Quaint Idea

Worth considering still:

A constructive approach to diplomacy doesn’t mean relinquishing one’s rights. It means engaging with one’s counterparts, on the basis of equal footing and mutual respect, to address shared concerns and achieve shared objectives.

 So says the President of Iran.  I could not agree more.

Inaugural Introduction

I clicked on live coverage of the presidential inauguration while Maddy Prior was singing "Scorched Earth" on LastFM.  Biden was coming up for his swearing in with that huge bible.  I much prefer the sound of Maddy Prior's voice to Biden's so I kept her vocal and his visual.  Prior's haunting vocal and music added some needed somber reality to the scene. 

A Sane Word About Guns

My ideal world is one where people do not kill each other, regardless of method.  Unfortunately, I do not live in that ideal world.  Nor is it likely in any foreseeable future.  So I go with with is practical and, most important, reasonably effective.  Lee at HorsesAss has a good piece about the challenges of building effective policies to reduce gun violence. 

Our problem is now a deeply rooted cultural one. It’s not that I don’t think it can ever change, I just don’t think there’s a set of realistic laws that can bring about that change by itself. It has to be a cultural shift over time. It will happen if the next generation of Americans grows up with a healthy measure of disgust over our obsessive gun culture and firearm extremism.

The best parallel I can point to is with cigarettes. Within a generation, we’ve greatly stigmatized being a smoker, while also passing a number of laws that didn’t outlaw smoking, but made it more inconvenient. It’s likely the laws did less than the information campaign to educate people about its unhealthiness, but both happened in parallel. And cigarette smoking was greatly reduced over my lifetime. (links in original)

One of the commenters suggests a "market-based approach" by requiring liability insurance for owners of certain high capacity weapons.  I would require enhanced purchase requirements and hold gun manufacturers and dealers liable for the consequences of their sales if requirments are not met.  The gun nuts are right about one thing:  bans on weapons will be circumvented; we need only look at the failed drug wars of the past 40 years to know that.  Like Lee, I don't have the answers.  Like Lee, I would look for practical solutions. 

The appeal and myth of guns in modern America will confound any attempts to reduce gun violence.  It's an easy appeal for me to understand and fear.  I still remember the power and authority that carrying an automatic weapon in combat gave me.  Wielding that kind of power is disturbingly satisfying.  That's why I fear it.

That is why I want to see fewer opportunities for others to embrace that  power.  

Armistice Day

The day Americans celebrate as Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day, a day to commemorate the end of The Great War in 1918.  On November 11 I prefer to think of ending war so the original name has great appeal to me.

On this day then, I remember that the one thing every combatant seeks more than anything else is peace.  I look forward to the day when the world will have no veterans of war, only the memory of their sacrifices during those unenlightened times when we did not know how to make peace.

For now, though, we have plenty of war veterans, living and dead.  It is right and proper that we remember them and their sacrifices.  One veteran who died this year was (and remains) among my great heroes:  George McGovern who flew 35 missions as a bomber pilot in World War II and spent many of the years since then speaking against war.  He spoke the truth when he said, "I'm sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars in which young men do the dying."

Armistice Day, a day to remember that peace is possible if we stop thinking that war is an acceptable option.

Peace out!

Roger Molander (1940-2012)

Roger Molander helped me become an activist. The mid-to-late 70's were a relatively quiet time after the Nixon's resignation in 1974 and the fall of Saigon in the following year. By 1981, though, Ronald Reagan was president and speaking glibly about nuclear war. In response many others began speaking far more responsibly about nuclear war. Roger Molander was one of them.

My participation in Ground Zero in 1982 started a chain of activism that has continued to this day. I had just moved to Phoenix, Arizona and was already very concerned about how blithely the Reagan Administration talked of nuclear war as "winnable". Ground Zero was just becoming active in Phoenix and I joined in. We helped present the very real downside of Reagan's nuclear war fighting talk. Meeting kindred spirits in conservative Phoenix was a bonus and initiated some lasting friendships.

Ground Zero is long past but the need to eliminate nuclear weapons and find cooperative ways for managing relations among nations remains.

The world still needs Roger Molanders.

Godspeed, Roger.

Pretty Cool

Maynard Hill, 1926-2011.

Godspeed.

A Day of Thanksgiving

Given the spirit of this American holiday, I started out writing a post about those things for which I am thankful. It got way too long. It's simpler to say that I am thankful for many people, experiences and opportunities in my life. I am a very, very fortunate individual at a time when many are not.

Perhaps someday I can be thankful that my good fortune is widely shared by all.

Without exception.

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
Take my hand and join us
And the world will live, will live as one

A Fundamental Thought

Once again, I see a reference to Republicans decrying Obama giving "new rights" to terrorism suspects by prosecuting them as criminals rather than some form of enemy alien. The "Terror 24/7/365" crowd doesn't seem to understand the fundamental nature of individual human rights: no one "gives" rights to anyone. Human rights are, as boldly stated in the US Declaration of Independence, "unalienable". Unalienable Rights among equals. Something to be respected, to be sure, but not something anyone gives. This nation's founding documents create a system, however imperfect it may be in practice, intended to adjudicate and protect these rights. Hell, we even try to do it in war, too. Used to, anyway.

So instead of calling the Underwear Bomber a deadly enemy and further mobilizing the National Security State (although he did a bit of this, too), Obama called him a criminal and will try him in federal court, just like the other 600 terrorism cases for which prosecutors can claim a 90 percent conviction rate. That's not good enough for the war crowd because it renders terrorism into something routine, something society just deals with. A criminal case successfully prosecuted in court lessens the rationale for extended, costly military deployments.

Don't expect Cheney and his echo chamber to stop barking. If they do, Americans may wake up and decide, finally, that we want our national legacy to be peace and justice, not war and predatory capitalism that wreck our military and their families, bankrupt the nation and create more hostility toward America throughout the world.

An awakened America would also know that the human Rights are inherent in all. that on our best days we recognize and respect all others' rights and that days not our best should be less rather than more.

A Sobering Thought

Not long after I wrote that last post it dawned on me: the Capitol High School Minesweepers know things that combat veterans know. On the one hand, I find their awareness encouraging. that knowledge may keep them from simply accepting war and its attendant inhumanity. On the other hand, I'm sad that the world my generation leaves them requires that kind of knowledge.

Minding the Mines (and Cluster Bombs)

Whenever I begin to think this world is doomed, I often encounter something that makes me doubt that apocalyptic conclusion. Last night was one of those times. I attended the "Night of 1,000 Desserts" landmine awareness event sponsored by the Capitol High School Minesweepers Club. I'd seen a notice about the event and pretty much decided to attend even if it meant sitting under that roof.

The Minesweepers are a school club that speaks out against the use of land mines and cluster bombs. It supports programs to identify and remove unexploded ordnance, educate populations at risk and provide assistance to victims. The evening's program included several displays about land mines and other unexploded ordnance around the world, a 20 or so minute presentation about land mine use, lethality and longevity in parts of the world and a showing of the documentary "Bombies". The evening was well-organized, informative and thought-provoking. (One map showed that Finland is among the many nations that stock cluster bombs. Finland!!) That high school students in the safety and comfortable ignorance of contemporary America are aware of this issue completely floored me; it notched my hope meter up a few points.

I know about mines and ordnance but the young woman making the presentation was equally conversant about the various types of mines and cluster bombs in use during the past half century. She described how a bounding mine works and what it does and what it does to a human body. She knew that the ratio of casualties from these weapons has dramatically shifted to civilians. She even had a picture of my old companion, the claymore anti-personnel mine and knew that although it is usually command-detonated, it can be rigged with a trip wire. During the break I not only thank her and fellow club members for their knowledge and interest but also verified for them that my unit did set claymores out as "automatic ambushes" which we were told were somehow not illegal booby traps under the laws of war(*). I did not tell them that those automatic ambushes caused two deaths and other casualties in my company during my first two weeks in Vietnam. They know enough already.

The Minesweepers took donations at the door with proceeds to support Adopt-A-Minefield. About 30 people attended, mostly students but a few parents, the club adviser, another Veteran For Peace and myself. In addition, to the information tables, the club also had two tables of sugar bombs of all sorts. I don't think the count of desserts actually reached 1,000 but it was more than ample. Not part of the presentation but obvious were the two 4x4 timbers shoring up the roof and drywall and baseboard repair from the flooding that followed December's roof collapse.

My high school did not have a Minesweepers Club. It probably could have supported a Ku Klux Klan student auxiliary if true local feelings were expressed but mostly our clubs were the social and junior networking organizations typical of the pre-revolutionary 60's. Nothing nearly as worthwhile as what I saw last night at Capitol High School.

(*) Update 02.21.09:

Later in the day, I remembered why our automatic ambushes were "not" illegal booby trap: we did not leave them in place. We set them up along roads and trails near our night defensive perimeters and retrieved them in the mornings before we moved on.

A Meditation

The world is a difficult place, where life is often “nasty brutish and short”. Some parts of the globe are prone to violence and terror that easily rival any Hell that I can imagine. Mothers wake each day wondering if their families will eat that day. Brutal tribal and civil wars disrupt and destroy life. Masses jam together in horrendous slums without access to the least comforts that even the homeless and destitute in America can sometimes find. Most Americans who speak of uncertainty and hardship have little or no understanding of how truly hellish life is for many others.

Because I study history, read and travel occasionally outside the United States, I have some minimal understanding of life in other parts of the world. Because I was in Vietnam, I am aware of what life is like in a war zone; I realized that a war zone is a place of peoples’ homes. I personally would not want my home–or anyone’s home–to become a war zone. It sucks. Of course, most Americans, among the richest people in the world, live comfortably and securely away from the difficulties of war. Americans may suffer random, tragic violence, perhaps, but not the sustained destruction, hopelessness and fear caused by war.

This knowledge is a curse. I know about all the suffering, tragedy and violence in the world and I can do little to change anything. Even powerful politicians are often unable make lasting change. What can I do? To stop the killing in Africa, Iraq or anywhere else in the world? To equitably solve all of the conflicts that create Hell on Earth? I can’t credibly address many complex international, scientific and economic problems. All that, plus I know human history, which does not give me any confidence in my species’ wisdom, judgment or goodwill. What’s the point?

The only answer that has any meaning for me is recognizing that I am an Everyman. Luckier than most–I’ve never wanted for food–but in the end no better or different than any other living thing on this planet. (Yes, I am one with the trees, coyotes and swamp algae of this world.) My good fortune is a matter of sheer geographical and genetic chance; I could have been that starving tribesman or maybe not at all. But here I am, in the comfort of America. That understanding helps me remember my humanity and respect for creation, including my fellow homo sapiens. And so I come always to the Golden Rule, which is something like: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (Not “as they do unto you”, I might add.)

That’s what I can do in this life. I can respect the human dignity of others. I can respect the integrity of tne natural world and its gift of life. I can choose non-violence and compassion in all my actions. I can be kind at every opportunity. My non-violence may not end civil wars in Africa or relieve dire poverty in the world’s slums but it subtracts from the total evil in the world and adds trust. It’s what I can do most often that will make a difference in my life and those I encounter. It’s a start toward my ideal world where no one’s home is a war zone.

This keeps my existentialism from turning to despair. I agree with the existentialists about life and the world, or what I think I recall of existentialism from political philosophy courses and reading Camus in college. (The world is absurd and illogical. Expecting anything else is pointless. Life has no inherent meaning. Life is this world and is pretty much what you make of it. Makes perfect sense to me.) Choosing non-violence and respect for others adds about as much meaning to life on this planet as anything else I can do. By rejecting violence and hate, I build bonds with others. Not only does that expand the web of kindness available to me but those bonds add to others’ lives as well, creating friendships, families and communities. Choosing to build rather than destroy, to love rather than hate, is a big, big difference that I can make every day. The rest is beyond my power and is subject to life’s absurdity and ill-logic. I find meaning and hope in the one thing I can do.

I also read John Donne. His words went to Vietnam with me a have stayed with me since.

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee..."

Mirror Image

Worth reading: Noam Chomsky's "What If Iran Had Invaded Mexico?" at Tomdispatch.

It baffles me to no end that my fellow Americans cannot see this country from the world's perspective. Americans certainly would resist another nation interfering in our internal affairs. Somehow, though, it's okay when we do it. We're America. We're the good guys.

That is SO special.