The Roots of Nonviolence

I've been finding it a bit difficult to comment on all the recent news on the iraq front. So much of it isn't so much news as it is details. We've long known the Bush Administration cooked the data on Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction. It was no secret that key people in his Administration spent the 1990s planning a war against iraq and it's no surprised that they saw the 9/11 terrorist attacks as there way of whipping up war fever against an uninvolved country.

It shouldn't be a surprise that there is a strong iraqi opposition to the American occupation. We could have predicted that Afghanistan would festers largely ignored, mired in lawlessness after the Bush Administration turned it's hungry eyes to iraq. Do we really think American citizens as somehow incapable of the gross human rights violations when put in charge of unmonitored iraqi prisons? Ever since Saddam Hussein's government fell, the U.S. has been puting his key military aids in charge of much iraq, so why are we suprised that the once-fearsome Republican Guard has been reconstitute as an American-controlled force to put down Fallujah's rebellion? Militarism is militarism and the flag on a soldier's uniform doesn't provide any guarantee that a stated desire for human rights or democracy will be put before the military insistance on psychological and physical control.

What then should the peace movement's response to all this be?

We need to not get too caught up in the details. We've known what's been happening for years and we know what happens in military occupations. If there's one theme I come back to again and again on Nonviolence.org, it's that wars start decades before the first shots are fired. Christians will argue that wars are rooted in our lusts (James 4:1-3) but even the most pragmatic secularlist should agree that our S.U.V.-driving, energy-wasting lifestyles are behind our recent oil wars, geopolitical battles fought on territories vital to the resource needs of the U.S. and its allies.

Pacifists need to start focusing on and shouting about the root causes of our wars. We need to stop not only the current ongoing wars in iraq and Afghanistan, but the future wars whose seeds are being sown now in places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine and Indonesia.

We also need to broaden our definition of "nonviolence." While we work with "anti-war" coalitions, we are not the same as them. We are not just against particular wars, but all wars and not just the ones fought with bullets between nation states. We are against the everyday wars of people oppressing other people through economics, sexism, racism, ageism and a thousand other mechanisms. When we speak out about environmental damage, we are stopping war. When we talk about lifestyle choices like vegetarianism and living car-free in transit-friendly cities, we are stopping war. When we fight for minimum wage and for stopping third-world sweatshops, we are stopping war. A few protests in Washington, D.C. won't stop our wars and neither will intricately-argued essays on Bush Administration manipulations. We need to build a culture of pacifism, we need to become conscientious objectors to the consumerism of our society.

I'd be curious to hear what other pacifists are doing these days. Over the past six months I've been focusing more on the roots of my pacifism, the Quaker peace Testimony (and exploring an unexpected expression of anti-consumerism in a re-examination of the Quaker tradition of plain dress). The most exciting essays I've read lately were from a collection of talks in the 1950s. I suspect other nonviolent activists have been looking at roots in the wake of these wars. What are other folks doing?

PS: The eternally-underfunded coffers of Nonviolence.org are dwindling again and we might not be able to pay this month's bill. Donations would be muchly-appreciated, thanks!