The costs of rejecting peace

I attended a speech by author Arundhati Roy recently. One of many interesting things she said was that governments that ignore peaceful requests from their people then 'privilege violence.'

It makes sense. When governments tell you that your peaceful demands mean nothing, what is left?

I've been thinking about this quite a bit and reviewing possible examples. If you were a set of 13 British colonies and you wished for independence (or a variety of reforms including representation in government), and the government laughed at your request, what does that tell you? It tells you that war, economic sabotage, and other tactics remain, because your rulers don't respect your peaceful request. The 13 colonies which became the United States engaged in civil disobedience (Boston Tea Party) and terrorism (going to war without wearing matching uniforms; fighting the war from cover, rather than marching in organized lines facing the enemy; engaging in sabotage and spying) to gain its independence. Because the U.S. eventually won, none of those tactics are described as terrorism in U.S. history books. Which is interesting, but which doesn't change their nature. The U.S. 'did what it had to do' to win independence, retroactively justifying any act.

[Roy notes that the Indian independence movement was not completely non-violent, as much as we'd like to believe it was.]

Currently and recently, if you look at disputes around the world, you see that Roy's words are painfully accurate. People in Uzbekistan who asked politely for a just system of governance have been executed, leaving only radicals who have seen the government rule out non-violent action from their list of options. In Iran, the U.S. chased out an elected leader, and replaced him with a king, who then killed off moderate, peaceful opposition members. This left radicals and violent people to figure out how to be rid of him. The country is STILL suffering from the rule of the radicals. Iraq? Hussein killed off his moderate opposition over time. Those who find themselves in opposition to the temporary government remember what they learned under Hussein. Israel constantly ignored both peaceful requests and international courts which ruled its actions unjust. If Israel ignores the law and ignores the peaceful, the groups oppressed by the Israeli government stop listening to their peaceful leaders, and turn to other options.

Those of us who believe in peaceful solutions are constantly being undermined by groups and governments who do not listen to peaceful solutions. Every time an authority rejects a peaceful demand, those moderates arguing for peaceful methods lose credibility with everyone on their side. And the list of options for resolution, ranging from peaceful to violent, loses a peaceful option. The list gets shorter.

We don't benefit from this. Only the violent on both sides gain, and gain only justifications for violent actions.

If governments were serious about stopping violence, including terrorism, they would listen to peaceful demands and provide procedures for requested changes to be made and for grievances to be addressed. The methods by which groups gain independence from their current rulers, for example, invariably lead to either violence to win freedom or government violence to suppress the demand for freedom. If a non-violent, internationally sanctioned method to acquire independence was available, groups would choose it. If they are given little or no choice between receiving violent suppression and engaging violent rebellion, it becomes morally difficult to challenge their choice.

The war in Iraq has been reduced to a topic of candidate debates by the major U.S. media recently. No matter that people are suffering and dying: there are political HAIRSTYLES to report on!

[Thank you, corporate media, for keeping us so well informed.]

I understand the corporate media's reluctance to discuss the war in retrospect often: it makes them look like, just maybe, they weren't doing their jobs.

There is an interesting interview on the Daily Show in which Stewart asks guest Blitzer if the corporate media's relentless insistence on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was 'group think or retardation.' Blitzer chooses the former (cough), and notes that all the OFFICIAL sources were saying it, so...

Blitzer was a good sport in light of the critical tone of Stewart's questioning. For a stenographer...

Interesting time to burst forth with this idea: Yahoo! News - Bush Suggests War on Terror Cannot Be Won (news.yahoo.com, 08/30/04).

Asked "Can we win?" Bush said, "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the — those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

This is something of a change of position, wouldn't you say?

Radical cleric 'calls Iraq truce' (bbc.com, 8/30/04). Sadr's spokesmen have made television announcements that all members of the "Mehdi Army" should cease fire, except for self-defense.

Oddly, a few other spokesmen weren't sure whether or not the cease fire had started, and a "British source" had doubts. (Who cares about the British source??!?)

But on the bright side, a very ugly conflict may be averted, if the cease fire holds, if the U.S. doesn't deny hearing of it and attack anyway, etc.

Legal history at Guantanamo Bay has some notes about the opening of military tribunals in Cuba. The reporter's predictions about how long it will take for most of the inmates to even have that half-baked day in court isn't very upbeat.

While our government is trying to spread "democracy" abroad, it is squelching it at home. Jim Hightower's "Bush Zones Go National" (thenation.com, 08/16/04 issue) discusses how "free speech zones," and illegal suppression of free speech by government officials is increasingly becoming the norm in our previously free country.

One of the creepiest statements, which I have heard once before, comes at the end:

After peaceful antiwar protesters in Oakland were gassed and shot by local police, [Mike] van Winkle [, a spokesperson for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center] [Hightower's Note: I do not make up these names] explained the prevailing thinking of America's new, vast network of antiterrorist forces:

You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act. I've heard terrorism described as anything that is violent or has an economic impact. Terrorism isn't just bombs going off and killing people.

There are a number of problems with Mr. van Winkle's logic. The most obvious problems are (1) that people protesting against the Iraq war were not protesting a war against "terrorism," because Iraq wasn't a terrorist state, and (2) "terrorism" is not a group of people, but rather is a tactic which cannot have war waged against it. [There is also that little, inconvenient notion that war is a form of terrorism, and so a protest against terrorism in the form of a war against terrorism isn't supporting terrorism. But that involves a lot of words, and may not be comprehensible to Mr. van Winkle.]

Under van Winkle's framework, Bush could declare a war on poverty, kill poor people, and anyone who protested would be labeled "in favor of poverty."

You see the problem with this. It's a word game that attempts to obscure the real cause of the problem through mislabeling. People who oppose WAR can be blamed for any nonsensical thing that the war purports to be about, regardless of whether or not the war is even about that topic. Which is what has occurred here in the U.S., but which is beyond the grasp of our simple-minded, with-us-no-matter-how-stupid-we-are-OR-with-the-evildoers leadership stupor.

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Also according to this fascinating quote, something as simple as a boycott of a restaurant like Hooters can be a terrorist act. Regardless of the reason. Like, say, unpleasant food. Or sexist service. Or, anything.

That's insane.

Almost all of the civil rights movement, like the bus boycott, or the lunch counter protests, would be deemed terrorism now.

Perhaps that is intentional.

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The labeling is ridiculous. The bastardization of language permeates everything, and the label "terrorist" is constantly misused. Entire nations are accused of supporting terrorism if they're not doing what we want them to. The same actions combined cooperation with the current U.S. Administration and its business allies prevents the 'terrorism' label from sticking. Our government and press aren't honest enough to note that repressive regimes we support should be so labeled.

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I may have mentioned before that South Africa's old Apartheid government used bait-and-switch labeling tactics to tarnish its opponents. The government defined anyone who opposed white-supremacist Apartheid as a "Communist." So all the people, like Nelson Mandela, who worked for democracy were thus "Communists." This approach, and the fact that the Apartheid government was an undeserving ally of the U.S., contributed to the U.S. listing Mandela as a terrorist for more than two decades. While the Apartheid government, which killed people for the color of their skin, were NOT considered to be terroristic.

Apparently, American government officials are very simple-minded when it comes to labels. Which would be funny, if it were happening to someone else's government, far away, without WMDs or a will to invade sovereign nations for oil...

Images of Saddam Hussein Statue being toppled: still staged

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, my favorite media critic, reports that the L.A. times admits/confirms that the image of the Saddam statue being pulled down by jubilant Iraqis was staged by the U.S. military. In their August issue of Extra! Update (not yet on-line), they write:

The statue pulldown is described in an internal Army study, the Times reported, as one of many psychological operations maneuvers employed by the military. It was a Marine colonel who decided to topple the statue, and 'it was a quick thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.'

FAIR goes on to note that the New York Times now describes the incident retrospectively as having been performed by American Marines, but quotes contemporaneous reports from multiple papers that fell for it.

The original L.A. Times article on the subject is available at charge here: THE NATION; Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue; by David Zucchino. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Jul 3, 2004. pg. A.28. Yes, page A28. From the abstract:

As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel -- not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images -- who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that ...

Of course, Information Clearing House got this story right the first time back in April, 2003 in its analysis of the photos, waaaaay back when the mainstream press was wallowing in the alleged glory the images provided. I posted this link to my site on April 12, 2003, so I feel a bit ahead of the L.A. Times on this one.

Fun from tinyrevolution.com: "We Know He Knew They Knew, And So On" on Rumsfeld:

It's like a compulsion with Rumsfeld, isn't it? I'm waiting for him to go on Face the Nation and say:

RUMSFELD: Look, Saddam Hussein regime's lied. That shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It invaded countries under false pretenses, pretending it had to for its own national security. Worst of all, its Secretary of Defense is a deceitful man named Donald Rumsfeld. Yet the media will let him go on shows and lie repeatedly without challenging him. In fact, he's on Face the Nation this very second.

See also "What 'Everyone' Knew", about the embarrassing ranting of speakers at the Brookings Institution prior to the war about how false Iraq's claims about not having WMDs must be.

The transcripts are lots of fun to read now. Pollack and Kay seem to be holding a contest to see who can say the thing that will look the most embarrassing in hindsight.

This is also a great read.

Freedom of the embedded press only, please

If you haven't seen cops shooting at unarmed, small business-owning women in heels with crowd control weapons lately, you should watch the Indymedia documentary, The Miami Model, about the impact of the FTAA on local communities and the police brutality and tactics used against peaceful protesters. The documentary discusses the division of Florida's nearby black communities with freeways, police brutality against unarmed black men, shows the protests, and discusses how the local media giant's financial investment in the FTAA talks guaranteed that reporting on the protests would be dishonest.

These are the same protests where Democracy Now! staffers were arrested and shot with rubber bullets. I hadn't realized until watching the film that the police "embedded" reporters for the protests, and would not 'guarantee the safety of any unembbeded reporters.' Sound familiar? That explains this comment from Ana Nogueira after she describes being attacked by the police while she and peaceful demonstrators were dispersing:

Eventually they arrested us one by one. Again, as I said, they didn't know what to do with me. One officer seemed uncertain as to whether he should arrest me or not until the other officers around him said she's not with us, she's not with us, and they immediately arrested me.

Get embedded or get abused and arrested! The documentary interviews reporters, both embedded and non-embedded on the topic.

The entire film is available for viewing in Quicktime at the Miami Model link above, and by internet/mail order on the same page.

Last month I mentioned that This Modern World and other blogs were reporting on the abuse of Juveniles at Abu Ghraib.. Inexplicably, very little has been reported on the topic since.

But now that the official source for how to think about the war if you're the American media - namely, the Pentagon - is about to release a report acknowledging the abuse, it's okay to discuss it. Suddenly. Now that the Pentagon is choosing to leak the information. Iraqi Teens Abused at Abu Ghraib, Report Finds (washingtonpost.com, 08/24/04):

Earlier reports and photographs from the prison have indicated that unmuzzled military police dogs were used to intimidate detainees at Abu Ghraib, something the dog handlers have told investigators was sanctioned by top military intelligence officers there. But the new report, according to Pentagon sources, will show that MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition.

As before, there is word that this was the work of a few bad apples, and not a permissive and dehumanizing environment in which entire peoples have been wrongly classified as evil.

We can pretend we believe this. But it's difficult.

The report also acknowledges that some prisoners were hidden from visiting humanitarian organizations. Which had been mentioned previously, but is now being "officially acknowledged," so you are now permitted to think about it.

'Interesting opinion piece in the Post on the dismal drop in attitudes about the U.S. in Egypt, and the oversimplified and defensive responses of Americans to the world's disapproval: An About-Face on America by Philip Kennicott (washingtonpost.com, 08/24/04):

And in the course of these discussions, a new subgenus of American political commentary -- the 'Why do they hate us?' essay -- has been born. The answers, on this side of the debate, have been myriad. But ask that question in Egypt, and you don't get long, complex divagations about clashes of civilization or income disparity or the strangulation of civil society under repressive regimes. For the most part, you get one answer, over and over again, and with little variation. They hate us because of our policy toward Israel and the Palestinians.

'It's very simple,' says Rashwan, of the Al-Ahram Center. 'Why don't you change your policy? Enforce one U.N. resolution against Israel, and you would gain trust. It would give people hope.'

There is a very interesting closing to this article about attitudes toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as earlier discussions about how things Americans consider part of their culture are now global and no longer associated with one nation exclusively. It's not happy, but have a read anyway.

Interesting: the U.S. seems to be able to provide very specific information on how many "insurgents" it has killed, but can NEVER provide ANY information on how many civilians have died.

Such selective knowledge doesn't get remarked upon much in the press.

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Najaf faces fresh US attack: Smoke rises near the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf, Fighting continues near to the Imam Ali Shrine in Najaf (bbc.com, 08/23/04). "Large plumes of thick, black smoke have been seen rising close to a holy Shia shrine in the city of Najaf where militia fighters are holed up...."

Talks have ended; U.S. forces have been attacking since last night.

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Reports on Sadr's forces, the Mehdi Army (bbc.com, 08/11/04) describe many of the fighters as "young and desperate Shia in Iraq's urban slums" rather than as political radicals. This has gotten some interesting play, but usually as an aside.

The idea that not everyone has benefitted from the occupation hasn't really been examined in the mainstream press.

(The idea that all Iraqis are NOT treated equally by every ruling government, foreign or domestic, is never critically discussed, either. It would aid international understanding of why some people loved Saddam Hussein and others hated him, and of why U.S. forces weren't greeted with flowers when they moved into Hussein's old palaces. We could use some added understanding...)

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BBC NEWS | Have Your Say | Shia Iraq violence: Your reaction has a lot of interesting commentary from around the world on the current situation. (Note that the question is framed about violence by Shias, not by the U.S. military.) There's a VERY wide range of opinions, which makes it appear that many of the writers are getting wildly different information from those immediately before or after. I'm unsure if it's the news media's slants in different regions, or very selective listening/reading.

It's interesting to see the range of thoughts. It varies from 'Sadr is a terrorist' to 'Sadr is standing up to the corrupt U.S. puppet regime,' from 'he's a thug' to 'he's a thug, but he's defending our home,' to 'I blame everything on the Iranians,' to the curious spectacle of people from democratic countries calling for summary executions without trial to help move forward democratic reforms (!!).

A response I liked:

The answer is that not all Iraqis are the same. America is a friend to some and an enemy to others. Sadr himself is a friend to some Iraqis and a mortal enemy to others. In the end this situation is about power, not morality. Sadr wants a future for Iraq as a theocracy, preferably with himself in charge. Bush wants a future for Iraq as a state both friendly to and heavily influenced (if not actually controlled) by America. Neither side is particularly concerned how many innocent Iraqis are killed in the process. -- Colin Wright, UK

I don't like this report merely because it takes some middle-moderate position: I like it because it doesn't categorize any broad category of people as evil.

Based on what I've read, I suspect Sadr _is_ a thug, who is fighting a puppet government sponsored by a self-interested U.S. Administration bent on controlling other people's oil. Both sides are using violence and patriotic rhetoric to support their positions. Both sides are doing wrong: the U.S. doesn't belong there, and Sadr shouldn't monopolize a public shrine that doesn't belong to him (though I understand the purposes of the tactic). So no one comes out smelling great in this scenario.

I tend to be more critical of the U.S., because the U.S. shouldn't be there - if the U.S. wasn't there, this entire scenario wouldn't be occurring. There's no reason to be an anti-occupation insurgent if there's no occupation. If Sadr's group didn't believe in the puppet government, and the puppet government didn't have the option to force its will on its people with U.S. firepower, it's more likely a compromise could be reached, since the relative power available to the groups would be more symmetrical. Or the government could take the time to establish itself and then deal with its opposition as an actual representative government, which would give it legitimacy it currently lacks.

It appears, from the events at the government meeting intended to establish the next step in government, that many are concerned about Najaf and want Sadr's (or his supporter's) participation in government, even though many object to his methods. THAT is a democratic, inclusive sentiment. Unfortunately, it appears that the issue will be resolved through overwhelming U.S. force, rather than debate and ballots.

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The main reason that the U.S. claims to be there, as a stabilizing force, doesn't seem to be working out convincingly. Instead, it is buttressing those that sympathize with its particular method of establishing 'order,' and violently clashing with those that don't. It aids collaborators, and shuns others. This is a traditional and logical tactic used by occupying powers, but it creates divisions and erodes the long-term credibility of occupied allies.

I don't think the U.S. intention is to taint its allies, but it's happening.

The U.S. needs to get out.

Glimmer of hope in Najaf: Delegation Arrives in Najaf to Meet With Sadr (washingtonpost.com, 08/17/04). Iraqis sympathetic to the situation the people of Najaf find themselves in, and hoping to prevent a bloodbath, refocused the national conference on the siege of Najaf. They've drafted a document proposing amnesty for Sadr's militia, turning Sadr's group into a legitimate political party, and ending the standoff at the Imam Ali Mosque, returning it to common Iraqi use rather than the exclusive use of Sadr's group.

Contrast this with the interim figurehead Allawi's 'whatever the U.S. wants is fine' position.

I don't think I previously posted a link to this: IRAQI WAR CASUALTIES, 3/21 - 7/31/03. Raed Jarrar, Director of this survey, is the same Raed that Salam Pax, 'the Baghdad Blogger,' was writing to when he titled his blog "dearraed.blogspot.com." (Pax is on a "hiatus" to edit a film.)

The Baghdad Burning blog pointed me back to that link. River doesn't make the current situation sound any better than today's other reading has...

More news which suggests the U.S. isn't making much progress on winning over people by attacking Najaf: Aljazeera.Net - Iraqi 'human shields' flock to Najaf (english.aljazeera.net, 08/16/04): "Around 2000 Iraqi civilian 'volunteers' have formed a human shield around Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf as US-led forces beseige the city."

Aljazeera.Net - Najaf officials quit in protest (english.aljazeera.net, 08/13/04):

Sixteen of Najaf's 30-member provincial council resigned in protest at the US-led assault on [] Najaf.... The council's resignations came several hours after the deputy governor of Najaf resigned in protest against the US offensive on the city.... On Thursday evening, the director of tribal affairs at the Iraqi Interior ministry announced his resignation through Aljazeera and said he could no longer work with the interim government in good faith given the "carnage and barbaric aggression of the US-led forces in Najaf."

This doesn't bode well.

Understatement of the day, from Informed Comment : 08/01/2004 - 08/31/2004:

I think the Americans are gradually incurring feuds with all the major clans of Iraq, and this is undesirable.

Voices in the Wilderness is alarmed that the U.S. "has told civilians to leave Najaf, in what appears to be the creation of a free fire zone, where anyone who moves becomes a target." This is near the the Imam Ali Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam (both Shia and Sunni).

It sounds like something very bad is about to happen.

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This audio file discusses the Imam Ali Mosque in more detail: NPR : Najaf's Holy Shiite Mosque and the 'Valley of Peace' (www.npr.org, 08/12/04). It is an interview with Juan Cole, professor of history at the University of Michigan.

Professor Cole maintains an excellent blog called Informed Comment at juancole.com. Excerpt from his 08/16/04 entries:

Likewise, CNN appears to have been the victim of a second-hand psy-ops campaign, insofar as it is referring to the guerrillas as "anti-Iraqi forces." The idea of characterizing them not as anti-American or anti-regime but "anti-Iraq" was, according to journalist Nir Rosen, come up with by a PR company contracting in Iraq. Nir says that they were told that no Iraqis would fall for it. So apparently it has now been retailed to major American news programs, on the theory that the American public is congenitally stupid.

I liked that comment for obvious reasons, but this one is even better:

The Allawi government forced all independent journalists to leave Najaf on Sunday, so that the only reporting we will have on operations there will come from journalists embedded with the US forces.

This week I watched the documentary film Control Room, which was filmed during the Iraq war. It provides an inside view of Al Jazeera, the most popular satellite channel in the Arab world, as it broadcast from U.S. Central Command.

The Bush Administration LOATHES Al Jazeera. The documentary provides clip after clip of Donald Rumsfeld, ranting, including a rant about how Al Jazeera must be planting women and children in front of homes bombed by U.S. air strikes to actually imply that women and children live in such homes in Iraq. Really. He said that. There's video. It's just amazing.

So it's worthwhile to see how the war looked from the people who worked at and ran the station that Rumsfeld (not the most credible person in the Bush Administration) loves to hate.

News flash: Arab people work there! And they have opinions! This includes those people who consider themselves to be or to have been Iraqis! THAT, in and of itself, is almost completely lacking from American reporting: what Iraqis thought about the war. (Aside from Ahmed Chalabi. (wikipedia.org) And he doesn't really count.) One reporter, who has a 'western' wife and previously worked for the BBC, tries to spread comprehension, using his experience in 'western' and Islamic cultures to explain to a young, go-team military official what the actual perception of U.S. actions is in the Arab world.

A senior manager of Al Jazeera is interviewed extensively. He comes across as somewhat arrogant, but provides some very interesting commentary. He remarked, for example, that once the war is 'won,' the details of exactly how it was 'won' will be shunted aside. History will be reduced solely to the fact of victory, and everyone will rush on to the next topic.

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My partner reminded me of my favorite John Madden quote, "Winning is the best deodorant." Madden meant it in a sport context, but it certainly applies here. Prior to the U.S. war in Vietnam (which the Vietnamese call 'the American War'), there was a generic assumption that all wars were won cleanly and fairly by the victor -- that famous truism about victors writing the history books notwithstanding. I've been waiting for the modern mass media, and especially the use of video, to change that.

I don't think I fully comprehended the nationalism of the available media outlets, however.

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'Control Room' provides a valuable point of view, and is worth seeing.

While the previous TMW link provides a link to the Washington Post article that inspired it's excellent diatribe, I should provide a link as well:The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story by Howard Kurtz (washingtonpost.com, 08/12/04), along with my personal favorite quote:

'We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power,' DeYoung said. 'If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said.' And if contrary arguments are put 'in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far.'