unjust and the raw exercise
of U.S. power was obviously wrong:
·
U.S.
attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments, such as Iran in 1953,
Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973.
·
U.S.
wars against national liberation movements, such as Vietnam in the 1960s, or
against attempts to consolidate national liberation, such as Nicaragua
throughout the 1980s.
·
U.S.
wars in response to clearly illegal acts, but where the U.S. short-circuited negotiations and used
indiscriminate, gratuitous violence that killed huge numbers of civilians
(directly and indirectly), such as in the Gulf War in 1991.
In all
those cases, there was no threat to the people of the United States, even
though many of the interventions were carried out in the context of the Cold
War project of making people afraid of threats-that-might-come. The solutions
were simple—in the first two cases, no intervention by the United States, and
in the third, diplomacy and negotiations within the framework of international
law while keeping the United States from unilateral military action.
But this
war was sparked by attacks on U.S. soil, and people feel threatened and afraid,
for understandable reasons.
In a
climate of fear, it doesn’t matter to many that the military strategy being
pursued by the United States is immoral (the civilian death toll from bombing
and starvation resulting from the attack will no doubt reach into the tens,
possibly hundreds, of thousands without immediate action) and ineffective (it
will most likely breed more terrorism, not end it). Americans are confronted
with a genuine threat and want to feel safe again.
As a
result, proposals offered by some in the antiwar movement have been difficult
for the public to take seriously. It is clear that pacifism is of interest to
virtually no one in the United States.
That is not said out of disrespect for principled pacifists who
consistently reject violence, but simply to point out that any political
argument that sounds like “turn the other cheek” will be ignored. It is also
hard to imagine how it would have an impact on the kind of people who committed
the crime against humanity on Sept. 11.
The only
public display of pacifism that would be meaningful now would be for pacifists
to put their bodies on the line, to put themselves somewhere between the
weapons of their government and the innocent victims in Afghanistan. Short of
that, statements evoking pacifism will be worse than ineffective; they will
paint all the antiwar movement as out of touch with reality.
Also
inadequate are calls for terrorism to be treated solely as a police matter in
which law enforcement agencies pursue the perpetrators and bring them to
justice through courts, domestic or international. That is clearly central to
the task but is insufficient and unrealistic; the problem of terrorist networks
is a combined political and criminal matter and requires a combined solution.
So, what
should those who see the futility of the current military strategy be calling
for?
First,
we must support the call made by UN-affiliated and private aid agencies for an
immediate bombing halt to allow a resumption of the serious food distribution
efforts needed to avoid a catastrophe.
There
will need to be a transitional government, which should be— as has been
suggested for the past decade—ethnically broad-based with a commitment to
allowing international aid and basic human rights. It must, however, be under
UN auspices, with the United States playing a minimal role because of its
history of “covert” action in the region. It should also be one that does not
sell off Afghanistan’s natural resources and desirable location for pipelines
on the cheap to multinational corporations.
While
all that goes forward, the United States should do what is most obviously
within its power to do to lower the risk of further terrorist attacks: Begin to
change U.S. foreign policy in a way that could win over the people of the
Islamic world by acknowledging that many of their grievances—such as the
sanctions on Iraq, the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, Israel’s
occupation of and aggression against Palestine—are legitimate and must be
addressed.
This
shouldn’t be confused with “giving in to the terrorists” or “negotiating with
bin Laden.” It is neither. It is a practical strategy that demonstrates that a
powerful nation can choose to correct policies that were rooted in a desire to
extend its dominance over a region and its resources and are now not only
unjust but untenable. It is a sign of strength, and it is the right thing to
do.
Some
have argued against any change in U.S. foreign policy in the near term.
International law expert Richard Falk wrote in The Nation, “Whatever the global
role of the United States—and it is certainly responsible for much global
suffering and injustice, giving rise to widespread resentment that at its inner
core fuels the terrorist impulse—it cannot be addressed so long as this
movement of global terrorism is at large and prepared to carry on with its
demonic work.”
In fact,
the opposite is true: Now is precisely the time to address these long-term
issues.
Here we
can actually take a page from “liberal” counterinsurgency experts who saw that the
best way to defeat movements of national liberation was to win the hearts and
minds of people rather than try to defeat them militarily. In those situations,
as in this one, military force simply drives more people into resistance.
Measures designed to ease the pressure toward insurgency, such as land reform
then and changing U.S. Middle East policy now, are far more likely to be
effective. The alternative in Vietnam was a wholesale attempt to destroy
civilian society—“draining the swamp” in Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase. The
alternative now would be unending global war.
In the
past, such strategies were part of a foreign policy “debate” in which the end
goal of U.S. economic domination of Third World countries was shared by all
parties, and so they were entirely illegitimate. Now, it is different—these
terrorists are not the voice of the dispossessed and they are not a national
liberation movement. Their vision for their own societies is grotesque.
But they
do share something with the wider populace of their countries.
There is
tremendous justified anger in the Islamic world at U.S. foreign policy. For the vast majority of the
populace, it has not translated to anger at the United States as a nation or at
Americans as a people. For groups like al-Qaeda, it has. Their aims and methods
are rejected by that majority, but the shared anger at U.S. domination provides these terror networks
their only cover. A strategy to successfully “root out” those networks must
isolate them from the populace by eliminating what they hold in common. It is
necessary to get the cooperation not just of governments of Islamic nations but
of their people as well. The only way is to remove their sources of grievance.
These
changes in policy must be preliminary to a larger change. The United States
must drop its posture of the unilateralist, interventionist superpower. In lieu
of its current policy of invoking the rule of law and the international
community when convenient and ignoring them when it wishes, it must demonstrate
a genuine commitment to being bound by that law and the will of the
international community in matters of war and peace.
Many
have said of the Afghans, and perhaps by extension of many other deprived
peoples, “Feed them and you’ll win them over.” This attitude dehumanizes those
people. Nobody will accept bombs with one hand and food with the other. Nor
will anyone feel gratitude over food doled out by an arrogant superpower that
insists on a constant double standard in international relations and makes
peremptory demands of other nations on a regular basis. To win the support of
Afghans and others for the long term, which will be necessary to substantially
reduce the danger of terrorism, the United States must treat other peoples with
dignity and respect. We must recognize we are simply one nation among many.
This
strategy will not win over bin Laden or other committed terrorists to our side;
that’s not the objective. Instead, we have to win over the people.
The
choice we face as a nation is similar to that faced at the end of World War II.
The capitalist West, the Communist world, and many of the colonies had united
to defeat fascism. That could have been the basis of building an equitable
world order, with the United States helping to equalize levels of wealth and
consumption around the world. Had that path been taken, the world would be a
far safer place today, for Americans and others.
Instead,
U.S. leaders chose the path of the Cold War, which was not so much an attempt
to contain Soviet-style communism as it was to destroy any example of
independent development in the Third World, to extend and entrench our economic
superiority. That effort harmed democracy in our country and in others, killed
millions, and has led in the end to the creation new and terrifying threats to
all our safety.
Government
officials are already speaking as if we are fighting a new Cold War, with
President Bush calling the war on Afghanistan “the first battle of the war of
the 21st century.”
We
cannot let history repeat itself.
Tom Atlee
* The Co-Intelligence Institute * PO Box 493 * Eugene, OR 97440 http://www.co-intelligence.org
* http://www.democracyinnovations.org
Please support our work. * Your donations are fully tax-deductible.
From: VeganBoi@aol.com
If the
International Criminal Court were up and running, this terrorist attack and
serious violation of territorial integrity that the U.S. has suffered would be
a perfect case to take to it. But, although almost every country in the world
has signed on to it, it’s not up and running. Why? Because the U.S. continues to withhold its
critical support unless (get this) the U.S. military is exempt from its
jurisdiction. And we wonder why people around the world view the United States
as an arrogant bully.
>From
what I’ve seen, there’s almost nothing about the International Criminal Court
and U.S. obstruction of it in the U.S. mainstream/corporate media, so that few
people in the U.S. have even heard about it.
The last
vote of the Internation Court was 14 to 2 against the US incident in
Lebanon. The US has dismissed the court
ever since.
--
Randy
Schutt
Author
of Inciting Democracy: A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society and
initiator of the Vernal Education Project:
Working
to increase the skills and support of progressive activists
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