November 2017 – Page 2 – Engaging Peace

An Honorable Marine

Posted on November 11, 2017December 10, 2017 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

He doesn’t know it (yet), but on this Veteran’s Day, I am honoring a particular veteran, a former Marine, Ross Caputi, for his enduring courage.

It takes courage for anyone, in or out of military uniform, to face death, injury, terror, loss. It takes an extra dose of courage to speak out when you recognize that you have been duped by your government, tricked into participating in an unjustifiable bloodbath.

In November 2014, Ross provided a veteran’s perspective on Veteran’s Day: Inconvenient memories: Veteran’s Day 2014.” The message of that essay, excerpted here, is as crucial as ever.

“Most Americans believe Veterans Day is a day of remembrance; in reality, it’s generally a day of forgetting.

On Veterans Day, people applaud as veterans march in parades, wearing their medals and fancy uniforms. People who have never seen or smelt war’s rotting corpses bask in an atmosphere of pride and patriotism, suppressing inconvenient memories of hundreds of thousands of civilians killed in Iraq, millions in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands in Korea, and so on throughout our nation’s short and bloody history….

On Veterans Day, we are called upon to remember America’s wars, sanitized of the harm they brought to countless victims around the world, and abstracted from their historical and political context. We are asked to support our veterans while forgetting the reality of what they participated in…. But my experience as a Marine in Iraq [see series on engaging peace starting in May 2012] has forever changed the way I look at war and the way I feel about being a veteran.

Let’s change the way we celebrate Veterans Day. Let’s make it a day of learning, not forgetting. Let’s be sympathetic to the ways veterans have suffered without ignoring the suffering of civilian victims. Let’s teach and learn about the wars in which our veterans have participated…. Let’s end the reflexive support for popular mythology, the jingoism, the cheer leading, and the forgetting. Let’s refuse to encourage the next generation to follow in the footsteps of today’s veterans.”

Note from Kathie MM: Amen.

Ross is the founding director of the Justice for Fallujah Project. He is also the director of the documentary film Fear Not the Path of Truth: a veteran’s journey after Fallujah

What Does Social Science Tell Us About the Link Between the Presence of Firearms and Violence? Part 2

Posted on November 10, 2017November 11, 2017 by kathiemm

By Alice Locicero

Note from Kathie MM: In this second part of her essay on firearms and violence, Dr. Alice Locicero shares information from the social science research community and asks the vital question: Who benefits when such information is withheld, when discussion of potential regulations of gun sales is suppressed.

Perhaps the more critical questions are: Who benefits from arms sales? Does the proliferation of gun sales and open carry laws make YOU feel safer?

In October, 2017, a Scientific American article discusses 30 studies that, by and large, show that more guns make us less, not more, safe….

The science linking the presence of guns with increased violence could benefit from research by the Centers for Disease Control. ..but the CDC is specifically forbidden by law—a law that totally defies common sense and thumbs its nose at science—to study gun violence. (If you are shocked, your reaction is normal.)

When there is so much scientific evidence pointing in one direction, one has to look at the forces silencing those who would do research, act on the results of research—or even talk about it. Ask yourself: Who benefits from suppressing science and suppressing all conversation about regulating firearms?

For the complete article on which this post is based, go here

Note from Kathie MM: You decide: Are health and human services being addressed when research on guns is not allowed in a major public, tax-supported institution that is supposed to protect the citizens of the country? Let’s repeat the earlier question: Who benefits when such research is prohibited? Who would want Congress to pass such a law?

Alice LoCicero, Ph.D., is president-elect of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict and Violence, Division 48 of the Anmerican Psychological Association.

What Does Social Science Tell Us About the Link Between the Presence of Firearms and Violence? Part 1

Posted on November 8, 2017March 9, 2021 by kathiemm

by Alice LoCicero

Note from Kathie MM: This is the first in a two-part series based on the Psychology Today website.

Another day in the US, another mass killing with firearms.

The current public conversation about firearms is disturbing, because when anyone posts or publicly states the possibility of even what are known as “common sense” gun regulations — such as restrictions on automatic weapons or background checks before purchase in all situations (including so-called gun shows) — there is apt to be an aggressive and hostile backlash.

The most recent time when we thought that — after the Las Vegas mass shooting — there might be a glimmer of light where Congress might be willing to at least ban so-called “bump stocks” that allow a semi-automatic weapon to shoot like an automatic weapon — Congress froze and did nothing. (But the state of Massachusetts has acted to ban them.)

The situation is worrisome, since the number of firearms in the US in 2017 is 300 million, very close to one per person. Perhaps more disturbing still, half of those 300 million firearms are owned by just 3% of Americans; about 9 million Americans own about 150 million firearms.

Let’s talk about just a few highlights of the relevant gun-use science. Early research is summarized briefly in a 2013 Psychology Today article by Professor Brad Bushman.

Professor Bushman recently published another study, with over 1,000 participants, showing that images of firearms — whether used by police or soldiers on the one hand, or by criminals on the other — increased the accessibility of aggressive thoughts.

In 2014, Andrew Anglemyer, a scientist from the University of California, San Francisco, reported that an analysis of the results of 16 studies “… found strong evidence for increased odds of suicide among persons with access to firearms compared with those without access … and moderate evidence for … increased odds of homicide victimization when persons with and without access to firearms were compared.…”

Note from Kathie MM: Please join the dialogue. What will it take to get people to heed social science research about how access to guns increases the propensity to use them? Join us in our discussions of these issues.

Is it OK to kill innocent civilians to defeat international terrorism? Views from the U.S, Israel, and South Africa

Posted on November 6, 2017 by kathiemm

In the public domain. Author=Roland Geider

By Michael Shachat

Note from Kathie MM: Michael wrote an honors thesis under my direction two years ago when he was a senior at Boston University. This post is based on his thesis.

Why is it that so many ordinary law-abiding individuals are able to justify actions that lead to the loss of innocent life when they are told those actions are necessary to fight international terrorism?

One answer may lie in the extent to which people become morally disengaged when they are fearful—that is, the extent to which they justify violence by strategies such as euphemistic labeling (e.g., referring to civilian deaths as collateral damage) and moral justification (or “pseudo-moral” justification) (e.g., assuming the violence that led to civilian deaths was committed in self-defense)..

These ways of thinking contrast dramatically with morally engaged reasoning —raising principled moral arguments against aggression (nobody has the right to harm anybody regardless of circumstances) and “telling it like it is” (calling civilian casualties murder).

For my study, I analyzed response from 328 participants from three different countries (Israel, the U.S., and South Africa) to the statement “Sometimes the heads of a government have the right to kill innocent civilians in order to fight international terrorism.”

My analyses revealed that participants from these three very different countries with different histories from different parts of the world did not differ in the extent to which they used morally disengaged reasoning to justify the killing of innocent civilians.

Does this finding surprise you? Would you have expected that citizens in one of those countries might have been more likely to show moral disengagement than citizens in one or both of the other countries?

There were differences. The US participants were significantly less likely than the South African participants to offer morally engaged arguments. Does that surprise you? Can you think of anything that has happened recently to people in those two countries that might account for that difference?

Another difference was that more women than men made morally engaged argument. (Any surprises there?)But it is encouraging that, in all three countries, participants. provided more morally engaged than disengaged arguments.

If we can find ways to strengthen morally engaged thinking, perhaps there is hope for the future.

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