“Sir, you are an
idiot.” Wow, an insult wrapped in such old-fashioned politeness. I let the
words hover and reach, as I always do, for peace: for clarity, connection,
common humanity.
Last week I raised
the idea of unarmed policing, as practiced in half a dozen countries around the world. I wasn’t
calling for immediate gun surrender but, rather, the diversion of human energy
away from short-sighted, violent responses to conflict situations — at pretty
much every level of society, from interpersonal to geopolitical — and to the
complex, courageous, creative task of building a culture of peace.
Being called an
idiot for making such a plea is to be expected, of course — it happens all the
time, and I relish it because it means my words have reached people on the
other side of the great political divide. That’s what building peace is all
about.
How will human
society let go of violence — “good violence,” which is the most seductive and
most destructive of all — when its utterly crucial necessity permeates the
media, permeates collective thought? Good violence is so simple, so “surgical.”
You take out only the problem situation and innocent people everywhere are
instantly safer. Then you close your eyes and refuse to see what happens next.
As violent conflict
runs wild in the Middle East, the result, the New York Times glibly and
mindlessly informs us, “is a boom for American defense contractors looking for
foreign business in an era of shrinking Pentagon budgets.” The article also
explains: “Saudi Arabia spent more than $80 billion on weaponry last year — the
most ever, and more than either France or Britain — and has become the world’s
fourth-largest defense market.”
And: “Qatar,
another gulf country with bulging coffers and a desire to assert its influence
around the Middle East, is on a shopping spree. Last year, Qatar signed an $11
billion deal with the Pentagon to purchase Apache attack helicopters and
Patriot and Javelin air-defense systems. Now the tiny nation is hoping to make
a large purchase of Boeing F-15 fighters to replace its aging fleet of French
Mirage jets. “American defense firms are following the money. . . .”
Wow, gosh, a
“shopping spree” — so reminiscent of George Bush’s injunction to the American
public to go shopping as the War on Terror was being launched. What the Times
article fails to mention, however, as Qatar and Saudi Arabia and other
anti-Iran U.S. allies go shopping for state-of-the-art weaponry, is that
hellish conflict zones all over the planet — aflame with violence catered by
U.S. and other Western defense contractors — are not merely killing innocent
people directly but wrecking life-sustaining social structures and causing the
displacement of millions of people, who are left without the means to live.
These conflict
zones include Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan,
Ukraine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic,
according to Thalif Deen, writing for Inter Press Service. And the United
Nations, charged with the task of assisting the displaced, is overwhelmed.
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist. [Abridged]
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/04/23/idiots-world-unite
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