July/August 2005 Featured Story - Fellowship Forum We Beg to Differ Those of us opposed to the current US Administration's hazardous policies are often challenged by friendly and not-so-friendly voices. "What's your alternative?" they ask. "What would you do differently?" These, I submit, are reasonable questions. So I posed two queries to a group of thoughtful skeptics and dissenters.
I did not design this as a theoretical exercise, but as a way of urging informed citizens to think as concretely as possible. In effect, I asked them if there is a different way for the US to relate to the world. Following are their replies - Murray Polner An American Perestroika by David McReynolds More Nuremberg Trials By Murray Polner I once edited and wrote the introduction to William Graham Sumner’s The Conquest of the United States by Spain and Other Essays. Sumner was an irascible Social Darwinist and classic 19th Century liberal supporter of laissez faire. What attracted me to him was his utter contempt for American imperialism during the Spanish-American war and the subsequent US invasion of the Philippines, which left 2,500 American volunteers and 250,000 Filipinos dead. Despite the backing of a jingoist and cowed press, politicians who invoked God’s support, and a supportive populace, Sumner wasn’t convinced. He knew what lay ahead for unsuspecting Americans: “war, debt, taxation, diplomacy, a grand governmental system, pomp, glory, a big army and navy, lavish expenditures.” The rest of the century, he warned, would bring a “frightful effusion of blood in revolution and war.” Sound familiar? Since then, America’s addiction to war has never abated. During Vietnam—and later, pre-Iraq war—we finally began mass protesting, marching, contacting politicians, constructing placards and posters, praying, carrying out acts of civil disobedience and marching, but to no avail. At least not yet. My own proposal is that the International Criminal Court in The Hague be empowered to investigate, indict and try every high-level—and only high-level—governmental leader whose policies have led to the murder of civilians. The court should be granted the muscle to deal with all those politicians, including those whose nations have not joined the ICC. In that event, the guilty leaders will never again be allowed to travel to a signatory nation without risk of arrest. Had such a court had the power, scores of past and present caudillos, generalissimos, presidentes, commissars, fuehrers, duces, Great Leaders, presidents, vice-presidents, and assorted zealots would now be behind bars. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon would have been hauled into court and tried for their responsibility in causing millions of deaths in Southeast Asia. The court would have had the power to call to the dock Saddam Hussein, Hutu leaders, those responsible for the disaster in Darfur, and those who deliberately lied so that Iraq might be invaded. Such a court would be required to monitor potential war criminals in future wars. This accountability, this threat to punish guilty heads of state and their appointed killers, this permanent black cloud would forever strip them of honor and memory—and with hope, dissuade future leaders from murdering in the name of one ideology or another. Moreover, we could institute special worldwide celebrations for the naysayers and whistleblowers who refuse to go along with the murderous plots afoot in their countries. And I would also have a curriculum devised to teach the young everywhere the dangers of groupthink, excessive nationalism, religious fanaticism, and the demonization of “enemies.” It may be a dream, but the alternative is a century even worse than the one Sumner envisioned.
Murray Polner, convener of this forum, co-authored Disarmed and Dangerous, a biography of Daniel and Philip Berrigan and wrote No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran.
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