Thursday, September 16, 2010

Terrorism Needs a Stronger Deterrent

We citizens of America agree:

We want a strong, secure country. Some of us also want all the world's citizens to live in peace and have resources to provide for themselves. A few of us see the two as deeply connected. We believe this ancient conservative idea from Jesus - "Do unto others as you would that they should do to you."

Our nation has been obsessed with a foreign policy do to other nations precisely what we don't want done to us. We want it done on their soil, not ours. It's amazing how so many citizens and media pundits believe it's just fine to make the nations of the world fear us. It's not just because Jesus disagreed that it's not working.

Famine, wars, insurgencies, terrorism and even genocide are driving the nations of the world frantic. Hopelessness is rampant. That's the hotbed of terrorism. That's where the "war on terrorism" should have begun, with more powerful, non-lethal weapons against what menaces human beings.

Remember our world before 9/11/2001?

Nine years ago this past Sunday evening I was in China. Bonnie and I just wanted to get a good night's sleep as we knew our preparation for the following day of instruction was fraught with uncertainty.

I had just dozed off when the phone rang. I fumbled, and my sleepy mind accidentally substituted my newly learned "hue" for "hello." Our colleague, a fellow English instructor from our Foreign Language Department at XiHua University, got right to the point.

"Are you watching the evening news?" he asked.

"No, I was in bed," I said.

"I am very sorry, but you must turn on the news (CCCTV English), something terrible has happened in your country," he said.

"Wow, what arrogance! This must be something," I thought, but did not say it.

"What's happening?" I asked.

"Your nation has been attacked. A large building in New York City is on fire," he told me.

"Attacked? How?" I still didn't believe him.

"Some terrorists commandeered a passenger plane and crashed it into the World Trade Center, killing themselves and all the passengers."

Immediately I thought of the "War of the Worlds" broadcast on radio decades ago. I thought of the virtual reality special affects of Star Wars, etc.

"Listen, we have hoaxes like this in the US. This is too preposterous to be true. Let's look at this in the morning." I did not turn on the TV.

An hour later the phone rang again. It was the Communist Party Head of the Foreign Affairs Department, in charge of our security. He told me it was two buildings, two passenger planes, thousands of people had lost their lives, and the Pentagon was also being attacked. The United States was at war, he said. They were concerned we would want to return to the USA immediately.

I finally woke up and agreed to watch the news. I told him I would return his call in a few minutes.

Distrusting Chinese TV, I turned on the computer. I found ABC news, the only non-Chinese news source not regularly blocked by Chinese censors. Yes, it was real.

He called back. I told him I suspected our placement organization, Mennonite Partners in China, would support us staying in China all the more since the attack. No, we were not at all convinced we should immediately return home.

We were amazed the next few weeks with the outpouring of sympathy from students, our colleagues, and even the university president.

In the next weeks I heard the words of students, echoed from other nations, "This tragedy has brought us together with America. Through 9/11 you understand now what we have been going through."

Remember? Our TV media focused on a few hateful extremist Palestinians demonstrating and celebrating after 9/11, with a "serves them (the USA) right" attitude.

But our Chinese students heard the Palestinians who abhorred the violence and celebrated their hope of new solidarity with America. Not being in the US, I got the information that people such as the Palestinians were celebrating hope that America would practice justice, economic fairness, and the end economic blockades and military occupations.

Our media, loyal to our government, deleted this information. It was available from international news sources.

Our President's statement the following week to "…do what it takes," nurtured the media-driven perception: foreign anger at America is spawned by hate of our democracy, jealousy of our economy, and disagreement with our basic values and religious beliefs. So the Iraq war was prepared and justified with this and other false understandings. Bombing began, the invasion was launched, and our students' statements of support gave way to distrust, suspicion, and outright hatred of the president and our foreign policy. Being in China became less pleasant.

Some Resources on a non-lethal, more powerful war on terrorism:

Central Asia Intitute

Victim Offender Reconciliation Program

Human Rights Watch

The Internationalist Magazine

The Third Side at Harvard Law School

Jimmy Carter's peace center

Kroc institute Notre Dame

Peace Corps

Greenpeace


There are hundreds more.

 

All major religious have peace centers established for research and practice of waging peace in human conflict.  Search on line, for example "Peace Judaism"

 

Nearly all major universities have centers for the scientific study of peace and human conflict research.  Search on line "graduate peace studies"

 

Many of these centers are relatively new, but the research and practice itself dates back to well before Jesus of Nazareth, 30 AD, probably the world's most important peace activist. Look up the word Irene Bible in a Greek language lexicon, or peace Jesus in English.

--

David Graber


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