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The Ends and Means of Violence After 9/11
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Kristina M. Gronquist, W A M M
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The Iraq quagmire is, in large part, the result of the absence of intelligent discussion and debate about U.S. foreign policy post 9/11. With the exception of the ostracized and largely disregarded community of genuine peacemakers, few Americans dissented or raised the right questions about the Bush Administration’s violent response toward the people of the Middle East. The work before us now, as we confront a more hostile Middle East, is to replace violent strategies with means that value, on an equal basis, the human rights of all world citizens. The need is to recognize and expose the paradox of employing violence to stop violence, of waging war “for peace,” of condemning terror while conducting terror.
The prevailing notion that moral foreign policy ends can be achieved through military means, in which any “acceptable number” of civilian casualties and injuries occur, remains bankrupt on all levels. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq left thousands of innocent civilians dead. The regions are more unstable than before, more chaotic, more disillusioned.
The futility of pursuing policies where “the ends justifies the means” is readily apparant. The violent strategies the Bush Administration chooses, and a compliant and uninformed mainstream does not question, will blow back to haunt us, for in destroying human lives in other parts of the world, we destroy parts of ourselves and ultimately we sow our own destruction.
National strategies must recognize the affinity of humankind. The lives of American citizens are no more or less valuable than the lives of anyone else in this global community. We mourn equally for the fallen American soldiers and the Iraqi children killed by unexploded U.S. bombs. All human life is sacred.
No nation or cultural community has the empirical evidence to name itself, its occupants, or its proclaimed values as superior to other nations or cultural communities. Values of love, compassion, and self-determination are not rooted in any particular people, religion, or culture; they do not reside in just one country or portion of the world; they were not born of a particular group within a particular timeframe in history. Certainly, it is questionable whether a nation founded on the genocide of Native Americans and three centuries of slavery has any moral pulpit whatsoever.
In offering foreign policy alternatives, we must have the courage to address problems of violence and intolerance without participating in the same abhorred systems. The Bush Administration and prevailing “think tanks” fail to understand this. War always claims the lives of innocents and thus invalidates and clouds “justifiable” ends. We must reject the violence promoted by the prevailing order. It is a ludicrous concept, the attempt to secure peace through war. As Albert Einstein stated, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
Evident in today’s most unstable and terrifying state of affairs is the need to challenge the “realist” mindset of the status quo. The dominant ideologies of those who “lead” us are, in fact, leading us astray. Our work will be to reverse the damage caused by the cycle of violence with a paradigm that pursues peace without violence because it is clear to us that there exists no disconnect between ends and means.
Peace is achieved through justice. Without justice for the world’s aggrieved, peace is not achievable. Can the families of the victims of 9/11 possess any peace of mind knowing that at least ten thousand innocent Afghanis and Iraqis were slaughtered, when Osama bin Laden himself has not been brought to justice?
We oppose the futility of war; military occupations; violence and terror, in all its forms. The institution of slavery was once considered moral, and is now abolished. Let us next move to abolish war. Let us challenge the Bush Administration’s analysts who, in their inability to change mindset, have dreams, or embrace any suggestion of idealism, are able only to support the self-perpetuating policies of war, killing, and planetary destruction. We must also courageously expose the failure of prevailing institutions (think tanks, academia, media, religious communities) to condemn violent tactics. We shall then ardently and passionately replace violent means with radical and enlightened foreign policy alternatives. |
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© 2003 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
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Complete October 2003 Index - click here
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