Peace is the way

By Richard Deats

There are no shortcuts to building a world of peace, justice, and freedom. Gandhi and King talked a lot about means and ends: The end is predetermined in the means, just as an apple seed produces an apple tree, not a thorn bush. A peaceful end comes through peaceful means; justice is produced through just means.

Yet in the public forum we've heard a very different message. Over and over again falsehoods have been repeated until many people believe in the official version of truth: 9/11 = Osama bin Laden = Saddam Hussein = the present devil incarnate. The US is good, our motives are pure, this war isn't about oil but about freedom. God is on our side and we are doing God's will. Wage war to bring peace. Terrorize Iraq in order to fight terror (even with "precision bombing," vast destruction and the killing and maiming of innocent civilians demonstrate anew the hell of war). We quote the part of UN Resolution 687 that says Iraq is to have no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) without quoting the part that says all the Middle East should be free of WMDs, since we supply weapons to Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. We must "get" Saddam through the collective punishment of war.

The bombing we have seen on television didn't adequately show what the Pentagon calls collateral damage. When a city like Basra or Baghdad is without water and electricity due to the bombing, we are not talking about inconveniences. What happens in homes when there is no electricity for a refrigerator? When a hospital has no electrical current, what happens to the infants in incubators, to the people on life support, to the person being operated on? What diseases will follow the drinking of polluted water, especially among the most vulnerable—infants, children, pregnant women, old people? In Gulf War I about 15,000 Iraqis were killed, but 70,000 more died from causes attributed to the war.

Many who were opposed to going to war, at least without UN support, are now saying, "When war starts, you stop protesting. We have to support our troops." But when a policy is founded on lies and, as Pope John Paul II said, is without moral and legal foundations, does it deserve this treatment? Should we really support a reckless adventure just because it is underway? Unilateral and preemptive war by one country tempts other countries to the same behavior. What if Pakistan decides to follow our example and attacks India before it is attacked? Or what if North

"We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total—but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial. So a whole will and a whole heart and a whole national life bent toward war prevail over the mere desire for peace….There is no peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake."

Korea decides to launch an attack on us before we attack them? I am sure they wonder if they are the next one of the "axis of evil" states to be taken out by the US.

Isn't it more supportive of our troops to call them back from harm's way? Over a decade after Gulf War I we still have troops in Saudi Arabia; almost half a century since the Korean war, we still have tens of thousands there. Do we really support imperial policies instead of supporting the United Nations, its peacekeeping operations and treaties designed to fashion a world order that can increase the safety of us all? We need to especially support conscientious objectors in the military, whose struggle is particularly difficult.

For many it seems, as Chris Hedges ironically said, that "war is a force that gives us meaning." Despite the deceit and lies, failure of imagination and goodwill, we are in another war...with promise of more to come.

Unless.

Unless we firmly join "that other superpower," the millions of people who have marched and rallied for peace in virtually every country. We have seen the beginning of a worldwide peace force that has enormous potential to bring down the powers of domination. Yet, as Daniel Berrigan warns us (see quote right), we will not defeat the warmakers without great sacrifice and determination and refusal to settle for anything less than a peaceful twenty-first century.

Rather than passively accepting these wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, who is next is unknown—let's deepen and sustain our resistance to the warfare state and commit ourselves fully to building a peaceful world.