Nothing is more important than working for peace.                                                 www.VickiJohnson.org

September 2006

Following the 5th anniversary of 9/11, and the 2006 Israel/Hezbollah war

Some passages for reflection

Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Step One: Look in the Mirror

Why do some people in the Islamic world hate us so much? It's a quick discussion. We take over and dominate other people's societies. We set up client states in their regions and rely on these client states to house US bases and, as in the case with Israel, to punish neighboring states if they don't submit to US aims. We foster double standards, condemning invasion and occupation when it suits us, (e.g., the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait) and yet undertaking or supporting murderous sanctions, invasions and occupations, while claiming to support and enhance democratic states. The role of the US and its client state, Israel, as occupiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine evokes rage and retaliation. Hideous and violent terrorist attacks will continue as long as we insist on taking other people's precious and irreplaceable resources for cut rate prices. We should either begin paying fair prices, or find new ways to live in which we're not so dependent on these resources.

How could we live differently, with less consumption and waste? Let me answer for myself. I consume far more than my fair share of jet fuel, electrical energy, and water each year. It's time to start rationing myself. The old adage, "Live simply so that others can simply live" comes to mind.

I'll have a refresher course in simple living during the late spring and summer of this year when I'll be an inmate in a US federal prison for four months. The prison-industrial complex is a cruel extension of US war-making against the poor in our country, but I hope this prison sentence, for nonviolent trespass on US military installations, will serve me as an incubation period, a time of adjustment while living with less, and a time to hatch new ideas about how to live more simply after I leave the prison. I hope all of us will find ways to slow down, find more leisure time, and in our times of rest reflect very seriously on Secretary of State Colin Powell's encouragement that we "get together to defeat organizations determined to kill and destroy innocent people." I hope we can get together to nonviolently defeat US militarism, at home and abroad.

The Wrong Response to Terrorism

What has still not been adequately discussed, much less accepted in U.S. public opinion, is that war is exactly the wrong response to terrorism. In fact, massive invasions with the powerful weapons forged for modern wars between nations are not only impotent to curb terrorism, but promote the very conditions that breed terrorism, particularly when invasions are conducted in a way that exacerbates the global divisions between rich and poor countries, Christian and Muslim cultures, the West and the Third World. Iraq, which had a repressive regime that nevertheless kept order, is now a nightmare of chaos, endless bombings and a breeding ground for a violent insurgency that incites imitators from all over the world.

There is a better way to combat terrorism, fairly well known to societies that have been dealing with it for a while, but one to which the United States has given secondary attention. This involves careful avoidance of rhetoric that promotes fear and paranoia among the citizenry and an affirmation of solidarity in the values of human life together. Not war but careful police work is then what is needed. All clues are followed up to ascertain how the acts were committed and who committed them. International police and intelligence agencies coalesce to share information in order to discover the networks that have promoted such acts and to prevent their reoccurrence.

I suggest Americans need to begin a discussion of how to reshape our own responses to terrorism in a way that is along more useful lines. Above all, Western nations such as the United States and England need to ask what are the local and global conditions that breed "terrorism." Why would an 18-year-old from Leeds, England, from a modestly successful immigrant family, be attracted to blowing himself up on a subway in London? what despair, alienation and anger at the present world power system and desperate desire for heroism lies behind such an attraction?

How can Americans and British, new and old imperialists, take account of how their capitals project a power system that is deeply unjust to the majority of the world's people? How can we begin to build a more just and cooperative world that allows young people from all cultures a greater sense that they have a role in building a better future? Let us dare to ask such questions even, and especially, in the face of the dismembered bodies of both terrorists and terrorized.

Howard Zinn

Retaliation

We need to think about the resentment all over the world felt by people who have been the victims of American military action. In Vietnam, where we carried out terrorizing bombing attacks, using napalm and cluster bombs,on peasant villages. In Latin America, where we supported dictators and death squads in Chile and El Salvador and other countries. In Iraq, where a million people have died as a result of our economic sanctions, And, perhaps most important for understanding the current situation, in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, where a million and more Palestinians live under a cruel military occupation, while our government supplies Israel with high-tech weapons.

We need to imagine that the awful scenes of death and suffering we are now witnessing on our television screens have been going on in other parts of the world for a long time, and only now can we begin to know what people have gone through, often as a result of our policies. We need to understand how some of those people will go beyond quiet anger to acts of terrorism.

We need new ways of thinking. A $300 billion dollar military budget has not given us security. Military bases all over the world, our warships on every ocean, have not given us security. Land mines, a "missile defense shield", will not give us security. We need to rethink our position in the world. We need to stop sending weapons to countries that oppress other people or their own people. We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

Our security can only come by using our national wealth, not for guns, planes, bombs, but for the health and welfare of our people - for free medical care for everyone, education and housing guaranteed decent wages and a clean environment for all. We can not be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding , but only by expanding them. .

We should take our example not from our military and political leaders shouting "retaliate" and "war" but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, not vengeance but compassion.

It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support one and condemn the other.

The Algebra of Infinite Justice

So here we have it. The equivocating distinction between civilisation and savagery, between the "massacre of innocent people" or, if you like, "a clash of civilisations" and "collateral damage". The sophistry and fastidious algebra of infinite justice. How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place? How many dead Afghans for every dead American? How many dead women and children for every dead man? How many dead mojahedin for each dead investment banker?

President Bush can no more "rid the world of evil-doers" than he can stock it with saints. It's absurd for the US government to even toy with the notion that it can stamp out terrorism with more violence and oppression. Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It's transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their "factories" from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.

Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and, for heaven's sake, rights. Instead, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, was asked what he would call a victory in America's new war, he said that if he could convince the world that Americans must be allowed to continue with their way of life, he would consider it a victory.

The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden (who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars. The millions killed in Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia, the 17,500 killed when Israel -- backed by the US -- invaded Lebanon in 1982, the 200,000 Iraqis killed in Operation Desert Storm, the thousands of Palestinians who have died fighting Israel's occupation of the West Bank. And the millions who died, in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Haiti, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Panama, at the hands of all the terrorists, dictators and genocidists whom the American government supported, trained, bankrolled and supplied with arms. And this is far from being a comprehensive list.

But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance", its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....)

Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow each other's rhetoric. Each refers to the other as "the head of the snake". Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed -- one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless. The fireball and the ice pick. The bludgeon and the axe. The important thing to keep in mind is that neither is an acceptable alternative to the other.

President Bush's ultimatum to the people of the world -- "If you're not with us, you're against us" -- is a piece of presumptuous arrogance. It's not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make.

As for the source of terrorism, there can be no doubt that it comes from the enormous gap between the haves and the have nots. Unless prosperity is shared and ignorance and poverty eradicated, in the long run we will not win this war against terrorism. In all this, once again, it is the strong who must be magnanimous.

What happened in New York was not an act of war, but a crime directed against the entire international community. As such, I believe fervently that the response should not be driven by one country, but by the United Nations. It should seek to apprehend the suspects and bring them to trial before the world community -- this would be the perfect case in point for the International Criminal Court (though the United States, of course, has not yet agreed to the establishment of such a court).

The awfulness of the innocent civilian casualties in New York and Washington should not be matched by the outrage in response of killing innocents in Afghanistan or elsewhere. One, too, hopes very, very much that one of the elements that makes America so great and admired -- respect for the rule of law -- will not be disregarded in fear, that innocents will remain that until proven guilty.

Tutu: Well, I believe myself that there's no way in which we are likely to win the war against terrorism, as long as you've got conditions of poverty, of disease, of ignorance that can make people so desperate that they believe the only options they have are to engage in acts of that kind.

Matthews: But the people who struck us on September 11 were people who were reasonably well educated. They were technical people. Maybe they didn't have Ph.D.s, but they had educations that would have allowed them to make a living quite well in the Western world.

Tutu: Now, the point is, if precisely people of that sort who look at the inequities of the international economic order--I mean, to think just now that you say to the developing world, in order for you to make it, produce more. So you sell. And they do produce more.

But then the developed world has massive, massive agricultural subsidies that ensure that farmers in those rich countries can produce their stuff cheaply. And there are high tariffs that prevent the developing country from being able to sell their goods. And so you say, these guys are playing a game and they make the rules for the game and they are the referees in this games. It is so lopsided that anyone seeking to be a normal person realizes that the odds are stacked against us so horrendously that people will say, I am ready to do anything to get out of this trap.

But how dare I compare? We are the chosen people, and they are just Arabs.

Who are those people fighting us in Lebanon ? Who are those determined youngsters, the fanatics impassioned by their faith and hatred?

They are eighteen-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, and twenty-five-year-olds or perhaps even thirty-year-olds. They were born in the last century, towards the end of the 70`s and the end of the 80`s. They are the sons of the previous war. They are the offspring of occupied Lebanon in 1982, children of the trampled south during the first war in Lebanon, frightened children of humiliated parents who grew into bitter men, full of burning hatred.

We also tried knocking some sense into their parents by bombing them. Their families were also driven out of their homes, hoping they would wander to the capital and pressure the government to disarm the militia of the time (Palestinian). Their villages were also pounded, flattened and cleansed.

The generation that grew out of that era is the same generation fighting us now. And twenty years from now - if we allow the Olmerts , the Peretzes, the Halutzes and the Ramons to continue ruling us – we shall find ourselves fighting the generation that is growing up now.

Edward Peck. Former U.S. Chief of Mission in Iraq and ambassador to Mauritania expressed the following opinion, “In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, they asked us -- this is a Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism; I was the Deputy Director of the working group -- they asked us to come up with a definition of terrorism that could be used throughout the government. We produced about six, and each and every case, they were rejected, because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities. [. . .] After the task force concluded its work, Congress got into it, and you can google into U.S. Code Title 18, Section 2331, and read the U.S. definition of terrorism. And one of them in here says -- one of the terms, “international terrorism,” means “activities that,” I quote, “appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.” [. . .] Yes, well, certainly, you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them. Israel is another. And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

Just after September 11, some reporter asked me why terrorism happens. I told him that my view is that such acts are not possible unless you have very strong hatred and very strong willpower and determination. That tremendous hatred comes from many reasons. The causes of this hatred may be going back centuries. Some people say that the West has a cruel history. These people also may see the achievements of Western countries—in terms of the economy, education, health and social achievements—as a result of exploitation of poorer countries, including Arab countries. Western nations get rich by using resources such as Arab oil. Meanwhile, the countries supplying them raw materials remain poor. Due to such injustices, jealousies are created. Then, there’s perhaps a religious factor. In some places, there’s the concept of one religion, one truth. In the Muslim world, there’s the notion of Allah. The Western, multi-religious modern society is some kind of a challenge to this. These, I feel, are the main causes, and, when combined with lots of anger and frustration, cause a huge amount of hate.

The countermeasures for such things are not easy. … At the general public level we must cultivate the notion of not just one religion, one truth, but pluralism and many truths. We can change the atmosphere, and we can modify certain ways of thinking. Then, second, there should be a spirit of dialogue. Whenever we see any disagreements, we must think how to solve them on the basis of recognition of oneness of the entire humanity. This is the modern reality. When a certain community is destroyed, in reality it destroys a part of all of us. So there should be a clear recognition that the entire humanity is just one family. Any conflict within humanity should be considered as a family conflict. We must find a solution within this atmosphere.

Dalai Lama

The attacks on USA were shocking, but retaliation by going to war may not be the best solution in the long run. Ultimately only nonviolence can contain terrorism. Problems within human society should be solved in a humanitarian way, for which nonviolence provides the proper approach.

Generations of suffering and grievances have provoked this violence. As a Buddhist I believe that there are causes and conditions behind every event. Some of these causes may be of recent origin but others are decades or centuries old. These include colonialism, exploitation of natural resources by developed countries, discrimination, suspicion and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. Years of negligence and indifference to poverty and oppression may be among the causes for this upsurge in terrorism. What is clear is that the shocking, sad and horrific terrorist attacks in the USA were the culmination of many factors.

Terrorism cannot be overcome by the use of force because it does not address the complex underlying problems. In fact the use of force may not only fail to solve the problems, it may exacerbate them and frequently leaves destruction and suffering in its wake. Human conflicts should be resolved with compassion. The key is non-violence.

...perhaps under the auspices of the European Parliament, a meeting could be arranged of private individuals, people who are concerned about peace in the world, and related non-governmental organisations to discuss how the problem of terrorism can be dealt with and overcome. It would be useful to include people who are considered terrorists or who are seen as supporting terrorism, so that we can learn why they are resorting to or encouraging terrorism. It is possible that some of their grievances are valid. In such cases we need to address them. But where they have no valid grievances or reasons, the true situation should be clarified in order to remove misunderstanding and baseless suspicion.

We must continue to develop a wider perspective, to think rationally and work to avert future disasters in a nonviolent way. These issues concern the whole of humanity, not just one country. We should explore the use of nonviolence as a long-term measure to control terrorism of every kind. But we need a well-thought-out, coordinated long-term strategy. The proper way of resolving differences is through dialogue, compromise and negotiations, through human understanding and humility. We need to appreciate that genuine peace comes about through mutual understanding, respect and trust. As I have already said, human problems should be solved in a humanitarian way, and nonviolence is the humane approach.

Strike against Terror

"Strike against terror" is a misleading expression. What we are striking against is not the real cause or the root of terror. The object of our strike is still human life. We are sowing seeds of violence as we strike. Striking in this way we will only bring about more hatred and violence into the world. This is exactly what we do not want to do.

Terror is in the human heart. We must remove this terror from the heart. Destroying the human heart, both physically and psychologically, is what we must absolutely avoid. The root of terrorism should be identified, so that it can be removed. The root of terrorism is misunderstanding, intolerance, hatred, revenge and hopelessness. This root cannot be located by the military. Bombs and missiles cannot reach it, let alone destroy it. Only with the practice of looking deeply can our insight reveal and identify this root. Only with the practice of deep listening and compassion can it be transformed and removed.

What I Would Say to Osama bin Laden

If you could speak to Osama bin Laden, what would you say to him? Likewise, if you were to speak to the American people, what would you suggest we do at this point, individually and as a nation?

If I were given the opportunity to be face to face with Osama bin Laden, the first thing I would do is listen. I would try to understand why he had acted in that cruel way. I would try to understand all of the suffering that had led him to violence. It might not be easy to listen in that way, so I would have to remain calm and lucid. I would need several friends with me, who are strong in the practice of deep listening, listening without reacting, without judging and blaming. In this way, an atmosphere of support would be created for this person and those connected so that they could share completely, trust that they are really being heard.

After listening for some time, we might need to take a break to allow what has been said to enter into our consciousness. Only when we felt calm and lucid would we respond. We would respond point by point to what had been said. We would respond gently but firmly in such a way to help them to discover their own misunderstandings so that they will stop violent acts from their own will.

For the American people, I would suggest that we do everything we can to restore our calm and our lucidity before responding to the situation. To respond too quickly before we have much understanding of the situation may be very dangerous. The first thing we can do is to cool the flames of anger and hatred that are so strong in us. As mentioned before, it is crucial to look at the way we feed the hatred and violence within us and to take immediate steps to cut off the nourishment for our hatred and violence.

In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has made attempts to realize this. All the parties involved in violence and injustice agreed to listen to each other in a calm and supportive environment, to look together deeply at the roots of violent acts and to find agreeable arrangements to respond to the situations. The presence of strong spiritual leaders is very helpful to support and maintain such an environment. We can look at this model for resolving conflicts that are arising right in the present moment; we do not have to wait many years to realize this.

It is said clearly in the Bible, "Forgive them for they know not what they do." This means that an act of evil is an act of great ignorance and misunderstanding. Perhaps many wrong perceptions are behind an act of evil; we have to see that ignorance and misunderstanding is the root of the evil. Every human being contains within him or herself all the elements of great understanding, great compassion, and also ignorance, hatred, and violence.

Without understanding, compassion is impossible. When you understand the suffering of others, you do not have to force yourself to feel compassion, the door of your heart will just naturally open. All of the hijackers were so young and yet they sacrificed their lives for what? Why did they do that? What kind of deep suffering is there? It will require deep listening and deep looking to understand that. To have compassion in this situation is to perform a great act of forgiveness. We can first embrace the suffering, both outside of America and within America. We need to look after the victims here within our country and also to have compassion for the hijackers and their families because they are also victims of ignorance and hatred. In this way we can truly practice non-discrimination. We do not need to wait many years or decades to realize reconciliation and forgiveness. We need a wake up call now in order not to allow hatred to overwhelm our hearts.

Do you believe things happen for a reason? If so, what was the reason for the attacks on the U.S.A.?

The deep reason for our current situation is our patterns of consumption. U.S.A. citizens consume 60% of the world's energy resources yet they account for only 6% of the total world's population. Children in America have witnessed 100,000 acts of violence on television by the time they finish elementary school. Another reason for our current situation is our foreign policy and the lack of deep listening within our relationships. We do not use deep listening to understand the suffering and the real needs of people in other nations.

Contact Vicki: vicki ATSIGN vickijohnson.org