Remembering the Wars

1.

I have noticed that some Missourians are converging on Columbia on Saturday 21 March “to mark the 6th Anniversary of the Iraq War.” The slogans for this gathering include the following: “Yes We Can! Begin the Peace Economy. End the Wars!” In the words of the flyer now circulating, the day will be a time for “Speakers! Music! Marching!” In remembering such a dread event as the U.S. invasion, I’m unsure how to interpret the exclamation points.

I make the following surmise: The invocation of “Yes we can!” is a direct reference, not to Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers, but to the new American president, whose campaign adopted this self-empowering mantra.

Further, I admit to the following nagging curiosity: How can we end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially given President Obama’s undeniable commitment to the well-being of the military-industrial complex? Why would the Missouri peace movement adopt Obama’s own borrowed phraseology when he is escalating the U.S. commitment to “win,” whatever that means, in Afghanistan?

Last, I ask the following question: Why say “begin the peace economy” now? Haven’t people been addressing this issue since the end of the Cold War? Is now a particularly auspicious time to do so? What evidence is there to suppose so?

2.

“I don’t really see that we’re the bad boy.”

“Why should I feel responsible?”

“But the thing which I think I will remember about Vietnam when I am a hundred years old and will talk about it with my grandchildren is the countryside, how beautiful the women looked, and the food.”[1]

3.

A few elementary truths…

The United States has no right to be in Iraq.

The United States has committed war crimes, crimes against peace, and crimes against humanity in Iraq.

No American officials are above the law, while they are in office or after leaving office.

American citizens have a responsibility for the crimes committed in their names by their government officials.

4.

“I don’t hate Americans. I hate the policy of invading other countries. And the debt, the distribution from the Paris Agreements, why haven’t they given us anything? We are very poor because of the war. The Americans don’t see how they destroyed everything, and they won’t pay their debt. I listen to the radio and hear how the Americans still have an embargo on our economy, and have no diplomatic relations with us. That’s not right.

This is the Vietnamese people’s land. Why did the Americans come to destroy us and make war, and why don’t they help now to rebuild our country? I am a farmer, I stay here. And I ask a simple question. Why did the Americans come here to destroy homes and kill people? And I ask you, who invaded who? If Vietnam decided to invade America they would have to send troops—the distance is far, thousands of kilometers. I ask you, if I came to your land to destroy and burn your houses, how would you feel? So I say, when the Americans came here to fight and destroy the Vietnamese people, they were wrong. The Vietnamese were not wrong to defend their land. And when the Americans lost the war, why didn’t they want to have relations with us?”[2]

5.

Since Israel’s assault on Gaza in late December and January, there has been increasing discussion about the need for supporting the Palestinian call to a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel.[3] Embraced by numerous organizations in Palestinian civil society, the BDS movement seeks to put the kind of pressure on Israel as was placed on apartheid South Africa by international civil society in the days when Nelson Mandela was still in prison.

U.S. citizens ought to consider whether BDS is an appropriate strategy here to force changes in Israeli policy, given that U.S. government has long been an enthusiastic accomplice with Israel in its torment of the Palestinians. But at this late date, six years into the American aggression against the Iraqi people, I wonder: Has anyone from within the U.S. or beyond called for a BDS movement against the United States, for example, by tactics such boycotting our artists and universities, and divesting from American companies? After all, the Bush administration was the singular instigator and relentless perpetrator of the war, occupation, mass death, torture, extraordinary rendition, destruction of Fallujah, devastation of culture, and unimaginably much more in Iraq.

6.

“I don’t think we ever lost hope or determination. But because the war was around for so many years the frustration was high and we ran out of what to do next. I mean first you have a picnic type of peace demonstration in the park, then you take it to Washington, or you have five demonstrations in five key cities. But that’s not working. They’re not paying attention. They don’t care if you have one peaceful demonstration. It doesn’t take any toll on the establishment. They can still pursue the war. There’s no price they have to pay. They don’t care if we don’t go to school. They don’t care if we’re out of our jobs and running around Washington or staying up all night. They don’t care.”[4]

7.

In a stirring conclusion to his brilliant examination of Gandhi’s relevance to resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict, Norman Finkelstein said,

Gandhi translated satyagraha as “hold on to the truth.” Herewith is our challenge: to hold on to the truth that what Israel has done to the Palestinians is wrong; to hold on to the truth that Israel’s refusal, backed by the U.S., to respect international law and the considered opinion of humankind is the sole obstacle to putting an end, finally, to their suffering. We can win if we hold on to the truth, and if, as the Negro spiritual put it with cognate wisdom, we “keep our eyes on the prize, and hold on.” That is, if we keep remembering what the struggle—the prize—is all about: not theoretical fad or intellectual provocation, not holier-than-thou radical posturing, but—however humdrum, however prosaic, by comparison—freeing the Palestinian people from their bondage….

Where was the world during the Nazi holocaust?, we still ask. Where is the world now? Has the Palestinian struggle gone on too long? Has it become boring and passé? Has the time come to move on? But the Palestinian people continue to be ground under, the merciless Israeli juggernaut keeps pressing on, confiscating yet more land, demolishing yet more homes, destroying yet more lives. The time now is not to move on—but to hold on![5]

This month, as people remember the U.S. invasion of Iraq, to which truths will we hold on? To whom will we communicate such truths? Will we blunt the edge of those truths so we can be more “effective” to get the ears of people in power? Will we challenge those who admit that, yes, some mistakes were made in Iraq during the Bush years, but things are different now? Will we remember our crimes with shame or will some of us say with a shrug that Iraq is now passé?

Do we have any idea how to free the Iraqi people from their bondage by us? Do we have any strategy for dealing with the permanent U.S. military bases and the business-as-usual profiteering of U.S. corporations in Iraq? In this period of daily talk of hundreds of billions of dollars for the economy, have we given thought to the case for reparations we owe the people of Iraq?

Will we interfere with the merciless American juggernaut as politicos and intellectuals soberly debate whether or not to add Iran to the other two Muslim nations we are currently dominating?