Volume 3 Number 4 Fall 2017 Donations Accepted Peace in Our Times A Veterans For Peace publication exposing the root causes and enormous costs of war Trump Bringing Us to Brink of War with North Korea

USS Ronald Reagan in formation with ships from Navy Strike Group Five and South Korea’s Navy during Invincible Spirit drills off the Korean Peninsula. Photo: U.S. Navy

By Christine Ahn Washington, a ­nuclear aircraft carrier, in dangerous brinksmanship, is willing by imposing more sanctions and forcing barrelled toward North Korea, and stra- to endanger millions of innocent lives in other nations to cut ties. Third, Ameri- Tensions have been running high be- tegic assets have been moved from U.S. North Korea, South Korea, and Japan— cans must realize that we are mired in tween the United States and North Korea bases in Guam and Okinawa to South and possibly in Guam, Hawaii, and the this conflict because of the large-scale since Donald Trump entered the White ­K o r e a . continental United States. Second, diplo- U.S. destruction of North Korea during House. But the two countries haven’t been As the situation spirals rapidly out of macy with North Korea has succeeded in the 1950–53 Korean War. this close to war since 1994, when the ad- control, three important points should be the past, but it requires actually engaging ministration of Bill Clinton weighed a kept in mind. First, Trump, by engaging with North Korea, not further isolating it continued on page 22 … first strike on North Korea. The spark that ignited the already in- cendiary relations between Washington and Pyongyang was President Donald Trump’s U.N. speech on September 19, America’s when he called the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un “Rocket Man” and threat- ened to “totally destroy North Korea,” a Vietnam Amnesia sovereign nation of more than 25 million people. In a revival of Harry S. Truman’s By Thomas A. Bass McCarthyism and George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” Trump cast North Korea, Everything wrong with the new 10-part PBS documen- Iran, and Venezuela as rogue regimes tary on the Vietnam War is apparent in the first five min- that Washington is prepared to confront. utes. A voice from nowhere intones about a war “begun in He noted that Congress just handed him good faith” that somehow ran off the rails and killed millions $700 billion, making the U.S. military of people. We see a firefight and a dead soldier in a body “the strongest it has ever been.” bag being winched into a helicopter, as the rotor goes thump, Over the weekend, Secretary of State thump, thump, like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Then we Rex Tillerson said that the United States cut to a funeral on Main Street and a coffin covered in Stars has a few open channels of communi- and Stripes, which multiply, as the camera zooms out, into cation with North Korea, making a nod dozens and then hundreds of flags, waving like a hex against toward potential diplomacy. But Trump warmongers who might be inclined to think that this film is quickly undermined his own Secretary of insufficiently patriotic. State when he tweeted that Tillerson was Everything right with the documentary is apparent in the Vietnam 1967: U.S. Marines evacuate a wounded comrade during “wasting his time trying to negotiate with continued on page 3 … Operation Pecos, a search-and-destroy mission. Little Rocket Man.” The USS George 2 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

Letters A Note from the Editors The Weight of Memory So this is how it ends. Where the be- version of history. ginning meets the end. The center of Or should we bear this horrible weight Maya Lin’s remarkable monument to the to our own graves? To what end? Who, war—The Wall—begins with the first after all, gets to hold the mirror of these American death in Vietnam, marches years up to our faces? Who writes The down 10 feet and then, listing the daily Iliad again? How, possibly, could anyone death toll, panel after panel, descends get it all right? Despite the attempt to glo- eastward into the ground, only continue rify this war, it ends in disgrace for the the litany on the westernn end, rising United States and utter disaster for the back up, panel after panel, to 10 feet and Vietnamese. Their land and their lives then dropping down to meet the begin- have been wasted on a level that boggles ning, where it records the name of the the mind. And as the crushing truth of last American to die in that war. Death this moment in history disappears into marches on, looping back onto itself. And the mists around Dak To, we hear of a this is to capture only the 58,300 Amer- “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and the ican names of those killed; if The futile attempts of Burns and Novick and Wall were to include the names of the company to build it for us. It is not to be. Vietamese killed, it would stretch out But that does not mean we should give up. for another nine miles. Visitors can reach Their attempt has failed to complete its out and touch a name, but all they take mission of healing, but it has succeeded away is their own reflections. There but on many other levels. It has opened many by the grace of some unknown force go I, doors that we should not back away from thinks the veteran; other visitors walking if we want to insure that all those young down that path are also ambushed, met by men and women whose names are on The more than they ever could have imagined. Wall have not died in vain. We owe that to The 10th episode of Ken Burns’ and our children and grandchildren. Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War begins To that end, Veterans For Peace has with Tim O’Brien reading from his book, mounted a campaign to bring more voices The Things They Carried, and ends with to the table. Our Full Disclosure project in- O’Brien reading from the same passage. cludes an opportunity for anyone who was His exquisite melding of the literal and the directly impacted by this war to write a let- figurative captures the crushing banality ter to The Wall. We promise to deliver that of this war and its deadly universality. The letter to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial soldiers on both sides, on all sides through- on Memorial Day. Over the past three years out history, have carried, will carry, the we have delivered 371 letters. At 10:30 am same things into war—their past lives and on each Memorial Day, we lay our letters, their last breaths, along with the trivial your letters, at the foot of The Wall in en- baggage of their daily life. The only thing velopes inscribed with “Please Read Me” they are missing is their futures. across the top. And people read the letters truth is that the liberty of a democracy is Meanwhile, the living stumble on— before the National Parks Service collects American Fascism not safe if the people tolerate the growth of POWs return home, politicians squabble them and archives them for future gener- “American Fascism, 1944 and Today” private power to a point where it becomes over what they think is important, work- ations to read. And they weep. And hug. by Henry Scott Wallace (Peace in Our stronger than their democratic state itself. ing stiffs get up and go to work, children And carry out of that memorial a richer, Times, Summer 2017), about his Proges- That, in its essence, is Fascism—owner- move on to learn, and then unlearn, the deeper sense of all that has been lost. sive grandfather, Vice President Henry ship of Government by an individual, by a basic truth of life on this planet—it all In some form or fashion each letter Wallace, reminds me that I’ve been say- group, or by any other controlling power.” must come to an end. Should we, those seems to say to those who died so young, ing for a very long time that I fought fas- This startling and predictive message who have survived this war, both the vet- “I am sorry. I am sorry that I did not do cism in Europe during WWII, and I’m goes on, with a rundown of the examples eran and his or her loved ones (there are more to save your lives.” And we, the sur- still fighting it here at home. When I was a we understand today as the “1 percent” eight women’s names on The Wall), “Let vivors, emerge from the experience of de- boy, in the thirties, fascism here was more vs. the rest of us; Roosevelt’s percentages It Be,” as the Beatles implore us to do? livering these letters, from having written blatant; it’s since become sophisticated, are almost the same as those we’re famil- “This is Saigon signing off” is the last some of them, with a redoubled commit especially over the European versions. I iar with. This document is easily found on directive issued from CIA headquarters ment to abolish war from this earth. You claim that the fascist term is applicable to your computers; read the whole thing, and in Vietnam. Henry Kissinger tells us to can join us by sending your letter to rawl- the present “President” as well as to our get a rare history lesson. “move on,” as if we were loiterers gath- [email protected] before May 15, 2018. whole so-called democratic system. Jay Wenk ering around, clogging up the flow of his —Doug Rawings Franklin Roosevelt, Henry Wallace’s WWII combat infantry survivor boss, sent a message to Congress in 1938, Woodstock, N.Y. titled “On Curbing Monopolies.” The sec- ond sentence reads, and I quote, “The first

Peace in Our Times Peace in Our Times is published quarterly by Veterans For Peace. Bundles of 80 are $35, and individual subscriptions are $15/year. To donate, subscribe, or order bundles, visit peaceinourtimes.org or send a check to Veterans For Peace, 1404 North Broadway, St. Louis, MO 63102. Letters, poems, articles, and ­images may be submitted to [email protected].­ Editorial staff: Tarak Kauff, Managing Editor; Ellen Davidson, Mike Ferner, Becky Luening,­ Ken Mayers, Doug Rawlings Website coordinator: Fred Nagel­ Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 3 Vietnam Amnesia … continued from page 1 next few minutes, as the film rolls back (literally running several scenes back- ward) into a trove of archival footage and music from the times and introduces the voices—many of them Vietnamese—that will narrate this history. The film relies heavily on writers and poets, including Americans Tim O’Brien and Karl Mar- lantes and Vietnamese Le Minh Khue, and Bao Ninh, whose Sorrow of War ranks as one of the great novels about Vietnam or any war. The evenhandedness, the flag-draped history, bittersweet narrative, redemp- tive homecomings, and the urge toward “healing” rather than truth are cinematic topoi that we have come to expect from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick through their films about the Civil War, Prohibi- tion, baseball, jazz, and other themes in U.S. history. Burns has been mining this territory for 40 years, ever since he made his first film about the Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, and Novick has been at his side since 1990, when he hired her as an archi- Ngo Dinh Diem inspects South Vietnamese troops. vist to secure photo permissions for The Civil War and she proved the indispens- ficers who came to resupply him in his harder than fighting the Viet Cong. is not mentioned in the film, nor is Lans- able collaborator. mountain redoubt, when suddenly the By Episode Two, “Riding the Tiger” dale identified in a photo of him seated In their interviews, Burns does most of film shifts from black and white to color (1961–1963), we are heading deep into next to Diem.) A cable had been drafted the talking, while the Yale-educated, for- and we are watching a former American Burns territory. The war has been framed instructing the U.S. ambassador to get rid mer Smithsonian researcher hangs back. soldier talk about his Viet Cong-induced as a civil war, with the United States de- of Diem. (A similar cable, sent a decade Novick receives joint billing in the cred- fear of the dark, which makes him sleep fending a freely elected democratic gov- later, would greenlight Diem’s assassina- its to their films, but most people refer to with a night light, like his kids. Even be- ernment in the south against Commu- tion.) The evening before the cable went them as Ken Burns productions. (After out, Diem launched a fierce attack on the all, he is the one with an “effect” named Binh Xuyen crime syndicate, led by river after him: a film-editing technique, now Southern Vietnam was never an independent pirate Bay Vien, who had 2,500 troops standardized as a “Ken Burns” button, under his command. When the battle was which enables one to pan over still pho- country. Defeated French forces regrouped over, a square mile of Saigon had been tographs.) One wonders what tensions ex- leveled and 20,000 people left homeless. ist between Novick and Burns: the patient in southern Vietnam after 1954, which is when The French financed their colonial archivist and the sentimental dramatist. U.S. Air Force colonel and CIA agent Edward empire in Asia through the opium trade The dichotomy between history and (another fact left out of the film). They drama shapes all 10 parts of the PBS se- Lansdale began working to elevate this skimmed the profits from Bay Vien’s river ries, which begins with the French coloni- pirates, who were also licensed to run zation of Vietnam in 1858 and ends with former colony to nationhood. the national police and Saigon’s brothels the fall of Saigon in 1975. As the film and gambling dens. Diem’s attack on the cuts from patient Novickian exposition Binh Xuyen was essentially an attack on to Burnsian close-ups, it sometimes feels fore we get to Ho Chi Minh and his defeat nists invading from the north. American the French. It was an announcement by as if it were edited by two people making of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, boys are fighting a godless enemy that the CIA that the French were finished in two different movies. We can be watching we are watching a U.S. Marine describe Burns shows as a red tide creeping across Southeast Asia. The United States had fi- archival footage from the 1940s of Ho Chi his homecoming to a divided America maps of Southeast Asia and the rest of the nanced their colonial war, paying up to 80 Minh welcoming the U.S. intelligence of- in 1972, a homecoming that he says was world. percent of the cost, but after the French The historical footage in Episode One, defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was time for “Déjà Vu” (1858–1961), which disputes the losers to get out of town. this view of the war, is either ignored or Once the river pirates were defeated misunderstood. Southern Vietnam was and other opposition groups such as the never an independent country. From 1862 Hoa Hao and the Cao Dai neutralized to 1949, it was the French colony of Co- with CIA bribes, Diem and Lansdale be- chinchina, one of the five territorial di- gan making a “free” Vietnam. By Oct. visions in French Indochina (the others 23, 1955, Diem was claiming his electoral being Tonkin, Annam, Cambodia and victory. Three days later he announced Laos). Defeated French forces regrouped the creation of the Republic of Vietnam, in southern Vietnam after 1954, which better known as South Vietnam. He can- is when U.S. Air Force colonel and CIA celled the elections intended to unify agent Edward Lansdale began working to northern and southern Vietnam—elec- elevate this former colony to nationhood. tions that President Eisenhower and ev- The United States installed Ngo Dinh eryone else knew would have been won Diem as South Vietnam’s autocratic ruler, by Ho Chi Minh—and began building the aided him in wiping out his enemies, and autocratic police state that survived for 20 engineered an election that Diem stole, years, before collapsing into the dust of with 98.2 percent of the popular vote. the last helicopter lifting off from the U.S. The key moment in Lansdale’s creation Embassy. Supplies are parachuted in for the beleaguered French garrison in Dien Bien Phu; was the monthlong Battle of the Sects, Lansdale was a former advertising the Vietnamese occupied the high ground. which began in April 1955. (The battle continued on next page … 4 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

east Asia) was essentially the creation of the United States,” wrote Leslie Gelb, Vietnam Amnesia who directed the project, in his Pentagon … continued from previous page Papers summary. “Vietnam was a piece man. He had worked on the Levi Strauss on a chessboard, not a country,” Gelb tells account when it started selling blue jeans Burns and Novick. nationally. He knew how to sell blue More than 80 people were interviewed jeans. He knew how to sell a war. Anyone by the filmmakers over the 10 years they knowledgeable about the history of Viet- gathered material for The Vietnam War, nam and its prolonged struggle against but one glaring exception is Daniel Ells- French colonialism could see what was berg. Ellsberg, a former Marine Corps happening. “The problem was trying to platoon leader, was a gung-ho warrior cover something every day as news when when he worked for Lansdale in Vietnam in fact the real key was that it was all de- from 1965 to 1967. But as the war dragged rivative of the French Indo-China war, on, and Ellsberg feared that Nixon would which is history,” said former New York try to end the stalemate with nuclear Daniel Ellsberg (right) in Vietnam. Times reporter David Halberstam. “So weapons (the French had already asked you really should have had a third para- Eisenhower to drop the bomb on Viet- graph in each story which should have nam), he flipped to the other side. other assassination teams. 1960s, Mai Elliott has lived far longer in said, ‘All of this is shit and none of this Ellsberg today is a fierce critic of U.S. • John Negroponte, former director of the United States than in Vietnam. means anything because we are in the nuclear policy and military adventures national intelligence and ambassador to Elliott, herself a former RAND em- same footsteps as the French and we are from Vietnam to Iraq. His absence from international hotspots targeted for covert ployee, is the daughter of a former high prisoners of their experience.’” the film, except in archival footage, con- operations. government official in the French colo- Even the language of the Second Indo- firms its conservative credentials. Funded • Sam Wilson, the U.S. Army general nial administration. After the French de- china War was borrowed from the French, by Bank of America, David Koch, and and Lansdale protégé who coined the feat in the First Indochina War, her fam- who spoke of “light at the end of the tun- other corporate sponsors, the documen- term “counterinsurgency.” ily moved from Hanoi to Saigon, except nel” and the jaunissement (yellowing) of tary relies extensively on former gener- • Stuart Herrington, a U.S. Army coun- for Elliott’s sister, who joined the Viet their army, which the United States later als, CIA agents, and government officials, terintelligence officer known for his “ex- Minh in the north. This allows Elliott called Vietnamization. France dropped who are not identified by rank or title, but tensive interrogation experience,” stretch- to insist—as she does repeatedly in her gelatinised petroleum, napalm, on Viet- merely by their names and anodyne de- ing from Vietnam to Abu Ghraib. public appearances—that Vietnam’s was nam in la sale guerre, the “dirty war,” scriptions such as “adviser” or “special • Robert Rheault, who was the model a “civil war.” The war divided families which the United States made even dirt- forces.” A partial list includes: for Colonel Kurtz, the renegade warrior like hers, but anticolonialist fighters ar- ier with Agent Orange and other chemical rayed against colonialist sympathisers do weapons. not constitute a civil war. No one refers to If these facts were known to govern- the First Indochina War as a civil war. It ment officials and journalists, they were The war divided families … but anticolonialist was an anticolonial struggle that shaded known to everyone after Daniel Ellsberg fighters arrayed against colonialist sympathizers into a repeat performance, except that by released the Pentagon Papers in 1971. this time Lansdale and Diem had created Forty volumes of top secret documents do not constitute a civil war. the facsimile of a nation state. Americans exposed the lies of every U.S. adminis- loath to help France re-establish its colo- tration from Truman and Eisenhower on nial empire in Asia could feel good about to Kennedy and Johnson. The Pentagon • Lewis Sorley, a third-generation West in Apocalypse Now. Rheault was the col- defending the white hats in a civil war. Papers describe how the American pub- Point graduate who believes the United onel in charge of special forces in Viet- Elliott, an eloquent and earnest victim of lic was deceived into supporting France’s States won the war in 1971 and then threw nam, before he was forced to resign when this war, embodies the distressed damsel effort to recolonize Vietnam. They re- away its victory by “betraying” its allies he and five of his men were charged with whom U.S. soldiers were trying to save count Lansdale’s covert operations and in the south (even though they had been premeditated murder and conspiracy. The from Communist aggression. U.S. culpability for scuttling the elections supplied with $6 billion of U.S. weapons Green Berets had killed one of their Viet- Once Lansdale is erased from the his- meant to reunify Vietnam. They describe before they collapsed to the advancing namese agents, suspected of being a turn- tory of the Vietnam War, we settle into a war for independence that the United North Vietnamese in 1975). coat, and dumped his body in the ocean. watching 18 hours of carnage, inter- States never stood a chance of winning, • Rufus Phillips, one of Lansdale’s The day that Nixon got the army to spersed with talking-head testimonials even with half a million troops on the “black artists” who worked for many drop criminal charges against Rheault is that reappear, first as sound bites, then as ground. The enterprise was actually di- years in psychological operations and the day that Daniel Ellsberg decided to re- longer snippets and finally as full-blown rected at containing China and playing counterinsurgency. lease the Pentagon Papers. “I thought: I’m interviews. These are surrounded by his- a global game of chicken against Russia. • Donald Gregg, organizer of the Iran- not going to be part of this lying machine, torical footage that rolls from the First In- “We must note that South Vietnam (un- contra arms-for-hostages scandal and this cover-up, this murder, anymore,” dochina War into the Second and then fo- like any of the other countries in South- CIA adviser to the Phoenix program and wrote Ellsberg in Secrets: A Memoir of cuses on battles at Ap Bac and Khe Sanh, Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. “It’s the Tet Offensive, bombing campaigns a system that lies automatically, at every over North Vietnam, the release of U.S. level, from bottom to top—from sergeant POWs, and the last helicopter lifting off to commander in chief—to conceal mur- from the roof of the U.S. Embassy (which der.” The Green Beret case, said Ellsberg, was actually the roof of a CIA safe house was a version “of what that system had at 22 Ly Tu Trong Street). By the end of been doing in Vietnam, on an infinitely the film—which is absorbing and con- larger scale, continuously for a third of a tentious, like the war itself—more than century.” 58,000 U.S. troops, a quarter of a million Burns and Novick rely extensively on South Vietnamese troops, a million Viet another person—in fact, she accompa- Cong and North Vietnamese troops, and nied them on their promotional tour for 2 million civilians (mainly in the south), the film—who is identified in the docu- not to mention tens of thousands more in mentary as “Duong Van Mai, Hanoi” Laos and Cambodia, will have died. and then later as “Duong Van Mai, Sai- The Vietnam footage is set in the con- gon.” This is the maiden name of Duong text of events back in the United States Van Mai Elliott, who has been married during the six presidencies that sustained for 53 years to David Elliott, a former this chaos (beginning with Harry Truman RAND interrogator in Vietnam and pro- at the end of World War II). The camera fessor of political science at Pomona Col- rolls through the assassinations of John lege in California. Since going to school Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Mar- Edward Lansdale at Georgetown University in the early continued on next page … Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 5

for useless mountaintops and rice paddies ries have been made about the Vietnam running naked down the road with na- that were seized while the enemy carried War, by Canadians, French, and other Eu- palm burning her flesh; Eddie Adams’s Vietnam Amnesia off their dead, regrouped, and attacked ropeans. American journalists Stanley photo of Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan shoot- … continued from previous page again somewhere else. Karnow and Drew Pearson have grappled ing a VC sapper in the head; and Hugh tin Luther King, the police riots at the With journalists reporting defeat and with presenting the war in TV documen- Van Es’s photo of refugees climbing a Chicago Democratic convention in 1968, the Pentagon trumpeting victory, the taries. But the tenacity with which the rickety ladder into the last CIA helicopter and various antiwar protests, including “credibility gap,” which by now had United States has forgotten the lessons of flying out of Saigon. the one in which four students were shot grown into a chasm, began to appear, Vietnam, burying them under misplaced Burns’s binocular vision in some ways dead at Kent State University. The film along with attacks on the press for be- patriotism and willful disregard for his- works better in the book than the movie. includes taped conversations of Nixon ing disloyal and for somehow “losing” tory, bump it out of contention for making The book has room to go into detail. It and Kissinger hatching their schemes. the war. Complaints about “fake news” a great movie about this war. provides more history while at the same (“Blow the safe and get it,” Nixon says of and journalists as “enemies of the peo- Why, for example, are the film’s inter- time presenting poignant reflections by incriminating evidence at the Brookings ple” are more social sequelae that can be views shot exclusively as close-ups? If the Bao Ninh, female war correspondent Ju- Institute.) It shows Walter Cronkite losing traced back to the Vietnam War. When camera had pulled back, we would have rate Kazickas, and others. Edward Lans- faith in the Vietnam venture and the Wa- Morley Safer documented Marines torch- seen that former Senator Max Cleland has dale and the Battle of the Sects appear tergate burglary and Nixon’s resignation ing thatch-roofed houses in the village of no legs—he lost them to “friendly fire” at in the book, but not the film, along with and the struggle over building Maya Lin’s Cam Ne in 1965, Safer’s name was black- Khe Sanh. And what if Bao Ninh and Tim details about the 1955 State Department Vietnam Veterans Memorial (the “gash ened by accusations that he had supplied O’Brien had been allowed to meet each cable that directed that Ngo Dinh Diem of shame” that has turned into a poignant the Marines with their Zippo lighters. other? Their reminiscing would have be overthrown—before the United States lieu de mémoire). Disinformation, psychological war, co- brought the meaningless mayhem of the reversed course and bought into the cre- For many, the film will remind us of vert operations, news leaks, spin, and offi- war into the present. And instead of its ation of Diem’s South Vietnam. Also here in chilling detail are Nixon and Kissing- er’s conversations about prolonging the war in order to win elections and save face. The book has the added benefit of in- cluding five essays commissioned by lead- ing scholars and writers. Among these is a piece by Fredrik Logevall speculating on what might have happened if Ken- nedy had not been assassinated; a piece by Todd Gitlin on the antiwar movement; and a reflection by Viet Thanh Nguyen on life as a refugee, who, in his case, went from working in his parents’ grocery store in San Jose to winning the 2016 Pu- litzer Prize. In 1967, eight years before the war’s end, Lyndon Johnson is announcing “dra- matic progress,” with “the grip of the VC on the people being broken.” We see mounds of dead Viet Cong heaved into mass graves. General Westmoreland as- sures the President that the war is reach- ing “the crossover point,” when more enemy soldiers are being killed than re- cruited. Jimmy Hendrix is singing “Are You Experienced,” and a vet is describ- ing how “racism really won” in “intimate fighting” that taught him how to “waste gooks” and “kill dinks.” By 1969, Operation Speedy Express in the Mekong Delta is reporting kill ratios of 45:1, with 10,889 Viet Cong fighters Last helicopter out of Saigon, April 29, 1975. Photograph: Hubert (Hugh) Van Es Bettman killed, but only 748 weapons recovered. Kevin Buckley and Alexander Shimkin what we already know. For others, it will cial lies are yet more living legacies from search for “closure” and healing recon- of Newsweek estimate that half the peo- be an introduction to 20 years of Amer- Vietnam. ciliation, what if the film had reminded ple killed are civilians. By the time the ican arrogance and overreach. People The film’s best narrative gambit is its us that U.S. special forces are currently kill ratios have climbed to 134:1, the U.S. might be surprised to learn of Nixon’s reliance on writers and poets, the two operating in 137 of the planet’s 194 coun- military is massacring civilians at My Lai treason in sabotaging Lyndon Johnson’s key figures being Bao Ninh (whose real tries, or 70 percent of the world? and elsewhere. Edward Lansdale, by then peace negotiations in 1968, in order to name is Hoang Au Phuong), the former Like most Burns and Novick produc- a general, said about this final stage of the boost his own election chances. This is infantryman who returned home after tions, this one comes with a compan- war he had set in motion (quoting from not the only time in this documentary six years of fighting his way down the ion volume, The Vietnam War: An Inti- Robert Taber’s War of the Flea): “There is that back-channel international treach- Ho Chi Minh Trail to write The Sorrow mate History, which is being released at only one means of defeating an insurgent ery resonates with current events. View- of War, and former Marine Tim O’Brien, the same time as the PBS series. Written people who will not surrender, and that is ers might also be surprised to learn that who came back from his war to write by Burns and his longtime amanuensis, extermination. There is only one way to the battle of Ap Bac in 1963, a major de- The Things They Carried and Going Af- Geoffrey C. Ward, the book—an over- control a territory that harbors resistance, feat for the Army of the Republic of Viet- ter Cacciato. The film ends with O’Brien sized volume weighing nearly two kilo- and that is to turn it into a desert. Where nam and its U.S. advisers, was declared a reading about soldiers carrying memo- grams—wears the same bifocals as the these means cannot, for whatever reason, victory, because the enemy, after killing ries from Vietnam, and then the credits film. It shifts from historical exegesis to be used, the war is lost.” eighty ARVN soldiers and three U.S. ad- roll, giving us Mai Elliott’s full name and autobiographical reflection, and features Thomas Bass is the author of Censor- visers, melted back into the countryside. other people’s identities. many of the photographs that made Viet- ship in Vietnam: Brave New World, The Only in the thick-headed logic of the U.S. This is when I began playing the foot- nam the apex of war photography. The Spy Who Loved Us, The Predictors, Viet- military could securing a bombed-out age again, rolling through Episode One, famous shots include Malcolm Brown’s namerica: The War Comes Home, Re- rice paddy be called a victory, but time surprised not by how much had been re- burning monk; Larry Burrows’s photo of inventing the Future, Camping with the and again, year after year, the United membered, but by how much had been left a wounded Marine reaching out to his dy- Prince and Other Tales of Science in Af- States would “win” every battle it fought out or forgotten. Many good documenta- ing captain; Nick Ut’s photo of Kim Phuc rica, and The Eudaemonic Pie. 6 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

not need to be. The grey mud caked over his body removed any impression of nu- America’s War: ‘Begun in Good Faith’? dity. He was a statue in living clay, part of the soil come to life in human form. By George Burchett Which takes us to Ba Dinh Square in Ha Nine years later, in May 1954, French “‘My people have always been here,’ he Noi, where on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi colonial rule over Indochina came to an said. ‘My father, my father’s father and his I watched all 10 episodes of the much Minh read the Declaration of Indepen- end at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. An In- father as long as we can count back. Their talked about The Vietnam War series dence of the Democratic Republic of Viet ternational Conference was convened in bones lie here, even if the Yankee dev- (PBS, September 2017) at home in Ha Noi. Nam: “All men are created equal. They Geneva to end the war in Korea and re- ils have torn up the tombstones with their The narrative of the series, directed by are endowed by their Creator with certain store peace in Indochina. After scoring a bombs and shells and tanks. I will live and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, opens with inalienable rights, among these are Life, historical victory against French colonial- fight here and if I die from Yankee shells or this declaration: “America’s involvement Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. … ism, the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam bombs, at least my bones will remain on the in Viet Nam began in secrecy. It ended “Nevertheless, for more than 80 years, was forced to accept temporary partition same bit of soil as those of my ancestors… 30 years later, in failure, witnessed by the the French imperialists, abusing the stan- along the 17th Parallel. Elections were to “‘We from Cu Chi,’ he concluded, ‘will entire world. It was begun in good faith dard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, be held in 1956 to re-unite the country eat grass and roots, the earth itself if need by decent people out of fateful misunder- have violated our Fatherland and oppressed through the ballot box. The United States be, but we will never leave this soil of standings, American overconfidence and our fellow-citizens. They have acted con- refused to accept the Geneva Agreements our ancestors. We will fight, and our sons Cold War miscalculations.” trary to the ideals of humanity and justice. and replaced the French puppet, Emperor and grandsons will fight until the invader And, in the September–October 2017 In the field of politics, they have deprived Bao Dai, with their own man, Ngo Dinh takes himself off.’ issue of The National Interest, Robert our people of every democratic liberty. Diem. The elections never took place, be- “These are the people America threat- D. Kaplan, a member of the Pentagon’s “They have enforced inhuman laws; cause, as Eisenhower acknowledged, “Ho ened to bomb ‘back into the Stone Age.’ ­Defense Policy Board, writes: “The peo- they have set up three distinct political Chi Minh would have won 80 percent of They proved again and again, to successive ple I know who supported the Iraq War regimes in the North, the Centre and the the vote.” Instead, Viet Nam remained di- invaders, that they can never be defeated.” genuinely intended the human-rights sit- South of Viet Nam in order to wreck our vided and at war for another two decades. Eighteen hours of gore and glory, shock uation in Iraq to be improved by the re- national unity and prevent our people Burns and Novick frame the war as a and awe, emotional, visual and sonic moval of Saddam Hussein, not made from being united. … civil war between the “communist” North overload haven’t changed my mind about worse through war and chaos. …” “In the autumn of 1940, when the Jap- and the “nationalist” South. That was the the war. The American war of aggression Let’s now slightly adjust Burns’ and against the people of Viet Nam, Cambo- Novick’s opening statement and apply it to dia and Laos—whatever the motives and the yet-to-be-produced The Iraq War se- reasons for it—was a monstrous crime ries. It would read as follows: “America’s against humanity. All three countries are involvement in Iraq began in secrecy. It still paying the terrible price of American ended 30 years later, in failure, witnessed “intervention.” by the entire world. It was begun in good In a letter to their main corporate spon- faith by decent people out of fateful mis- sor, Bank of America, Burns and Novick understandings, American overconfidence write: and post-Cold War miscalculations.” “Thanks to Bank of America’s gener- Sounds just right, doesn’t it? But, do ous support for the film and the outreach you buy it? I don’t. Because most sane materials that will accompany it, we be- people know that the invasion of Iraq was lieve that the series will inspire our coun- based on lies and manipulations and is try to begin to talk and think about the generally considered an unmitigated di- Viet Nam War and the questions it raises, saster. Chuck Hagel, Obama’s secretary in an entirely new way.” of Defense from 2013 to 2015, called it So, after watching carefully all 10 epi- “the most dangerous foreign-policy blun- Still from Wilfred Burchett’s film Vietnam North (1966) used in The Vietnam War. sodes of The Vietnam War, I am honestly der in this country since Viet Nam.” trying to figure out what that “entirely So why should we accept Burns’ and new way” may be. Then again, I am not Novick’s premise that the Viet Nam War anese Fascists violated Indochina’s terri- argument used by successive U.S. admin- American. was the result of “miscalculations” and tory to establish new bases in their fight istrations and their allies to justify their What it makes me think about is the lit- “misunderstandings”? And then watch against the Allies, the French imperial- “involvement” in Viet Nam. any of lies and manipulations that led to for 18 hours how these “blunders” made ists went down on their bended knees and To most patriotic Vietnamese, it was a the war, and its endless escalation. And “in good faith by decent people” ended up handed over our country to them. … war fought over many decades for the in- how the same logic leads to the next war costing the lives of millions of Vietnam- “The French have fled, the Japanese dependence and unity of their country. As and the next, and the one after … which ese, Cambodian, and Lao men, women, have capitulated, Emperor Bao Dai has Ho Chi Minh said, “Nothing is more pre- may well be the final one, the war to end and children, devastated their countries, abdicated. Our people have broken the cious than independence and liberty.” all wars and all life on our planet. The two narratives are irreconcilable. The series concludes with John Len- You either accept one or the other. non’s “Let It Be.” I prefer his “Imagine.” ‘We from Cu Chi,’ he concluded, ‘will eat grass Allow me to quote this passage from “Imagine all the people living life in Wilfred Burchett’s 1968 book Vietnam peace …” We should all collectively say: and roots, the earth itself if need be, but we will Will Win!: “There had been 60,000 people Yes We Can! And act upon it. Urgently. in the six villages of Cu Chi when the 2nd And sing with John Lennon: All we are never leave this soil of our ancestors. We will fight Brigade of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division saying is give peace a chance. … until the invader takes himself off.’ set up its headquarters there on January 19, George Burchett is an artist who lives 1966, after a 10-day ‘search and destroy’ in Ha Noi. offensive in the district. In the month that poisoned their land, left scars that will chains which for nearly a century have followed the Americans claimed they fired perhaps never heal. And in the process, fettered them and have won independence 180,000 shells into Cu Chi District, con- killed 58,220 Americans. for the Fatherland. Our people at the same tinuing at about the same tempo throughout In Viet Nam, the war is called the time have overthrown the monarchic re- that year. There were daily plane attacks American War. It was imposed on the gime that has reigned supreme for dozens against any sign of life: a bush moving with people of Viet Nam by the United States of centuries. In its place has been estab- the wind, a chicken running out of a hedge to project America’s post-World War II lished the present Democratic Republic.” or a buffalo wallowing in a pond. While I imperial power. No lofty ideals were in- In 1945, the United States, along with was there high-velocity guns were fired at volved. It ended on April 29, 1975, when Great Britain, made the “fateful” decision all hours of the night, sending streams of the last U.S. helicopter took off from the to support France in her efforts to reclaim shells pouring into the fields in every direc- roof of the U.S. Embassy in Ha Noi. her former colonies of Indochina and re- tion from the brigade headquarters. Ho Chi Minh reads the Vietnamese According to the film’s narration, the impose colonial rule. Thus began Ameri- “I spoke with one gaunt, naked cultiva- Declaration of Independence at Ba Dinh war began “in secrecy” 30 years earlier. ca’s 30-year “involvement” in Viet Nam. tor. He was not embarrassed and he did Square on Sept. 2, 1945. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 7

By Chris Hedges amples of “micro-militarism.” The Athe- nians engaged in micro-militarism when The American empire is coming to an during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 end. The U.S. economy is being drained The End of Empire B.C.) they invaded Sicily, suffering the by wars in the Middle East and vast mili- loss of 200 ships and thousands of sol- tary expansion around the globe. It is bur- diers and triggering revolts throughout dened by growing deficits, along with the the empire. Britain did so in 1956 when devastating effects of deindustrialization it attacked Egypt in a dispute over the na- and global trade agreements. Our democ- tionalization of the Suez Canal and then racy has been captured and destroyed by quickly had to withdraw in humiliation, corporations that steadily demand more empowering a string of Arab national- tax cuts, more deregulation and impunity ist leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel from prosecution for massive acts of fi- Nasser and dooming British rule over the nancial fraud, all the while looting tril- nation’s few remaining colonies. Neither lions from the U.S. treasury in the form of these empires recovered. of bailouts. The nation has lost the power “While rising empires are often judi- and respect needed to induce allies in Eu- cious, even rational, in their application rope, Latin America, Asia and Africa to of armed force for conquest and control do its bidding. Add to this the mounting of overseas dominions, fading empires destruction caused by climate change and are inclined to ill-considered displays of you have a recipe for an emerging dysto- power, dreaming of bold military master- pia. Overseeing this descent at the high- strokes that would somehow recoup lost est levels of the federal and state govern- prestige and power,” McCoy writes. “Of- ments is a motley collection of imbeciles, ten irrational even from an imperial point con artists, thieves, opportunists and war- of view, these micromilitary operations mongering generals. And to be clear, I am can yield hemorrhaging expenditures or speaking about Democrats, too. humiliating defeats that only accelerate The empire will limp along, steadily Empires in decay embrace an almost willful the process already under way.” losing influence until the dollar is dropped Empires need more than force to domi- as the world’s reserve currency, plunging suicide. Blinded by their hubris and unable to face nate other nations. They need a mystique. the United States into a crippling depres- the reality of their diminishing power, they retreat This mystique—a mask for imperial plun- sion and instantly forcing a massive con- der, repression, and exploitation—seduces traction of its military machine. into a fantasy world where hard and unpleasant some native elites, who become willing to Short of a sudden and widespread popular do the bidding of the imperial power or at revolt, which does not seem likely, the death facts no longer intrude. They replace diplomacy, least remain passive. And it provides a pa- spiral appears unstoppable, meaning the multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats tina of civility and even nobility to justify to United States as we know it will no longer those at home the costs in blood and money exist within a decade or, at most, two. The and the blunt instrument of war. needed to maintain empire. The parliamen- global vacuum we leave behind will be filled tary system of government that Britain rep- by China, already establishing itself as an licated in appearance in the colonies, and economic and military juggernaut, or per- local military superiority at range.” Mc- the effects of industrial warfare, and were the introduction of British sports such as haps there will be a multipolar world carved Coy predicts the collapse will come by blindsided by the ferocious blowback. They polo, cricket, and horse racing, along with up among Russia, China, India, Brazil, Tur- 2030. stated, and probably believed, that Saddam elaborately uniformed viceroys and the key, South Africa, and a few other states. Or Empires in decay embrace an almost Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, pageantry of royalty, were buttressed by maybe the void will be filled, as the historian willful suicide. Blinded by their hubris although they had no valid evidence to what the colonialists said was the invinci- Alfred W. McCoy writes in his book In the and unable to face the reality of their di- support this claim. They insisted that dem­ bility of their navy and army. England was Shadows of the American Century: The Rise minishing power, they retreat into a fan- ocracy would be implanted in Baghdad able to hold its empire together from 1815 and Decline of U.S. Global Power, by “a co- tasy world where hard and unpleasant and spread across the Middle East. They to 1914 before being forced into a steady re- alition of transnational corporations, multi- facts no longer intrude. They replace di- assured the public that U.S. troops would treat. America’s high-blown rhetoric about lateral military forces like NATO, and an in- plomacy, multilateralism and politics be greeted by grateful Iraqis and Afghans democracy, liberty, and equality, along ternational financial leadership self-selected with unilateral threats and the blunt in- as liberators. They promised that oil rev- with basketball, baseball, and Hollywood, at Davos and Bilderberg” that will “forge a strument of war. enues would cover the cost of reconstruc- as well as our own deification of the mil- supranational nexus to supersede any nation This collective self-delusion saw the tion. They insisted that the bold and quick itary, entranced and cowed much of the or empire.” United States make the greatest strategic military strike—“shock and awe”—would globe in the wake of World War II. Behind Under every measurement, from finan- blunder in its history, one that sounded the restore American hegemony in the region the scenes, of course, the CIA used its bag cial growth and infrastructure investment death knell of the empire—the invasion of and dominance in the world. It did the op- of dirty tricks to orchestrate coups, fix elec- to advanced technology, including super- Afghanistan and Iraq. The architects of the posite. As Zbigniew Brzezinski noted, this tions, and carry out assassinations, black computers, space weaponry, and cyber- war in the George W. Bush White House, “unilateral war of choice against Iraq pre- propaganda campaigns, bribery, blackmail, warfare, we are being rapidly overtaken and the array of useful idiots in the press cipitated a widespread delegitimation of intimidation, and torture. But none of this by the Chinese. “In April 2015 the U.S. and academia who were cheerleaders for U.S. foreign policy.” works anymore. Department of Agriculture suggested that it, knew very little about the countries be- Historians of empire call these military The loss of the mystique is crippling. It the American economy would grow by ing invaded, were stunningly naive about fiascos, a feature of all late empires, ex- makes it hard to find pliant surrogates to nearly 50 percent over the next 15 years, administer the empire, as we have seen in while China’s would triple and come close Iraq and Afghanistan. The photographs to surpassing America’s in 2030,” McCoy of physical abuse and sexual humiliation noted. China became the world’s second imposed on Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib largest economy in 2010, the same year it inflamed the Muslim world and fed al- became the world’s leading manufactur- Qaida and later Islamic State with new ing nation, pushing aside a United States recruits. The assassination of Osama bin that had dominated the world’s manufac- Laden and a host of other jihadist lead- turing for a century. The Department of ers, including the U.S. citizen Anwar al- Defense issued a sober report titled “At Awlaki, openly mocked the concept of the Our Own Peril: DoD Risk Assessment in rule of law. The hundreds of thousands of a Post-Primacy World.” It found that the dead and millions of refugees fleeing our U.S. military “no longer enjoys an un- debacles in the Middle East, along with assailable position versus state competi- the near-constant threat from militarized tors,” and “it no longer can … automati- aerial drones, exposed us as state terror- cally generate consistent and sustained continued on page 16 … 8 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org Trump Brushes Environment Aside in Pursuit of Big Border Wall By Ben Arnoldy

The Trump administration signaled on Aug. 1 that it will push forward with its border wall project regard- less of environmental laws. The Department of Home- land Security (DHS) issued a waiver that exempts con- struction efforts near San Diego from environmental and other regulations. To understand the impact of this deci- sion on the environment and coming legal challenges to the wall, Ben Arnoldy spoke with environmental law- Border walls such as the one in Nacos, Ariz., have already affected the environment, disrupting the natural migration of yer Dinah Bear. Ms. Bear is an independent attorney animals and causing flooding. and consultant in Tucson, Ariz., who spent more than 25 years working for the White House at the Council on process of replacing parts of the wall because they un- Congressional Research Service analyzed the situation Environmental Quality. derstand that it wasn’t built correctly in the first place— and said that this authority to waive all laws for the bor- Ben Arnoldy: What are some of the environmental im- in large part, I think, because of absence of compliance der was the broadest waiver of law in American history. pacts of constructing President Trump’s border wall? with environmental laws. BA: What legal avenues are there for Earthjustice and Dinah Bear: We don’t know about the design of any fu- BA: The DHS said it waived environmental regulations others to challenge these waivers? ture wall, but we have had a little over 10 years of experi- to expedite work on barriers along the border. What is DB: Unfortunately, one of the features of the Real ID ence with the border wall in Arizona where I live, as well the scope of this waiver? Act was to limit judicial review. So any challenges to the as in southern California and parts of Texas. DB: This waiver is confined to an area that stretches use of the waiver first have to be brought within 60 days. We know that the walls block wildlife. We have pho- tographs of mountain lions pacing, trying to get to the other side to their cubs. We have photographs of javeli- nas that are trying to get through the wall. We even know We know that the walls block wildlife. that there are some very rare bird species that have trou- We have photographs of mountain lions pacing, trying to ble getting over the wall because they don’t fly that high and they don’t like to fly in cleared areas. get to the other side to their cubs. … We even know that Another very serious impact that the border wall has already had is flooding. We particularly experience this there are some very rare bird species that have trouble in Arizona, where unfortunately when the current wall getting over the wall because they don’t fly that high was built—without any compliance with the usual en- vironmental laws—the contractors apparently thought and they don’t like to fly in cleared areas. it doesn’t rain. We have had massive flooding from the border wall, and in certain sections, the wall has actually fallen down because of the floods. from the Pacific Ocean for approximately 15 miles to the The only claim that can be heard by a court is a viola- There was about $8 million of economic damage in east. What we’ve seen in the past—and it looks like we tion of the Constitution of the United States. Then there Nogales, Sonora, because of the floods, and some peo- are going to see something similar now—is a series of is no right to appeal a decision from a federal district ple lost their lives. The border patrol is actually in the waivers that go section by section. And we expect the court. So it is a very narrow pathway to be able to chal- next one to be in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, prob- lenge the use of the waiver. I think these waivers will be ably next month, where there are apparently plans to wall challenged. off the crown jewel of America’s wildlife refuge system. BA: What role can ordinary Americans play in pushing Pirates BA: The DHS cites a Bush-era law for its authority to back on the wall? issue these waivers. What authority does that law grant? DB: In my view, the American public is the single most boarded our ship, DB: It was Congress, not President George W. Bush, potent instrument we have against this. If Americans re- threw passengers and sailors into that asked for this [kind of] waiver. In fact, I will say alized that this wall was not only ineffective, that real se- the frigid, foaming sea of ‘Fuck You, Jack,’ that there was conversation within the administration— curity experts have never advocated for this kind of bor- set our sails for the dry desert of penance, which I was in—about the fact that this wasn’t really der barrier, and that it is going to do a lot of harm to the ruined other vessels that crossed our wake. needed. But it was absolutely demanded by certain mem- country—and they conveyed [this message] to members bers of Congress and it was included in the 2005 Real of Congress—things would change. The pirates’ crew are smiling fools, ID Act. It was unfortunately passed with no end date. I would also like Americans to realize that they are thrilled with their captain’s whims, It provides the secretary of Homeland Security with the losing their opportunities to have input into the govern- always ready to load the guns, exulting in his refusal to oil troubled waters. authority to waive all laws—and I do mean all laws, not ment by waivers of laws like the National Environmental just environmental laws—for the expeditious construc- Policy Act (NEPA). And this idea of waiving all laws for We had forgotten. tion of border walls, barriers and roads in areas of high big projects can rapidly spread to other kinds of actions. This has happened before. illegal entry. Somebody in Wyoming or Kansas might not feel very af- Was it Apollo’s curse of Kassandra? Without the waiver, the administration would have had fected by these waivers, but this is clearly something that Was there a secret land of brigands that to provide environmental analysis, involve the public, could be duplicated for other kinds of projects and affect sends its members into the world on occasion? and consult with expert agencies about the impacts on people in their backyards. We have laws—and compli- Could it be the sign of something within ourselves? the environment as well as on historic and cultural sites. ance with laws—as a hallmark of what it means to be an BA: Has there been any other project in American his- American. —Jay Wenk tory that has been built under this type of waiver of law? Ben Arnoldy heads Earthjustice’s editorial team. DB: Absolutely not. Shortly after this was passed, the earthjustice.org Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 9

effect on our children can clearly be seen in a YouTube documentary by Chris Smiley, The Miramar Air Show: Just Don’t “Disneyland of War, short documentary.” Ironically this video, about the Miramar Air Show, should not be watched by children! We ask the readers to watch it Go, Says Veterans For Peace and ask yourself, is this what we intended By Dave Patterson factor, but the accidents keep happening. strafing runs are hazards that we cannot for our children? We hope that an accident doesn’t occur afford, except for training and combat. While all the noise and firepower can San Diego Veterans For Peace is now in here in San Diego, and we suggest the These activities should not be used for be exhilarating, the members of San our second year of working to influence people consider ahead of time how they entertaining military contractors making Diego Veterans For Peace believe that the public away from attending the might deal emotionally with the death of deals. there is no reason to risk our people and Miramar Air Show. We view American an aircrew, the injury or death of people There is a third and disturbing aspect equipment for a weekend entertainment militarism as a clear and present danger on the ground, and the destruction of of the Miramar Air Show that worries activity. Let’s get serious and let the to our society and the world, and the most an F-18 aircraft that cost $50 million. us deeply. Our children are being people that run this air show know that visible symbol of militarism in San Diego It is not rational to assume all this risk brainwashed because the Miramar Air we disapprove, by refusing to attend. The is the annual Miramar Air Show. Every solely for entertainment purposes. If an Show glorifies war. It makes war look Miramar Air Show, just don’t go! day we read of budget cuts to virtually accident happens, are we to be callous cool, fun, and interesting. What we see is a For more information, contact: Dave every aspect of government expenditure and walk away, telling ourselves that the deliberate push by the military to convince Patterson, NoMAS coordinator and past except for military spending that keeps military people killed were volunteers, our young children to buy into wars that President, San Diego Veterans For Peace, on going up. Spending of our tax dollars so no big deal? Recently a Navy Seal, our politicians will dream up in the future. 760-207-9139; www.sdvfp.org should be a choice of the citizenry and trained at incredible expense, was killed Our children are being dazzled with Dave Patterson is a member of Veterans not left solely to the political-military- entertaining a crowd in New Jersey when weapons and air displays. The powerful For Peace Chapter 91, San Diego. industrial complex. However, we believe his parachute failed to open properly. that the public is being influenced to accept Do we accept this? Clearly, sending our continuous increases in military spending military to risk their lives to protect us is in part, by the display of military power one thing, to please a crowd is insanity. exhibited at the Miramar Air Show. We also need to ask the question, “Is Costs surrounding military air shows the air show solely for entertainment?” just keep on piling up. As an example, The Miramar Air Show website boasts this past year the Air Force crashed that 500,000 people attend the air show a Thunderbird F-16 at a cost of $18.8 every year, but they don’t tell us which million. Luckily no one died, but when military contractors participate by the next accident happens, those of us renting luxury chalets right up front. In living near the Marine Corps Air Station those chalets, the government contractors Miramar may not be so lucky. To date, can, according to the air show webpage, 10 percent of the pilots who train and fly “entertain and network with clients.” for the Blue Angels have been in fatal The manufacturers and contractors accidents. This is an unacceptable cost make obscene profits from selling the for the military and for their families. The government war goods and then use some V-22 Osprey that regularly performs at of those profits to enjoy shaded seats with the Miramar Air Show is fast becoming fabulous food and beverages. Meanwhile known for its frequent crashes. As of this the military people participating in the writing there have been 39 V-22 fatalities air show risk their lives to entertain. That with three more assumed dead off the risk is clear to anyone who understands Australian coast. Every time there is military operations. Rappelling from there is an accident, the military dictates hovering helicopters, simulating ground some changes that they say lessen the risk assaults, and flying low while simulating VFP’s Stan Levin goes under cover at the Miramar Air Show.

When I was a child in the Bronx in the 1940s, whenever After the war, my father did not change jobs. Instead he a plan for the future was proposed, it would be learned to fix TVs. followed by the phrase, “after the war.” ‘After the War’ After the war. we had the first TV on the block, a small, My parents would say, “after the war,” Jack, my father, After the war, the men in our apartment building came square black and white box. would quit Ritz radio and start his own business. back from the Europe and the Pacific. My uncle We saw the images of survivors from the liberation from brought back grass skirts from the Marshall Islands, the camps, the bombed out cities of Europe. My mother would say: “after the war,” we will move into and large pear-shaped speckled shells, which I still Never again, a house in Queens. have. But after the war, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda happened I would meet my long absent grandparents who returned But, my aunt did not get pregnant. to Russia, I longed to meet them after the war. After the war, the U.N. was built. Our high school class My aunt who slept in my bed, while her sailor husband After the war, the cold war began and my grandparents visited the first glass building on the East River. We was away said she would have a baby after the war. could not come back from Russia. They were were told that now nations could meet, get along to After the war, we would give up our ration cards, we considered too red to re-enter. make peace. could have meat every night for dinner, not have to roll After the war, the letters we got from them were full of After the war, the Berlin wall was built. up balls of silver, for the war effort, not have to hide holes, like cutouts. under our desks in school when the sirens sounded. After the war, we could not travel to Russia to see them. After the war, I grew up, left the Bronx After the war, the neighborhood bullies will stop beating After the war, my mother said we could not tell anyone I lived in London and the ruins of the bombed-out the Jewish kids and about our grandparents in Russia. After the war the buildings from the blitz were still there. The Italians and the Jews could be friends again, McCarthy committee came to my City College campus hunting for communists. I learned to keep my mouth After the war, the was the Vietnam war. In Boston, my After the war the summer of ’45, I was 10. shut. house was the headquarters for the draft resisters. I We had a big block party on Garden Street in the Bronx. joined the antiwar faculty and marched with millions The street was closed, there were spotlights, streamers, After the war, some Jewish kids on my block were still to the Pentagon. tables full of food. There was a band, and we all swing being beaten. danced in the street. The Italians and Jews celebrated After the war, in school, we still hid under our desks, After the war, on 9/11, I watched from my window in together. now we feared the bomb. After the war, deep lower Manhattan as a plane crashed into the twin underground shelters were prepared in building, towerss. subways. Russia was the new enemy. —Iris Fodor 10 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

By Matthew Hoh guns into church, insist that Santa Claus can only be white and that the Confeder- Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s guilty plea be- Bowe Bergdahl: Traitor to ate flag is a symbol of a proud heritage, gins the end of this phase of an embar- have little time or consideration for the rassing, sad, and morally absurd saga of particulars of anything that triggers the American history. Sgt. Bergdahl, who American Excep­tionalism base tribalism that dominates and in- was dismissed from the Coast Guard be- forms their lives. cause of mental illness, was recruited The fundamental aspects of. Berg- into the Army despite such issues, and and White Supremacy dahl’s disappearance were well known then sent to the frontlines of Afghanistan and documented years prior to the White where he walked away from his base and House announcement of his release. Vet- was captured, kept as a prisoner, and tor- erans organizations called for his rescue tured by the Taliban for nearly five years. and return at rallies and Republican sen- He has been offered almost no compas- ators enacted legislation to help release sion, sympathy, or forgiveness by large him. “Bring Him Home” and “No Man swaths of the American public, political Left Behind” were echoed repeatedly by classes, veterans, and the media. Republican politicians and pundits, and The shameful blood-crazed calls even Ronald Reagan’s most famed aco- for vengeance against Sgt. Bergdahl, lyte and Fox News hero, Oliver North, screamed across Fox News, talk radio, wore a Bowe Bergdahl POW bracelet. and Twitter, by millions of rightwing However, to be white and to stand tear- Americans have begun again with Berg- fully and gratefully alongside that black dahl’s guilty plea. Despite an army in- president is unconscionable and unfor- vestigation finding no Americans were givable to many “true Americans” and killed as a result of his departure from so the parents’ sins became the son’s and his unit; despite the Pentagon admitting Sgt. Bergdahl’s treason was a dog whistle it was known that Sgt. Bergdahl was in to those who believe anti-whiteness and Pakistan within a few days of his capture, anti-Americanism are inseparable. thus negating the validity of the rightwing For the man who used race so overtly talking points about continuous search and effectively to become President of missions for Bergdahl that jeopardized the United States, calling during his cam- American lives; despite the general who paign for a “traitor” like Sgt. Bergdahl to led the investigation of Bergdahl’s dis- face the firing squad or be thrown out of a appearance stating that Bergdahl should plane without a parachute was a rudimen- not be punished and the colonel who led tary requirement in order to Make Amer- the Army’s version of a grand jury trial ica Great Again. Even Gen. James Mattis, recommending the same; despite the U.S. who hung outside his office a horseshoe military’s top prisoner of war expert testi- that had belonged to Sgt. Bergdahl and fying that Bergdahl endured more torture had been given to the general by the ser- at the hands of the Taliban than any U.S. geant’s father, understands the political prisoner of war since the Vietnam War, importance of Bergdahl’s treason. Gen. undoubtedly due to his multiple escape “There is no forgiveness in this loudly and Mattis, who previously had supported attempts and unwillingness to cooperate the soldier and given great comfort to the with his kidnappers; and despite repeated righteously proclaimed Christian nation, only the family, now, as secretary of Defense is calls by President Trump for Sgt. Berg- silent. I believe Secretary Mattis to have dahl to be executed, as well as calls by scapegoating of a young man and his family for higher ambitions than simply running the Sen. John McCain for retaliation against the failures of immoral and unwinnable wars.” Pentagon, and a careerist as savvy and the military if Sgt. Bergdahl is not sent cunning as James Mattis would not im- to jail, both blatant forms of wrongful peril that white base of support. and illegal command influence prohibited Now that Sgt. Bergdahl’s legal fate has by military law, Sgt. Bergdahl entered a highlights our wars here at home; for our allow for figures such as Sgt. Bergdahl. been decided, he and his family can begin guilty plea and put himself at the mercy of wars abroad come from the same root The greatest military in the history of the rebuilding lives that were shattered by the a U.S. Army judge. Although he was not causes as our wars at home. world is a required statement of faith for unending war in Afghanistan and then sentenced to any prison time, he received It was Sgt. Bergdahl’s parents standing all American politicians and public per- shattered again by the race-fueled parti- a dishonorable discharge, reduction in outside the White House with President sons, even though the U.S. imilitary has san politics of the unending war against rank to Pvt. E 1, and a $10,000 fine. Obama that began the rage against him not achieved victory in war in over 70 people of color in the United States. The In time, Bergdahl may become just a and his family. This was the treason that so years, so an explanation of collusion and suffering of Bowe Bergdahl, a young man footnote to America’s wars in the Mus- angered and upset the white conservative cooperation with anti-American and anti- who never should have been inducted into lim world, wars that have killed well over audiences of Megyn Kelly and Rush Lim- white forces is necessary to provide the the Army to begin with, is testament to a million people since 2001, but his indi- baugh. Bergdahl’s white parents standing causation of such an undermining. Of the viciousness, callousness, and hate that vidual story relays the fundamental truth at the White House with that black pres- course, once Bob and Jani Bergdahl stood dominate American actions both at home of these wars against Sunnis and Shias, ident and thanking him for freeing their with President Obama, the racially fueled and abroad. We deserve no forgiveness and Arabs, Africans and Pashtuns (nearly son began the scorn, the vitriol, and the reactionary political anger appeared in for what has been done, and may still be all the people we have killed, maimed, outrage against Sgt. Bergdahl, his mother Facebook posts and Twitter rants and the done, to him and his family. and made homeless have been Muslim and his father. The audacity of Jani and lies needed to sustain that anger and turn This work is licensed under a Creative and dark skinned): that there is no logic Bob Bergdahl—themselves released from it into a useful political tool arrived: Sgt. Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Li- to our violence. There is only the unend- the captivity of the unimaginable night- Bergdahl attempted to join the Taliban, cense. ing and insatiable requirement for more mare of the imprisonment and torture of Sgt. Bergdahl gave information to the en- Matthew Hoh is a member of the ad- war and more destruction. And there is their son for five years by the Taliban— emy, Sgt. Bergdahl got Americans killed, visory boards of Expose Facts, Veter- no forgiveness in this loudly and righ- in standing with Barack Hussein Obama Sgt. Bergdahl had anti-American beliefs, ans For Peace, and World Beyond War. teously proclaimed Christian nation, only and giving him thanks was a betrayal to Sgt. Bergdahl’s father is a Muslim. These In 2009 he resigned his position with the the scapegoating of a young man and his the usurped, rightful, and white struc- are all claims that were untrue and dis- State Department in Afghanistan to pro- family for the failures of immoral and tures that underlie so many white Ameri- proved over time, but such a straightening test the Obama Administration’s escala- unwinnable wars on the murderous altar cans’ understanding of United States his- of facts is almost always inconsequential tion of the Afghanistan War. He previously of the twin godheads of American ex- tory and society. to those whose identity is an abominable had been in Iraq with a State Department ceptionalism and white supremacy. Sgt. The grand mythology of U.S. milita- mix of race, rightwing politics, and na- team and with the U.S. Marines. He is a Berghdal’s story does not just inform us rism, a key pillar of both American excep- tionalism. People like those who believe Senior Fellow with the Center for Inter- of the madness of our wars overseas, but tionalism and white supremacy, does not Jesus is okay with them carrying hand- national Policy. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 11 Reclaim Armistice Day and Honor the Real Heroes By Arnold ‘Skip’ Oliver horror of World War I. And the identification of warriors as he- freedom. On the contrary, the Vietnam To be blunt about it, in 1954 Armistice roes is pretty shaky too. If you are a vet- War was fought to forestall Vietnamese How in heck did Armistice Day become Day was hijacked by a militaristic U.S. eran, and honest about it, you will admit independence, not defend it; and it bitterly Veterans Day? Established by Congress Congress and renamed Veterans Day. To- that most of what goes on during wartime divided the American people. in 1926 to “perpetuate peace through day few Americans understand the orig- is decidedly unheroic, and actual heroes Unfortunately, Vietnam wasn’t an iso- good will and mutual understanding be- inal purpose of Armistice Day, or even in war are very few and far between. lated example of an unjust conflict. Many tween nations, (and later) a day dedicated remember it. The message of peace seek- I have to tell you that when I was in Viet- American wars—including the 1846 to the cause of world peace,” Armistice ing has been all but erased. Worst of all, nam, I was no hero, and I did not witness Mexican-American War, the Spanish- Day was widely recognized for almost 30 Veterans Day has devolved into a hyper- a single act of heroism during the year I American War in 1898, and the Iraq War years. As part of that, many churches rang nationalistic quasi-religious celebration spent there, first as a U.S. Army private (this list is by no means exhaustive)— their bells on the 11th hour of the 11th day of war and the putatively valiant warriors and then as a sergeant. Yes, there was her- were waged under false pretexts against of the 11th month—the hour in 1918 that who wage it. We no longer have a national oism in the Vietnam War. On both sides countries that didn’t threaten the United the guns fell silent on the Western Front, day to recognize or reflect upon interna- of the conflict there were notable acts of States. It’s hard to see how, if a war is un- by which time 16 million had died in the tional peace. self-sacrifice and bravery. Troops in my just, it can be heroic to wage it. unit wondered how the North Vietnam- But if the vast majority of wars are not ese troops could persevere for years in the fought for noble reasons, and few sol- face of daunting U.S. firepower. U.S. med- diers are heroic, have there been any ac- ical corpsmen performed incredible acts tual heroes out there defending peace and of valor rescuing the wounded under fire. freedom? And if so, who are they? Well, But I also witnessed a considerable there are many, from Jesus down to the amount of bad behavior, some of it my present. I’d put Gandhi, Tolstoy, and Dr. own. There were widespread incidents of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the list, along disrespect and abuse of Vietnamese ci- with many Quakers and Mennonites. And vilians, and a large number of truly aw- don’t forget General Smedley Butler, who ful war crimes. Further, all units had, and wrote that “War is a Racket.” still have, their share of criminals, con art- In Vietnam, Warrant Officer Hugh ists, and thugs. Most unheroic of all were Thompson stopped the My Lai massacre the U.S. military and civilian leaders who from being even worse. planned, orchestrated, and profited greatly Another candidate is former U.S. Army from that utterly avoidable war. specialist Josh Stieber, who sent this mes- The cold truth is that the U.S. invasion sage to the people of Iraq: “Our heavy and occupation of Vietnam had nothing to hearts still hold hope that we can restore do with protecting American peace and inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.” We were honored to be able to host Josh in our home as he walked across the When Did We as a Culture Lose Our Right Minds? United States on a mission of peace while giving away the money he had earned in By S. Brian Willson speakable punishments being inflicted rival, the original indigenous population the military as partial atonement for his on the peaceful indigenous inhabitants. of the Taino (Arawak), estimated at 8 mil- role in a thoroughly unjust war. When did we as a culture lose our In “A Short Account of the Destruction lion, had been decimated to a mere 200. And how about Chelsea Manning who “right minds”? I think it important to ex- of the Indies,” as cited by Barry Lopez in Causes of death for these millions in- spent seven years behind bars for expos- amine the historical context of our narcis- The Rediscovery of North America, de las cluded mutilations (e.g., arms cut off) for ing more truths about the Iraq War? The sistic and imperial cultural mindset. This Casas spelled out the Spaniards’ behav- not producing (virtually nonexistent) gold real heroes are those who resist war and is not to say there are not wonderful peo- ior: vicious search for wealth with “dread- quotas, being hunted down and eaten by militarism, often at great personal cost. ple with compassionate values, but as a ful … unlimited close-fisted avarice” and dogs, being shot with muskets, gouged by And now the Harvard fellows include collective culture and nation-state we are their commitment of “such inhumanities swords, and hanged or burned to death, apologists and organizers of torture, but a diabolical, dangerous, even fatal force and barbarisms … as no age can parallel” as well as contracting European-borne not a whistle blower for peace. Go Figure. on the planet. in “a continuous recreational slaughter … diseases. Within another decade or two, Because militarism has been around for Extraordinarily gruesome Eurocentric cruelty never before seen, nor heard of, the Taino were genetically extinct. This such a long time, at least since Gilgamesh values such as those exhibited by some nor read of.” He identified routine murder, genocide foretold an ominous future for came up with his protection racket in Su- of my own familial ancestors were intro- rape, theft, kidnapping, vandalism, child the world. meria going on 5,000 years ago, people duced into the New World in the 1500s. molestation, acts of cruelty, torture, hu- S. Brian Willson is a Vietnam veteran, argue that it will always be with us. Ever since my Viet Nam experiences I miliation, dismemberment, and behead- trained lawyer, long-time peace activist, But many also thought that slavery and have been curious to discover where and ing. The indigenous, he said, possessed and a veteran for peace. He is author of the subjugation of women would last for- when my cultural Eurocentric values of no vocabulary to even describe such bes- the memoir, Blood On the Tracks, and the ever, and they’re being proven wrong. We being “out of our minds” originated? How tiality. subject of a documentary film,Paying the understand that while militarism will not did I lose my right mind? Perhaps humans By 1542, 50 years after Columbus’ ar- Price for Peace, directed by Bo Boudart. disappear overnight, disappear it must if have long before exhibited such brutality, we are to avoid economic as well as moral but I at least wanted to learn about my bankruptcy—not to mention the extinc- cultural origins. tion of our species. Sigmund Freud declared that in psychic As Civil War General W.T. Sherman life, nothing of what has been formed in said at West Point, “I confess without the past ever disappears. Everything that shame that I am tired and sick of war.” has occurred is preserved one way or an- We’re with you, bro. other and, in fact, reappears under either This year on November 11, Veterans favorable or unfavorable circumstances. For Peace will bring back the original Ar- We either integrate lessons, or we pretend mistice Day traditions. Join them and let they are irrelevant and ignore them. those bells ring out. Arnold “Skip” Oliver writes for Peace- Vicious Search for Wealth Voice and is professor emeritus of polit- Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish ical science at Heidelberg University in priest who arrived in Hispaniola in 1502 Tiffin, Ohio. A Vietnam veteran, he be- and became known as the “Apostle of the longs to Veterans For Peace, and can be Indians,” was shocked to witness the un- reached at [email protected]. 12 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org What It’s Really Like to Live with Drone Warfare The U.S. Air Force’s drone them. program tracks down terrorists “We have a very heavy load and protects troops. of sadness. A sad life has been But life in its shadow has left given to us. Many women are a generation of Afghan civilians now young widows and their physically maimed, mourning young children are left for us to lost family members, and fearful take care of. of future attacks. “I have trouble getting to sleep On the other side of the world, and I also wake up during the in America, former drone opera- night from fear. I can’t forget tors are speaking out about the what I saw. It comes to me in the dark side of this technology too. night like a dream. I get these Australian PhD student Alex nightmares a lot.” Edney-Browne has been collect- Shanaky, 25, from Wardak ing stories of trauma from both province, was blinded in both perspectives. In an exclusive for eyes by a drone attack in 2015. Science Friction, these are their His family spent their life sav- words. ings to restore sight in one of Aarif, 36, from Khost prov- his eyes. ince, lost her husband, son, “The day before the attack, ­father-in-law, and three neph- I heard a drone circling over- An Afghan man and woman stand in a mountainous landscape as shadows of drones fall on their faces. ews in a drone attack in 2015. head,” Shanaky says. She is now a single mother to “The next day, I was doing ir- economically. was killed. depression and post-traumatic her 2-year-old daughter. rigation work in our apple or- “But when this happened the “We are mountain people. We stress disorder (PTSD) result- “Before I heard the bomb, I chard, and I was attacked. I whole family became very sad. go to the mountain to collect ing from his work in the drone was busy with the animals: sepa- just saw a flame, and I lost con- And all the money they had, they wood for fuel, for fires. We need program. rating the baby goats after their sciousness. I saw fire in front of spent it on me for my medical it for our cooking and to make “You know how to make life mothers had breast-fed them,” me and heard the explosion, but costs.” bread. We also take our animals cheap? Teach someone to kill Aarif says. that is all I remember. Abdul, 45, from Wardak to the mountain. Our lives are someone else with the push of a connected to the mountain. Fear button,” Brandon says. has replaced enjoyment: we go “I felt like a pervert a lot of the to the mountain with fear, we go time. I am sitting in this cold, quickly. dark bunker, an air-conditioned “… I don’t like that Americans steel box, in the middle of the can see into my house, my home. Nevada or New Mexico desert, It is not joyful. It is not good. Es- watching people live their lives pecially for Pashtuns: Pashtuns out, while I’m behind a computer don’t like people seeing into our screen like the f**king Matrix. I house from above. had no life of my own. “In Pashtun culture, the re- “The culture was so vastly dif- spectful thing to do is to knock ferent to anything I had experi- on someone’s door. enced. You’d watch people go to “It is not good to have some- the marketplace and to cafes, and one see your family members … eat food. In Afghanistan they’d to watch women and children. It sleep on their houses because it is dishonorable and disrespect- was too hot to sleep inside. I’ve ful. The women in the village are seen weddings, funerals and all very disappointed. They don’t sorts of things. Left: An illustration of a woman holding a child and a photo of a deceased relative. like it.” “… You couldn’t see detail. Right: Flames pour from a burning car. Brandon Bryant is a former You couldn’t see a person’s face. U.S. Air Force drone sensor You are typically looking at operator from Missoula, Mont. shadows, or puppets. “I was keeping an eye out for “My memory became very province, lost his brother to a He battles with nightmares, “The disconnect doesn’t come my family, as I knew they would weak. Before I was attacked, I drone attack in 2014. He lives soon arrive back home for lunch. was in the top of my class—in with the torment of drones “The explosion was heavy. the first or second position. After frequently hovering over his The land was shaking. My house the attack, I lost all my chances mountain village. was shaking. I ran outside to see of kadr [the top position], as “I think of my brother a lot be- what had happened. studying was very difficult for cause he was close to me. And “I saw from a distance the me. then it goes to flashback. Some- burnt-out cars, and tried to get “… Before the attack, I could times I have nightmares also, es- closer but there were Afghan do any kind of work. I can’t any- pecially when I hear the drone is army there who wouldn’t let more. I could drive, but now I around,” Abdul says. me. But I could tell quickly that can’t. I can’t work well on the “They are about the day my it was my family, because they computer anymore. If I go to brother died, but also more about were due to arrive home very the bazaar to work, the dust the drone sound. The fear is be- soon and never did. scratches at my right eye and cause when we hear the drone, “I ran closer and saw smoke makes it water. we think it will strike again, like and fire, the car was burning, “My family had a big hope, it struck and killed my brother. and there were pieces of bodies. because I am the oldest son in “My brother was taking the My husband, my son, and three the family, that after gradua- animals to the mountain we usu- brother-in-law’s sons and my fa- tion I would have a good job and ally go to. At around 3:00 p.m. ther-in-law were killed. All of would be able to support them the drone hit my brother, who Left: A woman sits between two men drinking tea. Right: A child points at a drone hanging next to a U.S. flag. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 13 What It’s Really Like to Live with Drone Warfare between me and the people on and drone surveillance. For the ground. The disconnect her PhD research, she wanted comes between me and myself. to find out how drones are af- My job was sickening. I had no fecting Afghan lives and liveli- life of my own. I didn’t feel hu- hoods. man myself. “Drones are characterized by “I’ve watched coalition sol- governments and the military as diers die. I’ve watched enemy an accurate weapon that effec- combatants die. I’ve watched in- tively locates and kills terrorists nocent people die. They all die and limits damage to civilians,” the same, the innocent as well as Alex says. the guilty. “Rarely does the Western pub- “We are just a bunch of voy- lic hear from the civilians that Left: Two people watch a drone in the sky. Centre: Flames. euristic nerds utilising technol- drones are allegedly protecting. Right: A man holds an apple in front of a grove of burnt trees. ogy to rain destruction on peo- The Afghans I spoke to had lost ple who are living in their own family members, were person- fore the Soviet occupation of Af- heard of people who equate all “A child, about 12 years old, country, trying to live out their ally injured in drone attacks, or ghanistan in 1979 shared fond Muslims with terrorists. I tell stops next to me. ‘Mom, what’s lives as best as they can. lived under drone surveillance. memories of Western tourists him that Islamophobia is in- that?’ he asks. His mother says: “I remember everything, that’s “… Young men told me about coming to their villages. Before creasing in the West and partly ‘It’s a drone.’ the problem. That’s why I have how they used to play cricket in war began, Afghanistan was on explains the rise of leaders like “She sidles up to the sign and Donald Trump. reads for a few seconds, adding: “Shanaky asks if I could spon- ‘They watch and locate terrorists sor him for asylum, so that he and then they kill them.’ could have the vision restored in “I consider interrupting. I con- his other eye at a Western medi- sider informing them that they cal facility. also kill civilians and destroy “I tell him about the global their livelihoods. I decide against asylum seeker crisis and West- it, but am awash with cowardice ern government attempts to limit and shame. the number of asylum seekers “I feel sick. I feel sad. I sit for they accept. I say I will look into 10 minutes in the bathroom of the it, but that I am not hopeful. National Air and Space Museum “It goes unsaid but the sub- paralyzed by the ­contrasts.” text is blatant: the West inflicts violence and then refuses help to Credits those who are injured by its ac- Research: Alex Edney- tions. I look at my feet for the en- Browne, University of Mel- tire conversation. bourne “Two months later, and I’m in Illustrations: Rachel Ang the United States for the other Producer: Natasha Mitchell half of my research: examining for Science Friction the effects of drone warfare on U.S. Air Force drone veterans. “I am in the Smithsonian Na- Left: Man curled up in a box with a keyboard next to him. Right: Man looking at a map of Afghanistan. tional Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., standing in front of a Predator drone. It is nightmares.” the evenings and stay outside til the ‘hippie trail’ and regularly my first time seeing a real life, Earlier this year, Alex Ed- late talking with their friends. visited by Westerners. full-sized drone. It is bigger than ney-Browne travelled to Af- With drones hovering above, “Most people were curious I imagined. ghanistan to meet and inter- they are now too scared. about the West, and had difficult “A video of drone kills is play- view people who lived in areas “Many told me that cultural questions for me too. ing on loop. Teenagers walk past subjected to drone attacks practices of hosting neighbors “A young man—a teacher in the display saying ‘whoa!’ and for dinners and staying over at a his early 20s—asks me if I have ‘cool!’ family member or friend’s house if they were mourning a loved one (‘gham shareky’: sharing in one’s sadness) had reduced in case it’s mistaken for nefarious activity. “Farmers who often need to irrigate their lands at night now turn their torches off and return to their houses in the dark when they hear drones. “Despite the harrowing sub- ject matter, the people I met were relieved to tell their stories. Most had received no explanation or apology, let alone compensation, from U.S. coalition forces after drone attacks. Left: A man holds his head in his hand. Left: A woman sits between two men drinking tea. Right: A child points at a drone hanging next to a U.S. flag. “Afghans who were alive be- Right: A drone’s shadow falls on a man leading goats up a mountain. 14 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

the National Press Club: “The likely con- sequences of nuclear weapons have no Banning Nuclear Weapons: The Beginning politically, militarily, or morally accept- By H. Patricia Hynes and MacArthur; and Admirals Leahy, States wanted to demonstrate the new able justification. … The unbounded Nimitz, and Halsey strongly dissented atomic weapon that we solely possessed wantonness of their effects … transcend Against all odds, 122 countries agreed in from the decision to use the atomic bombs to intimidate the Soviet Union. The oppo- time and space, poisoning the earth and July to ban nuclear weapons. At the heart on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for both mili- site happened: An arms race between the deforming its inhabitants for generation of the U.N. treaty is an explicit ethical goal: tary and moral reasons. Japan was already United States and Soviet Union ensued. after generation. They … expunge all to protect peoples of the world from the hu- defeated and in peace negotiations with the Today seven other countries also possess hope for meaningful survival. They hold manitarian catastrophe that would ensue if Soviet Union; surrender was imminent. nuclear weapons (Britain, France, China, in their sway not just the fate of nations nuclear weapons were employed. Once 50 Bombing dense human settlements was Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea), but the very meaning of civilization.” He states ratify the treaty, it will enter into in- barbarous and would shock world opinion, with the ever-present specter of their use, joined 60 other retired generals and admi- ternational law. The United States, the only and a demonstration bombing away from an accident, or their theft by terrorists. (Two rals calling for nuclear weapons abolition. country to use nuclear weapons, dropped residential areas (also suggested by many countries, South Africa and Iran, have re- At their 40th anniversary reunion in the first atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, at atomic bomb scientists) could be used in- linquished their programs and signed the Los Alamos, N.M., 70 of 110 physicists Hiroshima, and Aug. 9 on Nagasaki. stead to force immediate surrender. new nuclear weapons ban treaty.) who had worked on the atomic bomb The United States lobbied hardest The top military commanders concurred On February 2, 1998, retired Gen. signed a statement in support of nuclear against this treaty, contending that these that the decision to use the atomic bomb George Butler, former commander of disarmament. weapons of mass destruction keep us was political, not military. The United U.S. Strategic Air Command, spoke to continued on page 16 … secure. Despite this morbid logic, we learned recently that our government’s leaders have a set of fortified sites con- structed to save themselves in the event of nuclear catastrophe while the rest of us fend for ourselves. (See Garrett Graff’s book, Raven Rock: The Story of the Gov- ernment’s Secret Plan to Save Itself While the Rest of Us Die). But the U.S. leaders who would know best about weapons and national secu- rity—generals and weapons scientists— have had a different take on the security and morality of nuclear weapons, from their first use in 1945 through their exis- tence today. American leaders from all branches of the armed forces, among them Generals Eisenhower, Arnold, Marshall 2015 march for nuclear disarmament in New York City. Photo: Ellen Davidson

How could I have children?!” Two Women Talking About the War The woman giggled. One point gained, I thought, but two answers used. By Lady Borton I became aware of hidden roles Vietnam- American woman walking alone, I was “Which army base do you work at?” ese women played in the war. like the circus come to town. Two boys Her tone changed now, from noncomit- Mine was a lowly job. Working in war- Strange to say, as a woman and a for- spotted me. “Ba My! Ba My!—Ameri- tal to ominous. She set down her baskets, time Quang Ngai, I held the lofty title eigner, I never felt afraid in a land at war. can woman! American woman!” they freeing her hands. of Assistant Director for the American Unarmed, I knew I posed no threat. But taunted, racing after me. Other children My last chance, I thought. “I have no Friends Service Committee’s Viet Nam I also knew to be watchful. One day in followed, shouting obscenities. connection with the military,” I said. “I program, but in truth, I was merely a glo- 1970, not long after I’d taken the first I turned, hunkered down on the dirt, and work for a peace organization. We help rified errand-runner. While my Western American journalist to the site of the My engaged the kids in chitchat. As we talked, war-wounded on all sides.” I described medical colleagues fit war-wounded Viet- Lai Massacre, I went to fetch a patient, a woman my age approached and stopped Quaker Service work in Quang Ngai, our namese with artificial limbs, I made runs Nguyen Van Kim, who lived near the My beside us; the boys became silent, watch- assistance to North Viet Nam, and to ar- to the American base to pick up mail, Lai Road. Ten years old, he had stepped ful. The woman was barefoot, her hair eas of South Viet Nam controlled by the fetched supplies, and transported patients, on a mine while tending water buffalo and pulled back into the traditional nape knot. Viet Cong, or Provisional Revolutionary stopping along dusty village paths to chat, lost the lower part of one leg. On her shoulder, she carried a bamboo Government, as it was officially known. listen, and watch. In this way, I saw cru- I drove the truck as far I could and, yoke with two baskets of rau muong, leafy The woman straightened. “We are cial details that American military lead- parking it, started walking down a dirt vegetables grown in irrigation sluices. grateful to you Americans,” she an- ers, GIs, and journalists failed to grasp. track suitable only for ox carts. As an “How old are you?” she asked, her tone nounced, “for saving us from the cruelly neutral. Her baskets hung level with my vicious, wicked, imperialist Viet Cong.” eyes. They seemed to bend her yoke more I relaxed: I’d won my reprieve. I as- than the load of vegetables warranted. I sumed then, as I always did whenever I wondered what she’d hidden under the rau heard such overblown gratitude that the muong. Rice? Medicine? Ammunition? speaker sympathized with the VC. This “I’m 28, Older Sister,” I answered in wasn’t a taxing deduction, for 95 percent Vietnamese. I rose and bowed. I knew of the Vietnamese in Quang Ngai province we’d begun a risky game of “Twenty supported the revolutionaries. Our conver- Questions.” sation soon eased into talk about our fam- I’d always figured I was protected from ilies, the nutritional value of rau muong, Viet Cong arrest by two qualities: First, I and the U.S. peace movement. For a few considered no Vietnamese my enemy, and moments, where we each had intended to second, I spoke Vietnamese. However, I travel that afternoon, what we’d intended also figured that if I were questioned by the to do, did not matter. We were simply two Viet Cong, I’d have a limited number of an- women talking, despite the war. swers to plead my case. Here, I’d already Later that afternoon, I swung by the used one reply, with no points gained. American Army compound to pick up “How many children do you have?” the the mail, entering the base as the Viet- woman asked. namese cleaning women left it. I’d of- “None,” I answered. “I’m not married. continued on next page … Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 15 Seven Feminist Laws Iceland Has That the World Needs Every country should have these laws. By a lot of measures, Iceland is the best from outlawing gender discrimination in place to be a woman. Iceland starts gen- schoolbooks and the workplace to buying der equality lessons in preschool. The goods and services. country has not just one, but three, laws 2. ‘Equal Pay For Equal Work’ Is protecting women at work. Sick of me- Mandatory, Almost. dia treating women as sex objects? That When Icelanders found out it would be doesn’t fly in Iceland, where a law bans another 122 years before they closed the gender discriminatory advertising. Plus, gender pay gap at the current rate, that the country was the first to ban strip clubs was unacceptable. Lawmakers took ac- for feminist reasons. tion, announcing on International Wom- Overall, the Nordic country has a near en’s Day that Iceland would require com- perfect score on the gender-equality scale. panies to prove they pay employees equal For eight years, the World Economic Fo- rates for equal work, or pay a fine. Unnur Brá, the Icelandic MP who breastfed her baby in parliament, with the former president of Iceland and other politicians. rum’s Global Gender Gap Report ranked Parliament is expected to pass a bill Iceland No. 1 on its list of countries ac- making Iceland the first country to out- tively closing gaps in gender equality. In law make gender wage discrimination. and Equal Rights of Women and Men turn to soliciting sex have no other option 2009, Iceland became the first country to The government expects the law to come states that no public company board or or were coerced by others. completely close the gender gap in educa- into effect by 2020. government council or committee may So instead of penalizing victims of poor tion and health. And in 2016, Iceland was Currently women make between 14 and have less than 40 percent female repre- circumstances who are often forced into 87 percent of the way to closing the gen- 18 percent less than men. sentation. prostitution, the law places criminaliza- der gap in all sectors. “We want to break down the last of the The law also states that any company tion on those who pay for sex, and third Clearly, Iceland is leading the way, so gender barriers in the workplace,” said with more than 25 employees must have a parties involved. what are the policies and standards in Thorsteinn Viglundsson, Iceland’s social gender equality program in place, which The country also banned strip clubs in place that the rest of the world is looking affairs and equality minister. “History will review goals every three years. 2009 for feminist reasoning. The revised up to? has shown that if you want progress, you 4. Best Parental Leave Policy in the law states no business may profit from nu- Here are seven laws and standard prac- World. dity of employees. The law passed with tices that support women’s rights, and pe- Iceland has the best maternity/paternity full support in parliament. nalize gender discrimination. The ministry of policy in the world. The official law, cre- “It is not acceptable that women or peo- 1. Women’s Equality Is Literally Pro- ated in 2000, is known as the Icelandic ple in general are a product to be sold,” tected by Law. gender equality, as in Act on Maternity/Paternity and Parental said Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir who pro- The Act on Equal Status and Equal Leave. The law itself was amended in 2006 posed the ban on strip clubs. Rights of Women and Men is the reason Harry Potter, is magic. increasing parental leave from six to nine This applies to public advertising too. gender equality is a hallmark of Icelandic months. The government covers parental No ad may belittle any gender or go culture. The law, established in 2000, was But unlike the fictional leave for birth, adoption, and foster care for against the country’s fierce mission to revamped in 2008 with the overarching novel, this ministry all employees in Iceland, even those who achieve gender equality. goal of reaching equal rights in all areas are self-employed, and pays new parents 7. There Is a Magical ‘Ministry of of society. This law includes information is real. 80 percent of their earned salary. Parents Gender Equality.’ on gender equality for government and split the time of leave equally to ensure that Ironically, the caveat to achieving gen- businesses to use. children grow up with equal care from both der equality for Nordic countries is taking Within the law there are nine defined need to enforce it.” parents, and workplaces are balanced. The it for granted. areas of gender discrimination. It identi- 3. Corporate Boards Must Include at policy is truly the gold standard of paren- “Our biggest challenge is taking equal- fies differences between indirect and - di Least 40 Percent Women. tal care. ity for granted. We relax too much. We rect gender discrimination, acknowledges After the shocking corruption and fi- 5. From Preschool to College, Kids think everything is done for good. This gaps in wages, and recognizes that gender- nancial collapse in 2009, the government Learn Gender Equality Matters. worries me,” said Gro Bruntland, Nor- based violence is detrimental to society. made an effort to include more women in After kids grow up with equal time way’s first female prime minister. The law draws out a roadmap to achiev- seats of power to reduce corruption. They from parents, gender equality lessons Fortunately, in Iceland, there’s a min- ing gender equality, even including lan- also prosecuted those responsible for don’t stop. Article 23 of the Act on Equal istry to complacency on gender equal- guage on changing negative gender ste- the financial crisis, unlike in the United Status and Equal Rights of Women and ity. The ministry of gender equality, as in reotypes. Within the law are 35 articles States. Men mandates that gender equality must Harry Potter, is magic. But unlike the fic- outlining specific policies on everything Article 15 of the Act on Equal Status be taught in schools throughout all levels tional novel, this ministry is real. of education. The country created agency to check That means from early education and balance progress on advancing equal- Women formed the core of the North through university, which is free, all ity as part of a revision to the Act on Two Women Vietnamese/Viet Cong spy, liaison, and sports, classes, and forms of schooling Equal Status and Equal Rights of Women … continued from previous spage distribution networks. Basket by yoked must include and practice gender equal- and Men. The agency includes a three- basket, women slipped supplies into lo- ity. Iceland has no time for sexist books part council that comprises the Equal Sta- ten chatted with these women and knew cations dangerously close to American or assignments either. tus Council, the Complaints Committee, that many of them lived near the My Lai bases. Mental picture by mental picture, The law states: “Educational materials and a new Centre for Gender Equality. Road. The maids flirted unabashedly as overheard conversation by overheard and textbooks shall be designed in such Together these agencies research, ad- the MPs checked their empty baskets for conversation, they absorbed information a way as not to discriminate against ei- vertise, advocate, and check laws on contraband. What fools those MPs are, about the enemy and carried it away. ther sex.” So you would never see an as- gender equality. Their goal is to create a I thought. Doesn’t it occur to the them The woman I met on the My Lai Road, signment, like the school in Utah, which legal, cultural, historical, social and psy- that the contraband these women carry the women who cleaned the American forced girls to go on dates with male class- chosocial approach to gender equality. is information hidden inside their heads? military base, and thousands of other mates, telling girls to “keep it to yourself” Global Citizen and CHIME FOR Don’t the MPs realize that their flirtatious women served the cause of revolution if they feel fat. CHANGE are campaigning to eradicat- cleaning maids probably pace off ware- as valiantly as their male counterparts. 6. Paying For Sex and Strip Clubs ing discriminatory laws that hold girls house measurements while they sweep, Yet even today, more than 20 years after Are Illegal. Prostitutes Are Victims. and women back with #LevelTheLaw. memorize shipments they unload, and the war’s end, their contribution remains Paying for sex is illegal in Iceland. It has Iceland sets the bar high, but they also note details of any unusual activity? largely unrecognized. been for decades. The difference, how- prove changing the law works to create In the years since, I’ve checked out From Still Hiding: A Personal Essay: ever, is in 2007 the government amended equal opportunities. my guesses, and learned that I was right. by Lady Borton. the law arguing that most people who 16 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

as the Roman emperors Caligula and End of Empire Nero. In the United States, the reins of au- thority may be in the grasp of the first in … continued from page 7 a line of depraved demagogues. ists. We have exercised in the Middle East “For the majority of Americans, the the U.S. military’s penchant for wide- 2020s will likely be remembered as a de- spread atrocities, indiscriminate violence, moralizing decade of rising prices, stag- lies, and blundering miscalculations, ac- nant wages, and fading international com- tions that led to our defeat in Vietnam. petitiveness,” McCoy writes. The loss of The brutality abroad is matched by a the dollar as the global reserve currency growing brutality at home. Militarized will see the United States unable to pay police gun down mostly unarmed, poor for its huge deficits by selling Treasury people of color and fill a system of peni- bonds, which will be drastically devalued tentiaries and jails that hold a staggering at that point. There will be a massive rise 25 percent of the world’s prisoners al- in the cost of imports. Unemployment though Americans represent only 5 per- will explode. Domestic clashes over what cent of global population. Many of our McCoy calls “insubstantial issues” will cities are in ruins. Our public transpor- virtue and exceptionalism or the myth of predatory in their relentless hunt for plun- fuel a dangerous hypernationalism that tation system is a shambles. Our educa- human progress. der or profit—witness the Atlantic slave could morph into an American fascism. tional system is in steep decline and be- “The demise of the United States as trade, Belgium’s rubber lust in the Congo, A discredited elite, suspicious and even ing privatized. Opioid addiction, suicide, the preeminent global power could come British India’s opium commerce, the paranoid in an age of decline, will see en- mass shootings, depression and morbid far more quickly than anyone imagines,” Third Reich’s rape of Europe, or the So- emies everywhere. The array of instru- obesity plague a population that has fallen McCoy writes. “Despite the aura of om- viet exploitation of Eastern Europe.” ments created for global dominance— into profound despair. The deep disillu- nipotence empires often project, most are When revenues shrink or collapse, Mc- wholesale surveillance, the evisceration sionment and anger that led to Donald surprisingly fragile, lacking the inherent Coy points out, “empires become brittle.” of civil liberties, sophisticated torture Trump’s election—a reaction to the cor- strength of even a modest nation-state. In- “So delicate is their ecology of power techniques, militarized police, the mas- porate coup d’état and the poverty af- deed, a glance at their history should re- that, when things start to go truly wrong, sive prison system, the thousands of mili- flicting at least half of the country—have mind us that the greatest of them are sus- empires regularly unravel with unholy tarized drones and satellites—will be em- destroyed the myth of a functioning dem­ ceptible to collapse from diverse causes, speed: just a year for Portugal, two years ployed in the homeland. The empire will ocracy. Presidential tweets and rhetoric with fiscal pressures usually a prime fac- for the Soviet Union, eight years for France, collapse and the nation will consume it- celebrate hate, racism, and bigotry and tor. For the better part of two centuries, 11 years for the Ottomans, 17 for Great self within our lifetimes if we do not taunt the weak and the vulnerable. The the security and prosperity of the home- Britain, and, in all likelihood, just 27 years wrest power from those who rule the cor- president in an address before the United land has been the main objective for most for the United States, counting from the porate state. Nations threatened to obliterate another stable states, making foreign or imperial crucial year 2003 [when the United States Chris Hedges, spent nearly two de- nation in an act of genocide. We are adventures an expendable option, usu- invaded Iraq],” he writes. cades as a foreign correspondent in Cen- worldwide objects of ridicule and hatred. ally allocated no more than 5 percent of Many of the estimated 69 empires that tral America, the Middle East, Africa and The foreboding for the future is expressed the domestic budget. Without the financ- have existed throughout history lacked the Balkans. This article was originally in the rash of dystopian films, motion pic- ing that arises almost organically inside competent leadership in their decline, Published by Truthdig tures that no longer perpetuate American a sovereign nation, empires are famously having ceded power to monstrosities such

ing and chest-beating war rhetoric. The ette College: “I’ve been there two or three their country, to eliminate the Commu- Nuclear Ban Obama administration (and, in lockstep, times since the 1994 agreement, and I can nist regime. They make a lot of mistakes, the Trump administration) ratcheted up tell you what the North Koreans want is but if the United States would just talk … continued from page 14 war games with South Korea, including a a peace treaty with the United States and to the North Koreans … I believe … we A word about Korea, given the nuclear simulated nuclear attack on North Korea. they want the 60-year economic embargo could have peace, and the United States tensions between that country and the Thus, a small, poor country wasted by its lifted against their people, so they can would be a lot better off in the long run.” United States. In 2013, former President own militarization and the world’s milita- have an equal chance to trade and com- Pat Hynes, a retired environmental en- and Korean War veteran Jimmy Carter rized superpower are locked in an asym- merce. It’s a very paranoid country. They gineer and professor of environmental spoke at Lafayette College about the U.S. metric nuclear standoff. are honestly convinced that the United health, directs the Traprock Center for policy towards North Korea. He traced Carter concluded his address at Lafay- States wants to attack them and destroy Peace and Justice. the current crisis to the Bush adminis- tration’s repeal of a 1994 agreement with North Korea that assured North Korea would not develop nuclear weapons in ex- change for energy and economic aid. In the early 1990s, Carter was asked by the North Korean leader Kim II Sung to come to North Korea “because,” he said, “no one in the U.S. government would talk to the North Koreans.” After persuading the adverse Clinton administration to al- low it, he met with Kim II Sung, who ex- pressed the desire for a peace treaty with the United States and to have the eco- nomic embargo lifted against his country. The result of their talks was a success- ful diplomatic agreement that ended the Korean nuclear weapons program in ex- change for lifting an economic embargo and allowing Americans to search for the remains of Korean War veterans. The Bush administration dismantled that agreement and included North Ko- rea in the “Axis of Evil” countries, mak- ing it an explicit target of regime change. North Korea responded by restarting a nuclear weapons program, weapons test- Veterans For Peace marches for nuclear disarmament in New York City in 2015. Photo: Ellen Davidson Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 17 Dismantling Power Zapatista Presidential Candidate’s Vision to Transform Mexico from Below By Benjamin Dangl munities, and local indigenous customs. One goal of her candidacy is to expand The Zapatistas and National Indige- this network and governing model while nous Congress (CNI) held an assembly in rejecting the Mexican political system. May in which they chose María de Jesús This grassroots political structure was Patricio Martínez, a Nahua indigenous described in a communique released by healer, as their spokesperson and presi- the Zapatistas and CNI released in Octo- dential candidate for the 2018 elections in ber of 2016, titled “May the Earth Trem- Mexico. ble at its Core.” The statement announced Patricio’s candidacy and radical vision the group’s decision to participate in the for Mexico challenges conventional poli- elections with an indigenous woman can- tics and marks a new phase for the Za- didate, and described the communal or- patista and indigenous struggle in the ganization that forms the basis of their country. The 57-year-old traditional Na- political vision, one carried out “collec- Zapatista presidential candidate María de Jesús Patricio Martínez hua doctor and mother of three from west- tively” and “from below and to the left”: ern Mexico is the first indigenous woman “We build rebellion from our small lo- to run for the presidency in Mexico. cal assemblies that combine to form large peoples and civil society to organize to put They denounced the myth of democ- Patricio joined the struggles related to communal assemblies, ejidal assemblies, a stop to this destruction and strengthen racy in Mexico and pledged to transform the Zapatista Army of National Libera- Juntas de Buen Gobierno [Good Govern- our resistances and rebellions, that is, the the country from below: tion in 1996, when she was involved in the ment Councils], and coalesce as agree- defense of the life of every person, fam- “No demand of our peoples, no deter- formation of the CNI, a network of indig- ments as peoples that unite us under one ily, collective, community, or barrio. We mination and exercise of autonomy, no enous communities in the country. She be- identity. In the process of sharing, learn- make a call to construct peace and justice hope made into reality has ever corre- gan helping out sick members of her com- ing, and constructing ourselves as the Na- by reweaving ourselves from below, from sponded to the electoral ways and times munity with herbal remedies when she tional Indigenous Congress, we see and where we are what we are.” They con- that the powerful call ‘democracy.’ Given was 20 years old. Her skills as a healer feel our collective pain, discontent, and cluded, “This is the time of dignified re- that, we intend not only to wrest back were passed down to her from elders in the ancestral roots. In order to defend what bellion, the time to construct a new nation from them our destiny which they have community and are based on a close rela- we are, our path and learning process by and for everyone, to strengthen power stolen and spoiled, but also to dismantle tionship with the local ecosystem. have been consolidated by strengthening below and to the anti-capitalist left…” the rotten power that is killing our peo- “Back then, there was a shortage of doc- our collective decision-making spaces, ples and our Mother Earth. For that task, tors and medicine and the health depart- employing national and international ju- ‘Deepen the Cracks’ the only cracks we have found that have ment had no answers,” Patricio told the ridical law as well as peaceful and civil After the meeting in May of this year liberated consciences and territories, giv- Guardian. “But we have so many plants resistance, and casting aside the politi- that chose Patricio as the spokesperson ing comfort and hope, are resistance and and so much knowledge from our elders. cal parties that have only brought death, and candidate, the Zapatistas and CNI re- ­rebellion.” My grandmother would give us special corruption, and the buying off of dignity. leased a communique outlining their vi- Echoing this vision, Patricio spoke at teas to cure stress, coughs or diarrhea, We have made alliances with various sec- sion and strategy. a meeting this year in San Cristóbal de and they worked. So I thought: why not tors of civil society, creating our own re- “We do not seek to administer power; las Casas, Chiapas, of the centrality of give herbal remedies to those who can’t sources in communication, community we want to dismantle it from within the women in Mexico’s grassroots move- afford medicine?” Her work as an herb- police and self-defense forces, assemblies cracks from which we know we are able,” ments, “the woman who struggles, who alist has influenced her political views: and popular councils, and cooperatives; they stated in the communique, entitled organizes, who is invisible and whose “The political class only see the earth and voice is not heard, but who has been pres- our natural resources as means of making ent during the long history of struggles money, not things that benefit the com- ‘The political class only see the earth and that we have had, in Mexico as well as in munity and need protecting.” other countries.” As a presidential candidate chosen by the our natural resources as means of making She discussed the various women’s CNI and Zapatistas, she is not interested in struggles across Mexico, in Acteal, Yu- winning votes, but in grassroots organizing money, not things that benefit the community catán, Veracruz, Michoacán, and Oax- and resisting the destruction that so many and need protecting.’ aca, where women are on the front lines communities in Mexico are facing. against mining, for the liberation of po- “Our participation is for life,” she ex- litical prisoners, and in search of disap- plained at a press conference in Chiapas. in the exercise and defense of traditional “The Time Has Come.” They explained peared family members. “It’s to bring together our communities medicine; in the exercise and defense of that their goal was to “deepen the cracks” “In spite of everything,” she continued, that have been hit hard for years and years traditional and ecological agriculture; in that workers and activists have made in the “women have been participating in the pro- and that, I think, right now need to look our own rituals and ceremonies to pay re- political system and Mexican society, and cess of reconstruction of our communities for a way to keep on existing.” Her goal is spect to Mother Earth and continue walk- to dismantle “power from above from the in a struggle alongside men, alongside chil- for Mexicans to “to join forces to be able ing with and upon her, in the cultivation smallest level to the largest. We want to dren. Sometimes they have been invisible to destroy this system that is generally and defense of native seeds, and in politi- make so many cracks that they become our and have been silenced by those in power.” finishing us all off.” cal-cultural activities, forums, and infor- honest and anti-capitalist government.” Patricio placed her role as spokesperson mation campaigns. “The political class has dedicated itself and candidate within this wider women’s A Different Way of Doing Politics “This is the power from below that has to turning the State into a corporation that struggle, explaining that her goal is not to Patricio’s candidacy is based on a model kept us alive. This is why commemorat- sells off the land of the originary peoples, win the presidency, but to win “unity be- of politics that is far removed from the ing resistance and rebellion also means campesinos, and city dwellers, that sells low, the unity between communities and dominant political parties in the country. ratifying our decision to continue to live, people as if they were just another com- other sectors that are tired of this struc- Indeed, her position is part of a horizon- constructing hope for a future that is only modity to kill and bury like raw material ture that we have, and want to build a new tal, communally organized structure that possible upon the ruins of capitalism.” for the drug cartels, that sells people to structure from below.” relies on democratic decision-making and Considering this struggle, the CNI and capitalist businesses that exploit them un- Benjamin Dangl is the editor of governance from the bottom-up. Zapatistas decided to organize a pro- til they are sick or dead,” the statement ­TowardFreedom.com, a progressive per- Though seeking office, Patricio is less of cess of consultation with their communi- explained. “In the midst of this revulsion spective on world events. He has a PhD a candidate and more of a spokesperson for ties and choose an independent candidate they continue to tell us to vote for them, in history from McGill University and the CNI and Zapatistas. She reflects and for the presidency. “We confirm that our to believe in the power from above, to let his dissertation is Centuries March the represents the democratic indigenous gov- struggle is not for power, which we do not them continue to design and impose our Streets: The Power of the Past in Bolivian erning council, its consultations with com- seek. Rather, we call on all of the originary destiny.” Indigenous Movements, 1970–2000. 18 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

comply with their oppressors: Israel, the Brussels and Sydney? United States, Britain, the European Union. In Syria, a recent liberal cause—a Palestine: ‘The Greatest Since 2008, Britain alone has granted George Clooney cause—is bankrolled licenses for export to Israel of arms and handsomely in Britain and the United missiles, drones, and sniper rifles, worth States, even though the beneficiaries, the Moral Issue of Our Time’ $559 million. so-called rebels, are dominated by jihadist [Editor’s note: This is an abridged crushed cars and demolished houses, to Those who have stood up to this, fanatics, the product of the invasion of version of John Pilger’s address to the the Palestinian Cultural Center. Until that without weapons, those who have refused Afghanistan and Iraq and the destruction Palestinian Expo in London in July. morning, Israeli soldiers had camped there. to comply, are among Palestinians I have of modern Libya. Pilger’s film Palestine Is Still the Issue I was met by the center’s director, been privileged to know: And yet, the longest occupation can be viewed at johnpilger.com.] the novelist Liana Badr, whose original My friend, the late Mohammed Jarella, and resistance in modern times is not manuscripts lay scattered and torn across who toiled for the United Nations agency recognized. When the United Nations the floor. The hard drive containing her U NRWA, in 1967 showed me a Palestinian suddenly stirs and defines Israel as an By John Pilger fiction and a library of plays and poetry refugee camp for the first time. It was a apartheid state, as it did this year, there is had been taken by Israeli soldiers. Almost bitter winter’s day and schoolchildren outrage—not against a state whose “core When I first went to Palestine as a everything was smashed and defiled. Not a shook with the cold. “One day …” he purpose” is racism but against a U.N. young reporter in the 1960s, I stayed on single book survived with all its pages, not would say. “One day … .” commission that dared break the silence. a kibbutz. The people I met were hard- a single master tape from one of the best Mustafa Barghouti, whose eloquence “Palestine,” said Nelson Mandela, “is working, spirited and called themselves collections of Palestinian cinema. remains undimmed, who described the the greatest moral issue of our time.” socialists. I liked them. The soldiers had urinated and defecated tolerance that existed in Palestine among Why is this truth suppressed, day after One evening at dinner, I asked about the on the floors, on desks, on embroideries Jews, Muslims, and Christians until, as he day, month after month, year after year? silhouettes of people in the far distance, and works of art. They had smeared feces told me, “the Zionists wanted a state at the On Israel—the apartheid state, guilty beyond our perimeter. on children’s paintings and written—in expense of the Palestinians.” of a crime against humanity and of “Arabs,” they said, “nomads.” The shit—“Born to kill.” Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician in Gaza, more international lawbreaking than any words were almost spat out. Israel, they Liana Badr had tears in her eyes, but whose passion was raising money for other—the silence persists among those said, meaning Palestine, had been mostly she was unbowed. She said, “We will plastic surgery for children disfigured by who know and whose job it is to keep the wasteland, and one of the great feats of make it right again.” Israeli bullets and shrapnel. Her hospital record straight. the Zionist enterprise was to turn the What enrages those who colonize and was flattened by Israeli bombs in 2014. On Israel, so much journalism is desert green. occupy, steal and oppress, vandalize and Dr. Khalid Dahlan, a psychiatrist, intimidated and controlled by a groupthink They gave as an example their crop of defile is the victims’ refusal to comply. whose clinics for children in Gaza— that demands silence on Palestine while Jaffa oranges, which was exported to the And this is the tribute we all should pay the children sent almost mad by Israeli honorable journalism has become rest of the world. What a triumph against Palestinians. They refuse to comply. They violence—were oases of civilization. dissidence: a metaphoric underground. the odds of nature and humanity’s neglect. go on. They wait—until they fight again. Fatima and Nasser are a couple whose A single word—”conflict”—enables this It was the fi rst lie. Most of the orange g roves And they do so even when those governing home stood in a village near Jerusalem silence. “The Arab-Israeli conflict,” intone and vineyards belonged to Palestinians them collaborate with their oppressors. designated “Zone A and B,” meaning that the robots at their teleprompters. When a who had been tilling the soil and exporting In the midst of the 2014 Israeli the land was declared for Jews only. Their veteran BBC reporter, a man who knows the oranges and grapes to Europe since the 18th bombardment of Gaza, the Palestinian parents had lived there; their grandparents truth, refers to “two narratives,” the moral century. The former Palestinian town of journalist Mohammed Omer never had lived there. Today, the bulldozers are contortion is complete. Jaffa was known by its previous inhabitants stopped reporting. He and his family were laying roads for Jews only, protected by There is no conflict, no two narratives, with their moral fulcrum. There is a military occupation enforced by a nuclear- armed power backed by the greatest military power on earth; and there is an epic injustice. The word “occupation” may be banned, deleted from the dictionary. But the memory of historical truth cannot be banned: of the systemic expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland. “Plan D,” the Israelis called it in 1948. The Israeli historian Benny Morris describes how David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was asked by one of his generals: “What shall we do with the Arabs?” The prime minister, wrote Morris, “made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand.” “Expel them!” he said. Seventy years later, this crime is The Congress of South African Trade Unions sees clear parallels between the struggle against South African apartheid and the fight for suppressed in the intellectual and political Palestinian liberation. Photo: Ellen Davidson culture of the West. Or it is debatable, or merely controversial. Highly paid journalists eagerly accept Israeli government trips, as “the place of sad oranges.” stricken; he queued for food and water laws for Jews only. hospitality, and flattery, then are truculent On the kibbutz, the word “Palestinian” and carried it through the rubble. When It was past midnight when Fatima in their protestations of independence. The was never used. Why, I asked. The answer I phoned him, I could hear the bombs went into labor with their second child. term, “useful idiots,” was coined for them. was a troubled silence. outside his door. He refused to comply. The baby was premature, and when they In 2011, I was struck by the ease with All over the colonized world, the true Mohammed’s reports, illustrated by arrived at a checkpoint with the hospital which one of Britain’s most acclaimed sovereignty of indigenous people is his graphic photographs, were a model in view, the young Israeli soldier said they novelists, Ian McEwan, a man bathed feared by those who can never quite cover of professional journalism that shamed needed another document. in the glow of bourgeois enlightenment, the fact, and the crime, that they live on the compliant and craven reporting of Fatima was bleeding badly. The soldier accepted the Jerusalem Prize for literature stolen land. the so-called mainstream in Britain and laughed and imitated her moans and told in the apartheid state. Denying people’s humanity is the next the United States. The BBC notion of them, “Go home.” The baby was born Would McEwan have gone to Sun City in step—as the Jewish people know only too objectivity—amplifying the myths and there in a truck. It was blue with cold and apartheid South Africa? They gave prizes well. Defiling people’s dignity and culture lies of authority, a practice of which it is soon, without care, died from exposure. there, too, all expenses paid. McEwan and pride follows as logically as violence. proud—is shamed every day by the likes The baby’s name was Sultan. justified his action with weasel words In Ramallah, following an invasion of of Mohamed Omer. For Palestinians, these will be familiar about the independence of “civil society.” the West Bank by the late Ariel Sharon For more than 40 years, I have recorded stories. The question is: Why are they Propaganda—of the kind McEwan in 2002, I walked through streets of the refusal of the people of Palestine to not familiar in London and Washington, continued on page 20 … Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 19

tween Palestinians and Israelis “because this will make Palestinians depend on themselves and self-sufficient.” And in fact, the president of the Palestinian Power Au- thority at the time, Abdul Rahman Hamad, expected Gaza Power Wars that extraction would start in 2003. In preparation, a li- cense for exploration and production was awarded to BG Group, a major British oil and gas company. Unfortunately, the First Intifada ignited in September 2000, and Israeli forces prevented Palestinian access to the gas field (in contravention of the 20-mile Palestin- ian zone of control set by the 1993 Oslo Agreements). That blockade continued when Hamas won control of the Gaza Strip. According to Al-Shabaka, Israel initially prevented the development of the field to assure it could buy the gas on commercially favorable terms. It was only later, after Israel discovered its own resources, that it be- gan citing “security concerns” as an excuse for prevent- ing development. Many Palestinian officials and journalists argue that the gas field was a driving force behind Israel’s three wars against Gaza, with one of the goals to prevent Pal- estinians from having independent energy resources— and thus, taking a key step toward real independence. A confrontation now is brewing, since one of the first steps of the Palestinian consensus government is to de- Gaza’s only power plant burns during the 2014 Israeli assault. velop a plan to capitalize on this treasure. Developing the field would cost an estimated $1.4 billion, while saving Palestinians about $8 billion per year. By Mohammad Arafat Arafat, had given the green light to start gas exploration. “We are finalizing all of the needed procedures to start “This gas field is a gift from God,” Arafat said in 2000. extracting gas from the field,” says the acting head of the Everyone who follows news about Gaza (which some- “In this historic moment, I feel that God is helping us Palestinian Power Authority, Zafer Melhem. Although times I think are very few) knows how short we are on despite the obstacles we have, and this gas field is a gift BG has since been acquired by Shell, which announced electricity, a commodity that is so basic most other peo- from him for the people of Palestine and our future gen- its plans to withdraw from the project this year, Palestin- ple around the world take it for granted. These days, erations.” ian government officials say they are forging new deal we are “blessed” with only about four hours of power a Discovered 28 years ago, the Gaza Marine Gas Field is with a Greek company. day—forcing every aspect of our life to be calibrated ac- located 19–22 miles off the coast, at a depth of 1950 feet. Zafer says the extracted gas will be used to generate cording to when we have electricity. electricity for both Gaza and the West Bank (through a Gaza has only one power plant of its own, which runs plant in Jenin), and will be available by 2020. on fuel purchased from Israel, supplemented by the Yet, Israeli authorities hindered installing gas pipes in Egyptian electrical grid when available and donations [I]f allowed, Gaza could be the station recently, and it needed to only use its own from countries such as Turkey and Qatar. However, the energy independent: It has its pipes for transferring the gas. power plant can only run at reduced capacity, since it has The bottom line: Independence is the dream of every been damaged repeatedly in past wars, with repair parts very own gas field, off the coast Palestinian. We could achieve that if allowed; we have not allowed in due to the Israeli blockade. In addition, everything we need. But will we be allowed to breathe each link in the supply chain is at the mercy of politics in the Mediterranean. on our own, or kept on life support? and manipulation—and the result is a chronic shortage, Originally published at wearenotnumbers.org. with Gaza’s two million people the victims. Mohammad Arafat, 22, is a graduate of the Islamic What most people don’t know, however, is that if al- The field’s estimated reserves are about one trillion cubic University of Gaza, where he studied English. He as- lowed, Gaza could be energy independent: It has its very feet. That’s not large enough to allow Palestinians to ex- pires to be “a voice for Palestine, expressing the people’s own gas field, off the coast in the Mediterranean. While port, but it could allow us to be self-sufficient—providing hopes and pains.” Mohammad has self-published his surfing the internet, I found a 17-year-old article about the electricity as well as cooking gas. book, Still Living There, which he distributes through field, reporting that the late Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat also believed the field would lead to peace be- Amazon.

and environmental implications. In 2012, the United Na- tions determined that if trends continued, Gaza wouldn’t I’ve Never Seen Gaza So Devastated be liveable in 2020. Today, the effects of the blockade, By Abby Smardon nizations like UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and recurring violence, and now the electricity crisis have led Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. the United Nations to conclude that Gaza is basically al- I’ve visited the Gaza Strip for each of the past six years, Nearly one million refugees require UNRWA food as- ready unlivable. including in 2014 a few months after Israel’s devastating sistance now, up from 80,000 people in 2000, before the The first day of my visit, I visited a water pumping military assault. And yet, I’ve never seen Gaza like I did blockade was in place. At its heart, UNRWA is a hu- station at Al-Shati refugee camp by the coast. There, I when I had the privilege of visiting this summer. man development agency, running the largest and one witnessed raw sewage pumping directly into the water. I call it a privilege because, due to the blockade of Gaza of the best-­performing public school system in the entire The sewage would normally flow to a treatment plant, imposed by Israel (with the support of Egypt), which is Middle East, 10 times the size of Washington, D.C., pub- but without electricity, that’s not an option. Instead, it part of Israel’s now 50-year-old military rule over Pales- lic schools. But due to decades of Israel’s dispossession, pumps directly into the sea, not far from where people tinians in the occupied territories, internationals allowed occupation, and systematic oppression of Palestinians, swim and fish. Their fish will be contaminated, just like in and out of Gaza are few, and Palestinians even fewer. UNRWA is forced to prioritize emergency interventions their water. The sea, which is at the heart of Gazan cul- This illegal land, air, and sea blockade, which has just like food assistance and emergency protection. It’s an af- ture, now poisons them. Despite more than 65 percent of entered its 10th year and amounts to collective punish- front to humanity. the shoreline being unsafe for humans, people continue ment, as has been noted by the United Nations and hu- Upon arriving in Gaza, which requires a permit from to go to the beach because it’s the only source of relief man rights groups, has decimated the economy of Gaza Israel and extensive humanitarian coordination, I imme- left during the sweltering summer. and allowed for the near complete destruction of critical diately saw the crippling effects of the ongoing electricity At an UNRWA health clinic, I met with doctors and infrastructure. Experts use the term “de-development” crisis which has been wreaking havoc since March. Elec- nurses who are facing the challenges of the electricity to describe this once bustling Mediterranean coastal en- tricity is now only available for 2–4 hours a day, a situ- crisis both at work and home. A nurse shared with me clave of two million Palestinians. ation that has been exacerbated by internal Palestinian that she wakes up at 2 a.m. to do her family’s laundry Nearly half the population is now unemployed and political divides. This has brought life to a near complete because that’s usually when she has electricity. A doc- 80 percent rely on humanitarian assistance from orga- stop for many in Gaza, and has enormous public health continued on next page … 20 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

Cases of psychosomatic illnesses and psychological stress ical political game. Gaza Devastation continue to increase too, particularly among children. Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip deserve hu- An UNRWA counselor I met shared the story of an manitarian support, but no amount of assistance will … continued from previous page 11-year-old girl who had recently attempted suicide. One ever substitute for the necessary political action, includ- tor told me that he only gets 3–4 hours of rest each night man told me they continue to swim and fish despite the ing that of the United States, to stop the violation of hu- because the heat keeps him awake. Regardless of their dangers because death would be a relief at this point. man rights that Palestinians face on a daily basis. Lifting personal struggles, they both come to the clinic every With the stress of simply surviving as great as it is, it’s the blockade on Gaza would be a start. day committed to providing quality healthcare for their not surprising that many have little energy left to have Originally published on Mondoweiss. fellow Palestine refugees. hope for the future. The two million people in Gaza are Abby Smardon is executive director of the U.N. Relief Because the medical equipment runs on a different the victims of cruel politics—collateral damage in a cyn- and Works Agency (UNRWA) USA National Committee. current than the clinic’s back-up generator, x-ray, ultra-

[A]t least 30 hospitals, 70 primary health care centers, and a blood blank in Gaza are at severe risk of full or partial closure due to continued power outages. sound, lab testing machines and others aren’t able to run at full capacity, and the machines will break down much sooner than they should. The World Health Organization warns that at least 30 hospitals, 70 primary health care centers, and a blood blank in Gaza are at severe risk of full or partial closure due to continued power outages and not enough fuel or spare parts for backup generators. It’s a health catastrophe in the making. Skin rashes from heat and bacterial infections, potentially from direct exposure to sewage, are on the rise. In August, it was reported that a five-year-old boy in Gaza died from a brain disease caused by bacteria in the contaminated sea. Sewage in Gaza. It poisons the sea but Gazans have no choice but to go down to the water.

in 2014. A seaport for Gaza—agreed by Brussels in promotion of privilege, and power. 2014—has been abandoned. Among young people, internationalism has found Palestine The U.N. commission I have referred to—its full name a vast new audience. Look at the support for Jeremy … continued from page 18 is the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Corbyn and the reception the G-20 circus in Hamburg delivered, with its token slap on the wrists for his delighted Asia—described Israel as, and I quote, “designed for the received. By understanding the truth and imperatives hosts—is a weapon for the oppressors of Palestine. Like core purpose” of racial discrimination. of internationalism, and rejecting colonialism, we sugar, it insinuates almost everything today. Millions understand this. What the governments in understand the struggle of Palestine. Understanding and deconstructing state and cultural London, Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv cannot Mandela put it this way: “We know only too well that propaganda is our most critical task. We are being frog- control is that humanity at street level is changing our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the marched into a second cold war, whose eventual aim is perhaps as never before. Palestinians.” to subdue and Balkanize Russia and intimidate China. At the heart of the Middle East is the historic injustice When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke in Palestine. Until that is resolved, and Palestinians privately for more than two hours at the G-20 meeting Propaganda … is a weapon have their freedom and homeland, and Israelis and in Hamburg, apparently about the need not to go to war Palestinians have equality before the law, there will be with each other, the most vociferous objectors were those for the oppressors of Palestine. no peace in the region, or perhaps anywhere. who have commandeered liberalism, such as the Zionist What Mandela was saying is that freedom itself is political writer of the Guardian. Like sugar, it insinuates almost precarious while powerful governments can deny justice “No wonder Putin was smiling in Hamburg,” wrote to others, terrorize others, imprison and kill others, in Jonathan Freedland. “He knows he has succeeded in his everything today. our name. Israel certainly understands the threat that one chief objective: he has made America weak again.” Cue day it might have to be normal. the hissing for Evil Vlad. People everywhere are stirring and are more aware, in That is why its ambassador to Britain is Mark Regev, These propagandists have never known war, but they love my view, than ever before. Some are already in open revolt. well known to journalists as a professional propagandist, the imperial game of war. What Ian McEwan calls “civil The atrocity of Grenfell Tower in London has brought and why the “huge bluff” of charges of anti-Semitism, as society” has become a rich source of related propaganda. communities together in a vibrant almost national resistance. Ilan Pappe called it, was allowed to contort the Labour Take a term often used by the guardians of civil Thanks to a people’s campaign, the judiciary is today Party and undermine Jeremy Corbyn as leader. The point society—“human rights.” Like another noble concept, examining the evidence of a possible prosecution of is, it did not succeed. “democracy,” “human rights” has been all but emptied Tony Blair for war crimes. Even if this fails, it is a crucial Events are moving quickly now. The remarkable of its meaning and purpose. development, dismantling yet another barrier between Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign (BDS) Like “peace process” and “road map,” human rights in the public and its recognition of the voracious nature is succeeding, day by day; cities and towns, trade Palestine have been hijacked by Western governments of the crimes of state power—the systemic disregard unions and student bodies are endorsing it. The British and the corporate NGOs they fund and which claim a for humanity perpetrated in Iraq, in Grenfell Tower, in government’s attempt to restrict local councils from quixotic moral authority. Palestine. Those are the dots waiting to be joined. enforcing BDS has failed in the courts. So when Israel is called upon by governments and For most of the 21st cent u r y, the f raud of cor porate power These are not straws in the wind. When the Palestinians NGOs to “respect human rights” in Palestine, nothing posing as democracy has depended on the propaganda rise again, as they will, they may not succeed at first— happens, because they all know there is nothing to fear; of distraction: largely on a cult of “me-ism” designed to but they will eventually if we understand that they are nothing will change. disorientate our sense of looking out for others, of acting us, and we are them. Mark the silence of the European Union, which together, of social justice and internationalism. John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documen- accommodates Israel while refusing to maintain its Class, gender, and race were wrenched apart. The tary filmmaker based in the United Kingdom. He has commitments to the people of Gaza—such as keeping personal became the political and the media the message. written for The Guardian, The Independent, The New the lifeline of the Rafah border crossing open: a measure The promotion of bourgeois privilege was presented York Times, and The Los Angeles Times, among other it agreed to as part of its role in the cessation of fighting as “progressive” politics. It wasn’t. It never is. It is the publications. Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 21

All of this took place before the inven- tion of devices like the computerized wall Kill-Chain maps Friedman saw in Kuwait. The crew members of the Strategic Air Command By Denny Riley B-47s, and the pilots of the F-105 Thuds, took maps and target photos with them Since Thomas Friedman backed our in- when they climbed up into their birds, the vasion of Iraq he is not a pundit I’d ex- target materials prepared by the airmen pect anyone to turn to for an opinion, but in the Target Room. Maps and charts, it happens. The U.S. Air Force recently let scissors and rubber cement, felt-tipped Friedman into an area where highly clas- markers and an ability to read coordi- sified work was under way. nates were how we did it. On the wall of He wrote a column about it called the F-105 Target Room was a big map of “Many Shades of the U.S. at War.” Southeast Asia covered in Plexiglas. Ev- He says, “The first contrast was ery grave shift a sergeant with a grease summed up in two wall-size digital maps pencil drew the ingress and egress of all at our Kuwait-based command center for that day’s sorties. the war on ISIS. One map displays ev- At the Strategic Air Command the ery military aircraft the United States old bomber crew members told WWII pocked the earth around the target but the with it. has in the skies over Syria and Iraq (as war stories as we worked. One day Col. target was still there. Friedman’s amazement at the lit-up well as Russian, Syrian and Iranian air- Bonnett said the invention of the Norden Forward to today’s news. In an analy- maps in Kuwait could translate back 50 craft) pounding ISIS targets. There are Bombsite led to our victory in Europe. I sis story in the New York Times, “Talk of years to a journalist visiting our target little symbols for B-52s, U-2s, F-16s, F- remember hearing that so vividly that I’m ‘Preventive War’ Rises in White House room and being amazed at how well we cut 22s, F-15s, MQ-9 Reapers and jet refuel- inclined to think I heard it over and over. Over North Korea,” Davis E. Sanger and glued the target charts for the F-105s. ers. It is a giant aerial armada, a flying I was young and accepted it as fact. As wrote, “Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis But all the efficiency and precision Fried- killer symphony orchestrated by the U.S. much as I liked Col. Bonnett, though, I said this week that President Trump had man and I are talking about is in prepara- Air Force.” have to tell you he was wrong. Our gov- been presented with all military options tion for the birds taking off, very different I worked in such a room in 1966, but ernment spent a fortune in the Norden and would meet threats with a “massive from an ability to expend ordnance on a not at command level, and not with com- Bombsite (making the inventor 46th on military response” that would be “effec- specific coordinate, a particular North Ko- puterized wall panels. It was the Target the list of people who profited from the tive and overwhelming.” In a subsequent rean command and control center. Room of the 388 Tactical Fighter Wing. war) and they were treated as highly clas- article Sanger wrote, “Mr. Mattis’s as- This has always been the way of war. We had F-105 Thunder Chiefs, or Thun- sified material but they did not deliver the sertion left open the question of whether To quote Mike Tyson, “Everybody has a der Hogs, or Thuds. Our mission was plan until they get punched in the mouth.” the bombardment of North Vietnam and Or read War and Pea ce in which Tolstoy Laos, striking targets whose coordinates When I got out in ’67 I figured Southeast Asia tells us the same thing in thirteen hundred were sent to us late at night by 7th Air and fifty pages. On D-Day the Allies had Force in Saigon. Four other Thud wings was going to be a win for our side because we’d 2200 bombers “soften up” Normandy by from four other bases shared the job. So dropping their payloads on Nazi coastal many F-105s attacked North Vietnam for already destroyed everything in North Vietnam positions, but the weather was bad so so many years the mountain range that and Laos of strategic or tactical value, destroyed the bombardment was largely ineffec- runs parallel to the Red River was known tual. Whole landing crafts of GIs didn’t as Thud Ridge. some of it two or three times. make it to the beach. There were a total of Before I was sent overseas I was in a some 209,000 allied casualties, with close Strategic Air Command bomb wing. Our to 37,000 dead among the ground forces B-47s were loaded with nukes aimed at precision bombing promised. the United States would, through di- and a further 16,714 deaths among the Al- the Soviet Union. Operations and Intel- When I got out in ’67 I figured South- rect attack or cyber-sabotage, try to de- lied air forces. The invasion succeeded ligence is always top heavy with officers east Asia was going to be a win for our stroy North Korea’s missiles before they because between June 6 and August 21, because highly classified material needs side because we’d already destroyed ev- left the launch pad. That, in turn, could 1944, more than 2,000,000 troops were an officer present, yet I did the same work erything in North Vietnam and Laos of trigger a bigger operation—a plan called landed in Northern France. as majors and lieutenant colonels. These strategic or tactical value, destroyed some Kill-Chain that was named in a recent At the end of WWII, the Soviet Union majors and lieutenant colonels, who of it two or three times. But I learned joint statement from the United States and and the United States divided the Korean seemed old to me then, had been bomber that one third of the ordinance didn’t ex- South Korea—to systematically wipe out peninsula into north and south along the crew members in WWII. They’d flown plode, and I remembered bomb damage North Korea’s launch sites, nuclear facili- 38th parallel and occupied it. The serious raids over Europe. Several had been shot assessment photos of bridges and ferry ties and command and control centers. Its situation we are in now is the residue of down, one twice. crossings where dozens of bomb craters own authors have doubts about whether that western colonialism. South Korea is Kill-Chain could be executed swiftly 96 percent ethnic Korean. North Korea enough to work, but the decision to pub- is over 99 percent ethnic Korean. If they licly refer to it was deliberate, senior of- consider themselves two different people, ficials say. While the plan itself is classi- it is we and the Russians who did that. fied, its goal is a systematic elimination of China, with whom North Korea does 85 the North’s ability to threaten South Ko- percent of its trade, doesn’t want a prob- rea, Japan and the United States.” lem; they’re busy conquering the world It’s generous of the Kill-Chain authors peacefully. Sophocles said, “All concerns to admit they have doubts about it work- of men go wrong when they wish to cure ing. I would have had those doubts no mat- evil with evil.” At all costs, for the sake ter how I heard about Kill-Chain. Aerial of peace, the United States and allies bombardment has always been a matter should make Kim Jong-un feel he is not of lobbing explosives out of a plane. You threatened. We should remove our troops might feel I should be reminded we took and weapons from the Korean peninsula, out two Japanese cities with one bomb should remove them from Japan and Oki- each. I know. Those were aerial detona- nawa. We should make North Korea a tions over populated areas. Several analo- trading partner, we should invest in North gies come to mind but it’s all too terrible Korea. That’s the way to peace. Albert to say more about. I visited Kitty Hawk Einstein said, “If at first the idea is not ab- this summer and came away with a feel- surd then there is no hope for it.” Creative ing I’ve had before, that the Wright Broth- thinking involves taking risks. ers figured out how to fly, then the gov- Denny Riley is a member of VFP Chap- ernment figured out how to kill people ter 69 in San Francisco. 22 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org Brink of War … continued from page 1 War of Words to Potential Military Conflict In the seven-decade history of the United Nations, never has a head of a member state threatened the total annihi- lation of another member state. If Char- lottesville was a moment when neo-Nazis took off their hoods, then Trump’s U.N. speech exposed the U.S. empire’s un- abashed drive to aggressively dominate those countries it opposes. When Trump threatened genocide on North Koreans, he failed to mention that the crisis we are in today stems from the fact that the United States unleashed stag- gering destruction on North Korea during the Korean War. Sometimes referred to as the “Forgotten War,” the U.S. onslaught killed millions of Koreans in just three years. Kim Jong-Un fired back that Trump’s threats “have convinced me, rather than U.S. Naval Strike Force in the South China Sea frightening or stopping me, that the path I chose is correct and that it is the one I with, “This is the way a nuclear war be- shows me that 10 million people in Seoul Threat of Regional Escalation have to follow to the last.” Trump tweeted gins.” She quotes Rob Givens, a retired don’t die in the first 30 minutes from con- Many analysts believe the escalation in response, calling Kim Jong-Un “a mad- Air Force brigadier general who was sta- ventional weapons, I don’t know what is fueled, in part, by Japan, whose neo- man who doesn’t mind starving or kill- tioned in South Korea, as saying: “There you’re talking about, there’s no military conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ing his people” and claiming the North is only one way that this war ends. With solution here, they got us.” has become Trump’s closest foreign ally. Korean head of state “will be tested like North Korea’s defeat—but at what cost?” Yet, administration officials ultimately In fact, the U.S. government appears to never ­before.” That is the moral quandary the Trump are not preventing Trump’s dangerous es- be sidelining South Korea, which is now Trump quickly turned his threats into administration is—we can only hope— calation. The day before Trump’s U.N. headed by the liberal Moon Jae-in, who a display of military confrontation. Dur- seriously weighing as it considers mili- speech, when asked if there were any insists that a conflict on the Korean pen- ing the night of Sept. 23, the U.S. Air tary action against North Korea. “When military options that would not endan- insula will not happen under his watch. Force flew B-1 Lancer bombers north of Mr. Trump threatens to annihilate 25 ger Seoul, Secretary of Defense Mattis Abe was the first foreign dignitary the Military Demarcation Line, techni- million people in North Korea, he is en- said, “Yes there are. But I will not go into Trump invited to his Mar-o-Lago resort, cally into North Korean territory, the far- dangering 51 million South Koreans,” ­d e t a i l s . ” and it was during this visit that North Ko- thest north U.S. fighter planes have flown said Ahn-Kim of Women Making Peace In recent weeks, there has been a de- rea fired a missile as a message to both in the 21st century. Some speculated that in South Korea in an email to In These cisive shift by Washington toward mili- Washington and Tokyo. As University of the Trump administration acted unilater- Times. “Millions of South Koreans have tary action. Many were hopeful that an Chicago historian Bruce Cumings said ally, when in fact South Korean President family in the North. When he threatens off-ramp emerged as a possibility dur- in March, “Basically, 70 or 80 years of Moon Jae-in authorized the flight. history is represented by that particular In response, a coalition of major peace missile test.” Abe’s grand­father was Ki- organizations representing tens of thou- shi Nobusuke, a Class-A war criminal sands of South Koreans—including Peo- If Charlottesville was a moment from World War II who hunted down, im- ple’s Solidarity for People’s Democracy, prisoned, and tortured Korean guerrillas Young Women’s Christian Association when neo-Nazis took off their hoods, fighting for Korean independence from and Women Making Peace—issued a Japanese colonialism. Among them was statement on Sept. 25 protesting the mili- then Trump’s U.N. speech exposed Kim Il-Sung, the founder of the Demo- tary action. “The Moon Jae-in govern- the U.S. empire’s unabashed drive cratic People’s Republic of Korea and ment should have rejected such military grandfather to Kim Jong-Un. protest,” the statement read. Jeong-ae to aggressively dominate President Moon came into office prom- Ahn-Kim of Women Making Peace told ising reconciliation between the two Ko- In These Times that massive protests have those countries it opposes. reas, not quite in alignment with Trump’s been taking place outside the U.S. Em- strategy to choke off Pyongyang. This ap- bassy in Seoul and will continue. proach reflects public opinion: In survey On Sept. 25, as North Korean Foreign them, he threatens us.” ing the August U.S.-South Korean “Ul- after survey, eight out of 10 South Kore- Minister Ri Yong-ho departed New York, Even top Trump administration offi- chi Freedom Guardian” war drills, when ans express a desire for peace and recon- he announced that the United States has cials acknowledge that U.S. military ac- the United States reduced the number of ciliation with their neighbors in the north. “declared war on our country” and that tion would be catastrophic. “It will involve U.S. troops by 7,500—a sizeable cut from Yet, in reality, Moon has largely gone North Korea has the right to defend itself, the massive shelling of an ally’s capital, 25,000. along with the Trump administration’s ag- “including the right to shoot down United which is one of the most densely packed Unfortunately, according to veteran gression toward North Korea and China. States strategic bombers even when they cities on earth,” U.S. Secretary of Defense journalist Tim Shorrock, “the key ele- He installed the U.S. THAAD missile de- are not inside the airspace border of our James Mattis warned Congress in June ments of the exercises, including train- fense system in Seongju, despite earlier country.” when asked why Washington wouldn’t ing in ‘decapitation strikes’ on the North promises to conduct a yearlong environ- just go to war with North Korea to prevent Korean leadership, remained.” This led mental impact review. Playing with Fire it from acquiring the capability to strike to a ­counter-reaction from Pyongyang in At the same time, Moon has defied calls Although a military confrontation be- the United States. “It will be a war more the form of two missile tests, including for complete isolation of North Korea by tween the United States and North Korea serious in terms of human suffering than over the Japanese island of Hokkaido. On committing $8 million to the United Na- would be unimaginable, many are begin- anything we’ve seen since 1953.” Sept. 2, North Korea conducted its sixth tions for humanitarian aid to North Ko- ning to predict how it will unfold. In a ter- “There’s no military solution, forget it,” nuclear test. It was then that McMaster rea. Moon has also vowed to review his rifying article in The Los Angeles Times, Steve Bannon told Robert Kuttner of The started “speaking openly of a ‘preventive impeached predecessor’s bilateral agree- Barbara Demick looks at how a U.S. American Prospect on his way out of the war,’” Shorrock explains, aimed at stop- ment with Abe forgiving Japan’s wartime war with North Korea would be fought. White House last August. “Until some- ping “North Korea from threatening the sexual slavery of hundreds of thousands Demick begins her fearmongering piece body solves the part of the equation that United States with a nuclear weapon.” continued on next page … Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org V3N4—Fall 2017 23

fully arrive at this conclusion and agree Brink of War to negotiate a nonaggression pact that would reduce the threat of a North Korean … continued from previous page counter­attack—and could freeze their of Korean, Chinese, Filipino, and other ­nuclear and missile weapons develop- women and girls. ment. But first it must agree to talk with Yet, the United States, South Korea, North Korea unconditionally. and Japan are all on the same page when it The good news is that there is a viable comes to profiting from the ongoing Ko- proposal now to freeze North Korea’s nu- rean conflict. On Sept. 5, Donald Trump clear and missile program in exchange tweeted, “I am allowing Japan and South for a halt to the U.S.-South Korean mili- Korea to buy a substantially increased tary exercises. It was first introduced by amount of highly sophisticated military Pyongyang and is now backed by China equipment from the United States.” Mark and Russia. According to Kye Chun-yong, Lippert, the former U.S. ambassador to the North Korean ambassador to India, South Korea, now heads government re- “We are willing to talk in terms of freez- lations for ­Boeing, to ensure a steady ing nuclear testing or missile testing … if stream of fighter jets to Seoul. the American side completely stops big, cluding former State Department official then planned but not executed during Just as the United States needs the on- large-scale military exercises temporarily John Merrill, who told PBS, “A freeze-for- the 1994 negotiations that culminated in going Korean conflict to sell more weap- or permanently, then we will also tempo- freeze option is the only remaining viable the Agreed Framework that froze North ons, Japan is using the North Korean rarily stop. Let’s talk about how to solve option to defuse the current crisis. It is ac- ­Korea’s nuclear program for more than conflict to justify eliminating its Peace the Korean issue peacefully.” tionable and carries relatively little risk. If eight years. According to former Sec- Constitution, including Article 9. Ac- Even President Moon’s senior advisor successful, the payoff could be peace.” retary of Defense William Perry, North cording to Kozue Akibayashi, professor Moon Chung-in has proposed that South There is a precedent for halting U.S.- ­Korea could have produced enough plu- at Doshisha University in Kyoto, “Abe Korea consider scaling back the exercises South Korean war exercises. In 1992, tonium to build 50 nuclear bombs a year. is using the North Korean nuclear threat to eliminate the most threatening aspects. George Bush senior suspended the Team Another step the antiwar movement can to justify more militarization, such as re- take is to urge Congress to rein Trump voking Article 9, which threatens the se- in by limiting his ability to authorize a curity of the entire region.” first strike on North Korea without con- ‘A freeze-for-freeze option is the only remaining gressional approval. Like the Markey- Reviving the U.S. Antiwar Movement viable option to defuse the current crisis. It is Lieu bill restricting first use of nuclear The time is now for mass mobilization weapons, such legislation would prevent and opposition to Trump’s drive for pre- actionable and carries relatively little risk. If Trump from initiating military action emptive war on North Korea. According without congressional authorization. to a poll conducted in September by The successful, the payoff could be peace.’ Time is not on the Trump Administra- Washington Post and ABC News, two tion’s side. Every time North Korea con- thirds of Americans oppose a preemptive ducts a missile or nuclear test, it is perfect- military strike against North Korea. Now, Many U.S. experts say such a move would Spirit exercises, which led to North Korea ing its ability to strike the U.S. mainland as it’s the peace movement’s role to ensure be fair and do little—or nothing at all—to allowing the International Atomic Energy a deterrent against a military invasion. As that the Trump administration is held to weaken the U.S.-South ­Korean deterrence Agency to inspect its main nuclear facil- Obama acknowledged with Iran, Trump account and pursues genuine diplomatic capability. ity, which in turn led to the discovery that must realize that it is better to freeze North engagement to resolve the standoff. A growing number of former U.S. offi- the North had a secret nuclear program. Korea’s nuclear and missile program be- The Trump Administration will hope- cials support the dual freeze proposal, in- The war drills were re-started in 1993, fore it can reach Washington, D.C. Rep. John Conyers, one of two Korean War vet- erans still in Congress, is spearheading congressional efforts to restrict Trump’s ability to launch a first strike. Finally, the U.S. peace movement must push for a final settlement of the unre- solved Korean War with a peace treaty. We are in this crisis today because a fragile ceasefire has been in place for 64 years. North Korea is keenly aware of what happened to Iraq, which didn’t pos- sess weapons of mass destruction, and it is not about to become victim to another U.S. military regime-change invasion. Furthermore, Trump’s threats to abrogate the Iran deal aren’t helping persuade the North Korean regime to de-nuclearize. Pyongyang won’t even consider aban- doning its nuclear weapons program as long as it is being threatened with “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” as President Trump has forewarned. Peace and diplomacy are the only way forward, and the first step is dialogue— unconditionally. Christine Ahn is the founder and in- ternational coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, a global movement of women mo- bilizing to end the Korean War, reunite families, and ensure women’s leadership in peace building. She is the co-founder of the Korea Policy Institute, Global Cam- paign to Save Jeju Island, and National Divers from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 swim back to guided-missile submarine USS Michigan during exercise off North Korean coast. Campaign to End the Korean War. U.S. Navy photo by Specialist 3rd Class Kristopher Kirsop 24 V3N4—Fall 2017 Peace in Our Times • peaceinourtimes.org

my life, I needed to return to my homeland whatever the consequences. My parents were getting older, my country was being told to “put the war behind us” by both Presidents Ford and Carter. I decided to come back publicly. I wanted to challenge the notion that the war was over. A govern- ment simply cannot engage in the mass murder of over three million people, sacrifice almost 60,000 of its young citizens in the process, and then tell people to put it all behind them. How many billions of dollars were wasted? In making the decision to return to the United States, I searched for legal advice. The draft refusal charges against me had been dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The New York State riot-inciting charges had been dropped. I was facing three years in prison for the assault charges and the possibility of bail-jumping charges were extant. Friends in the movement for universal unconditional amnesty suggested I contact former U.S. Attorney Gen- eral Ramsey Clark. I knew that he had been to Ha Noi shortly after leaving office, I knew that he had spoken Reflecting on 50 out strongly against continuation of the war both in pri- vate to President Johnson and vociferously upon return- ing to public life. I phoned him in New York City and he Years of Activism responded, “Bruce, I’m the one who got you into this, I owe you the chance to resolve it.” Bruce Beyer and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark on October 20, 1977, just before Beyer returned to the United States to face charges associated with his refusal to submit to the draft. A week latter Mr. Clark flew to Toronto. We sat and got to know each other, talked legal strategy, and philosophy. I took an instant liking to him and when he flew back to By Bruce Beyer arrived at the church doors demanding my surrender. I New York City that afternoon my resolve to return to the refused. United States was strengthened. I sent out a press release In 1966, having been thrown out of a private military What started out as a nonviolent protest against the to the Courier Express and the Buffalo Evening News in- academy, I barely graduated from Bennett High School war in Southeast Asia ended in a fist-swinging melee. forming them of my intention to return home. Both news- in Buffalo, N.Y. My father insisted I attend college and I I and eight of my friends were charged with assaulting papers carried the story and a columnist at the Courier resentfully spent a year at a junior college before I uncer- federal officers in the process of carrying out their -offi Express, Michael Healy, wrote a piece entitled “War Pro- emoniously failed out. cial duties. Of the nine of us arrested, four were veterans. tester to Face Music As Sounds of Grim Era Echo.” During the summer of 1967 I worked as a night clerk William Yates, at age 16, lied about his age and enlisted On October 20, 1977, I came home. Literally holding at the Imperial 400 Motel at Main/Summer Streets. It in the Navy during World War II. He fought as a ground my hand as we crossed the Peace Bridge was Colonel Ed was eventful summer. I was robbed at gunpoint, stum- combatant in the Pacific. Ray Malak, Tom O’Connell, Miller, the highest-ranking Marine Corp ex-POW, who bled on a friend of my parents who was cheating on his and Jim McGlynn all served in Viet Nam. had spent five years in a Ha Noi prison camp. Ramsey wife, became friends with jazz legend Jimmy Smith, and There were two Buffalo Nine trials. At the end of the Clark held my other hand. Gold Star mother Patricia Si- witnessed the police and media response when rebellion first one, I alone stood convicted. At the end of the sec- mon, author Gloria Emerson, my father and 50 mostly Viet broke out on Buffalo’s East Side. ond trial, Yates and Malak were found guilty. They had Nam veterans made up the contingent of walkers. I was Because of its proximity to the East Side, journalists refused to stand when Judge John Henderson entered the arrested at customs, transported to the federal building, from across the country made the motel their base. Buf- falo police used the parking lot as a staging area as they planned forays into the streets. For two days it was like sitting beside a battlefield watching. I began to make A government simply cannot engage in the mass murder of over connections to the Viet Nam war. I knew my school failures would lead to being drafted three million people, sacrifice almost 60,000 of its young citizens in but even my scant knowledge of the war made it sound the process, and then tell people to put it all behind them. uninviting. In an effort to avoid ground combat, I enlisted in the Air Force on a delayed entry basis. I read about Viet Nam. I drew parallels between the war and racial in- justice but military service loomed large on the horizon. courtroom. When ordered to do so, Malak said to the and brought before Judge John Curtin. He took us into his In late August of 1967 I met a woman involved with judge, “You don’t stand for us, I won’t stand for you!” chambers, looked at the U.S. Attorney, then to Mr. Clark, antiwar activities. When she heard my plan to enlist she Yates and Malak were immediately hauled off to jail for and turning to me said, “Mr. Beyer, I’m going to let you go asked if I had ever considered just saying “NO.” I had 30 days for contempt of court. home. I’m not going to require you to post bail and I expect never heard of such a concept, nor had I considered it. Two In 1969, having been convicted for the assault charges, you will present yourself in court when required to do so.” days later I made the decision to attend an antiwar dem- I was out on bail and awaiting trial for having refused I waited a year for Judge Curtin to reach his deci- onstration in Washington, D.C., and turn in my draft card. induction. My opposition to the war grew more vocal sion regarding my incarceration There were infrequent On October 20, 1967, I stood on the steps of the Justice as the body count on both sides rose to staggering pro- conversations with Ramsey Clark and I was reminded Department and returned my draft card to then-U.S. At- portions. I spoke out at every opportunity I was given. I of how I felt after I turned in my draft card and waited torney General Ramsey Clark. This act symbolized for gave a speech at University of Buffalo after which stu- for the FBI to come arrest me. In the end, he reduced me my opposition to the war and my desire to throw off dents destroyed the ROTC offices located in the Clarke my sentence from three years to 30 days. I was given what I came to describe as my “white skin privileges.” Gym. I was charged with inciting a riot, arson, burglary, “credit” for the 19 days I had already served in 1970. I By this time I came to realize that minorities and white and conspiracy to incite a riot. spent 11 days at the Erie County Correctional Facility. working-class young people were serving while those of Now facing considerable jail time, I jumped bail and October 20, 2017. Fifty years since the day I returned us from middle-class backgrounds were allowed an es- fled the United States. After six months of hiding in Can- my draft card and 40 since I came home. cape through a system of deferments. I would disavow ada, I eventually made my way to Sweden, where I was The President of these United States is now threaten- my privileges. If it took going to jail as a way of serving granted humanitarian asylum. Two years latter I married ing war against another small Southeast Asian country. my country then I was prepared to go. my Canadian girlfriend and we immigrated back to Can- We already murdered more than a million Korean people Over the course of the next 10 months, I received ada. I lived in Canada for almost five years and began the in the 1950s and we sacrificed more than 33,000 young three orders to report for induction. I publicly refused process of applying for Canadian citizenship. American lives doing it. Are we going to continue to each time. Upon receipt of the third order, my friend In the spring of 1977, a friend gave me a copy of a book walk down this unending road to war? Bruce Cline and I took symbolic sanctuary in my fam- entitled Winners and Losers by New York Times for- When will we ever learn? ily church. After a mere 10 days, 32 FBI agents and fed- eign correspondent Gloria Emerson. Reading her book Bruce Beyer lives in Western New York with his wife, eral marshals, backed up by 100 Buffalo police officers, changed my life. I realized that in order for me to resolve Mary.