As mentioned in my essay On Violence I and before
turning to contemporary events, this essay will highlight the long-term
efficacy of policy makers' use of massive violence in two of the most violent
events of the 20th century World Wars I and II. But since, by a
wide margin, the world's people certainly Americans are likely to regard
the violence perpetrated in World War II as much more unavoidable, wholly
justified, and absolutely necessary than the violence perpetrated in World
War I, I will focus on challenging the necessity and long-term efficacy
of the use of violence in World War II. Besides, the violence perpetrated
in World War II has greatly contributed to the shaping of events, institutions,
and public attitudes that have helped to perpetuate violence to the present
day. In fact, throughout the world, contemporary policy makers are
still resorting to violence and, thereby, breeding more violence in response.
So, now, as a U.S. war against Iraq seems to loom ahead, we are again at
that juncture in history where the voices for non-violence and fundamental
policy changes must speak out. After all, if enough people can be
made to realize the simple truth that war entails "a premeditated decision
in cold blood to kill an indefinite number of [totally innocent] civilians"
including thousands of children then, perhaps, we can start curbing
the insanity perpetuated by war-promoting policy makers.
At any rate, at the end of most wars, elite policy makers
are divided into those on the winning side and those on the losing side.
But it is not uncommon for the policy makers on either of the once contending
sides to survive the war (or wars) that they themselves have orchestrated.
Such is generally not the case for many of those on either side who have
occupied the lower social strata of their respective societies. Indeed,
as several of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century demonstrate, it also
is not uncommon for the "victorious" policy makers on one side to have
cost more of their own compatriots' lives in "winning" than their defeated
counterparts have cost their compatriots in "losing." In other words,
our evaluation of "victory," like that of war, imperialism, foreign aid,
politics, economics, culture, and history itself must often be undertaken
by using "class as the crucial unit of analysis."
Given this understanding of the class dimension of policy
making and the variegated outcome of war, any "victory" that is brought
about through massive violence must be measured against both the goals
that the respective policy makers sought to achieve in the war and the
numbers of those who died on both sides. According to this analysis
of war and victory, there appears to be little for the vast majority of
most people on either side of a modern war that justifies the organized
violence of war. We might see that more clearly if we were to view
the wars that elite policy makers concoct and conduct by standards that
are somewhat similar to the perspective offered by the Roman Catholic Church's
criteria of proportionality in so-called "just wars." On the basis of that
set of criteria, the human and social cost of prosecuting a "just war"
must be proportional to and not excessive to the cost of the evils which
provoked the war in the first place. Accordingly, it may be
argued that neither of the two most violent and costly wars in human history
the First and Second World Wars were justified. Indeed, in regard
to modern war, it has been contended that there is no such thing as a "just
war."
Historian and World War II U.S. combat ( B-17 bombardier)
veteran Howard Zinn argued precisely that point when he explained why he
had written that "'there is no such thing as a just war.'" In his
words, "I came to that conclusion as a result of my experience in World
War II . . . [A war in] theory, [at least, that was] the closest you could
come to a just war. . . . I came to the conclusion that we had reached
a point in human history when there probably was no longer a possibility
of waging a just war, because the overwhelming technology of modern warfare
inevitably involves the killing of large numbers of people. [Thus]
the means overwhelmed any end you could come up with . . ."
Continuing with this theme, Zinn accurately argues, "In war, the evil of
the means is certain and the achievement of the end, however important,
is always uncertain. . . . For instance, in World War II, you could not
be certain that . . . you would be doing away with all the elements of
fascism, with militarism, racism, imperialism, and violence. In fact,
after 50 million deaths [most estimates run 50-65 millions killed], that
did not happen. . . . I decided that whatever problems we faced . . . we
had to come up with a solution other than the mass killing of human beings."
In short, Zinn concludes, "The term 'just war' contains an internal contradiction.
War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to
deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of
people."
Indeed, in the case of the largely imperialist struggle
known as the First World War, there are very few who would argue that the
"victors" much less the "losers" had much to cheer about once they
compared their "winnings" to the carnage that they had inflicted and suffered.
In fact, the violence of World War I produced little more than the deaths
of 30 million people (10 million soldiers and 20 million civilians) and
conditions leading to World War II twenty-one years later. After
all, in the First World War, all the great imperialist powers of Hohenzollern
Germany, Hapsburg Austria-Hungary, Romanov Russia, and Ottoman-Turkey went
to war to protect and extend their domains but, instead, collapsed in utter
ruin. Imperialist England sought to limit and destroy the competition
of Imperial Germany and, instead, got a powerful competitor in the form
of a stronger U.S., and its policy makers' incipient free market global
designs. France went to war for what it could gain from Germany and
in revenge for its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and, instead, was
bled to the point of such a physical and social demoralization that it
succumbed to both external and internal fascism in the 1940s. The
U.S., meanwhile, went to war, as President Woodrow Wilson famously declared,
"to make the world safe for democracy" and, instead, got a world filled
with traditional imperialism, the rise of a communist dictatorship in Russia
and fascist dictatorships in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Then, World
War II came.
At a loss of around 60 million killed (24 million
soldiers and 36 million civilians), World War II is frequently described
as the "good war." And it is widely assumed that the violence that
was unleashed in it by the victors at least was necessary, unavoidable,
and largely positive because the allied victory in that war is said to
have ended the fascist tyrannies and barbarism of Germany, Italy, and Japan.
World War II, therefore, unlike World War I, is often presented as a "just
war" in which violence and violence alone was the only option available
to the Allied side. Thus, as Zinn states, "The question always comes
up about World War II: 'What would you have done [to stop fascist
aggression and domestic barbarism if the strategy entailing the use of
massive violence had not been chosen]?'" To this question,
Zinn replies, "The answer is not an easy one, but . . . 'I would not accept
a solution that involves mass killing. I would try to find some other
way.' The other way . . . is resistance without war. The other
way is underground movements, strikes, general strikes, noncompliance.
Even Hitler, in World War II, was at times successfully resisted in Denmark,
in Norway, in Germany itself, by wives protesting the deportation of their
Jewish husbands."
Zinn, of course, is not alone in his view because numerous
historians, such as Christopher Simpson, Charles Higham, Thomas McCormick,
and Eric Hobsbawn, among others, have rightly questioned whether the tremendous
destruction wrought in that war was necessary, or was directed at ending
the wanton slaughter of innocent peoples, or was successful in ending fascism.
Interpreting the causes and objectives of the war from a more or less class
perspective, these historians have avoided the sentimentalized view that
the policy makers of the leading countries in the so-called "Grand Alliance"
against fascism (i.e., England, the U.S., and the Soviet Union) went to
war to destroy fascist tyrannies or to end the murderous holocaust that
was befalling millions of Jews, gypsies, "inferior peoples," and anti-fascists.
Instead, these historians reveal that important wealthy and elite personages
and policy makers in England, France and the U.S. not only accommodated
German and Italian fascism but even embraced those fascist regimes as rather
lucrative partners.
Christopher Simpson, for instance, noted that "U.S. investment
in Germany accelerated rapidly after Hitler came to power."
According to the U.S. Commerce Department records that he cited, U.S. investments
in Germany "increased some 48.5 percent between 1929 and 1940."
Likewise, Charles Higham noted that U.S. investments in Nazi Germany "at
the time of Pearl Harbor" amounted to an "estimated total of $475 million"
from, among others, such U.S. firms as Standard Oil of New Jersey ($120
million) General Motors ($35 million), ITT ($30 million), and Ford ($17.5
million). Even more revealing are Higham's findings that, in
1942, the "Standard Oil of New Jersey managers shipped the enemy's fuel
through neutral Switzerland," that "the [U.S.] Chase Bank in
Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth
of business with the enemy," that "Ford trucks were being built for
the German occupation troops in France with authorization [from Ford's
headquarters in] Dearborn, Michigan," that "ITT built the Focke-Wulfs
that dropped bombs on British and American troops," that, according
to Newsweek, "recently declassified [U.S.] documents show that at least
300 U.S. companies continued doing business in Germany during the war,"
and that future U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, law partner
in one of the most prestigious of U.S. law firms at the time Sullivan
& Cromwell oversaw the 1940 legal work that insured that the "Nazi
engine-parts producer, Bosch," would "retain control" of its U.S.-based
arm during the war by "creating a Swedish dummy owner" to protect the assets
of its U.S. firm. More shocking than these findings is the
fact that, after the war, the U.S. government actually paid General Motors
$33 million as compensation for the "'troubles and destruction occasioned
to its airplane and motorized vehicle factories [that produced Nazi tanks
and equipment] in Germany and Austria in World War II.'" Likewise
the head of ITT, Sosthenes Behn, received "millions of dollars [$27 million,
according to author Michael Parenti] in compensation for war damage to
his German plants in 1944." In short, according to these sources,
there appears to have been a very cozy symbiotic relationship of non-fascist
and fascist elites before, during, and after World War II. Such a
relationship apparently dictated that virtually no tough, non-violent measures
would be undertaken by the non-fascist elites to curb the virulent excesses
of the fascist regimes as they emerged and grew in the 1920s and 1930s.
With an awareness of such facts as these, it is fairly
clear that U.S. policy makers no more went into World War II to destroy
fascist tyranny and death camps than U.S. policy makers went into the Civil
War to destroy slavery. And that conclusion is reinforced by the
fact that the U.S., British, and French leaders refused to send any aid
to the democratically elected government of the Spanish Republic at the
time when it was so desperately fighting the combined fascist forces of
Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and General Francisco Franco's fascist Flange
in 1936-1939. Likewise, even after the policy makers of England and
the U.S. had incontrovertible evidence of the existence and operations
of Nazi death camps as early as 1943, they still ignored the pleas of Jewish
leaders and refused to undertake any military actions to destroy either
those concentration camps or the railroads leading to them.
Then, too, after World War II, U.S., British, and French policy makers
not only supported in various ways economically, politically, and militarily
General Franco's fascist dictatorship in Spain, but they also tolerated
or propped up similar military and rightwing dictatorships all over the
globe. While Britain and France tried to retain control over their
rebellious colonial domains, U.S. policy makers supported such murderous
tyrannies as those of General Stroessner in Paraguay, General Geisel in
Brazil, General Somoza in Nicaragua, General Pinochet in Chile, General
Suharto in Indonesia, and so on.
All that helps to explain the basic underpinnings
of why, apart from merely seeking revenge for the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor, U.S. policy makers went into World War II. In the very large,
that reason has been explained by historian Thomas J. McCormick when he
wrote that U.S. policy makers of the 1940s had the catastrophe of the Great
Depression very much in mind as they witnessed huge chunks of Europe and
Asia fall into the aggressive German and Japanese spheres of control.
And those conquests with more on the horizon threaten to exclude or
truncate British and American trade, investment, and raw material access
in such fundamental ways that "'the nightmare of a closed world'"
appeared to be at hand. U.S. policy makers, including President Franklin
D. Roosevelt, knew that, if England and the U.S. were excluded from European
and Asian markets, it would not only cripple much of their profit making
potential, but it might even threaten their respective nation's future
economic and socio-political stability. Quite simply, the health
of those capitalist systems, which the policy makers of England and the
U.S. were charged with maintaining, required an open door world for trade,
investment, extraction of raw materials, and markets. As Roosevelt
succinctly put it, "'Freedom to trade is essential to our economic life.'"
And given that necessity, U.S. leaders "fought the war,"
writes McCormick, "not simply to vanquish their enemies, but to . . . insure
that the periphery in the Pacific rim, the Mediterranean basin, and Latin
America would be integrated, under American aegis, into a global market
economy, its resources equally open to all core powers." In
other words, the 1940s and 1950s architects of U.S. global dominance
such men as Roosevelt, Dean Acheson, George F. Kennan, Averell W. Harriman,
James V. Forrestal, Robert Murphy, Paul H. Nitze, and Harry Truman aimed
at constructing a U.S.-led free market world based on economic internationalism
and maintained by a U.S.-led collective security apparatus. After
all, these policy makers had a clear mission to perform. It, as professor
Harvey Goldberg once lectured, was the conquest of foreign markets for
the most powerful U.S. economic interests and that meant either putting
or maintaining a group of acceptable political rulers over the people in
those targeted areas. Of course, those political rulers were the
ones who, it was expected, could maintain socio-political control over
their populations and, so, serve the more powerful U.S. economic interests
as clients. Of course, the world order that post World War II U.S.
policy makers undertook to built was meant to eschew the older traditional
forms of colonialism, autarchy, and economic nationalism. Instead,
those U.S. policy makers advocated an "open door" world in which the economic
principles of free trade and productionism would reign supreme. As
these policy makers saw it, if all societies operated according to the
economic dictates of comparative advantage and economies of scale, everyone
would be a winner. Of course, some those with advanced industrial
economies and sophisticated, high profit producing technologies like the
U.S. would be the bigger winners. So, this set-up favored the core
industrial powers, especially the U.S.
Known, now, by some historians as America's "hegemonic
project," this "project" makes the whole Cold War a mere "subplot" of "a
larger story." And it means, as McCormick noted, that U.S.
policy makers had to "manage" virtually the whole world Russia (previously
the Soviet Union), England, German, Japan, the Third World, and the American
citizenry if the "project" were to be successful. Of course,
before it became as fashionable as it is today and as far back as 1959,
the great American historian William Appleman Williams described what those
U.S. policy makers had created in words that characterized a U.S., informal,
open door empire. Now, such a free market empire still requires supportive
policy makers who, today, may use a perpetual war against terrorism to
insure necessary global markets. Of course, some interpret this "war"
as an effort to impose a much needed pax-Americana on the world while others
condemn it as the pretext for a dangerous expansionism that is fraught
with frightening intended and unintended consequences.
Certainly, given the current hawkish policy makers in
Washington, it is crucial to point out that there are better options than
war for solving current problems. And, by looking back at the half decade
before World War II, we can see that other options than war existed even
then. Indeed, if that bloody event in human history can be shown
to have been avoidable, what grounds are there for undertaking any war
that has less compelling reasons for being fought than World War II?
The point is that if a reasonable case can be made that violence was not
even necessary in the case of World War II, perhaps more people will question
the idea that militarism and its violent practitioners need be a necessary
part of humanity's future.
Consider, then, whether any or all of the following
steps could have been undertaken by the1920s and 1930s U.S. and/or Western
policy makers to have badly crippled fascism. And, consider if such
steps might not have avoided the larger violence of World War II.
First, instead of many people and institutions in the U.S., British, and
French business and political elites supporting or ignoring the fascists
of Germany and Italy with their policies on trade and investments, they
could have withheld their trade and investments to weaken those regimes.
Second, during the 1930s, instead of ignoring and rebuffing the Soviet
offers of a rapprochement or some type of accord with one or several of
the Western powers against the Nazis, the political leaders of England,
France, and the U.S. could have struck some sort of agreement with the
Soviets that would have signaled Adolph Hitler that he had better be careful
because politics can make some mighty strange bedfellows. Third,
instead of allowing Hitler to tear up the Versailles Peace Treaty and march
into the demilitarized Rhineland with impunity, the Western powers could
have acted jointly to have pressured him with their opposition in a united
front. Fourth, instead of letting the anti-fascist forces of the
democratically elected Spanish Republic fight the Hitler/Mussolini backed
fascist forces of Franco alone and outgunned from 1936-1939, the Western
democracies could have joined with the Soviet Union and economically impoverished
Mexico in providing vital financial assistance and military equipment to
the beleaguered Republican forces. This possibly would have
turned the tide against fascism in Spain and throughout Europe. Fifth,
instead of selling out the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia at the 1938 Munich
conference with Hitler, the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain,
and the French Prime Minister, Edouard Daladier, could have ended years
of appeasing the Italian and German fascists with a diplomatic, economic,
and propaganda counterattack on Hitler's and Mussolini's domestic and international
policies. Sixth, instead of ignoring and/or assenting in the step-by-gruesome-step
persecution and victimization of German Jews from 1933 to 1939 (all leading
to eventual genocide), the policy makers of France, England, the U.S.,
and other countries could have vigorously challenged the racist, anti-Semitic
policies in Nazi Germany. And, finally, in addition to these might-have-been
actions by non-fascist states and powerful institutions, what if, before
the war, the mass consumers in non-fascist societies had been encouraged
by their respective media and businessmen to conduct successful large-scale
boycotts of the products and services coming from fascist countries?
And what if, in every non-fascist society, there had been generated a concerted,
non-communist, anti-fascist propaganda campaign directed at every racist,
anti-democratic, and offensive action that the fascist regimes undertook?
And what if "smart sanctions" had been applied to inhibit the fascist regimes
from getting crucial fuels, military technologies, and strategic materials?
And what if the businessmen in fascist societies faced frozen assets and
increasing international restrictions on their foreign financial activities?
Similarly, comparable actions against the Japanese fascists and militarists
could easily have been mounted. Beyond that, such actions as economically
assisting the Chinese communists who were actually fighting the Japanese
invaders rather than the nationalist Chinese who were only pretending to
fight them would have warned the Japanese militarists that there were some
very real pitfalls ahead of them. Unfortunately, these largely non-violent
responses to fascist policies and practices were not undertaken.
Indeed, almost exactly the opposite occurred.
Taken together, it is reasonably likely that all these
anti-fascist actions in Europe and Asia would have given every potential
fascist aggressor some very serious reasons to pause and rethink their
policies/actions. Of course, given the nature of fascism and militarism,
there may still have been a need to use some violence against one or more
fascist regimes. Yet, nothing of that sort needed to have been as
inevitable as it is now often pictured to be. There were other options,
and, if taken, they may well have severely crippled, constrained, or eliminated
the most virulent of fascist actions and avoided the enormous carnage of
World War II. Ironically, many of today's Bush II Administration
war hawks inadvertently acknowledge as much when they promote the view
that World War II was only made possible because timid Western leaders
did not listen to Winston Churchill's warnings. Instead, those weak
leaders declare the current Churchill-wanna-bes chose to appease Hitler
at the Munich conference. Of course, this claim by some in the Bush
II Administration is not used by those neoconservative ideologues and their
associates to assert that World War II could have been peacefully avoided.
On the contrary, those policy makers and their associated political pundits
argue that the "lesson of Munich" means that World War II not only should
have started about a year earlier than it did, but that, analogously, they
should launch a preemptive war against people in Iraqi.
In fact, in contrast to their view, the Munich agreement
was not the appeasement turning point leading to World War II that they
portray it to be. It was simply another reflection of the long-standing
acquiescence and connivance in pro-fascist policies by important British,
French, and U.S. elite interests. And, plausibly, it was that tradition
of elite-driven policies favorable to the fascist regimes on nearly every
significant matter that made the violence of World War II inevitable after
1937. But had that deplorable history been the opposite one of the
sort that I have outlined, it is far from certain that the tremendous violence
and bloodshed of World War II would have become necessary.
Today, some of those eager for war are again at the helm
of power, and they impatiently assert that the best defense is a good offense.
But such people frequently suffer from a shortsighted or blind hubris that
tends to backfire. Already, the recent international polls are showing
that the mighty reservoir of global sympathy and good will for Americans
that was in evidence in the immediate wake of the tragedy of September
11, 2001 is starting to evaporate. The polling data from various
research firms show that, as of September 2002, the Latin Americans who
supported the U.S. military attack on Afghanistan ranged from a 2% low
in Mexico to a 16% high in Panama. Meanwhile, "69% of [Canadians
polled] said that the U.S. shares some of the responsibility for the attacks"
of 9/11, and "15 percent said [that] all of the responsibility sits on
American shoulders." Similarly, 60% of South Koreans polled
"'don't like' America" partly due to U.S. "bombing of civilians in Afghanistan,"
and an earlier April 2002 poll found that "85 percent of Germans, 80 percent
of the French, 73 percent of Britons, and 63 percent of Italians felt that
Washington was acting mainly on its own interest in the 'war on terror.'"
Among the British, pollsters found, "nearly 80 percent" of Britons "were
still opposed to a U.S.-British attack on Iraq that lacked an explicit
endorsement from the United Nations" even after Prime Minister Tony Blair's
September 2002 speech presenting "evidence" on Saddam Hussein's "threat."
More importantly, among Muslims around the world, dominant U.S. policy
makers are apparently creating an ever bigger tidal wave of resentment
that will likely harm our general security. After all, the people
in those communities are the ones who can provide vital information that
may erode the threat of non-state terrorism if they are not further alienated
by unwise U.S. Middle East policies and war making. But, many Muslims
are already registering their disaffection. Just glance at the October
2002 Pakistani elections in which the anti-President Pervez Musharraf/U.S.
Islamic fundamentalists (i.e., United Action Council or MMA in its Urdu-language
initials) got nearly 25% of the national vote and increased their seats
in parliament from only 2 in 1997, to 51 at present. Indeed,
the disaffection with pro-U.S. and Musharraf policies gave the fundamentalist
mullahs "a clear majority in the North-West Frontier province's legislature
. . . and [they] may control Baluchistan's legislature as well."
This means that the pro-Taliban politicians and other fundamentalist sympathizers
are positioned to exercise increased authority in precisely the geographical
regions along the border with Afghanistan where U.S. soldiers and intelligence
agents are hoping to detect and intercept their elusive foes. Indeed,
"the MMA is determined to send [the U.S. and pro-U.S.Pakistani forces]
home." In short, all these poll and election findings buttress
the earlier July 30, 2002 U.S. Council on Foreign Relations report that
stated "'Around the world, from western Europe to the far east, many see
the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, self-absorbed, self-indulgent,
and contemptuous of others.'" And that probably means less
sympathizers, less intelligence information, and less cooperation for the
U.S. "war on terrorism" that neoconservative U.S. policy makers are presently
conducting.
Apparently unwilling to change its basic militaristic
and Middle East policies, the Bush II Administration has responded to this
deepening and world-wide disaffection with U.S. policies in a shallow fashion.
They have set up a special public information/propaganda office Global
Communications Office under Charlotte Beers. She and her public
relations team will join a host of other publicists and act as those whom
the social theoretician Antonio Gramsci long ago described as the "traditional"
or orthodox intellectuals who do the propaganda and put the gloss on the
ruling elite's ideas, policies, and actions. In fact, they will have
to "spin" faster than an atomic electron to cover up the fact that U.S.
policy makers are displaying unilateralist disdain for a "descent respect
to the opinion of mankind." That disdain itself is evidenced by "undermin[ing]
the new International Criminal Court [with demands for special exemption
for U.S. government personnel]," by "reject[ing] an international treaty
limiting biological weapons," by "refus[ing] to strengthen a convention
against torture," by bullying the U.N. to approve the resolutions
and actions that U.S. policy makers want on Iraq, by ignoring Israel's
violations or refusals to acknowledge U.N. resolutions and screaming foul
over Iraq's violations or refusals to acknowledge U.N. resolutions, by
dumping the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, by first promising to sign and,
then, refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on the global environment, by
contravening free trade agreements with massive subsidies to U.S. steel
and agribusinesses, by declaring the right to make preemptive war, and
by operating on a widely perceived double standard regarding conventions
on prisoners of war. With such actions, U.S. policy makers are dangerously
"alienating the very friends and allies [that they most need for the] fight
in the war on terror."
Yet, there is another path, for as President George W.
Bush's Middle East envoy and former Marine General Anthony Zinni put it,
"'We need to quit making enemies that we don't need to make enemies out
of.'" And this can be done if the Bush II Administration were
to heed the advice of one of its sharpest critics, Noam Chomsky.
Noting that much could be gained toward eradicating terror if U.S. policy
makers were not so bent on "providing recruits for terrorist actions" through
their military policies. Chomsky cites, as a model for reducing terrorism,
the sensible view of the former head of Israeli military intelligence,
Yehoshaphat Harkabi. He quotes Harkabi as stating: "'To offer
an honourable solution to the Palestinians respecting their right to self-determination:
that is the solution of the problem of terrorism. When the swamp disappears,
there will be no more mosquitoes.'" Continuing to comment,
Chomsky writes, "with modern technology, the rich and powerful will lose
their near monopoly of the means of violence and can expect to suffer atrocities
on home soil. If we insist on creating more swamps, there will be
more mosquitoes, with awesome capacity for destruction. [But] if
we devote our resources to draining the swamp, addressing the roots of
the 'campaigns of hatred,' we can not only reduce the threats we face but
also live up to ideals that we profess."
So, what has the great victory in the "good war" brought
us? We now have a U.S.-led world order that is filled with over 35,000
nuclear weapons and no meaningful efforts on the part of the superpowers
current policy makers either to put those weapons under international control
or to reduce and eliminate them. Likewise, apart from the highly
problematic model of neo-liberal capitalism, there is no concerted effort
to address the conditions of vast political and economic inequalities that
might lead to the use of either nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass
destruction (WMDs). And it is a world order that is likely to perpetuate
the proliferation of those nuclear, chemical and biological WMDs until
they may fall into the hands of religious lunatics or clandestine non-state
groups who might have little or no qualms against using them on either
their "enemies" or themselves. It is a world order that, as of 1999,
had such glaring and growing disparities between the rich and the poor
that a mere 475 people on earth had more wealth and income than all of
the combined incomes of half of humanity, or three billion people.
It is a world order in which, according to UN figures, 700 million people
(almost 1/6 of humanity) suffer from famine and two billion more are malnourished
while 14.6 million children die from malnutrition related causes each year.
It is a world order in which the superpowers dominant policy makers are
annually spending 36% of the world's entire military spending, and, by
2007, they will be spending almost $500 billion per year ($469.6 bn).
It is a world order in which those self-same policy makers are planning
to spend $42 billion, by 2008, on a U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD)
system when they have yet to explain to us, as a study by the highly respected
Center for Defense Information points out, "'why an opponent would chose
the expensive, technically difficult, and suicidal method of delivering
a weapon of mass destruction via missile rather than via truck, boat, or
plane.'" And, just to put all these figures in an appropriate
context, I should note that, even at the level of a projected pre-9/11
annual defense expenditure of $396 billion (FY 2003), the U.S. typically
spends between 66% and 70% more than the combined military spending of
Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
Moreover, when the pre-9/11, fiscal year 2002 projected defense spending
of $328.7 billion is added together with the percent of increase (57.86%)
that occurs when all the other military-related expenditures in other budget
lines are also calculated, the real annual defense cost of almost $519
billion ($518.9bn) is obtained. That figure creates an annual U.S.
military spending rate of over $16,400 a second. Putting a
better perspective on the enormous socio-economic waste which this represents,
a nominee for the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Helen Caldicott states:
"If you [were to] spend $1,000 a minute since Jesus was born, you would
have just got to a trillion dollars [by 2002]." In brief, she
says that every single year the U.S. spends "half-a-trillion dollars on
death when America is one of the only countries in the West that has
no free [i.e., universal, single-payer, publicly funded] medical care system."
Thus, while it is problematic that the violence
that brought about the victory of some powers in World War II may have
brought most people in the world some betterment of their conditions of
life, that betterment is certainly not universally distributed. And
that violence itself must be measured not only against the loss of the
60 millions lives which that war took, but against, perhaps, another 5-6
million who have been killed in the subsequent process of decolonization,
Cold War-related conflicts, and associated upheavals in the years since
World War II. Beyond that, if we slip back into the pre-1939 chaos
of might-makes-right as the sole basis of international law, we face a
likely future of more mass bloodshed. But be assured that the policy
makers on opposing sides will hunker down in their bunkers and probably
survive the ensuing carnage while thousands of innocent people are choked,
incinerated, and blown to pieces.
And, so, in many ways, we live with the legacy of World
War II looming large in policy makers' minds. In many respects, World
War II's violence of "total war" may well have set the stage for
the more horrendous violence that could come in the 21st century.
After all, only two and a half generations after the end of that massive
World War II bloodletting, many people have been persuaded to think that
mass violence is not only a necessary tool of politics but a glorious and
useful tool. Thus, contemporary "Churchillian" leaders can be found
referring to their adversaries as "Hitler," or "Stalin," or an "axis of
evil." It is as if they are involved in some sort of anachronistic
board game of international politics and war about which they have little
human sensitivity but, nevertheless, love to play and to glorify.
Hitting the nail squarely on the head, Dr. Caldicott issued this dire warning
and placed the blame for potential future catastrophes where much of it
belongs on U.S. policy makers' mistaken moral vision. She declared,
"We have never seen a country so militarily armed. . . . And now
that the Cold War is over, America should be rising to its full moral and
spiritual height, and abolishing nuclear weapons with a friendly Russia.
And encouraging everyone else to do the same. Instead, these people
in this Bush administration, they're building up a huge nuclear arsenal
and saying with impunity, 'We'll use nuclear weapons on anyone.' . . .
I have to tell you . . . that I predict if things go unimpeded as things
are going now, that there will be a nuclear war within the next 10 or 20
years . . ."
With such a potential future, we need to realize that,
if U.S. foreign policy today were to be fundamentally demilitarized and
the "war on terror" boosted by an immediate recognition that a just settlement
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be made, then much of the threat
to the world's people would likely be greatly reduced or even virtually
eliminated. More importantly, the focus on hunting down actual and
potential non-state terrorists would be given a tremendous impetus forward
because a fair settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, in accordance
with UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, would certainly diminish
the number of aggrieved people and their sympathizers who might otherwise
give clandestine terrorists protection and assistance. By creating
more friends rather than more enemies through fundamental policy changes,
we are likely to increase the numbers of potential informants and, thereby,
greatly inhance the detection capabilities of the various intelligence
gathering agencies.
After all, if, as our authority figures never tire of
telling us, there are suicidal fanatics who are relatively certain to use
WMDs against people in an indiscriminant fashion, then, while our leaders
may be protected by bunkers, inoculations, security forces, and state-of-the-art
medical science, our loved ones, including our children, remain at risk.
Recall, as well, that the U.S. Defense Department's own 1997 study has
declared that "Historical data show a strong correlation between US involvement
in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against
the United States." Thus, as the Director of the conservative
Cato Institute's Defense Policy Studies wisely concluded: "There
is a way to significantly reduce the chances of an attack on the American
home land by terrorists using weapons of mass terror . . . [The U.S. must
cease] provocative overseas interventions . . . [and] should adopt a policy
of military restraint. That policy entails intervening only as a
last resort."
Yet, although sensible and just policy changes, including
a switch from "provocative overseas interventions," would likely do more
to "provide for the common defense [and] promote the general Welfare" than
an outrageously costly NMD Maginot Line in the sky, such policy changes
are unlikely to occur. Other interests, just as before World War
I and World War II, dictate other policy maker choices. Using this
class based perspective, political scientist Michael Parenti cites the
marvelous verses of the playwright Berthold Brecht to make the inherent
inequities of power and profit in class divided societies beautifully clear:
"'There were conquerors and conquered./ Among the conquered the common
people starve./ Among the conquerors the common people starve too.'"
So, as some U.S. policy makers push the U.S. people toward another war,
Parenti and Brecht remind us that the cost of following those leaders will
not be equally shared.
But, even if the elite interests and policy makers everywhere
on earth are motivated by a quest for territory, mineral resources, markets,
and self-aggrandizement, the rest of us must realize to the very depth
of our souls that war entails "a premeditated decision in cold blood to
kill an indefinite number of [totally innocent] civilians."
And we should press upon our leaders the need to act according to democratic
principles of fairness and equality as well as according to the same moral
dictates by which we would hope that others would be guided. As stated
by the great intellectual Edward Said, "We should expect no less of ourselves
than we should of others." If we can do that, we stand a much
better chance of avoiding the worst that may lie ahead. (E)
PAGE 11
PAGE 8
Notes to On Violence II
Abd-al-Wahhab Badrakhan, "Unconvincing," Al-Hayat,
26 September 2002, 9, supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring, forwarded email
28 September 2002.
Michael Parenti, "The Cost of Empire at Home and
Abroad," Lecture on Audio Tape, Peoples Audio and Video, Palo Alto, California,
November 1994.
In a somewhat paraphrased form, the Roman Catholic
Church defines a "just war" as one which meets these six criteria:
1) It is waged by legitimate authority. 2) It is waged
in a just cause, and the evils produced by the war must be proportionate
to the evils which provoked it. 3) It is undertaken with the
intention of achieving a just and lasting peace. 4) It is undertaken
only as a last resort. 5) It should be waged only if there
is a reasonable expectation of success. 6) It should be fought
with morally legitimate methods and there should be no indiscriminate killing
of non-combatants.
In severely criticizing this Roman Catholic Church justification
for so-called "just war," Archbishop Robert M. Bowman of the United Catholic
Church (an outgrowth of the Old Catholic Church in Utrecht, Netherlands)
writes that Jesus Christ not only taught the early Christians to lead lives
dedicated to absolute non-violence ("'love your enemies'" and "'do good
to those who persecute you'") but He practiced a life of absolute non-violence
"all the way to the cross." As Bowman explains, once the early Christians
embraced the Roman Emperor Constantine, "they gave up their nonviolence,
their independence, and . . . instead of following Jesus, they began following
Caesar. . . ."
"They invented," he continues, "the ["rationalization"
of] the 'Just War Theory' to justify taking up the sword for the emperor.
And for the last 1600 years or so, most Christian churches and their hierarchies
have advised young Christians to go to war for whatever is the latest adventure
of Caesar, whether he is called Napoleon, Adolph Hitler, Bill Clinton,
or George Bush (with whatever middle initials)." But, writes Bowman,
"What [is] just war? No such thing exists." Quoting the late
Catholic Bishop John L. McKenzie, Bowman concludes with this scathing indictment
of the compromise/corruption created when most Christian churches adjusted
their teachings to embrace state power: "'The statement of the renunciation
of violence [by Jesus] is clear enough. Christians have never questioned
either that Jesus said it or that it admits no qualification. Christians
have simply decided they cannot live according to these sayings of Jesus.'"
See Robert M. Bowman, "Return to the Catacombs: Reintroducing the
Nonviolent Jesus to Christianity and Restoring Pre-Constantinian Catholicism,"
no date, 1, 2, HYPERLINK http://www.rmbowman.com/catholic/catacombs.htm
www.rmbowman.com/catholic/catacombs.htm .
Currently launching blistering attacks on the Bush II
Administration's war hawk policies, Bowman writes about his past as a combat
pilot: "As a confused but obedient Roman Catholic, I flew 101 combat
missions in Vietnam. Knowing what I know now, I would not do it again."
See Ibid. And to the August 17, 2002, Veterans for Peace National
Conference, Bowman minced no words when he addressed his remarks directly
to President Bush and stated: "We have troops stationed in 150 countries
around the world, and not one of them has anything to do with protecting
America or Americans. . . . [T]heir job . . . in Saudi Arabia [is] to keep
the Saudi people from toppling our puppet regime which protects the interests
of our oil companies. . . . In Kosovo and Bosnia and Afghanistan . . .
[t]heir job is to secure oil pipelines from the Caspian to the Mediterranean
and Indian Oceans. . . . So the DoD [i.e., Department of Defense]
and CIA exist to install and protect foreign dictators from THEIR people,
and the Dept of Homeland Security is to protect YOU [i.e., Bush] from US!
. . . You have spent billions to bail out the top executives and stockholders
of airlines that have gone bankrupt anyway. You have given hundreds
of billions in tax breaks to your wealthy friends and to the multinational
corporations. You have inflated a defense budget which was already
obscene. . . . You have isolated us from the rest of the world by undermining
one treaty after another. You have inflamed the Muslim world against
us . . . You have killed more innocent civilians in Afghanistan than the
hijackers killed in the World Trade Center. You have staged a coup
in Venezuela for the oil companies, and are getting us into war in Columbia.
You have supported genocide against the Palestinian people. You have
continued the cruel embargo against Cuba and the tragic sanctions against
Iraq. You have blood on your hands. . . ." But, Bowman concludes,
"We are the people. This is OUR country. We fought for it.
Our friends died for it. And it is OURS. We are sovereign.
We are not going to let you and your co-conspirators turn us into whores
for the multinational corporations. We are not going to let you endanger
our fellow citizens by making them the target of terrorists. . . . And
we are not going to let our beloved country continue to be the #1 rogue
nation in the world. . . . You're not getting my sons and grandsons
[for the military since] the best thing our government can do for its combat
veterans is to quit making more of them." See Robert M. Bowman, "Conversation
Between a Veteran and George W. Bush," August 17, 2002, Duluth, Minnesota,
1-2, HYPERLINK http://www.rmbowman.com/ssn/veterans4.htm
www.rmbowman.com/ssn/veterans4.htm .
Robert M. Bowman is a retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel
who flew 101 combat missions in the Vietnam war. He has a Ph.D in
Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Cal Tech. He served as Director,
Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Department of Defense
in Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter Administrations. He described
his job in that capacity as directing the programs and developing the systems
for "Star Wars" type spy satellites. He is a stanch critic, as he
says, of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bush II "suicidal" "Star Wars" programs.
He is a former Vice President of Space Communications Company and Manager,
Advanced Space Programs for General Dynamics. Currently, he is President
of the non-profit Institute for Space and Security Studies (ISSS) and a
presiding Archbishop in the United Catholic Church. See
HYPERLINK http://www.rmbowman.com www.rmbowman.com .
Howard Zinn, Terrorism and War, New York:
Seven Stories Press, 2002, 22. Zinn points out that he has never
used the "word 'pacifist' to describe [himself] . . . because it suggests
something absolute, and I am suspicious of absolutes." Thus, in his
view, "I think that there might be situations when a small, focused act
of violence against a monstrous evil would be justified." See Ibid.,
25.
In reflecting on his personal history as a patriotic
young bombardier flying bombing missions in Europe during World War II,
Zinn recounted one of the turning point experiences that started him thinking
about the morality of mass violence. The incident occurred near the
end of the war and after allied armies had already overrun France.
Still, Zinn's plane was ordered to participate in a 1,200 B-17 raid on
a small French town called Royan where there was supposed to be a few thousand
German soldiers "holed up." Although the war was nearly over and
the raid seemed a bit unusual considering the numbers of planes and the
isolation of the German troops, neither Zinn nor any other flyer questioned
the reason for the raid. And the bombers, Zinn discovered, were not
carrying their usual load of twelve five-hundred-pound demolition bombs
but, instead, were carrying "something new." They were carrying thirty
one-hundred-pound canisters of "'jellied gasoline.'" It was an "early
use of napalm." After the war, Zinn happened to read a "dispatch
of a New York Times correspondent in the area" of Royan who wrote that
"'About 350 civilians, dazed or bruised . . . crawled from the ruins and
said the air attacks had been 'such hell as we never believed possible.'"
So, from "twenty-five or thirty thousand feet," Zinn writes, "we saw no
people, heard no screams, saw no blood, no torn limbs, [no dead]. . . .
The war," he adds, "was over in three weeks," and Zinn "heard no one question
. . . why [the raid on Royan] . . . was necessary." He remorsefully
admits that he certainly "didn't." Years later, Zinn concluded, "The
more I thought about World War II, the more I became convinced that the
atmosphere of war brutalizes everyone involved, begets a fanaticism in
which the original moral factor . . . is buried at the bottom of a heap
of atrocities committed by all sides."
An epilogue: Upon a request from the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, in January 1968, Zinn and Father Daniel Berrigan were
selected by some leaders of the U.S. peace movement to traveled to war
torn North Vietnam to escort home three newly freed American prisoners
of war (Major Norris Overly, Captain John Black, Lieutenant Junior Grade
David Methany). While there, Zinn experienced four to six daily bombing
raids by U.S. B-52s, only, on those occasions, he was in the bomb sights
of other bombardiers. "I thought," he said, "I guess I deserve this."
See Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal
History of Our Times, Boston: Beacon Press, 1994, 93-94, 98, 126,
131-132.
Zinn, Terrorism, 23.
Ibid. 23. I chose not to argue my case for
non-violence with the example of the U.S.-Vietnam War because many people
(especially Americans) would probably agree that all the violence employed
in that war was futile simply because the U.S. did not "win" it.
But what about the efficacy of violence for the side that did "win" it?
Well, once again, what exactly was won or lost by the "winners" needs to
be explored. Briefly covering these matters, my argument against
the efficacy of all the tremendous violence expended in Vietnam (three
times more bomb tonnage was dropped in Vietnam a country about the size
of the state of New Mexico as in the whole of World War II) runs as follows:
In the case of that U.S.-Vietnam war (1965-1975) the stated objective of
U.S. policy makers was to preserve a non-communist South Vietnam at the
lowest possible cost and risk. And based on those objectives which
remained essentially constant throughout the ten year struggle the U.S.
policy makers failed. On the other hand, the policy makers of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front (i.e.,
Vietcong) achieved their basic wartime objective, i.e., the independence
and reunification of their country.
But when victory and defeat are considered from the standpoint
of the non-policy makers on both sides especially those who were killed
or permanently maimed neither victory nor defeat is likely to be relevant.
After all, millions of those people paid the "ultimate price" because of
the decisions made by those policy makers who started and conducted that
war. And while, in the case of the Americans, the ultimate price
for defeat was paid for by the lives of around 60,000 people, the ultimate
price for a Vietnamese victory was paid for by the lives of about 3.4 million
people. Given that horrendous loss of life, it is difficult to imagine
that, according to the principle of "proportionality," either victory or
defeat would be joyously celebrated by the ones who died or even by many
of their loved ones who survived.
Meanwhile, most of the policy makers on both sides
certainly on the U.S. side undoubtedly survived. And their survival,
while something noteworthy, is hardly a gratifying compensation for the
loss of the millions who were killed. The only compensation that
can even come close to equalizing the proportionality of loss to gain must
be found in the before and after war conditions that the Vietnamese people
experience. In other word, for the "victorious" Vietnamese, the losses
of lives and limbs must be measured against not only what would have been
lost without the war but, also, in the amount and type of freedom that
is accorded to the survivors and their progeny, the degree of prosperity
and security that each now enjoys, and the longer, better life that they
and their children may have. Unless their independence and freedom
from colonial domination bring about a liberation of the human flesh and
spirit that otherwise would not have prevailed and unless there are lasting
material gains of the sort already mentioned, the Vietnamese's "victory"
is profoundly hollow. In that circumstance, it would be difficult
to contend that the violence of war brought a victory that adequately compensated
for the millions who died.
Zinn, Terrorism, 23.
Ibid., 23.
Christopher Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast,
Monroe, Maine: Common Courage press, 1995, 64.
Ibid., 64.
Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy: An
Expose of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949, New York: Dell, 1983,
14.
Ibid., 13.
Ibid., 13; see also the later confirmation of Michael
Hirsh, "The Hunt Hits Home: Did U.S. companies cozy up to the Nazis?
"Newsweek, 14 December 1998, 48.
Higham, 13.
Ibid.
Hirsh, "The Hunt," 48.
Ibid.
Higham, 199.
Higham, 113, 135; also see Michael Parenti, Democracy
For the Few, New York: St Martin's press, 1995, 78.
For a recent example, see historian Michael Beschloss's
Newsweek excerpt from his book, The Conquerors (2002), in which he states
that former Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy recently implicated
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the decision not to bomb either Auschwitz
or the railroads leading to that huge death camp. See Michael Beschloss,
"FDR's Auschwitz Secret," Newsweek, 14 October 2002, 37-39. To his
credit, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill apparently wanted the
British and American Air Forces to do something to damage concentration
camp operations but nothing was done. See Ibid., 38.
Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half-Century:
United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After, Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins U.P., 1995, 32.
Ibid., 32.
Ibid., 33.
Ibid., xiii.
Ibid.
A September 2002 Gallup poll cited in Noam Chomsky,
"Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes," The Guardian, 9
September 2002, 1, HYPERLINK http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4497046,00.html
www.guardian.co. uk/Print/0,3858,4497046,00.html .
A September 2002 Ipsos-Reid poll cited in Shawn
McCarthy, "Most think U.S. partly to blame for Sept. 11," Globe and Mail,
7 September 2002, 2, forwarded email 7 September 2002.
A September 2002 South Korean poll and an April
2002 Pew Research Center poll of Europeans cited in Peter Ford, "Is America
the 'good guy?' Many now say. 'No,'" Christian Science Monitor, csmonitor.com,
11 Sept 2002, 2, 9, HYPERLINK http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0911/p02s03wogi.html
www.csmonitor.com/2002/0911/p02s03wogi.html .
A September 2002 NOP Research Group poll cited
in John Nichole, "Blair's British Problem" in "The Online Beat," The Nation,
30 September 2002, 1, HYPERLINK http://www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=110
www.thenation.com/thebeat/index.mhtml?bid=1&pid=110 .
Fareed Zakaria, "Don't Feed the Fundamentalists,"
Newsweek, 28 October 2002, 37.
Ron Moreau and Zahid Hussain, "A Big Vote for Jihad,"
Newsweek, 21 October 2002, 39.
Ibid., 39.
Ibid.
Peter Ford, "Is America," 3; also Julian Borger,
"White House acts to shed arrogant image," The Guardian, 1, 31 July 2002,
forwarded email 31 July 2002.
Peter Ford, "Is America," 5.
Ibid., 11.
Mike Salinero, "Gen. Zinni says War with Iraq is
Unwise," Tampa Tribune, tampatrib.com, 24 August 2002, 1, HYPERLINK
http://tampatrib.com/News/MGA65V9295D.html http://tampatrib.com/News/MGA65V9295D.html
.
Noam Chomsky, "Drain the swamp," 2.
Ibid, 4.
Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh with Thea Lee,
Field Guide to the Global Economy, New York: The New press, 2000, 53.
Douglas Dowd, Capitalism and It's Economics: A
Critical History, London: Pluto Press, 2002, 216. Dowd notes that
the figures on the children's deaths are taken from a 1986 UNICEF report
and the figures on malnutrition and famine are taken from a 1993 UNICEF
report.
Center for Defense Information (CDI), "Fiscal Year
2003 Pentagon Budget Request, Budget Authority," February 4, 2002, 1,
HYPERLINK http://www.cdi.org/ www.cdi.org/ issues/budget/ FY03topline-pr.cfm.
This U.S. budget figure does not include all the related annual military
expenditures that are located (shrewdly) in other areas of the discretionary
budget. Those annual expenditures create a percent of increase of
over 57%. They, for example, boosted the pre-9/11, FY 2002, annual
defense proposed outlays from $328.7 billion to $518.9 billion. See
CDI, 2001-2002 Military Almanac, Washington, D.C., CDI, 2001, 34.
CDI, "Issue Brief: Reshaping the Military for Asymmetric
Warfare," 5 October 2001, 10 HYPERLINK http://www.cdi.org/press/
www.cdi.org/ press/ press-releases/2001/terrorism100501-pr.cfm.
CDI, "Issue Brief: Reshaping the Military for Asymmetric
Warfare," 5 October 2001, 10 HYPERLINK http://www.cdi.org/press/
www.cdi.org/ press/ press-releases/2001/terrorism100501-pr.cfm. CDI, 2001-2002
Military Almanac, Washington D.C., CDI, 2001, 34.
Helen Caldicott, "America's Weapons of Mass Destruction,"
TomPaine.commonsense, 16 September 2002, 2, HYPERLINK http://www.tompaine.com/
www.tompaine.com/ feature.cfm/ID/ 6379/view/print.
Ibid.
Ibid., 4.
Department of Defense, Under Secretary of Defense
for Acquisition & Technology, "The Defense Science Board 1997 Summer
Study Task force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats, Vol. I, Final
Report, Washington, D.C., October 1997, 15.
Ivan Eland, "Tilting at Windmills: Post-Cold
War Military Threats to U.S. Security," Policy Analysis, No. 332, February
8, 1999, 34, HYPERLINK http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-332es.html)
www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-332es.html .
Michael Parenti, Against Empire, San Francisco,
City Light Books, 1995, 65.
Abd-al-Wahhab Badrakhan.
Edward Said, "Backlash and backtrack," Al-Ahram,
27 September-30 October, 2001, 3, HYPERLINK http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/553/op2.htm
http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/553/op2.htm .