The Citizens United decision serves the latest cabal of robber barons and further empowers the military industrial complex, which may be credited by the Court as having enough brain to exercise rights but has manifested little in regard to a heart.
Indeed, in exercising their putative Constitutional rights, the profiteers of the military industrial complex have shown an enormous talent for crushing human rights both within the borders of the United States and in other lands wounded by US hegemony.
In one of the latest examples of human rights violations in the US, the City of Detroit has been shutting off water to the poorest residents of the city, unable to pay their water bills.
The shutoffs have been linked to a push towards privatization of the water system. Like the privatization of prison management, this effort is one more giant step forward in the rush to privatization that disproportionately violates the human rights of people of color and poverty in the U.S.
Occupy Wall Street October 5, 2011 licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license Photograph by David Shankbone
Question: Why was the U.S. government so terrified of the nonviolent Occupy Wall Street movement (and its spinoffs) that it squelched the movement?
Answer: Perhaps they were aware of the “Rules of Revolt” identified by the inimitable Chris Hedges.
Here is a Checklist of the principal lessons derived by Hedges from his analysis of the student occupation of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989. Which of these principles applied to the United States during the Occupy movement in 2011? Which apply now?
• “A nonviolent movement that disrupts the machinery of state and speaks a truth a state hopes to suppress has the force to terrify authority and create deep fissures within the power structure.”
• “An uprising or a revolution … is ignited not by the poor but by middle-class and elite families’ sons and daughters, often college-educated… who are being denied opportunities to advance socially and economically.”
• ” Radical mass movements often begin by appealing respectfully to authority for minimal reforms.”
• “Once déclassé intellectuals make alliances with the working class a regime is in serious danger.”
• “The most potent weapon in the hands of nonviolent rebels is fraternizing with and educating civil servants as well as the police and soldiers…”
• “When a major authority figure, even in secret, denounces calls to crush a resistance movement the ruling elites are thrown into panic.”
• “The state seeks to isolate and indoctrinate soldiers and police before sending them to violently quash any movement.”
• “The state on the eve of breaking a rebellion with force seeks to make police and soldiers frightened of the protesters. It does this by sending in agents provocateurs to direct acts of violence against symbols of state authority.”
Hedges reminds us that conducting a revolt nonviolently does not protect one from violence from the state and other groups, noting that nonviolence requires “deep reserves of physical and moral courage.” We can also ask whether we are assured protection from violence if we ignore and acquiesce in social injustice.
Child at Fallujah Maternity and Children’s hospital. Photo by Dahr Jamail, used with permission
There was no casus belli (just cause) for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The leaders of the coalition forces treated the lives of Iraqi civilians with reckless disregard as they bombed and invaded Iraq, citing intelligence they knew to be questionable. The shock-and-awe bombing of Iraq claimed over 7,000 lives, and the subsequent occupation claimed hundreds of thousands more.
The occupation also shredded the social fabric of Iraqi society, exploited a social division in Iraq that previously held little significance, provoked a civil war between the Sunni and Shia communities, and has resulted in entrenched resentments and a divided country.
Entire communities have been displaced, uprooting people, robbing them of their historical bond with their locality. The agricultural system, the historic seed bank, the marshes, have all been forced to change.
The medical and educational systems have been destroyed too. Many Iraqi researchers, instructors, and doctors have been assassinated. Many others have fled the country, leaving these essential services understaffed and incapable of meeting the needs of Iraqis.
Worse yet, pollution from war has left Iraq with a crippling public health crisis. Rises in birth defects and cancers have been reported throughout the country, with extreme rates in cities like Fallujah and Basra. Iraq will remain contaminated with radiation for billions of years because of uranium weapons. And the extent of the contamination from other sources—such as burn pits and lead and mercury from conventional munitions—is still unknown.
The occupation has left Iraq divided, polluted, and silenced under a corrupt political system and an oppressive government that enjoys considerable support from both the US and Iran.
What was taken from Iraqis can never be given back to them in its entirety. The harm our society caused theirs is immeasurable. Reparations are a moral imperative. Though the cause of the harm may be unidirectional, the healing will not be. Assisting Iraqis in the rebuilding of their society will cultivate in us a culture of responsibility, solidarity, and caring.
Join us at Islah [http://www.reparations.org/projects/truth-reconciliation/ in collaborating with Iraqis who are rebuilding the social infrastructure of their society. Help us in confronting the public silence surrounding the crimes committed against the Iraqi people. By campaigning for an international war crimes tribunal too, we hope to collaborate with Iraqis to create the requisite conditions for a future truth and reconciliation commission.
Ross is currently on the Board of Directors of ISLAH. He is also a graduate student and a writer. In 2004, he was a US Marine in the US-led occupation of Iraq. His experience there, in particular his experience during the 2nd siege of Fallujah, compelled him to leave the US military and join the anti-war movement. His activism has focused on our society’s moral obligation to our victims in Iraq, and to the responsibility of veterans to renounce their hero status in America.
Our philosophy at Islah is that the goal of a reconciliation project must not be merely to end violence and mend feelings and attitudes between an oppressor and an oppressed group. The absence of violence with the persistence of injustice is not positive peace, but the Pax Romana. This is the peace that empires seek, the stillness of the cemeteries, where all forms of resistance against oppression have been quelled and the status quo has been preserved in totality.
Reconciliation is not realistic or desirable until all injustices have been addressed. The first step of this process lies in reparations efforts.
We see truth-telling and reparations as essential steps towards any possible reconciliation. Through voluntary reparations, individuals who feel complicit in war, occupation, or displacement can begin to directly rebuild relationships with victimized people. Reparations do not just address the responsibility of one party for harming the other, but also help to abolish structures and systems of injustice, which are often lubricated by either outright misinformation or collective aphasia.
Truth-telling is essential for accountability. Trust cannot be restored between people while wrongs committed remain a secret known only to the perpetrator and the victim. Through reparations and truth-telling, a process of restorative justice can begin, and reconciliation may be possible.
Truth and Reconciliation in Iraq
Our goal is to work towards a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Iraq by first addressing the suffering that Iraqis experience as a direct result of the US-led invasion and occupation. Our goal is to create an enduring, restorative relationship between Iraqis and participants in the occupation of Iraq (soldiers and citizens of the occupying countries).
Ross is currently on the Board of Directors of ISLAH. He is also a graduate student and a writer. In 2004, he was a US Marine in the US-led occupation of Iraq. His experience there, in particular his experience during the 2nd siege of Fallujah, compelled him to leave the US military and join the anti-war movement. His activism has focused on our society’s moral obligation to our victims in Iraq, and to the responsibility of veterans to renounce their hero status in America. Photo by Dahr Jamail of Iraqi women using the only water available to them .
