Joseph Gerson
"So let us not talk falsely now
the hour is getting late"
- Bob Dylan
Welcome:
I want to begin by thanking those who really organized this conference: the members of AFSC´s Peace & Economic Security Program Committee, Annie Bartos, Steve Kubiner, Nick Godfrey, Tufts´ Peace and Justice Studies Program, the Tufts Peace Coalition, and the many members of AFSC´s staff who pitched in to make this weekend´s conference possible. Thank you.
It is wonderful to see you. Tomorrow, with many people coming from out of town, we will be overflowing. It´s been our unhappy responsibility this week to turn several hundred people away. The up side of that is that we have a movement here, and that what the mainstream press is saying about our irrelevance is simply the Bush Administration´s wishful thinking. Your presence reflects that critical thinking, commitments to justice, peace and democracy remain alive and well here in New England, and more broadly in the U.S. We´re going to make a difference, to save human lives, and to protect our constitutional freedoms.
There´s no denying that we have our work cut out for us. These are hard and dangerous times. But, let me assure you that the victories won by the labor and civil rights movements, the Vietnam and Freeze era peace movements, the women´s and lgbt movements have all come out very dark or (thinking in terms of Melville´s "whiteness of the whale") white periods. The people who wrote the bible teach us that "A people without a vision will perish." Friends, we have a vision. And, while I don´t want to get lost in patriotic references, with will and imagination, our vision is the hope of this nation. Given the pain and destruction being wrought by those who speak and act in our name, we are also the hope of many of the world´s people. Marcia Morris, who is here and who has just returned from an international peace conference in Okinawa, can testify to that.
I want to appreciate those of you who have traveled far to join us. I especially want to appreciate Randy and Amber Amundson, who will be addressing us tomorrow morning and the delegation of Atom Bomb Survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Professor Konishi, Ms. Kitagawa, and Mr. Yamada, chose to include this conference as part of their work in the U.S. to further global campaign to achieve the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. They´ve been to Washington, D.C. and will be meeting with U.N. officials next week. The Bush Administration tells us that an essential element of its "war against terrorism" is non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. That´s interesting given that the U.S has threatened to initiate nuclear war more times than any other nation (including the war against Afghanistan and Al Queda,) and that with the other nuclear powers it has consistently and openly refused to implement Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which requires that the nuclear powers completely eliminate their nuclear arsenals. The Hibakusha know more than perhaps any of us here about the experience and meanings of terrorism. Their very presence here should serve as a mirror for us to better see ourselves and the only nation ever to have attacked another with nuclear weapons. And, for those of you who are sometimes disheartened, the courage and achievements of the Hibakusha are a model for us all.
Meanings of September 11:
We need to be clear and to remember that the attacks of September 11 were brutal and indiscriminate crimes. In addition to those we have lost, we also now understand that we are vulnerable as much of the rest of the world has been for so many years. Two centuries of near invincibility are clearly over. We now know that we and our children can become orphans, widowers, and widows through no fault of our own.
After almost 200 years, the oceans surrounding us failed to provide protection, and we are in the midst of an identity crisis. Are we a people committed to vengeance and empire, are we committed or to democracy, to justice and to common security? Does Rep Barbara Lee speak for us, or President Bush with his call for World War III and for a new crusade?
As the U.S. and the world´s peace movements have been clear, the attacks of September 11 were inexcusable crimes, whose perpetrators must be brought to justice. Our speakers tonight and tomorrow will describe in detail that there were and are alternatives to war, and we find ourselves surprisingly in agreement with the insurance companies which are treating the attacks as the wanton crimes that they were, not acts of war. War is not the answer. Instead it has further undermined our security and multiplied the dangers faced by all who share the planet with us. As in the case of European and Japanese resistance to terrorism in recent decades, the truth is that we can only recreate our security through patient legal, democratic and diplomatic means.
The near-hysterical press seems to relish repeating that 90% of the U.S. people support the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war, but do you really think the pollsters are asking if people support the killing of children, women and men, the use of fuel air explosives and nuclear threats in order to punish those responsible for the indiscriminate killing of our innocent children, women and men?
The peace movement countering the Bush Administration´s new "world war" must also be a justice movement, reaching out to help protect communities at risk here in the United States: Muslims, Arabs, Arab-Americans and the South Asian community. In early October, an Arab-American student asked me "Will we be put in concentration camps?" much as the Japanese were. My answer was "No", in part because that would undermine U.S. control of the oil-rich Middle East, but I stressed to his classmates that this young man´s terrible fear illustrated the importance of doing what we can protect and guarantee the security of our neighbors who are at risk and increasingly frightened. But, I have to tell you, with Ashcroft´s "invitations," people being held secretly in jails, and the assaults on our constitutional liberties, I find myself wondering if I answered that student correctly. The answer is up to all of us.
Our movement must address the root causes of the September 11 attacks and of the war that has followed. A century ago, as Washington launched what our high school text books teach us was "The Age of Imperialism", the Washington Post wrote that "The policy of isolation is dead…A new consciousness seems to have come upon us - the consciousness of strength, and with it a new appetite, a yearning to show our strength…ambition, interest, land hunger, pride, the mere joy of fighting…The taste of empire is in the mouth of the people, even as the taste of blood in the jungle."
Does this sound familiar?
Fifty years later, George Kennan, the author of the United States´ Cold War containment doctrine, was serving as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, and was the man most responsible for developing strategies for U.S. foreign policy. In this role he advised President Truman that:
"We have about 50 percent of the world´s wealth, but only 6.3 % of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this policy of disparity…The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts."
This, three years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the futile effort to avoid having to share influence with the Soviet Union in East Asia, as the U.S. had to do in Europe.
Since then, as Noam Chomsky teaches us, Political Axiom Number One of U.S. foreign and military policy has been to ensure that neither Washington´s enemies, nor its allies, gain independent axis to Middle East oil - what former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Taylor called the "jugular vein of western [now global] capitalism." We should be clear that, even as the current war is about the Empire having been struck and the Empire striking back, at root it is very much about oil and who rules what we call "Saudi Arabia," where one-quarter of the world´s known oil reserves lie under the desert.
Toward these and other ends, the U.S. maintains and is now expanding a global network of foreign military bases: more than a hundred in Japan, a hundred in Korea, and in places as diverse as Equador, Egypt, El Salvador, Baharain, Diego Garcia and Saudi Arabia. As we think about these bases and the attacks of September 11, we do well to remember that the authors of our own Declaration of Independence wrote that the "abuses and usurpations" that attended King George III "keeping among us in times of peace" "Standing Armies" were cause for declaring independence, going to war - killing people. One doesn´t have to support Osama Bin Laden to understand and oppose the forces that made him what he is.
Finally, on the subject of empire, last Sunday´s New York Times informed us that "There is talk of a new American empire, of a world that presents the global superpower with a unique opportunity to exploit a victory in Afghanistan…to force decisions in every capital…and to rethink the principles around which nations cooperate." Note the words "exploit the victory." They are significant, quite accurate, and help us to understand the meanings and dimensions of the Bush Administration´s "World War."
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz have redoubled the Clinton Administration´s commitment to "full spectrum dominance" of the world. While all eyes are on Afghanistan, the war in Colombia is escalating. The Bush Administration is refusing to enter into treaty agreements to commit to nuclear arms reduction, and - worse - with the support of the Democratic Party it is pressing the testing and deployment of a new first strike weapon system , so-call "missile defenses" which are - in truth - targeted primarily against China and to a lesser extent against Russia and our allies.
These are not formulas for winning friends, but for deepening the cycles of violence and creating new generations of terrorists and others who despise us. Thus, as we reel from the September 11 attacks and the national mobilization for war, we need be thinking about the roots and implications of this war (not the least of them being the socialization of our young for future cycles of war and violence), about a politics of repentance, and about the fundamental importance of common security - that ancient truth that we or the world´s nations cannot be secure if others are not.
Immediate Dangers of a Widening War:
Beyond these principles and this world view, we need to confront the most immediate dangers facing us and the world community. While the Afghan phase of the U.S. war may be winding down, with the number of civilian casualties there unknown, with millions of Afghans still facing hunger and cold this winter, the dangers of an August 1914 scenario, of this becoming a truly devastating global war, have not passed.
The Administration termed this World War III, threatening sixty nations, Iraq and North Korea foremost among them after Afghanistan. And, in its campaign to restructure the global (dis)order - to reaffirm and to consolidate U.S. global dominance for the coming decades - Bush and those around him insist that there are no alternatives to either supporting their new "crusade" or becoming its target.
Living under the barrage of headlines datelined New York and Afghanistan, our attention has been focused on the defeats of the Taliban, the continued fighting in southern Afghanistan, and (to the degree that we notice) on the return of notorious Afghan warlords to power. Have you seen serious reporting on the "collateral damage," the hundreds and probably thousands of Afghan civilians killed, wounded, orphaned, and widowed. Friends, if there was any lesson to be taken from the indiscriminate criminal attacks of September 11, it was that war is not the answer, that killing innocent civilians is not the way to create peace, justice or security.
The U.S. media and the Democratic Party have apparently forgotten their capacities for critical thinking. Their attention seems to be on building market share - even at the cost of creating near hysteria across the country -and on winning the next elections. That Bush and Company have declared World War III, committed the United States to toppling states, and severely manipulated public opinion, have been flushed down George Orwell´s memory hole.
Two days ago, the Afghan feminist Rina Amiri observed here at the Fletcher School, that even as the Bonn agreements are being celebrated, they only scratch the surface. Who cares that it is Afghanistan´s warlords who are returning to power? Or that thousands of innocent Afghans have been killed and wounded by the less than discriminate bombing of 500 pound bombs, 2,000 pound bombs, and fuel-air explosives? As our attention is turned toward holiday shopping, who is still thinking that Taliban forces have sought refuge in nuclear Pakistan, a nation with a long history of military coups and whose military and intelligence services not only helped bring the Taliban and Osama bin Laden to power, but includes have many people who share their beliefs?
How many in our communities are thinking hard about what a new war against Iraq would mean, or how Ariel Sharon is exploiting the most recent terrorist attacks in Israel to destroy the PLO, to eliminate the middle ground and hopes for a mutually acceptable solution, and thus to complete the job he began with his 1982 invasion of Lebanon? U.S. military advisers have now joined the war against the Abu Sayaf rebels in southern Philippines, and Washington has signaled its desire for improved collaboration with the Indonesian military. This is the most powerful institution of the world´s most populous Muslim state, which -- not coincidentally -- sits astride the Malacca Straight through which almost all of East Asia´s oil must pass.
Friends, George Bush´s "World War" "against terrorism" threatens to ignite an accelerating and devastating cycle of violence that could lead to war against the Islamic world that would, truly, be World War III. This is why a number of analysts are making reference to a possible August 1914 scenario.
Proto-Fascism At Home:
A major part of Bush´s war is here on the home front. In addition to our new minister for "Homeland Security", Lynn Cheney, the Vice-President´s wife is leading the charge against academic freedom, Attorney General Ashcroft is threatening to put under cover agents in places of worship and religious institutions. Our rights to freedom of speech and religion are under attack. In addition to these first amendment rights, the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments of our constitution are also under assault. Despite the spin the Administration is giving to President Bush´s Executive Order, the text is clear that 20 million immigrants in this country can be made subject to secret military tribunals and the threat of execution, with no rights to appeal. As one of my colleagues observed, it´s time to remember Pastor Neimoller´s words, "First they came for the Jews…"
Can "it" happen here? Only yesterday, the chief law enforcement official of the land, Attorney General Ashcroft told the nation that "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists" that criticism "gives ammunition to America´s enemies, and pause to America´s friends." Just as no middle ground, no third ways, are to be permitted internationally, the administration seeks to forbid and crush critical thinking and democratic dissent here. And, not trusting the U.S. people to make and to hold our own meanings of September 11, Hollywood has been engaged in a propaganda campaign modeled after the mobilization of World War II.
So much for the "freedom" the Bush Administration says it is fighting for. This new McCarthyism is the second stage of what New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis described last spring as "almost a coup." The models are Saudi Arabia and Putin´s Russia, and I wonder if it is appropriate to that we are in a pre-fascist, and certainly a McCarthyite, situation. Even the liberal Hong Kong press is warning that these steps "undermine efforts to create a rule-of-law in China. The Bush Administration has taken action that…may undermine the rule of law within the US itself."
There is a great temptation to describe how the Bush Administration is using the war to restructure its alliances with Russia, Japan, China, and Europe and the global (dis)order itself, but Noam Chomsky, Lamis Andoni, Zia Mian, and Michael Klare will have a lot to say about that tomorrow.
OK, so we face a difficult situation. What do you think the struggle against Jim Crow was like for Blacks? Do you remember how bleak it felt when Nixon added to the millions killed in Vietnam and did his damnedest to subvert our democracy? Remember how frightening the times were when Reagan escalated the nuclear confrontation, which in turn ignited a global peace movement?
Democracy, peace and security are never givens. As we know, they must be redefined, recreated, and re-secured in each generation.
Our overflow crowd tells us that there is a movement coming into being. Mary Lord, who is coordinating AFSC´s responses to the September 11 attacks and the war, reminded me that the Vietnam War and Reagan era peace movements came into being with teach-ins like ours.
Let me close by saying that this weekend´s conference has been organized to help lay the foundations for what will need to be a long-term peace and justice movement. Learn all that you can, and please think about the ways that you can replicate it in your communities - in small ways and large.
This conference is not about strategies. That will be have to wait for another time. Obviously, our work will need to embrace a broad spectrum of activities, from intellectual work to community organizing, from art to civil disobedience, and everything in between.
Thank you for joining us.
Persist!
* Joseph Gerson is Director of Programs of the American Friends Service Committee in New England and was a principle organizer of the "After September 11: Paths to Peace, Justice and Security" conference.; together with Tufts University´s Peace and Justice Studies Program and Peace Coalition. December 7 & 8, Medford, Massachusetts
Frank Ching, "US attacks a blow to judicial reform" South China Morning Post. 11/8/01