Tag: chemical weapons

Fallujah: Death and destruction again, Part I

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Ian Hansen

As a supporter of human rights and locally-controlled democracy in Iraq, I am dismayed to see Fallujah fall to Al Qaeda.

Al-Qa'ida training manual
Al-Qa’ida training manual, CIA Virtual Museum. Image in public domain, from Wikimedia Commons

Some may see poetic justice for the U.S. in this development: the U.S. war of aggression has clearly backfired in Fallujah. But there’s no justice in it for the people of that historic city. I would have been happy to see Fallujah residents lead a nonviolent civil disobedience movement to regain control over their communities, but the ascendance of Al Qaeda there is a tragedy.

The people of Fallujah have already endured enough massacres, destruction of the city’s ancient buildings and mosques, and chemical weapons horrors from the U.S. siege in 2004. And although the draconian rule of the U.S.-aligned Iraqi Security Forces should be overthrown by local democratic rule, the siege by Al Qaeda is, if anything, a regression, not an improvement.

Al Qaeda is not a progressive organization, and there is nothing redeeming about it. It’s a violent oppressive scourge on Islam in much the same way that the Christian Coalition–and the U.S. military-industrial-ideological machine generally–is a violent and oppressive scourge on Christianity.

It is not a coincidence that Al Qaeda as a movement arises largely from the Arabian Peninsula, most of which is controlled by an oil-rich U.S.-Israeli ally (Saudi Arabia). Saudi Arabia–one of the most draconian autocracies in the Middle East–is playing a disgraceful role in the Syrian disaster right now; it just got around to abolishing slavery in 1962. Al Qaeda is at odds with the Saudi regime in obvious ways, but in other obvious ways Al Qaeda mirrors its core values.

And I don’t think that violent decision-makers in the U.S. actually want Al Qaeda to disappear (though until more evidence pours in, this is more of an accusation against our leadership’s unconscious intentions than their conscious ones).

Even at the time of 9/11, Al Qaeda was originally a pretty paltry and unpopular group. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the drone assassinations, and the other Joint Special Operation Command-CIA paramilitary killings all over the world seem to have only magnified Al Qaeda’s international presence.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.

Modern warfare: Losing ground?

Posted on by kathiemm

November 6 is International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.

U.S. helicopter spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam
U.S. spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam. Image in public domain.

Why?

International wars and internal armed conflicts ravage environments as well as killing and maiming men, women, and children, leaving behind environments that are dangerous and unusable long after the fighting ends.

Formerly arable land and drinkable water can be polluted for decades, and abandoned munitions can continue to take lives and limbs—not only of enemies or even former enemies but of innocent civilians and wildlife.

Is there an international requirement that military leaders everywhere must lack the necessary gene for imagining tomorrow?

Must they be unable to recognize that no matter how fierce the current fighting, today’s enemies may be tomorrow’s allies? That the environment we are ruining today may limit tomorrow’s life-sustaining food, water, and air for our own children and grandchildren, not just the offspring of today’s designated enemy?

During and after destructive armed conflicts, there are people and groups that attempt to repair the damage done. We see such efforts regarding, for example,

Efforts at reconciliation with “enemies” and undoing destruction of environments are essential but we learn as children that prevention trumps cure.

Time to act. Support the bans on and destruction of:

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

The U.S. government’s assault on children

Posted on by kathiemm

We’ve heard considerable rhetoric recently about the vileness of subjecting children to poison gas–and vile it is. So are other means by which children are maimed and murdered, and the government of the United States is complicit in vile acts against the world’s children.

For example, being burned to death–as happened to thousands of children in the World War II firebombing of cities in Japan and Germany–is ghastly, whether it kills or scars for life.

Being born with birth defects related to Agent Orange, or being killed or maimed by unexploded ordinance (a continuing scourge for children in Vietnam) is a legacy of U.S. government intervention.

An article in the Independent reports, “Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.”

According to a 2012 Children’s Defense Fund report [opens as pdf], “In 2008, 2,947 children and teens died from guns in the United States and 2,793 died in 2009 for a total of 5,740—one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years.” Any government that does not fight the gun lobby is complicit.

There is an international chemical weapons convention to which our government has alluded in trying to make its case for bombing Syria.

There is also a convention that prohibits the use of anti-personnel mines, which the U.S. has failed to ratify. How does a government that has authorized widespread “collateral damage” have the moral authority to unilaterally punish other violators of international conventions?

Let us hope and pray that the current administration listens to the millions of American voices calling for a nonviolent alternative to raining terror on children and other innocent civilians in yet another Middle Eastern country.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Weapons of war: rape

Posted on by kathiemm

All weapons of war are weapons of destruction and pain. Previous posts have reminded readers of the pervasive lethal effects of, for example, nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and landmines.

Another violent and devastating tactic recognized by the United Nations Security Council as a weapon of war is rape.

In its resolution calling for an end to sexual violence against women, the Security Council said, “Women and girls are particularly targeted by the use of sexual violence, including as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instill fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.”

A recent report from the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights focused on the horrendously high rates of rape by warring groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and the Dafur region of Sudan.

Unfortunately, we must add to the list of wartime horrors the rape of U.S. servicewomen by U.S. servicemen. Watch the video above; you will not easily forget.

And for a horrifying example of moral disengagement in regard to the rape of women in the U.S. military, watch Liz Trotta of Fox News blame the victims.

If you watch these and other videos, you will want to do something. Stop Rape Now, the U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict agency, provides several suggestions, including the simple action of crossing your arms. Learn what you can do to stop this weapon of war.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology