Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup metatuning Universalizing human rights -- response to terrorism

Dear friends in the tuning community,

After a moratorium of four days offline as a time of prayer and reflection
after the horrible acts of violence on 11 September 2001, I am moved both
to offer my best wishes to all, and to share some first remarks originally
written for another kind of forum on the topic of genocide and its
prevention.

Reading some of the messages on these tuning forums, I learned of how
xenharmonicists in the New York area and vicinity have experienced these
days, and also some of the human emotions and passions involved. Let us
listen to each other, as has been so wisely suggested, with the same kind
of understanding that we would have prevail in the larger world. Deciding
whether to be offline or online has not been an easy judgment, and I thank
those of you who have continued the quest for a community of peace in
these last days through the channel of our forums.

One message I found especially moving was the statement from an Afghani
student, providing the most eloquent gloss to the very brief reference to
Afhganistan mentioned near the end of my statement. How tragic it would be
if the immoral politics of the Cold War should be succeeded by the
amorality of state-conducted terrorism by bombing against a shattered
society?

In the Middle East, as a person myself from a Jewish family, I have
advocated ideally some kind of multicultural federation bringing together
Palestinians and Jews as equal citizens with human rights standards
applying to all. In the world of political realities, some kind of "two
state solution" may be an immediate alternative to fratricide (and
sororicide, since women on all "sides" are frequent victims of violence).

With Dr. Chalmers, I would like strongly to agree as to the dangers of
"terrorism" on all sides, affirming that a commitment to the best Jewish
values means rejecting the bombing of high-rise buildings such as
apartment buildings in West Beiruit as well as the World Trade Center in
New York. Personally I would favor a "Law of Return" for Palestinians as
well as Jews, a recognition that massacres such as Dir Yassin are acts of
terror which must be repudiated and made occasions of restitution and
restoration.

At the same time, I would like to reject the death penalty as itself an
act of terror, advocating penalties which respect life, as Amnesty
International has described in its guidelines for genocide or war crimes
trials.

Please let me express my love for you all, and my understanding that anger
is a natural human emotion in these circumstances. If this anger moves us
to rise beyond injustice, rejecting the evil while recognizing the
humanity of the evildoer (however hypothetical that distinction can
sometimes feel), then it can also be part of the process of healing and
justice.

In peace and love and solidarity,

Margo

- - -

Hello, everyone, and it is with great respect and an appreciation for
the contributions offered here that I write about the terrible events
of the last few days, and some issues also raised by certain earlier
posts.

First, while human conflict and tension themselves seem to me an
inherent part of the human experience -- however creatively and
nonviolently conducted and resolved -- I would find an association
between the violence of mass murder (in theory or, all too tragically
in practice) and the ultimate violence of genocide a likely one.

Once one includes within the scope of "reasons of state" such acts as
the Rape of Nanking (1937), or the terror bombings of Tokyo and
Hiroshima in 1945, an ideology of killing _everyone_ in a given
population seems not quite so unthinkable. Of course, the special and
methodical efficiency of the Shoah as a machine of death makes it
unique, but not necessarily without moral relationship to such other
forms of "total war."

If it is "permissible" to kill _anyone_ in the name of "reasons of
state," then it may be not so unacceptable to kill _everyone_ within a
certain group.

In my view, a truly "antiterrorist" policy must reject the principle
of terrorism itself, whether directly or indirectly sponsored by a
state, or carried out by other individuals or groups: the
permissibility of killing civilians and destroying
"military-industrial assets" as a just means of waging conflict.

Please let me affirm in the strongest possible terms that I regard the
horrible crimes of 11 September 2001 as "terrorist acts" -- and as war
crimes, if this is to be considered a kind of war.

The perpetrators should be brought to justice before a tribunal itself
committed both to the categorical rejection of such acts, and to the
affirmation of the elementary human rights standards of Amnesty
International to be observed even in the punishment of such crimes,
lest they be emulated in the name of "justice." For example, the death
penalty should be excluded, thus upholding the very value of human
life which terrorism would deny.

Although, in view of my own commitment to nonviolence among other
things, this is a most unlikely scenario, I ask myself how I might
react as a government decisionmaker of some state finding the
perpetrators on its soil.

My response would be to detain them on some legal ground, and to seek
their trial before some fair and impartial international tribunal, or
in some national jurisdiction where the standards of Amnesty
International would be observed, categorically excluding the death
penalty.

The cycle of terror, violence, and pain must somehow be broken, and I
find concerted nonviolent and nonlethal means to be the most
apppropriate and least improbable ones to serve this end. Absolute
safety is impossible in this world, but striving to move from an ethic
of retaliation to one of restoration may be the best step toward a
safer and more just world.

Of course, anyone committed to nonviolence must face the question of
Hitler, and one lesson I draw is that once we are ready to compromise
fundamental human rights in the name of political expediency, no one's
rights are truly secure.

Some time ago, in randomly looking through a collection of college
debates, I found a debate from around 1934 on the topic, which I
paraphrase but rather closely, Is Hitler the future for Germany's
youth?

This debate took place between two colleges in the southern portion of
the USA. In it, the advocates for the negative side -- two women,
interestingly -- cited the many human rights violations then becoming
known against Jews and others in Hitler's emergent Third Reich. They
told of torture, disappearances, and murders.

The affirmative advocates, however, argued that Hitler was good news
for the vast majority of the German people -- all except the
"privileged" Jews. This was a evidently a "respectable" position in
1934, just as it was apparently "respectable" around 1980 for some in
the USA to argue that death squads were a "regrettable necessity" in
Central America.

Following Barbara Deming, I might argue that the question with
terrorism and related forms of injustice, whoever their sponsors, is
not whether they are opposed militarily, but whether they are opposed
with _some_ form of "uncompromising action" -- hardly the kind of
opposition Hitler faced in the world community during 1933-1935.

Thus in rightly condemning the terrorist actions of 11 September 2001,
we should look at the larger network of terroristic actions and
policies carried out or supported by a large number of states over the
past decades in the name of "democracy" or "socialism" or
"geopolitical balance."

The bombing of urban areas with known civilian populations present,
even when the intent may be less murderous than that shown in
Hiroshima or New York (where strategic choices favored _maximum_
casualties), inevitably risks killing large number of innocents, and
therefore seems to me more like an emulation of terrorism than its
rejection.

To reject strategic bombing as a response to terrorism leaves open a
number of strategies which more clearly reject the terroristic outlook
and seek both to prevent and punish the crime while moving states --
including those carrying out these strategies -- away from the deadly
web of terror in the name of "political necessity":

(1) When wielded with discrimination and fine judgement, economic
sanctions may serve to express the condemnation of states practicing
or supporting terrorism and other human rights violations, especially
when the states participating themselves strive to comply with human
rights standards;

(2) Although I am myself committed to nonviolence, I recognize the
legitimacy of the police function of the state in preventing terrorist
crimes, for example through airport security measures, and urge that
this function be carried out as nonviolently or at least nonlethally
as possible;

(3) The building of an international consensus against the deliberate
taking of the life of _any_ unarmed person by the state would provide
the clearest and most categorical basis for condemning not only
genocide but any form of deadly terrorism.

Again, I emphasize the basic axiom that the murderous acts of this
last Tuesday indeed define the kind of terrorism or war crime which
must not be tolerated, and seek to draw some conclusions from this
axiom which may call for a radical commitment to human rights as an
ultimate "weapon" against terrorism.

To what I have said in these first impressions of a horrible
situation, I might add two points.

First, while the dilemmas of even the most enlightened and
compassionate society in seeking full independence from the ethic of
terrorism are daunting and complex, the uncertainties of proposed
military solutions must never be underestimated. From a calculus of
uncertainties there seems no escape.

Specifically, to say that a given state has the power to determine the
place or date on which a military conflict will end seems to me most
naive. The fortunes of war and the fog of war respect no nation, and I
would realistically emphasize that nonviolent and nonlethal methods
have their own uncertainties as well as moral ambiguities.

Secondly, it seems to me possible at once to condemn terrorist acts
such as those of the past week, and to ask about predisposing
conditions -- not necessarily conditions providing the perceived
grievances for a given group of people using strategies of mass
destruction, but conditions which may make the emergence of such
groups more likely.

If the World Trade Center had been a center for the administration of
a world income tax promoting equitable development with environmental
sustainability, for example, might this attack have been less likely?

If, during the era of 1978-2001, both the USA and the USSR had shared
the kind of commitment to some kind of social democracy suggested by
Academician Andrei Sakharov's "convergence" theory, might the history
of Afghanistan have been radically different and less murderous, with
incalculable consequences for the events of last week?

The universalization of elementary human rights standards in the 21st
century may be an immodest proposal, but possibly also the clearest
and most decisive response to terrorism in all its forms.

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, everyone, and in view of some recent discussion, I would
like to comment on the situation of the Kurdish people, especially
those within Turkish borders, from the standpoint of human rights and
the struggle for peace.

The tragic events of last week have, sadly, had many counterparts in the
Kurdish history of the last century, ranging from destruction of Dersim in
1937-1938 to the genocidal _Anfal_ campaign of 1988-1989 in Iraq and the
razing of thousands of villages in Northern Kurdistan over the past two
decades.

In responding to the remarks of others, and especially Dr. Chalmers, I
would like to communicate both the complex nature of the cultural and
political realities involved, and the often stark and simple
injustices filling the recent history of the region and calling for
application of the most elementary human rights standards.

With such a social reality, as with musical reality, we must seek a
multileveled appreciation acknowledging many open and possibly now
"unsolvable" political questions, but at the same time affirming basic
guarantees of human dignity and cultural integrity which should apply
to all humans and communities everywhere.

For example, just what might be the political status of the Kurdish
people of Northern or Turkish Kurdistan in the year 2020 remains an
open question.

However, I consider it a basic imperative of the year 2001 that they
at least enjoy the language and cultural rights guaranteed by
international human rights standards, and that their nonviolent
leaders and representatives be free to advance their aspirations
through peaceful political activity.

In what follows, I shall try to summarize some of the relevant
developments, urging people to turn especially to the findings of
human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch for relevant data, including documentation of "terrorism"
or human rights violations by the Turkish Government, and all too
sadly, at some points in recent history by portions of the Kurdish
resistance movement also.

Please let emphasize also that I write based mainly on the situation
through the earlier part of the year 2000, and that recent events may
alter some of the conditions at hand -- for the better, I hope.

An already prudent warning may be especially imperative here: do not
judge the character of an entire people by the worst acts committed in
their name. This statement applies to the Turks, the Kurds, or any
other national or cultural group.

Just how old are the Kurdish people? Some scholars have suggested
indigenous roots going back to prehistoric times in the region known
as Kurdistan, the homeland of the Kurds. It has been proposed that the
Qutil people mentioned in some documents around 2000 years before the
Common or Christian Era (2000 BCE, or 2000 BC) might be synonymous
with the Kurds.

Whatever their origins, the Kurdish people were evidently strongly
"Iranicized" during the 2nd millenium BC/BCE, and speak a language
belonging to the Iranic family of Indo-European (e.g. modern Farsi),
distantly related to languages including Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and
the Germanic branch having English as one member.

The Kurds are known as _Karduche_ in the chronicles of Xenophon,
having a reputation as warlike and fierce defenders of their
liberties. For some time there was a Roman presence in Amida, a city
in Northern Kurdistan known as Amed, and also as Diyarbakir.

Possibly one of the best known Kurds in world history is Salahaddin, a
leader famed in medieval Europe for his chivalry and kindness to
prisoners in the late 12th century during the Crusades.

During the 16th-18th century era, Kurdistan interestingly found itself
in a situation somewhat analogous to Italy, having a cultural identity
but seeming often merely a "geographical expression" in terms of the
map of emerging states. Gibbon, for example, in his _Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire_, writes of "Curdistan" as a distinct people and
region, but there was no nation-state by this name at the time -- nor
one of "Italy," for that matter.

Much of Kurdistan was divided in this era between the Ottoman and
Persian Empires. Despite much violence and political tension resulting
from the rivalry between these powers, a rich cultural life often
flourished for the Kurdish people.

While most of the Kurdish people had accepted Islam, there were a
diversity of religious traditions, some mixing Islam with elements of
an earlier Iranic tradition. Also, there were many Kurdish Jews, and
in the earlier 17th century, Asenath Barzani became a Rabbi in
Southern Kurdistan (now within Iraqi borders) -- a position which may
reflect the Kurdish esteem for women.

In 1695, the great poet Ahmede Zane wrote the epic _Mem u Zin_, a
romance combining popular and legendary elements with a passionate
affirmation of Kurdish national identity and a call for unity to
resist the waves of a "sea" of Turkish, Persian, and Arabic power
often sweeping violently over Kurdish communities.

Under the Ottoman Empire, a certain degree of linguistic and cultural
autonomy was permitted, contributing to the image of modern Turkey as
a "mosaic." If only this policy had continued through the 20th
century, possibly resulting in some kind of local self-determination
for Kurdish people within the borders of the current Turkey, much
violence and inhumanity on all sides might have been avoided.

Tragically, for the Turkish majority as well as others, the history of
Turkish nationalism in the early 20th century took a violent and
indeed genocidal turn, resulting first in the Armenian Genocide of
1915-1922, and then in what might be called at least a form of
cultural genocide, including some mass murders, against the Kurds.

When the Young Turks came into power around 1907-1908 with a program
of modernization, many Armenians were enthusiastic supporters. As
members of a religious minority, the Christian Armenians had suffered
discrimination and some episodes of mass murder under Ottoman Rule;
the Young Turk call for democratization looked like a positive
change.

(Here it should be emphasized that the Ottoman persecutions of the
Armenians did not reflect any inherent Islamic policy: the toleration
both of Christians and Jews in Islamic Spain during the Middle Ages,
and the expulsion of Jews and Moslems alike in 1492 and 1498, serve as
one notable counterexample. Some of these Jews, interestingly, found
refuge in the Ottoman Empire, now the Turkish Republic.)

In 1915, however, the same Young Turk movement launched a campaign of
genocide against these same Armenians, with an estimated 1.5 million
people killed by outright murder or by starvation and thirst in the
deserts where they were deported to die.

Some Kurds helped the Armenians to escape, while others sadly took
part in the genocide along with members of the Turkish majority.
History would soon show that where one national group is not safe, no
one is safe.

After the First World War, there were a range of views among the
Kurdish community, but many Kurds joined in Ataturk's movement for
Turkish independence.

The assumption, as late as 1922 or 1923, was that Turkey would be a
unitary state with local autonomy for Kurdish communities in areas
where Kurds formed a majority. This approach might have led to a
situation somewhat like that in the previous Ottoman Empire for the
Kurds, but with a democratic process where they might have
representation in a national assembly as well as manage their own
local affairs.

However, it appears that the influence of Mussolini's fascist movement
and rise to power in Italy at this time may have had an influence on
the emerging Turkish state, established in 1923. The idea of a
"united" culture, imposed on all linguistic and cultural groups in the
name of a dominant "Turkism," sadly prevailed over some sane and just
multicultural outlook, for which Ottoman history would have provided
much precedent.

In March of 1924, Kurdish schools and cultural organizations were
outlawed, with Kurdish revolts and brutal repression following. The
Kurdish language was itself outlawed, with fines being imposed for
speaking it -- a legal state of affairs only modified in 1991, and
then often more in theory than in practice.

As declared by Turkish leaders, the policy was one of "Turkization" --
with "non-Turks" tolerated only as second-class people, or slaves --
unless they chose to repudiate their own cultural identities and
heritages. Further, campaigns were initiated to "Turkicize" regions
where "non-Turks" lived -- including the Kurds.

Around 1935, for example, the Kurds of the Dersim region were ordered to
leave their homes; when they resisted, a famous Kurdish uprising
started which was repressed with mass killings of civilians.

Any history of the Turkish-Kurdish tragedy must at once recognize the
disastrous spiral of violence brought about by the cycle of repression
and rebellion, and recognize the root cause of this cycle: an attempt
not merely to include the Kurds of Turkey as one element of a
pluralistic nation-state, but to destroy the identity of the Kurds and
the tradition of their language in its various dialects.

For an analogous situation to arise in the USA, for example, we must
imagine conditions like these:

(1) The use of Spanish within Latino/Latina communities
had been illegal for decades, and in practice still
often brought imprisonment, torture, or murder if
the language was used, however peacefully, for
political self-expression;

(2) The teaching of Spanish remained illegal even as an
_additional_ language in either public or private
schools (defined in British or American terms), and
was also banned as a subject at language schools for
adults;

(3) The government held that Spanish was not a language
with various dialects, but itself a dialect of the
_English_ language, invented for the sake of
destroying the linguistic unity of the USA; and

(4) It was often asserted that the Latina/Latino people
were actually "Mesa Anglos" who had forgotten their
true English origins, and sought to devise a new
"minority" identity for subversive purposes.

In fact, official Turkish ideology has often held that the Kurds are
actually "Mountain Turks," and Kurdish language a "dialect" of Turkish
invented to "divide our country."

One court verdict against Mehdi Zana, democratically elected Mayor of
Amed/Diyarbakir in 1980 who was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned
in the wake of the military coup of 12 September of that year, held
that all the words of the Kurdish language were originally derived
from pure and ancient Turkish!

Sadly, the humanity of this "democratic" regime has often been
comparable to its level of linguistic expertise. In Turkey, as in
Central America during the 1980's, "democracy" was a veneer for
torture, death squads, and state terror -- as well as for some violent
as well as notably nonviolent forms of opposition, sometimes also,
sadly, involving terrorist acts.

After the military coup of 1980 -- preceded by coups in 1960 and 1971
also accompanied by anti-Kurdish represssion -- some Kurds continued
nonviolent opposition at horrible risks, while others joined the
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a group which in 1984 launched a
movement of armed revolution.

Any impartial history must note the atrocities committed by elements
of both the Turkish armed and security forces, and the PKK, during the
era of 1984-1999, the 15 years' civil war.

The annals of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, for example,
provide an outspoken condemnation of the outrages by both sides, while
emphasizing that the Turkish government was itself the main source of
human rights violations within Turkish borders.

The patterns of official repression predated this civil war, going
back to actions of the security forces targetting cultural activism in
the Kurdish region, and indeed to 1924. Thus we have an episode of
bloody civil war which may be seen as one side of a campaign of
"ethnic cleansing" against the Kurdish -- an official pattern of
criminal conduct which cannot, of course, justify political murders
and atrocities by the PKK.

While Kurdish independence was the initial aim announced by the PKK,
by around 1992 or 1993 this goal had shifted to the basic demand for
"cultural autonomy," one consistent with basic humanity and elementary
human rights protections also applying, for example, to the Turkish
minority in Bulgaria or Kosovo.

As international organizations such as Amnesty International have
documented, many Kurds during the civil war era sought a nonviolent
alternative to the bloody guerrilla struggle: peaceful political
advocacy and cultural expression.

In 1991, Leyla Zana won election to the Turkish Parliament, and there
became an advocate of peace with full human rights for her
constituents in Amed/Diyarbakir and more generally for the people of
Northern Kurdistan. She advocated the brotherhood -- and sisterhood --
of the Kurdish and Turkish peoples within a democratic framework, In
1993, she testified before a human rights committee of the United
States Congress.

In 1994, she and three of her Parliamentary colleagues -- Hatip Dicle,
Orhan Dogan, and Selim Sadak -- became Prisoners of Conscience when
they were stripped of their immunity, tried on capital charges, and
convicted of "terrorism" with prison terms of 15 years. Amnesty
International, upon investigating these cases, declared that the Four
Kurdish Members are indeed being imprisoned for peaceful political
advocacy.

Ms. Zana, while in prison, received the Sakharov Prize of the European
Parliament for 1995.

To confuse such a state of affairs in Turkey with "democracy," like
confusing the political realities of the pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union
with "social democracy," can advance the cause neither of democracy
nor of socialism with human rights.

The end of the civil war in 1999, and the ceasing of armed operations
in Turkey by the PKK, might have been an occasion for swift progress
on some nonviolent process of democratization and cultural pluralism
within a unitary Turkish state. Kurdish leaders including the
imprisoned Leyla Zana have endorsed this kind of solution, which would
also satisfy the membership guidelines for the European Union. of
which Turkey is a candidate for membership.

This is the kind of policy which Turkey itself has rightly championed
on behalf of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, for example, where
Turks recently won the right to Turkish language broadcasting

However, the year 2000 saw instead a continueed policy of repression,
although happily some Turkish as well as Kurdish political parties and
groups advocated a definitive move toward pluralism. In 2001, a group
of Kurds were conducting a vigil in Washington, DC, for the liberation
of the Four Kurdish Members of Parliament in Turkey.

Here I have focused on only one portion of Kurdistan, seeking to
present the tragedy of the Kurds of Turkey -- and also that of the
Turkish people -- in some perspective.

The ultimate outlines of a political solution may be unclear, but I
hope that the basic imperatives for democratization and cultural
pluralism within a peaceful process may be clear.

Indeed, however borders are drawn, cultural pluralism and human rights
within them may be the most important goal of the 21st century, a goal
affecting the security of all peoples, and serving to help prevent
tragedies such as those of the past week.

Most respectfully, in peace and love,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, everyone, and thank you to the many contributors who
have shared thoughtful as well as often passionate viewpoints on the
tragic events of the last week.

As a pacifist, I reflect on a question raised in the USA during the
Indochina wars of the 1960's: "Can a pacifist tell a just war?"

While affirming my own commitment to the principle of active
nonviolence -- when necessary, militant and uncompromising nonviolent
action -- I would like to consider some ethical issues on which
pacifists and nonpacifists joining in the quest for peace might seek
out some common ground.

Please note that I say "seek out" rather than "find," realizing that
people whose passion for peace and commitment to human rights is at
least as great as mine might reach other conclusions. If the process
of dialogue brings us to better understand these earnest issues,
however diverse our understandings may be, then it will have served
its purpose.

Here I would like to propose four points which may reflect my own
pacifist or nonviolentist position, but may also speak to some
considerations of a "just war" approach focusing on such concepts as
discrimination and proportionality:

(1) "Retaliation" is an inappropriate concept in responding
to an act of mass murder committed by some amorphous
network of armed groups;

(2) The "punitive expedition" mentality of warfare favored
at various points in the history of the USA and its
predecessor Anglo-American colonial authorities may be
at odds with basic elements of the "just war" paradigm,
leading to especially bloody and indiscriminate tactics;

(3) One of the greatest dangers is that military action
will be launched to "defend" some indefensible aspects
of the economic and political status quo placing the
world at risk of escalating "terrorist" attacks with
increasingly deadly technologies, as well as ecological
catastrophe; and

(4) The mass murders of 11 September 2001, like the genocide
or democide in Cambodia of 1975-1978 and the crimes of
the Taliban against the people and cultural treasures
of Afghanistan, may reflect a political equivalent of
"Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" whose control and
cure depends largely on a radical change in superpower
policy -- meaning, in 2001, the policy of the USA.

In approaching these four points, I might roughly divide them into two
subcategories.

The first two points address the clear and present danger that in
seeking to repudiate or "punish" the crime, a military reprisal may be
said rather to emulate it, resulting in the deaths of more innocent
civilians in Afghanistan, if that is the selected target.

The last two points raise the danger that such an attack may
additionally fail to achieve a goal indeed imperative: to minimize the
risk of future attacks in various parts of the world, possibly with
escalating technologies of mass destruction, and to build a more
secure world.

My message, if one accepts it, is a call to action, whatever action
seems possible to prevent another attack taking the lives of innocent
civilians, and to move toward a world where such attacks become less
and less likely rather than more and more inevitable.

-------------------------------
1. The dangers of "retaliation"
-------------------------------

How does one "retaliate" against acts of mass murder such as those
committed on 11 September 2001?

Certainly such acts of violence, like war crimes committed by states,
call for an uncompromising response; and Gandhi tells us that while
active nonviolence is the best choice, those unable to follow this
path should prefer to respond with violence rather than not respond at
all.

However, whether one takes a radical approach of active nonviolence or
an approach seeking to resolve the situation with a minimum of
violence on all sides while not excluding military action, is
"retaliation" a useful or possibly counterproductive framework in
which to weigh such a response?

When responding to murders within a civil society, an enlightened
police force seeks not "retaliation" but justice and restored
security: the goal is not to inflict comparable harm on the
perpetrators, but to apprehend them and bring them before some
tribunal constrained by elementary principles of human rights which
protect the lives of the now-subdued perpetrators.

While the concept of a "police action" can serve as merely another
euphemism for war, it might usefully direct us away from concepts of
"payback" or revenge, and toward the ideal of restoring or possibly
creating for the first time a system of world security based on
justice, including economic and ecological justice.

From a nonviolent perspective, such a police action might be waged by
nonviolent forms of power and coercion, indeed of "war without
violence," directed not only against the immediate perpetrators, but
against governments which have sponsored them, or perpetuated the
conditions promoting their terrorist acts or war crimes.

From a "just war" perspective of _minimizing_ violence, without
excluding armed force, any military action would aim above all else at
discrimination, the deliberate avoidance of harm to civilians, and the
capture of perpretrators or state officials implicated in the crimes
with the least possible casualties on all sides.

In either the nonviolent or just war approach, one must focus on the
issue of governments violating basic human rights and standards of
decency -- whether by sponsoring attacks on civilians outside their
borders, or by committing crimes against humanity within them.

As I shall discuss in Section 4, the best remedy for "rogue
governments" -- often recognized as such when they happen to sponsor
violent actions directly or indirectly touching major powers, but not
when they terrorize their own populations -- is to let natural
internal forces act so as to overthrow and replace these governments,
ideally by means of nonviolent revolution, and indeed to lend support
to such forces rather than actually weakening them in the name of
misguided economic interests or "geopolitical" considerations.

In short, I would argue that from either a nonviolentist or just war
perspective, the purpose is not to "retaliate" for the killing of an
estimated 5000 people, but to dismantle the structures of violence and
injustice making such a crime possible with a minimum of further harm
to any human beings, and to built structures of peace and security,
however partially and tentatively.

---------------------------------
2. Beyond the punitive expedition
---------------------------------

In a recent dialogue with a friend who takes a great interest in
military history, one concept came to the fore: the "punitive
expedition" as a model for warfare, and its consequences for
situations ranging from early democide and genocide against Indigenous
people during the Anglo-American colonial era of the 17th and 18th
centuries, to the bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in 1945,
and of Panama City in 1989.

While either armed or nonviolent force may sometimes gain amazingly
prompt victories, protracted struggle is often the norm using either
technique of conflict. Thus a mixing of active conflict and
negotiations, leading to an often fine art of conflict termination,
may require much patience as well as resolve and "staying power."

The "punitive expedition" mentality, however, seeks a quick and
decisive end to a conflict with an emphasis on "punishing the enemy"
followed by convenient disengagement, with at best a low priority
accorded to the consideration of minimizing casualties on _all_
sides.

Often the "punitive expedition" may involve the dehumanization of the
people on the adversary side, whether Indigenous nations of the 17th
century (e.g. the Pequod Nation, victims of the massacre of 1637 in
Massachusetts Bay Colony), or Japanese civilians in 1945.

The result of such an outlook, if followed in 2001, is all too
predictable: a military attack quite likely killing many civilians in
the already decimated land of Afghanistan, while leaving in place the
roots of further terror, and structures of injustice there or
elsewhere providing fertile ground for the multiplication of such
roots.

------------------------
3. Beyond the status quo
------------------------

During the 1980's, when the _Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists_ placed
its clock for doomsday portentiously closer than usual to the midnight
of nuclear war, a question arose which now has a special relevance.

If one or two nuclear weapons were used in some conflict, and the
world then fortunately came to its senses and prevented further use,
what changes might happen in the way we view the world and assess our
political arrangements?

Would such a tragedy, in all its horror, provide a decisive
opportunity at last to change our way of thinking, and avert
Einstein's "unprecedented catastrophe"?

After the tragedy of 11 September 2001, dramatizing the dangers of
indiscriminate violence of a kind now open to "freelance" as well as
state actors, the time for such an assessment has come.

Certainly the immediate perpetrators, and any state sponsors, must be
rendered harmless, ideally by nonviolent means of coercion; or from a
just war perspective, with a minimum of injury to humans, innocent or
otherwise. However, we must also consider the conditions favoring such
lethal organizations and acts.

Often the end of the Cold War has been read -- or misread -- as the
just triumph of capitalism over "socialism." Here I would like to
suggest a different interpretation.

One of the lessons of Soviet-brand communism and its downfall is
indeed that to attempt the _suppression_ of what I might term the
"market instinct" in humans is likely to be both futile and
counterproductive, especially if it leads to "the dictatorship of the
proletarian" -- or _over_ the proletariat as well as the population in
general.

However, the problems of USA-brand capitalism in 1989 or 2001 show
that the enshrining of this "market instinct" as the main theme or
moral principle of a society may be equally misguided, and finally
just as dangerous for world security and ecological balance.

A sane approach, suggested by the "convergence" theory of Academician
Andrei Sakharov in the 1960's and by the ideal of "peace and freedom"
championed by E. P. Thompson of the European Nuclear Disarmament
movement in the 1980's, seeks some balance between communal solidarity
and individual liberty and autonomy.

Some kind of "mixed" economy, with reasonable constraints on income
inequalities and a mixture of private, public, and cooperative
sectors, seems a likely synthesis. It is tragic that this did not
take place, for example, in the later 1980's as a logical and just
denoument to the Cold War, producing a kind of society radically more
humane than either the old USSR or the old USA could offer.

I consider this the unfilled promise and vision of the Eastern
European revolutions of 1989, which also highlighted the potential
power of nonviolent action.

Not only the alleviation of the debt situation for underdeveloped
nations, but a radical measure such as a progressive world income tax
structured to promote ecologically sustainable development with a
special emphasis on community efforts, is imperative -- and possibly
the best weapon against the roots of terrorism.

-----------------------------------------------------
4. The political equivalent of AIDS -- and its remedy
-----------------------------------------------------

If the Taliban is a sponsor or abettor of the terrorist attacks of
last week, then this latest act of mass murder provides another
illustration of a deadly syndrome: superpower sponsorship of
repressive regimes, or use of destructive military force, in a manner
that inhibits or destroys vital social structures and sows the seeds
of further violence.

Consider, for example, the two Gulf Wars -- 1980-1988 between Iraq and
Iran, and 1991 between the USA and Iraq.

In the first of these wars, the USA lent support to the Iraq of Saddam
Hussein, despite his known crimes against humanity ranging from the
hanging of Jews to the _Al Anfal_ campaign of genocide against the
Kurdish people launched in the last year of the war (1988), and
preceded by mass disappearances and other crimes against the Kurds.

After the second war, during which the USA had urged elements in Iraq
such as the Kurds and Shi'ite Moslems to rise up in a struggle for
freedom, these uprisings in fact took place.

As a pacifist who opposed the war, as I oppose all wars, I am
nevertheless tempted to comment that in March of 1991, the USA would
have needed to use minimal if any actual armed violence to prevent
Iraqi helicopters and other forces from moving to crush the revolts.
Saddam's power would have been limited, if not overthrown, by a
"natural immune system" -- the resistance of the people of Kurdistan
within Iraqi borders, and of the Shi'ite community.

Instead, the USA stood by while the Iraqi forces moved in for the
slaughter, and the Kurds were forced to seek refuge in Turkey, a state
known for a campaign of what might be termed "cultural genocide"[1] as
well as episodes of democide and massive displacement against the
Kurdish communities within its borders.

One could cite other instances ranging from the politically as well as
economically convenient support by the USA of French colonialism in
Indochina after the Second World War, to the horrors of Chile in 1973
and Central America in the 1980's.

Here one might add the horrors inflicted by "communism," from the mass
executions by Lenin's Cheka to Stalin's millions of murders by famine
and purge to the reported millions of executions in the China of
1950-1951 and the destruction of Afghanistan initiated in 1979. Such
actions have no more resemblance to the cause of democratic socialism
than the death squad rule of El Salvador or Guatemala to Franklin
Roosevelt's Four Freedoms.

My purpose here is not to "bash" the USA, or the former USSR for that
matter, but to suggest that history can have fateful connections and
consequences, if they are not forestalled by informed action.

If asked a week ago this Monday, I would have associated 11 September
with the atrocities of the coup in Chile on that date in 1973.

For a superpower to condone such atrocities -- whether against the
Kurds of Iraq and Turkey, or the people of Chile or El Salvador -- is
to undermine not only the local and regional roots of viable social
institutions, but the ethical immune system of the world community.

If thousands of peaceful people may be killed with impunity to promote
"geopolitical stability," or to make the world safe for certain oil
interests, then why may not thousands also be killed for some other
type of cause or ideal?

The lesson I draw is that regimes which violate elementary human
rights standards such as those of Amnesty International, or which
accept and promote conditions leading to or perpetuating untenable
inequalities of income, are setting the stage for more terrorism,
whether recognized by that name or sanitized by some other.

If we agree that crimes such as those of last week are intolerable,
whether one takes a radical nonviolentist or a just war position, then
conditions promoting such crimes or the formation of organizations
committing them must also be deemed intolerable in the 21st century.

To recognize the scope of the problem should lead, not to inertia, but
to action for peace and justice -- by individuals, nongovernmental
organizations, and the community of nations.

The problem is to constrain violence and to seek the roots of social
peace with justice, a struggle which now takes on a special urgency.

----
Note
----

1. The classic presentation of the concept of genocide by Raphael
Lemkin in 1944 suggests to me the useful category of "cultural
genocide" for the attempted destruction of the _identity_ of a
cultural group through suppression of its traditions and language, a
concept which may also fit Lemkin's earlier category of "barbarity"
(1933). See Lemkin, _Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation,
Analysis of Government, Proposals for Reform_ (New York: Howard
Fertig, 1973; originally Carnegie Institute for the Humanities, 1944),
at pp. 79-80, and the discussions of "social" and "cultural" aspects
of genocide at pp. 83-85; on "barbarity," see pp. 91-93. Lemkin's
"destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group," and
"imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor" might be
interpreted to include such "cultural genocide," not necessarily
involving physical extermination of the group (physical genocide), or
even mass killings (democide).

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@...

🔗John A. deLaubenfels <jdl@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, John deLaubenfels, John Chalmers, and everyone.

Thank you for raising some very important points on questions ranging
from the ethics of democracy and secession to the nature of Islam.

This kind of dialogue can make us all better informed, and has also
provided me with an opportunity to clarify some of my own views,
something which is a precious gift to receive.

First, John (de Laubenfels), I strongly agree that "democracy" can
mean a tyranny of the majority, and doesn't rule out persecution,
violence, or even outright genocide against minorities. Some political
theorists may have been naive in extolling "the general will" as the
ultimate test of right, or in celebrating the power of a state
untrammeled by any higher law or human constraints -- but we cannot
afford the consequences of such mistakes.

Although there are reasons to question whether ancient Athens was
truly a full "democracy" -- consider the exclusion from the popular
councils of women as well as slaves -- this city-state has often been
considered a paradigm case of direct democracy, at least for those
with the rights of citizens. However, this style of political
organization did not prevent the massacre at Melos in 416 BCE/BC.

Basically the Melians had declared a policy of neutrality in the wars
then going on between Athens and Sparta, and Athens, using a kind of
brutal "diplomacy" not unknown in more recent times, demanded that
Melos enter an alliance with the Athenians -- or else.

The Melians refused, and Athens invaded, overcoming a valiant attempt
at armed self-defense. All the adult men were then systematically
slaughtered, and the women enslaved.

Euripides, to his eternal credit, wrote a great protest play: _Trojan
Women_, speaking of Troy to address the fresh horrors of Melos.

Sadly, while that play may have expressed the best of Athenian
democracy, the Melian genocide that set the stage for it warns us that
popular institutions alone cannot guarantee basic human rights or
prevent mass murder in the name of "the people."

Now we come to the question of secession which you raise, something
very important not only from an historical point of view, but from the
view of our 21st-century world filled as it is with diverse national
and ethnic groups and often quite artificially crafted "national
borders."

First, I would like warmly to agree with the point that secession is
_not_ the ultimate political evil in any sane weighing of the scales.
It may be a positive good when it leads to the creation of more stable
societies and states; sometimes an unfortunate event, if it happens to
promote rather than resolve the danger of repression and violent
conflict; or sometimes just a neutral accident of history, neither the
best nor the worst outcome, maybe a bit like a river which happens to
meander in one direction rather than another.

Your mention of the history of the USA suggests to me a number of
examples, some touching on the delicate questions you raise of slavery
and the Civil War of 1861-1865.

For example, let's consider the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1797, which
raised real issues of whether the USA would really have a right of
free speech, or whether the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights
(1791) might be mainly a form of words.

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 declared that the States
were not bound to follow such invalid and unconstitutional laws, and
had the power to nullify them. While the power of the United States
Supreme Court to review and overturn unconstitutional legislation
would provide a different kind of partial safeguard against such an
encroachment on the First Amendment, this doctrine was not yet clearly
defined.

The power of judicial review -- to declare a law unconstitutional --
was asserted in _Marbury v. Madison_ (1803), but is indeed a "partial"
protection because the Supreme Court may "follow the election returns"
rather than the rights of an unpopular minority, as some of the cases
decided during the era of the First World War illustrate.

The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, however, suggested a different
kind of remedy to protect liberty: the people of a given State might
reject a national law infringing on their basic human liberties, or
even secede if necessary to protect those rights.

As it happens, the Alien and Sedition Acts didn't stay in force
nationally, so the question of nullification or secession to defend
freedom of the press was averted.

Discussing secession in terms of the Civil War of 1861-1865 -- and I
realize that "Civil War" for many people here may also evoke the
English Civil Wars of 1642-1649 -- raises the central and complicating
issue of slavery, which should not be equated with the more general
question of secession.

Similarly, some of us may recall that in 1965, there was a
"Declaration of Independence" issued by Ian Smith in Southern
Rhodesia, a document published in the name of "White" colonial
supremacy. Such a document should not lead us to equate the idea of
national independence, or unilateral declarations of independence in
general, with the evils of racism.

I find it striking that secessionism or "disunion" was advocated in
the 1830's by a champion of human rights, William Lloyd Garrison,
whose motto was "No Union with Slaveholders." While his proposal would
have involved the secession of the North from the South, rather than
vice-versa, he took the view that the evils of slavery were worse than
the problems of separation.

Also, while Garrison spoke as a northerner, I find it noteworthy that
a southerner had some five decades earlier shared his passionate
conviction that the sanction for slavery in the U.S. Constitution was
a fatal flaw and intolerable evil: George Mason of Virginia, who
refused to endorse it for this reason.

The idea of State resistance to unjust national laws also won favor
among abolitionists when Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850; some States passed "personal liberty" laws specifically aimed at
nullifying this notorious enactment.

From my own historical perspective, both the North and South had set
the stage for the bloody Civil War not only by together sharing
responsibility for the evil of slavery, but by participating in
genocidal violence against Indigenous people and Nations.

In fact, I find it curious to envision a scenario whereby the South
might have been a champion of human freedom in seceding. Suppose that
history had developed very differently in the 18th century, with more
of an Indigenous current in the "mainstream" culture that emerged as a
fusion of native, European, and African elements. Parts of the region
remain under native sovereignty, while in others there is a kind of
mixing of peoples and traditions.

Now suppose that this part of the continent developes some kind of mix
of agricultural technologies with a bit of gathering and hunting here,
and a bit of industrialization there. Lots of African-Americans might
become farm owners, for example -- and some of them, along with some
European immigrants, might become members of the Indigenous Nations,
as happened in actual history.

Maybe the ideal of "Jeffersonian democracy" would suggest some small
part of such a scene, although it would emphatically be a more
feminist kind of democracy, as the example of "Beloved Women" such as
the Ani-Tsalagi or Cherokee leader Nancy Ward might suggest.

Now suppose that in the North, history is more like what happened, and
that the North ultimately wants to use its industrial power to reshape
the South in its image -- in this scenario, a system with much less
political, economic, feminist, and multicultural freedom. Somehow the
North and South joined around the end of the 18th century in some kind
of union, but that union places the positive cultural values of the
South at risk.

If secession of the South is what it took to preserve freedom, then
I'd say secession by all means.

It's interesting to imagine a Civil War in this kind of setting fought
by nonviolent means, and I'd guess that someone like Stonewall
Jackson, given the right access to knowledge and training in the
techniques of militant nonviolent action, might have made a great
leader, as might have Nancy Ward or Harriet Tubman.

Slavery, of course, could not have been defended by nonviolent means,
but secession itself seems to me morally neutral when taken out of
context.

On the Civil War, there's also Winston Churchill's famous essay: what
if Lee had won at Gettysburg, thus adequately offsetting the
Confederacy's defeat around the same time at Vicksburg, and then
announced the abolition of slavery?

Churchill's scenario has President Lincoln deciding that with the
evils of slavery eliminated, the issue of an imposed union alone is
simply not worth further bloodshed. The two nations go there own ways
for a while, and ultimately reunite. While this essay doesn't fully
address the issue of racism, and accepts some racist stereotypes of
African-Americans, it curiously has African-Americans rendering
outstanding service in the armed forces of the Confederacy after the
peace settlement of 1863.

As W.E.B. Dubois and some other historians have observed, a truly
effective campaign for the liberation of the slaves would have needed
to give them the economic basis for self-determination: land
ownership, for example, as happened in other liberations of slaves or
serfs in various parts of the world. Given the drive for education and
democracy among African-Americans in 1865, that -- especially coupled
with the recognition of the rights of women, as advocated at that time
by Sojourner Truth -- might have shaped a radically different and
better history for the USA during the past 135 years.

Anyway, I find it minimal political sanity to say that genocide, at
any rate, confers a right of secession from a state following such a
policy -- as with the Kurds of Iraq in 1991. Why _shouldn't_ a state
such as Saddam Hussein's Iraq, an artificial construct of the
post-First-World-War era, which I understand didn't originally
include the affected portion of Kurdistan, be "dismembered" after the
_Anfal_ campaign of mass murder including poison gas attacks and death
camps? More expressly, is more mass slaughter by Iraqi forces
preferable to such "dismemberment"?

To sum up, I would say that national borders are or should be there
for the sake of humans, not humans for the sake of national borders.
Secession can be good, bad, or indifferent -- human rights and the
basic imperatives of decent living should be paramount.

John Chalmers, your response gives me the opportunity to clarify my
position that Islam, like Judaism or Christianity for example, can be
associated with societies and policies ranging from the most gentle
and tolerant to the most cruel and inhumane.

In rejecting the view that Islam or its followers are "inherently"
violent or intolerant, I do not mean to imply that must "inherently"
be gentle and tolerant. History reveals both possibilities, sometimes
in complex shadings and mixtures.

Islam is not unique in this way: consider, for example, the portions
of the Jewish Torah prescribing the death penalty for offenses such as
idiolatry, gathering sticks on the Sabbath, or juvenile delinquency,
not to speak of mandates in the Hebrew Bible for genocide against
certain non-Hebrew peoples.

Consider how one Rabbi, Jesus, declares in the Sermon on the Mount
that not an iota of the law will be annulled -- and yet interprets the
law at a higher level, which many of us would read as a mandate for
love, nonviolence, and the abolition of the death penalty (including
in those cases where the letter of the Torah would seem to prescribe
it).

Some other Rabbis of the time took the same view: consider the Rabbi
Akika. In a Talmudic dialogue, someone remarks that a Sanhedrin or
High Court which executed one person in seven years would be a bloody
Sanhedrin. Another says, "Once in 70 years." Then we hear the view of
the Rabbi Akiba: "If we had been on the Sanhedrin, no one would ever
have been executed."

Sonme recent commentators on Islam have said, similarly, that portions
of the Islamic law can be interpreted as reflecting customs and social
conditions of the time. The Arab Lawyers Union, for example, has
joined in an Amnesty International statement calling for the abolition
of the death penalty.

May I strongly agree that a toleration for "People of the Book" as
traditionally defined in Islam -- Islam, Judaism, and Christianity --
is not enough: the cruel persecution of the Kurds following an Iranic
tradition during the Arab invasions, around the 7th or 8th century I
guess, provides one illustration, as your account of the repression of
Hindus provides another.

Around 15 years ago, I was privileged to meet an Arab peace advocate
whose family followed an Islamic tradition affirming the sacred nature
of all spiritual paths, providing an example for us all.

Pointing to the humane and tolerant aspects of Islam and its followers
should not obscure the opposite tendencies, any more than the example
of St. Francis of Assisi should obscure the horrors of the so-called
"Albigensian Crusade," the Languedoc/Occitan Genocide of 1208-1242.

Sadly, there were Islamic as well as Christian jurisdictions which
executed "heretics" around 1200, and one example of mass slaughter of
Moslems by Moslems is the killing of an estimated 40,000 Shi'ites by
the Ottoman Emperor Selim the Cruel around 1514. The purpose was to
"send a message" to the Persian Emperor that he meant business in the
conflict between the two rulers.

As you observe, we can also cite examples of Christian toleration in
medieval and early modern times. In the Christian portion of Spain,
the King of Castille in the 13th century sometimes styled himself "the
King of the three religions," and as you mention, Sicily under the
reign of an Emperor such as Frederick II was a haven of tolerance for
Islamic scholars and scientists.

Partial tolerance, and intolerance, can be a curious thing. Thus
Frederick II embraced and sponsored Islamic learning, but at the same
time permitted the persecution of "heretics" taking place in
connection with the Albigensian genocide.

Similarly, in the late 16th century in France, Jean Bodin wrote an
amazing dialogue, a colloquy between seven people sharing their
religious views.

We have a Jew, Salamon; a Roman Catholic, Coronaius; a Moslem,
Octavius; a Lutheran, Frederichus; a Calvinist, Curtius; a follower of
"natural religion," Toralba; and a skeptic, Senamus.

It is an incredible statement for tolerance, as a principle and as a
process in action as the theological dialogue unfolds; but the same
Jean Bodin also took part in the trial and execution of witches,
defending this practice in another book.

As a religious person, I feel also a special responsibility to affirm
that true tolerance must also extend to atheists and agnostics, and
emphatically to "apostates" from any tradition.

To conclude, in looking at Islam -- from a peace perspective, or also
from a feminist perspective, for example -- I might draw a conclusion
much like that drawn by Pico de Mirandola about human nature in what
might here be termed the early meantone era in Europe at around the
end of the 15th century.

We have a choice to realize the best or the worst of our potentials;
let us celebrate and strive for the best, while not neglecting the
warnings of history as to how we may and must avoid the worst.

Most appreciatively, in peace and love,

Margo

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, Johnny Reinhard and Dante Rosati and Jeff Scott and
everyone.

In response to some recent posts offering some very helpful sources
for alternative viewpoints on the present crisis, I would like to
clarify a matter regarding an approach to the struggle against
terrorism from a pacifist or nonviolentist perspective, and to suggest
that we look more closely at the nature of the "enemy" we face.

That enemy is indeed terrorism -- whether conducted by an amorphous
private or paramilitary group, by a recognized government within its
own border, or under the aegis of a declared or undeclared war
conducted by a state and resulting in attacks against civilian targets
across national borders.

Thus the Holocaust of 1939-1945 which you so properly mention, Johnny,
as well as the acts of 11 September 2001, the Contra acts of war in
Nicaragua targetting civilians and civilian installations in the era
of 1981-1989, and the execution of the death penalty in countries
where it is retained, are all acts of terrorism.

From my own nonviolentist position, _all_ of these forms of terrorism
must be resisted, and the forms of resistance must not themselves
emulate the evils to be confronted, and thus themselves become
terroristic.

Ironically, it was often pacifists in the early and middle 1930's who
were pointing to the dangers of fascism and Naziism, at a time when
governments, including "democracies," were apparently ready to
tolerate Hitler's persecution of the Jews.

Consider the role of the USA not only in failing actively to oppose,
but in condoning and in effect lending diplomatic support to, the
Indonesian regime which invaded East Timor in 1975 and launched a
campaign of mass murder which might well be considered a form a
genocide.

Here I would like to agree with a point repeatedly made in the wake of
the horrible bombings of last week: we must beware of a kind of "moral
relativism" which would seek to excuse or justify such crimes.

If we are to avoid the deadly seducation of such "relativism," we must
indeed recognize the evil of terroristic violence -- whether
officially sponsored by a state, or unofficially conducted by some
paramilitary or militia group or the like -- regardless of who may be
the perpetrators, or the victims, in any part of the world.

At such times, there is a special responsibility in taking a
nonviolent position: the responsibility of concerted and
uncompromising struggle against evil, a struggle which one follower of
Gandhi has called _War Without Violence_.

Mahatma Gandhi himself expressed this spirit of struggle when he held
that while nonviolent action is the best choice, it is better to
resist evil violently than not to resist at all.

He called for "the nonviolence of the strong," a path involving the
conquest of violence, not submission to it and the evils that surround
violent oppression.

What does "freedom from terrorism" mean? Here I might suggest four
categories of terror which must be resisted:

(1) UNOFFICIAl TERROR ACROSS STATE BORDERS, such as that involved in
the bombings of 11 September 2001, and also, for example, in the
various attacks on civilians during the Contra insurgency in Nicaragua
during the 1980's.

(2) UNOFFICIAL TERROR WITHIN STATE BORDERS, such as the bombing of the
Federal Building in Oklahoma City, USA, on 19 April 1995.

(3) OFFICIAL TERROR WITHIN STATE BORDERS, ranging from persecutions
and murders by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan of women and others,
to the death squad regimes of El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980's,
to the judicial homicides or executions carried out by nations sadly
still including the USA as well as China, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

(4) OFFICIAL TERROR ACROSS STATE BORDERS, often committed as a feature
of declared or undeclared war, such as the bombing of civilian
targets, or the killing of prisoners of war, however sophisticated the
technology used for this type of terroristic attack. Examples range
from the Rape of Nanking in 1937 to the bombings of Tokyo, Hiroshima,
and Nagasaki in 1945 to various acts by a range of states and military
alliances over the last 15 years.

While it is human to seek to reduce such an urgent and imperative
struggle to a question of "two sides," I would like to suggest that
that to think and to act effectively on the side of peace and justice,
we must be ready to look at all sides of the problem with a single
standard of respect for human life and evolving standards of
international decency.

For example, I am certainly not on the "side" of Timothy McVeigh and
his associates in the horrible Oklahoma City bombing; nor am I on the
"side" of President George Bush and others who had him executed.

Emphatically I am on the side of Bud Welch, whose daughter Julie Marie
Welch was killed in this senseless attack, and who toured the country
in an effect both to honor his daughter and to save Tim McVeigh's
life. While voicing his own feelings of anger, his own inner struggle
to come to terms with the reality of an unspeakable crime and tragedy
against so many innocent people at that building including children,
he warned that violence begets violence.

Looking to his own daughter's example of service and compassion both
during her Latin American travels and in her position of interpreter
for a government agency at the time she was killed in the bombing, he
warned that Tim McVeigh acted for revenge, and that killing him out of
revenge would continue the ugly cycle of pain and evil.

Please let me say with some modesty as well as compassion as a citizen
of the USA that no one country has a monopoly upon either virtue or
evil, nor can one country alone resolve the problem of terrorism.

Terrorism, which one scholar has termed in its government-sponsored
forms as "democide," is a problem affecting many states and regions of
the world. Recognizing the scope and depth of the problem, whether the
acts are conducted by suicide bombers or certified military pilots or
freelance mercenaries or official "security forces," should promote
not immobilized passivity but an active struggle for a single standard
of human rights.

This struggle, in my view, must be conducted from all sides; to
recognize the intolerable nature of last weeks attacks, for example,
while condoning other types of elementary human rights violations or
attacks on civilians, leaves the world open to more terror and
aggression.

A world where the genocide in East Timor or Rwanda is possible, is one
in which the mass murders in New York City, Washington, and
Pennsylvania are also possible.

The results of addressing _only_ the "immediate" terrorist problem,
and especially of failing to keep the motivation of freedom from all
forms of terrorism in focus, can have results amply documented in the
chronicles of recent history.

During the 1970's, for example, the USA aligned itself with the Shah
of Iran, despite the well-known atrocities of his SAVAK secret
police. When revolution finally came in 1979, it sadly produced
another kind of brutal regime, conducting mass executions and
oppressing women, and conducting a genocidal persecution against
members of the Baha'i faith.

Then, during the 1980's, the USA and other states more or less closely
aligned themselves with the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, a ruler who had
already hanged Jews and was known to be involved in oppression of the
Kurdish people within his borders. The idea was to "stop Iran" from
spreading its influence.

During this same era, the USA also helped to train and arm what became
the Taliban, this time in opposition to Soviet actions in the region.
Indeed the brutal Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan at the
end of 1979, like the earlier military actions of the USA in
Indochina, involved the use of high-tech violence against civilians
approaching the level of genocide.

To oppose "terrorism" means defining it comprehensively, and choosing
techniques and strategies which address not only the terrible crimes
of last week which killed over 5000 people, but the policies and
conditions which make such crimes possible.

In some situations, trials for such terrorist acts before an
appropriate criminal court, or for state terrorist acts such as war
crimes or genocide, may provide one necessary response, always
following the guidelines of Amnesty International excluding the use of
torture or the death penalty, and affirming the humanity of those who
have committed even the most inhumane acts.

Nonviolent sanctions of an economic and diplomatic nature, however
precarious or uncertain in their effect -- compare South Africa and
Iraq -- may provide another invaluable weapon against terrorism. A
state seeking to fight terrorism, of course, should take care that its
own policies do not invite such sanctions from the international
community.

Following such great moral leaders as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, I
recognize a right of armed self-defense for individuals and
governments. At the same time, I urge that any such right be exercised
seeking the most minimal and nonlethal forms of force possible, and
under the rule of law, domestic or international.

For anyone not committed to nonviolence as a principle, the use of
limited armed force either to capture members or leaders of a
terrorist group, or to restrain a government which conducts or
sponsors terroristic acts, would appear to be one of the most
justified uses of the "police power."

However, the "just war" value of discrimination should be at the
center of any such exercise of armed force, with any action directed
to the restraint or capture of terrorist members or sponsor regimes
themselves. The target is the organized structure of terror, not the
lives of the guilty -- who should if possible be captured or removed
from power with a minimum of violence -- let alone the lives of the
innocent.

If we agree that the 5000 or more people killed at the World Trade
Center were _not_ a legitimate target, then neither are the civilians
of Kabul, whatever the flaws of their governments.

The negative goal of not targetting civilians should be coupled with
the positive and relentless goal of targetting terrorism itself
wherever it may found or promoted.

That is indeed a radical struggle, and possible a politically
unpalatable one for many governments; but if we seek a truly more
secure future, can we afford less?

Most appeciatively, in peace and love,

Margo

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

Hello, there, everyone and may I especially thank Dante and Jon for
the resources and comments you have shared toward a process of active
peacemaking.

Empathy sometimes takes a great deal of courage: to seek to emphathize
with the hijackers is not to condone or excuse their terrible acts of
violence, but to attempt to understand the roots of violence.
Recognizing that people who do such things are also human -- whether
by hijacking airliners and flying them into buildings, or by dropping
conventional or nuclear munitions on authorized targets with the
benefit of an officially sanctioned military uniform -- can be a
realization terrifying in itself as well as liberating, if we dare to
bridge the gap.

This is a realization that can cut -- and heal -- many ways. Thirty
years ago, I had the opportunity to meet a Vietnam veteran who had
become active in the antiwar movement, and who shared some of his
experiences. It was an uncommonly friendly experience, people coming
from very different backgrounds and experiences and yet united in the
cause of peace.

At that time, sadly, many antiwar people in the USA took an attitude
of personal antagonism toward the soldiers and police carrying out or
supporting the government's policies in what at least approached a
genocidal war, and could certainly be described as a democidal one,
with millions of people killed, including a large proportion of
unarmed civilians.

From a purely pragmatic political view, such attitudes made it harder
to build bridges to soldiers who might be agonizing over the dilemmas
of conscience and authority, or to police officers who might be able
to exercise discretion to keep demonstrations or civil disobedience
events nonviolent.

It is a most painful paradox that people may commit the most
destructive and murderous acts from the highest motives. The
widespread admiration for soldiers of many nations who may bomb and
kill thousands of innocent civilians, sometimes in calculated attacks
against "urban-industrial assets," reflects the genuine idealism and
comradeship of such warriors, however mistaken or even immoral may be
the orders they follow.

Recently I read a book edited by Robert McNamera on the history of the
Indochina war, much of it consisting of transcripts of dialogues in
the later 1990's between government and military leaders on both
sides. As someone who had become involved in the antiwar cause in the
USA in 1964, as part of my growing up, I was fascinated to see the
frank exchange of ideas, the mutual acknowledgement of disastrously
mistaken "mindsets" and "missed opportunities."

At the same time, while admiring the human beings on both sides of the
dialogue, I was tempted to observe that certain issues were not
squarely raised, issues also entangled in the roots of violence.

For example, at least some of the participations from Washington and
Hanoi alike seemed to conclude that there was a mistaken Vietnamese
"mindset" in the 1950's that the USA was in support of "colonialism,"
when in fact it had merely supported the French in their struggle to
retain control of Vietnam because of political convenience in Europe.

The explanation offered was that France's support was sought in the
growing tension of the Cold War during the years after the end of the
Second World War, and that the endorsement of the USA for French
colonialism in Indochina was an inducement to this purpose.

However, to show that the USA did not intend to run a French-style
colonial establishment in Indochina hardly addresses the issue of what
might be called _neo_-colonialism, for example through a ruler such as
Diem, whose repressive measures of the mid-1950's are seen in the book
as a major cause of the violent uprisings of those years in South
Vietnam and the war that followed.

Here we must consider not only Indochina, but places such as Iran in
1953, where Mosadegh was overthrown with the support of the CIA
because he wanted to nationalize oil; or Guatemala in 1954, where
Arbenz was likewise overthrown. These places, of course, have had
their own horrible subsequent histories of violence, but they also
reflect on the kind of Cold War mentality evidenced in Vietnam:
treating smaller countries, and their peoples and cultures, as
geopolitical assets rather than human communities with equal claims of
self-determination and justice.

Also, the conferees might have addresed a sensitive topic in the
history of North Vietnam which an eloquent witness, Colonel Bui Tin,
has directly confronted in his memoirs: the "land reform" campaign of
the period 1954-1956. Thousands were killed and thousands more
terrorized in this political inquisition which the national leader Ho
Chi Minh himself finally stopped by his intervention.

However dwarfed by the greater violence of bombing and ecocide that
would follow in the next two decades, this episode of democide
provided material for the argument that the cause of Diem in the South
was an alternative to such a "bloodbath" throughout Vietnam.
Ironically, this argument could be made even while Diem filled the
South with mobile guillotines to execute political dissenters, a
technology borrowed from the former French occupiers (who were
themselves to abolish the death penalty in 1981, some 20 years later).

While the consideration of peace and human rights issues in these
dialogues may be incomplete, they at once humanize the participants
and express a moving consensus that ignorance begets violence, and
violence begets violence.

As we focus on the struggle against terrorism, which must include a
very difficult struggle to understand the motives of those humans who
commit it with frightful consequences, not only empathy with the
tragically misguided from other nations and backgrounds, but
compassionate self-examination, are potent weapons of the spirit.

For example, it has been reported that members of the military forces
of the USA in Vietnam, as part of the Phoenix program, carried out the
assasinations of unarmed family members including children in an
effort to weaken the "infrastructure" of the insurgent National
Liberation Front (NLF). This was an act of terrorism, and also a war
crime directly ordered by a state.

Here it might be added that the NLF also carried out acts of terrorism
and assassination, in part as a reaction to the repression of the
early Diem years, but indeed as a policy with its own momentum, a
policy which could target not only officials of the Saigon government,
however guilty or otherwise, but also village bystanders including
children. The terrorists on all sides may have acted out of fear, or
perceived expedience, or simply "to follow orders."

Witnesses such as the Buddhist peace advocate Thich Nhat Hanh, a voice
for nonviolence and reconciliation both then and now, have documented
the crimes of both sides, and the courage of Vietnamese activists who
for the cause of religion and humanity waged a struggle with the
weapons of peace, sometimes to pay with their lives.

Would not a Commission for Truth and Reconciliation provide an ideal
tribunal for such crimes, where those who carried out immoral orders
could make a peaceful atonement by sharing the lessons of their
experiences for a new century, and the victims could receive the
recognition and honoring of their suffering, before history and the
community of nations.

Again, to recognize the humanity of those committing private or
state-mandated terrorist acts is not to justify or apologize for these
acts themselves, but rather to focus on the actual enemy: the
diversion of the highest idealism into the most terrible forms of
violence.

Please let me agree with others that acts of terrorism and democide
are not unique to the 20th century, and remark that some instances of
mass murder were well known in previous centuries, albeit without the
help of instant mass multimedia.

Consider, for example, the Languedoc Genocide of 1208-1242, often
known as the "Albigensian Crusade," including the massacre at Beziers
in 1209, and the forming of the Inquisition around 1230 for the
continued repression of "heresy" in the conquered areas of Languedoc
(a cultural area within the current borders of southern France and
northern Italy).

We might also consider the invasion of the Netherlands in 1567 by the
Duke of Alba to restore full Spanish control, in which Alba procured a
death sentence against the whole population of the Low Countries
(present Belgium and the Netherlands) with a few people excepted. His
purpose was not to kill everyone in the Seventeen Provinces, but to
have the power to kill _anyone_ he wished. About 14,000 executions, as
I recall a common estimate, followed in the next decade.

Alba's 16th-century "counterinsurgency" campaign, ultimately as futile
as that in Indochina, became a topic for paintings and drawings
published to dramatize the cruelties of the occupation forces. The new
technology of printing made it easier to bring such reports to a large
international audience.

Here it might be added that there were terrorists on both sides of the
struggle. Thus Koornhert, a famed champion of religious tolerance and
human rights, had to go into exile in order to avoid both Alba's
persecutions in the name of Catholicism, and the wrath of some
Protestant leaders who committed atrocities against Catholics in the
name of liberation. (Many people of both faith traditions joined in
the resistance to Spain.)

In the history of oppression in Ireland, September 11 has a special
meaning: it marks the calculated massacre carried out at Drogheda in
1649 by Oliver Cromwell, after a successful siege of the royalist
stronghold. Thousands were evidently slaughtered, a toll possibly not
that much smaller than the mass murder wrought by the terror in and
from the air of 11 September 2001.

We might also consider 11 September 1973, the date of the military
coup in Chile overthrowing democratically elected President Salvador
Allende, in which he died along with thousands of victims of terror,
some of whom were tortured and mutilated and then murdered at a soccer
stadium.

It is easy, at least if one comes from a certain political viewpoint,
to appreciate the role of the CIA in this coup of terror, but we must
confront a deeper question: what were the motivations of the thousands
of Chilean soldiers and officials who participated in these
atrocities.

One must acknowledge, of course, that there are humans who may act in
a sociopathic way whether with or without the sponsorship of a
government, and that regimes may sometimes very deliberately recruit
such people for their purposes. In some way sociopaths, and regimes
which use them, must be restrained -- as humanely as possible.

The guidelines of Amnesty International for trials of war crimes and
genocide, for example, present imprisonment under humane conditions as
a fitting punishment, while categorically excluding the death penalty
or torture. These guidelines would apply equally to private
sociopaths, to the use the term now current for people who seem to
have no moral inhibitions against repeated acts of violence, often
without any apparent motive that we can yet comprehend.

Yet we must also look to the roots of violence, involving both
individual and mass dynamics of pain, oppression, and injustice.

To understand that the terrorist is human, and that any human may have
the potential to become a terrorist under the right (i.e. wrong)
circumstances, is to humanize the patient while recognizing the all
more deadly and insidious nature of the disease.

It is also admitting that any of us may be susceptible to one degree
or another to the same disease, a realization calling for
self-examination on a personal, community, and national scale, and for
heightened compassion as we acknowledge this vulnerability.

It has been said that knowledge is power, and knowing ourselves and
each other may at once build the mutual awareness and foster the
empathy we must seek to make universal in moving from a cycle of
terror to a circle of love.

Most appreciatively, in peace and love,

Margo

Universalizing human rights -- response to terrorism

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗John A. deLaubenfels <jdl@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗mschulter <MSCHULTER@...>

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...>

🔗Afmmjr@...

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...>

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...>

🔗Afmmjr@...

🔗John Starrett <jstarret@...>