The U.S. election campaign has many ironies, none perhaps as strange as the fights over the candidates’ war records. The current President George W. Bush got out of active duty in Vietnam by using the influence of his politically powerful family. While soldiers killed and died on the Mekong Delta, he goofed off on an Alabama airfield. Most of the central figures of his Administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney also avoided fighting in Vietnam.
Not that I can blame them exactly. If you don’t believe in fighting, then why not use any influence and loophole you can? It’s more courageous to stand up publicly and stand in solidarity with those conscientious objectors who don’t share your political connections. But if you’re both antiwar and a coward, hey, loopholes are great. Bush was one less American teenager shooting up Vietnam villages and for that we commend him.
Ah, but of course George W. Bush doesn’t claim to be either antiwar or a coward. Two and a half decades later, he snookered American into a war on false pretences. Nowadays he uses every photo-op he can to look strong and patriotic. Like most scions of aristocratic dynasties throughout history, he displays the worst kind of policial cowardice: he is a leader who believes only in sending other people’s kids to war.
Contrast this with his Democratic Party rival John Kerry. He was also the son of a politically-connected family. He could have pulled some strings and ended up in Alabama. But he chose to fight in Vietnam. He was wounded in battle, received metals and came back a certified war hero. Have fought he saw both the eternal horrors of war and the particular horrors of the Vietnam War. It was only after he came back that he used his political connections. He used them to puncture the myths of the Vietnam War and in so doing became a prominent antiwar activist.
Not that his antiwar activities make him a pacifist, then or now. As President I’m sure he’d turn to military solutions that we here at Nonviolence.org would condemn. But we be assured that when he orders a war, he’d be thinking of the kids that America would be sending out to die and he’d be thinking of the foreign victims whose lives would inevitably be taken in conflict.
Despite the stark contrast of these Presidential biographies, the peculiar logic of American politics is painting the military dodger as a hero and the certified war hero as a coward. The latter campaign is being led by a shadowy group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Today’s Guardian has an excellent article on the “Texas Republicans funding the Swift Boat controversy”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1288272,00.html. The New York Times also delves the “outright fabrications of the Swift Boat TV ads”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/politics/campaign/20swift.html?ex=1094018686&ei=1&en=691b4b0e81b8387f. A lot of Bush’s buddies and long-time Republican Party apparatchiks are behind this and its lies are transparent and easy to uncover. It’s a good primer on dirty politics 2004 style.
One of the big questions about this election is whether the American voters will believe more in image or substance. It goes beyond politics, really, to culture and to a consumerism that promises that with the right clothes and affected attitude, you can simply buy yourself a new identity. President Bush put on a flight jacket and landed a jet on an aircraft carrier a mile off the California beach. He was the very picture of a war hero and strong patriot. Is a photo all it takes anymore?
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Tag Archives ⇒ culture of peace
War of the Parents & the Peace Movement Standing Strong in the Flak
July 9, 2004
The Washington Post reports that in blue-collar America, “it’s the parents are hanging up on war and on the recruiters”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35400-2004Jul7?language=printer trying to send their sons overseas:
bq. “It’s the parents holding me back,” [Army recruiter] Broadwater says. When he calls, they hang up the phone, refuse to put their children on the line, tell him off. They try to talk their sons and daughters out of joining, and, more often now, they succeed.
Lots of good commentary on this article and what it means from “Under the Same Sun”:http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2004/07/index.html#000100, where I found this link. USS draws some good questions for the peace movement:
bq. So, what are we tell mothers of future dead soldiers? We were afraid to be seen as less than supporting of the troops so we will let them be sent to kill and get killed in an immoral occupation? I am not saying that it was not hard to voice these truths, especially before all the evidence became widely available and before the body bags and bodies missing parts started streaming back home. It is partly a ques
War Tax Resistance overview
April 15, 2004
In honor of Income Tax Day here in the U.S., here are some links to sites on war tax resistance.
There are many ways to participate in militarism. The most obvious is to personally fight in a war, but another way is in financing its deeds. The United States military makes up a huge portion of the federal budget. It is estimated that 53 percent of income taxes go to pay for past, present and future wars. Nothing else comes close to this expenditure, and budget-cutting in education, environmental protection and the social safety net is a direct result of decisions to put the money into preparation for war. For more on the reasons for this form of protest, check out Nonviolence.org’s own “guide to war tax resistance”:http://www.nonviolence.org/war_tax_resistance.php and the very excellent “Philosophy of Nonviolence”:http://www.nonviolence.org/issues/philosophy-nonviolence.php.
The “National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee”:http://www.nwtrcc.org/ is a coalition of local groups, alternative funds, contacts and counselors working to support, coordinate, and publicize conscientious objection to the payment of taxes for war. The NWTRCC coalition protests a tax system that supports war, and it redirects tax dollars to fund life-affirming efforts.
The “War Tax Resistance Penalty Fund”:www.nonviolence.org/issues/wtrpf is an organization that ties together war tax resisters and their supports. When penalties are levied, all the contributors pay a small amount to help defray the resister’s costs. This is a way for to support the principle of war tax resistance for those who don’t feel ready to resist themselves.
“Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes”:http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm is a popular flyer from the War Resisters League.
The “National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund”:http://www.peacetaxfund.org/ advocates for legislation enabling conscientious objection to war and to have the military portion of objectors’ federal income taxes directed to a special fund for projects that enhance peace.
The “Friends Committee on National Legislation”:http://www.fcnl.org/ and the “War Resisters League”:http://www.warresisters.org/ both regularly compile statistics about military spending as a percentage of income tax.
“Hang up on War”:http://www.hanguponwar.org/ is a campaign launched in October 2003 by a coalition including WRL and NWTRCC.
Who Was Yassin?
March 25, 2004
From the NYU Center for Religion and Media, a “fascinating breakdown of press coverage of the killing of Palestinian leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin”:http://www.therevealer.org/archives/daily_000270.php
bq.. We have to turn to the foreign press to learn anything substantial about the religious views of the “spiritual leader” whose worldly terror has been a constant factor in U.S. foreign policy.… [W]hy has our press ignored the “spiritual” dimensions of this “spiritual leader”? Two possibilities. One is that the journalists assigned to cover the Middle East are political reporters. They approach religion as simply a veneer for political motives, and rarely bother to learn its intricacies.
The other, deeper problem, is with the narratives available for religion stories even when a reporter tries to pay attention. Most religion writing is divided between innocuous spirituality and dangerous fanaticism, with subcategories for “corruption,” “traditionalism,” and wacky.…
So what does our press do? Nothing. A major enemy of peace in the Middle East has just been killed, and yet we learn almost nothing about what made him fight or why he is mourned. Opponents and supporters of the Palestinians remain in the dark, uninformed by a press incapable of breaking the narrative to investigate — and perhaps help eradicate — the roots of terrorism. It’s easier to stick to the “he-said/she-said”-with-guns version of events that reduces it all to retaliation, to hopeless spirals of violence and ancient ethnic hatreds, to enmity without reason.
p. Found via “All over the map”:http://kenneth.typepad.com/
Sheen: Appealing to almighty God
November 14, 2003
In the Bruderhof magazine, an “interview with actor Martin Sheen”:www.bruderhof.com/articles/sheen.htm?source=DailyDig. It’s a profile that focuses not only on his acting fame or activist causes but on his religious faith and how it underpins the rest of his life. Read, for instance, Sheen on civil disobedience:
bq. It is one of the only tools that is available to us where you can express a deeply personal, deeply moral opinion and be held accountable. You have to be prepared for the consequences. I honestly do not know if civil disobedience has any effect on the government. I can promise you it has a great effect on the person who chooses to do it.
Sheen’s radical Catholic faith is not a superficial confession that provides him with a place to go on Sunday morning, and it’s not passive identity from which to do political organizing. Rather, it’s a relationship with God and truth that demands witness and sacrifice and suffering. It’s the faith of someone who has personally gone through the depths of spiritual hedonism, and who has watched his country become the “most confused, warped, addicted society,” and who has found only God left standing:
bq. God has not abandoned us. I don’t know what other force to appeal to other than almighty God, I really don’t.
I could quote him for hours, but read the interview.
A Military Draft Would be Good for Us
November 12, 2003
From Johann Christoph Arnold, a “provocative argument that a military draft might not be a bad idea”:www.nonviolence.org/articles/1003-arnold.php. “Deciding which side to stand on is one of life’s most vital skills. It forces you to test your own convictions, to assess your personal integrity and your character as an individual.”
It’s a pretty drastic wish. I don’t really wish it on today’s youngins’ (I’m not sure Arnold is quite convinced either). But I will give a snippet of my own personal story, since it’s kind of appropriate to the issue: when I was a senior in high school my father desperately wanted me to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. I went on interviews and even took the first physical. The pressure to join was sort of akin to the pressure young people of earlier generations have faced with a military draft (except more personal, as I was essentially living with the chair of the draft Martin Kelley board). I was forced to really think hard about what I believed. I had to reconcile my romaticism about the navy with my gut instincts that fighting was never a real solution. My father’s pressure made me realize I was a pacifist. With my decision to forego the Naval Academy made, I started asking myself what other ramifications followed from my peace stance. Almost twenty years, here’s Nonviolence.org.
Arnold’s argument, right or wrong, does reflect my story:
bq. A draft would present every young person with a choice between two paths, both of which require courage: either to heed the call of military duty and be rushed off to war, or to say, “No, I will give my life in the service of peace.”
Michael Moore explains how deal with Lies and Lying Liars
September 26, 2003
Filmmaker Michael Moore’s satiric documentary on gun ownership in the United States is out on video and DVD now. “Bowling for Columbine” is pure Moore: he goes around the country talking with gun owners and gun victims but also ties it all in with a culture of militarism and violence.
Not unpredictably, the pro-gun lobbies have campaigned against the movie and have tried to discredit it. In the last month or so, plenty of blogs and even some of the cable news networks have been full of exposes of the filmmaker’s supposed deceits. “Now Moore response to his critics”:http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/
If you haven’t seen “Bowling for Columbine” go right out to your video store and do. Moore is one of the best satirists in the country today. He combines humor with horror and produces work that is always compelling to watch.
In Two Years, What Have We Learned?
August 18, 2003
*By Johann Christoph Arnold*
bq. “I often wonder how many more tragedies it will take before we learn to truly love each other, and before we grasp how happy we could be if we cared for those around us as well as we care for ourselves.”