Iraq war – Page 3 – Engaging Peace

The Post Glory Exuberance Disorder-PGED

Posted on June 9, 2017 by kathiemm

by Kathie MM

World War I Victory Parade – 700 Block Hamilton Street – Allentown PA. 1919.
In the public domain

Just google “perpetual war,” and you will find many articles on US involvement in what appear to be endless military actions around the world. Google “PTSD” and you will find many more articles on the pernicious effects of war on those who are sent to wage it.

Given the huge costs of war–financial and humanitarian–why do so many Americans continue to support their government’s military undertakings?

These excerpts from an article in Transcend Network by Johan Galtung provide one thought-provoking answer.

“Very well known is post trauma stress disorder, PTSD; no doubt a very painful disorder experienced by many, most, maybe by all of us. Something went very wrong: a shock, violence, physical, verbal, by and to individuals, groups in society, societies, groups of societies….

What would be the opposite of trauma? Evidently something positive…. [One] type of trauma is defeat in a war and the opposite is victory. Basking in the glory, not suffering the gloom of trauma. And then, if trauma could lead to a state of stress,…maybe deep and repeated glory could lead to a state of, let us call it exuberance?….

Death in a war is a major trauma for the bereaved and all, victory a major glory for many and all. The loser is traumatized, the winner glorified. The loser may suffer deep disorder, like nations traumatized by Western colonialism. Or they may say “Never Again” and launch a peace movement. The winner will do his best to keep war as an institution. Till his time comes to lose….

Because to any PTSD it makes sense to postulate a PGED [Post Glory Exuberance Disorder] as a strong cause having that PTSD as effect. If we want to reduce the PTSD, it is obviously insufficient to work on the victim side only, with therapies and remedies, when PGED reproduces PTSD. A whole system has to be changed….

Take the war system, … as alive as ever with threats of major wars in many places in the “Middle East” (West Asia), the USA-EU-Ukraine-Russia complex, and in the “Far East” (East Asia). The relatively peaceful continents are in the “Third World”, Latin America-Caribbean and Africa; the enormity of violence against them being structural more than direct war.

In this there is a message to those who naively believe that “development leads to peace”; right now it looks more like the other way around. Why, given all the suffering, the PTSD, caused by wars?

Because of PGED enjoyed by the winners. Not only basking in the glory of ticker tape parades and similar orgies, but in billions to the winners, incidentally also to some of the losers…. Wars make money flow.

The world’s major war machine is the United States of America. No US president winning a war has ever been blamed for human suffering caused…. The war in Vietnam was lost, a terrible trauma for US leaders, population, and the bereaved of 58,000 killed. But not of 3 million Vietnamese? Grotesque insensitivity. Questions raised were not about the political use of war but how to win future wars to overcome the “Vietnam syndrome”.

To win means collective glory and exuberance, individual profits in the billions high up, and some heroism, glory, and medals lower down. Of the millions killed and tens of millions bereaved: no word.

Try one minute, or an hour rather, to contemplate the total PTSD perpetrated by US warfare on the peoples of Afghanistan from 2001, and Iraq from 1991, and 2003. True, there has been no US PGED but even some US PTSD from the “unfinished wars” as CNN calls it. Also true, lots of US psychotherapy for PTSD has been made available both places.

But most in need of counseling are Americans hit by wanting PGED, demanding winnable wars as therapy; disasters to the victims all over, even counting in the millions, with enormities of PTSD in their wake.

We are victims of a negative psychology of individual therapy. And short on a positive psychology to provide work for negative and positive peace, for security and good relations to higher ups who want PGED. And to remove causes of war: unsolved conflicts and unreconciled traumas.”

______________________________________

Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, is founder of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU. Prof. Galtung has published 1670 articles and book chapters, over 470 Editorials for TRANSCEND Media Service, and 167 books on peace and related issues, of which 41 have been translated into 35 languages, for a total of 135 book translations, including ‘50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,’ published by the TRANSCEND University Press-TUP.

This is a shortened version of an article originally published on TMS: The Post Glory Exuberance Disorder-PGED.

Unjustifiable wars and moral imperatives: Another veteran speaks out

Posted on January 2, 2017January 1, 2018 by kathiemm

by Michael J. Corgan

I am writing in response to the recent post on anti-war veteran activist, Ross Caputi. I don’t consider myself a pacifist since I believe there will always be those who choose to resort to war for little or no good reason and others of us must deal with them.

However, sometimes we ourselves are the ones who resort to war for little or no good reason; those of us who were in the military as a profession have a particular moral responsibility to speak out.

Like my longtime colleague Andy Bacevich, I am a service academy graduate and served several tours in wars whose justification was uncertain at best. Like him, I am most concerned about our propensity to get into wars for which there was no justification: Mexico in 1846, Spain in 1898, Woodrow Wilson’s Latin American invasions, Granada and Panama in 1982, Iraq in 2003, to name just the clearest cases.

At the Naval War College in the late 1970s we began the study of Thucydides and Clausewitz to try to determine why we, a supposed 1st-rate military power lost to North Vietnam, a supposed 4th-rate military power.

From Thucydides one learns how easily the arrogance of power leads to foolish and disastrous military adventures in which many are killed for no worthy aim. From Clausewitz a more important lesson: know when to quit when you are not going to ‘win.’

What prompts my concern now is our war in Afghanistan, the longest war in our history. According to New York Times interviews with commanders there, we are farther from ‘winning’ than ever.

According to international law, we probably had justification for going to war after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11; that group operated with either the acquiescence of the Taliban or the inability of the Taliban to prevent use of their country as an operations base for the attackers. However, after 14 years, what is our justification for continuing a war that kills civilians and is no closer to being concluded than it ever was?

Five hundred years ago, Mongols couldn’t control the land. Two hundred years ago, the British began their futile attempt to control it. Then, in the last century, the Russians also failed. All that resulted was a lot of people dead.

Now, in our arrogance, we think we can create a stable country. How can we be effective nation builders when we are foreigners, don’t speak any of the languages, and are infidels. It isn’t working. Meanwhile people who want no part of either side are dying. There needs to be a solution to problems in that unhappy land but we and our war aren’t providing it even with all our incredible precision weapons and dropping of the largest conventional bomb ever.

The only right thing to do is to extract ourselves and admit the final answer, if there is one, will be attained by those who live there. The moral imperative is that we must go home.

Michael J, Corgan is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston University.

Here we go again!

Posted on July 1, 2016July 1, 2016 by kathiemm

By Guest Author Paul Shannon

Here we go again! Our leaders have learned nothing from their disastrous war in Iraq. That brutal intervention destroyed Iraq as a country, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, created a terrorist government in Baghdad, and set off a sectarian war, opening the gates of hell. Through those gates still another extremist group called ISIS has emerged. And then, of course, we decided to change the regime of Libya, opening the door to ISIS and all kinds of extremist groups there.

Over the past 15 years our country has already spent one trillion, five hundred billion dollars for war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia. These military actions have drained our country of the resources needed to create jobs and support a well-functioning society.

And yet, after all this bloodshed and all this treasure wasted, we are now told that the dangers in the Middle East are even greater than before we got into these wars!

A sane and moral person might see by now that war is not the best “solution” to the tragic and complex developments we are now seeing in the region. But our leaders have neither common sense nor morality. War seems to be the only thing they know how to do.

In response to being bombed by the U.S., ISIS has called for and stimulated violence against the West wherever it can. Now these brutal acts are being used by most of the U.S. foreign policy establishment to whip up war fever once again.

In its earlier sweep through Syria and Iraq, ISIS used modern American weapons that we sent into the region during previous military actions. We were promised that these weapons would bring stability; instead, they were and are used by ISIS to conquer large swaths of territory. ISIS’ success has also been possible because of the brutality inflicted on the Iraq people by an Iraq government that we armed to the teeth, but that refused to fight when challenged by ISIS.

A war on ISIS coordinated by the United States will cost billions more dollars and further weaken programs that all Americans need. It may or may not stop ISIS, but what new horrors will emerge in response to still another military incursion by foreign “Crusaders”?

The United States does not have an answer to the turmoil in the Middle East, a turmoil that we helped to create, starting with our military support to Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to fight “Communism” and “religious fundamentalism” in the 1980s.

We oppose the President’s long term war in Iraq and Syria, an enterprise involving air combat, thousands of special forces and weapons, and training to some very shady groups. We especially oppose all efforts to promote a bigger war against the Syrian regime.

Now is the time for the United States to play a different role, a role designed to promote peaceful solutions over time and support humanitarian aid to war victims through international institutions.

Now is the time to change course, and that change begins with the policy: No War in Iraq and Syria. We promote this policy not because we are blind to the suffering now occurring in the area, but because we know that any real solution must come from the peoples of that region themselves, not from a new U.S. war.

Paul Shannon is a member of the program staff of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in New England and a coordinator of the local Budget for All campaign and the national Peoples Budget Campaign. He is past editor of the Indochina Newsletter and director of the national film library of the AFSC. He has been teaching social science courses at a number of colleges for 39 years, including a course on the history of the Vietnam War. Currently he is working on several efforts to bring social justice, climate change and anti-war efforts together into a convergent movement for social change.

Do you hear what I hear?

Posted on June 16, 2014June 16, 2014 by kathiemm

: Photo by Tom Pratt.. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Every way I turn my head, I hear echoes from 9/11.

What I hear:

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. The excited heart of George W. Bush as he envisioned finishing what his father had started and planting Uncle Sam’s big boot on Iraqi oil fields.

No! No! No! The screams of babies, children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles as they’re being pierced, shattered, and torn apart by guns, mortars, bombs, and collapsing buildings, courtesy of the U.S. military.

Thud, thud, thud. Earth and sand being thrown on all those graves. There in Iraq. Here in the US.

What I don’t hear:

Triumphant cheers from Iraqi perpetrators of 9/11. And why not? Because Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The hum of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—there were no WMDs in Iraq until the US sent its troops.

Can you hear what I hear?

The echoes are getting louder. The reverberations are getting stronger.

Beat. Beat. Beat. The sound of the war drums. [http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/06/13-4 ]

My poet friend Tom Greening [www.tomgreening.com ] has a message that is relevant to all the Americans eager to gear up, flaunt their weapons, increase the Department of Defense budget, refill their pockets, distract people from problems at home, and once again make a bad situation worse:

Waging war is often occupational therapy
for men unsure about their
masculinity and life goals
and deluded about
how best to serve their country.
Patriotism should not be confused
with chauvinism and adolescent posturing.

What do I want to hear?

I want to hear all the anti-war groups, all the anti-violence groups, all the pro-peace groups, all the nonviolence groups join together and just say NO! No troops. No bombing. No more killing.

The image in the upper right of this post is a poster from Arlington West Memorial Project of the Veterans for Peace (Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license). Learn more about the Veterans for Peace projects at: http://www.arlingtonwestsantamonica.org/