Tag: death

Which way will you go?

Posted on by kathiemm
World War II poster. In the public domain.

 

To ring in the New Year, with its new choices and pathways, here is the fourth post in our current series from guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella.*

Beyond Propaganda, Media Deception and Abuses, and Lies

The United States of America and its closest international allies have chosen the path of war, with tragic consequences for the survival of humanity and our natural world. Our foreign and domestic policies are destructive — serving the political, economic, and financial interests of a limited number of individuals and organizations. Unless we retreat from this path, and choose the path of peace, we will find ourselves doomed to endless domestic and international violence and war.

The US government has fashioned an explicit global domestic and foreign policy that encourages endless fractures and divisions between and among nations, regions, genders, religions, ethnic groups/races, and social-economic classes. The government is pitting humanity against itself and against the natural world, promoting global chaos and collapse.

Efforts by the US power structure to use the deceptive “patriotic” attractions and seductions of war — blindly mantled in glory, soldiers’ bravery, and martial domination, replete with songs, parades, banners, and celebrations of victory and nationalism — are deceptive attractions and seductions of our bodies, minds, and spirits.

How many more must die from this lie that finds virtue in war? How many more must be wounded, traumatized, and punished by starvation, torture, and social upheaval and dislocation? Have we no conscience? Have we lost all sense of human dignity and worth? Have we no awareness of our assault on nature? Have we no sense of the exploitation and exhaustion of our natural resources?

Our leaders come before us, offering  plaintive explanations designed to sculpt their destructive legacy in our minds as legacies of brilliant strategy, moral and ethical choices, and wise and learned tactics and actions. Through daily exposure to these messages, will humanity continue to accept such lies? Or can we choose a different path in 2015?

*This post is adapted from an essay originally published by Transcend Media Service at

https://www.transcend.org/tms/2014/10/two-paths-in-the-wood-choice-of-life-or-war/

9/11 and just war

Posted on by kathiemm
9-11 We Remember
U.S. Marines in Iraq remember 9/11. Image in public domain.

For most Americans, the words “September 11” continue to evoke fear, anger, distrust, and a desire to return to the way things used to be before we were attacked on our own soil.

September 11, 2011, we learned, to our horror, that we too, the golden people on the hill, are vulnerable.

In this blog, we have devoted several posts to just war principles.

Based on just war principles, can the attackers argue that the 9/11 assault on largely civilian sites in the US was justified?

We can say No in regard to many of those principles:

  • The attack was not undertaken as a last resort.
  • The attack was not committed by a legitimate authority.
  • The attack was committed in pursuit of a hopeless cause, which is considered not morally justifiable by just war principles. (Attacking the U.S. could be seen as a hopeless cause.)
  • Establishing peace was not the goal of the attack (as stated by Bin Laden himself).
  • The attackers did not discriminate between combatants and civilians; worse, they deliberately targeted civilians.

Whether the attack violated two other just war principles is a matter of debate. Specifically, for a war to be just:

  • It must have a just cause. Although some people around the world would argue that there was some truth to Bin Laden’s diatribe concerning American aggression against Muslims in the Middle East, the attacks were not undertaken to prevent or stop a genocide.
  • The violence inflicted must be proportional to the injury suffered. The death, pain, and destruction created by the attacks was tremendous. Was it disproportionately high in relation to any violence the U.S. might have been responsible for prior to the 9/11 attacks?

Finally, many proponents of just war principles in the U.S. (including President Jimmy Carter) have argued that the post 9/11 attack on Iraq by the U.S. was also not a just war.

As you consider the just war principles stated above, what do you think about this issue?  Was the US invasion of Iraq justified? How about the invasion of Afghanistan? How about US violence elsewhere in the Middle East since 9/11? Have these been just wars? If not, why is the US still killing people there?  And what are you going to do to stop it?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Close your eyes

Posted on by kathiemm 
Close your eyes and tell me what do you see? 

Is reality harsher than your vision of peace?
When I open my eyes I see reality and greed,
A world where men choose power and let their souls bleed,
I see the murder of Hamza Al Khateeb,

I witness his death though it’s hard to perceive,
When I close my eyes I wish that you could see,
The vision in my mind that causes my heart to bleed,
I close my eyes and I see a vision of peace,

A vision you could truly say was hard to believe,

I see fallen angels and faces I miss,

Reality is cruel so I see what I wish.

The world in a state where division is rare,

Where if my brother was to bleed every soul would care,

If another needed time everybody would share,
Where through the words of a man his soul would be bare.
Lies, greed, intolerance and hate,

Would be a vision of the past long locked away,

Pain would not exist nor would terror be disguised,

Fear would be a myth no longer seen in your eyes.
When I breathe my last breath and I close my eyes,

Take my vision from this page and witness it through your life.

San'aa Sultan

 

Double-duty death: War and environmental destruction

Posted on by patdaniel

Book review of Barry Sanders’ The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism
By Pat Daniel, Ph.D., managing editor of Engaging PeaceThe Green Zone: The environmental costs of militarism

We are all too familiar with war’s impact on people and politics, but how often do we consider its damage to the Earth? The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism provides a frightening glimpse of the ecological menace known as the U.S. armed forces.

Barry Sanders’ research met obstacles at every turn. Information is secret, not measured or recorded, not available to the public. Nevertheless, this Pulitzer Prize nominated author substantiates a sobering and terrifying conclusion: The U.S. military is not only the greatest polluter on the planet, but also is playing the lead role in speeding us toward a global warming catastrophe.

The Green Zone is a must-read for members of both the peace and environmental movements. The arts community, too, will be awakened by the stunning images contributed by students of Pacific Northwest College of Art. Here is just a sample of the horrors that Sanders exposes, primarily from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Radiation poisoning

We fight conventional wars—not nuclear—right? Wrong.

  • Most U.S. munitions are made with depleted uranium that leaves behind radioactive dust. Easily absorbed, the dust is responsible for alarming increases in deaths, cancers, birth defects and other medical problems among citizens in war-torn countries, as well as U.S. veterans. Indigenous wildlife endures similar impacts.
  • Because of the long half-life of radioactive residue, the ecological destruction will continue for decades or centuries to come.

Air, soil and water contamination

  • Fragile soils, agricultural lands and natural vegetation have been destroyed by the impact of heavy vehicles, or made unusable by firebombing, land mines and unexploded cluster bombs.
  • Toxic chemicals from weapons, vehicles and military targets such as fertilizer plants pollute the air, fresh water supplies, and ocean habitats.

Energy use and carbon pollution

Ironically, while the U.S. military devotes much of its efforts toward insuring the flow of oil supplies, the institution itself is the world’s largest consumer of fuels:

  • In military speak, fuel consumption is measured in “barrels per hour,” “gallons per minute,” and “gallons per mile.”
  • The M-1 Abrams tank gets 0.2 miles per gallon; the Apache helicopter, 0.5; the Humvee, 4.0. The F-16 Fighter Jet uses 28 gallons per minute; the B-52 Stratocruiser, an astonishing 500 gallons per minute.

As Sanders demonstrates, if every aspect of the non-military sector instantly stopped generating greenhouse gases, the military’s carbon footprint alone will propel the world toward catastrophe.

“Indeed, if scientists are correct in telling us that we must reduce the burning of fossil fuels by seventy percent…then surely they must see the obvious: We must put a stop to war.”

Pat Daniel, Ph.D., managing editor of Engaging Peace