My unit returned from Iraq (A Marine remembers, Part 1)

Posted on May 17, 2012 by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  In recognition and appreciation of his anti-war efforts, Engaging Peace offers the first installment Ross Caputi's story]

Iraq soldier

Image in public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.

My unit returned from Iraq to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina in January of 2005. When we arrived on base we were met by crowds of cheering friends and family members.

In the weeks and months that followed, newspapers published articles praising us; authors interviewed us and wrote books about what we had done in Fallujah; a filmmaker began making a documentary about us. People thanked us for our service, parties and parades were thrown in our honor, and everyone was calling us heroes.

We were met with a wave of praise and veneration, and we rode that wave as if it would never break, celebrating and drinking recklessly.

But eventually that wave did break, and it faded away like all waves do. Yet after our moment of fame had come and gone, we continued celebrating and our drinking only intensified.

The end of that winter and the year that followed is a period of my life that I will never forget. On the surface everyone in my unit was triumphant, proud, and confident.

Perhaps I was the only one, or perhaps there were others, who felt confused and depressed behind that happy facade. I was taking trips with some of the guys from my unit into the ghetto to buy drugs. Maybe they were feeling like I was, indifferent towards life and death; or maybe they felt invincible after having survived Fallujah.

I got the impression that what was driving them was quite different from what was driving me. There was a feeling in my gut that, at that time, was incomprehensible and inexplicable.

Ross Caputi, former Marine, founder of the Justice for Fallujah Project, and former president of the Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Posted in Armed conflict, Stories of engagement | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The causeless enmity (Portraying “the Other,” Part 2)

Posted on May 14, 2012 by kathiemm

[Today we have another guest post from our regular contributor, John Hess.]

Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and RestorationIn my previous post on the forgiveness theme, I introduced Slotkin’s book, Regeneration through Violence, where he depicts the way groups create an evil “Other” to justify attacking the other.

Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative most fully represented this approach and became the paradigm for future captivity narratives. The wife of a Puritan minister, Rowlandson  was captured in a Native raid on and destruction of the frontier village of Lancaster. She was held captive for nearly three months before being ransomed. Her Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is an extraordinary book, the first colonial best seller. (See http://www.hannahdustin.com/maryrolandson.htm)

In Regeneration Through Violence, Slotkin argues (p. 100):  “The situation of the captive (the settler captured by the Natives) presented an exaggerated and emotionally heightened illustration of the moral and psychological situation of the community,” the embattled community, assailed from within and without.

This outlook passed into what became American culture, though obviously transformed and adapted to meet changing needs. Essentially what remains is this confrontation with the Other seen as the direct opposite of the (imagined) nation.  If you substitute Taliban for Natives, you will see what I mean by adapted and transformed.

One other aspect that Slotkin doesn’t stress that has also passed into our cultural heritage is revealed in the citation from the ”Preface” to Rowlandson’s Narrative, probably written by Increase Mather, where “lessons” are drawn for Puritan readers.

Here is how the Natives are portrayed: “such Atheistical, proud, wild, cruel, barbarous, brutish, (in one word,) diabolical Creatures as these, the worst of the heathen.”

Why are the Natives the enemies of the English?  Well, the behavior of the English has, in this view, nothing to do with it, as the author speaks of “the causeless enmity of the Barbarians against the English, and the malicious and revengeful spirit of these Heathen.”

The word I want to stress is “causeless,” for what this word implies is that the English were innocent, guiltless. According to that enduring narrative, we today, like the English then, are innocent of wrong-doing when we participate in aggression because we mean well—a theme that continues to pervade our culture.

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Posted in Book reviews, Tolerance, Understanding violence | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Contribute a peace of the pie

Posted on May 10, 2012 by patdaniel

Mother’s Day is Sunday, and the Eighth Annual Mother’s Day National Action Day is tomorrow, Friday May 11.

Peacebuilding is 1% of U.S. budgetIn 1870, Julia Ward Howe, a Unitarian Universalist, launched a campaign to promote an annual Mother’s Day devoted not to candy and flowers but to disarmament. She placed her trust in mothers as peace activists.

The Peace Alliance recommends that on Mother’s Day National Action Day, women strive to make peace a piece of the pie. Check out their suggestions for what you can do to promote peace tomorrow and every day.

Do this on behalf of the child victims of war. Children are dying horrific deaths daily in many parts of the world, often from drone attacks launched by the United States, or from weapons bought from the US.  They lose their limbs and eyesight, as well as their families and neighbors. Children are forced to live as refugees from the wars that devastate their lands.

Mother’s Day is a good day to remember those children and to take action to stop the carnage.

Honor your mother, your grandmother, your wife, or your sister this Mother’s Day by joining the Mother’s Day National Action. Finally, please view a superb documentary on the aftereffects of war.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Posted in Children and war, Commemorating peace | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Us versus them (Portraying “the Other,” Part 1)

Posted on May 7, 2012 by kathiemm

[By guest author, John Hess.]

Regeneration through ViolenceI was stunned by the title of a post on Engaging Peace. “Recovery through forgiveness” contrasts so greatly with Regeneration through violence: The mythology of the American frontier, 1600-1860, the first volume of Richard Slotkin’s trilogy on American culture.

Slotkin’s argument is similar to that advanced by Christopher Hedges in War is a force that gives us meaning.

Specifically, nations often seek to work out pressing internal problems and bring about national unity through violence directed at an adversary who is portrayed as “the Other,” an embodiment of evil.

The U.S. used this approach in justifying the “War on Terror,” and later the Iraq War:

  • Us against them
  • Good against evil
  • War against those who hate our way of life and want to destroy it.

The first major example Slotkin discusses in Regeneration is King Philip’s War. That 1675-6 conflict is said to have been, relatively speaking, the most destructive war ever fought on (what became) American soil.

Puritanism was then in the throes of a spiritual crisis, with many of the more intransigent ministers claiming there had been a “falling away” from the fervor and purity of the original colonists. At the same time, the New England colonies were rapidly expanding, which led to a demand for more land. This in turn brought them more and more into conflict with the Native tribes, who were on land the Puritans desired.

Puritan thinkers increasingly came to portray the Natives as their direct opposites:

  • Where the English were Christian, the Natives were pagan
  • Where the English were civilized, the Natives were savage
  • Where the English were the new Chosen People, the Natives were not
  • Where the English were doing God’s will, the Natives were certainly on the other side.

John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Posted in Armed conflict, Book reviews, Moral disengagement | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments