Since I posted Let there be peace on earth ... yesterday, I've been asking myself what can make people want peace so badly they'll set aside the ordinary reasons they have for supporting a war such as the war in Iraq.
The answer, I think, is identification.
When I watched the PBS telecast of the Memorial Day celebration on the Mall, I identified with the soldiers and their wives whose letters to one another were reenacted on the stage. One of the men died of combat wounds in an American hospital after having helped evacuate the other man, seriously hurt in a previous battle. They were best war buddies, and their wives were too. When one of the wives finally lost her shot-up husband just days before her first child was born, the other wife was by her side — even though it was touch-and-go for her husband at that point, in a hospital far from home. He had told his wife to go where she was most needed, which meant she couldn't be with him.
When one identifies with one's fellow Americans — an infant who will never know her father and a wife whose husband breathes no more — one is apt to become an instant pacifist.
This is separate from questions of whether the war is "worth it." No war is worth it, not if it can be avoided with honor and safety intact.
This war could have been avoided with America's safety and honor intact. But that is a caluclation we may make — or not — and it has nothing at first to do with identification. We can calculate the rightfulness or wrongfulness of a war until the cows come home, and that baby will still not have a father.
When will we adopt the attitude that war is just plain bad, no matter its "justification"?
For when we do that, we will seek alternatives to war — not all of which are necessarily craven or defeatist. There are ways of neutralizing threats that do not involve bombs or bullets.
Nor is the real point whether we ought to identify with those who pay the ultimate price on our behalf, but rather whether we do identify. Of course we ought to feel their pain, as fellow human beings and fellow Americans. But how hard it is to actually do so, most of the time! It takes a special set of circumstances to trigger true empathy.
Mine was triggered because the Memorial Day concert was clearly not a peace demonstration. I knew that, and so when that tableau of heroic sacrifice and personal pain was presented on stage, I could not duck its impact by imagining that someone was trying to indoctrinate me.
And so I identified with people who I was aware probably would not have wanted me to not support the war. For that widow to oppose the war now that her husband has given his life in it would be to have his — their — sacrifice be in vain. Identification is not the same thing as agreeing with the person identified with.
At some point, reason has to chime in and say the best thing one can do for somebody with whom one disagrees fundamentally, but with whom one nonetheless identifies totally, is to respectfully continue to disagree.
At some point, reason has to generalize the individual identification and conclude that war is just plain bad.
It starts with identification, but it ends with reason.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Let there be peace on earth ...
... and let it begin with me!
It's Memorial Day 2008, and oldstyleliberal (that's me) feels a positive hunger for peace.
Last night I watched the Memorial Day celebration at the National Mall, at the U.S. Capitol, thanks to the Public Broadcasting System. In one segment, three actors read from letters written by three of the honored guests. Two were the wives of soldiers formerly stationed in Iraq, and the third was the first of the two soldiers. The second soldier is dead, having died in combat only days after helping evacuate the first, his best buddy who had been shot and grievously wounded in a firefight, and who is yet only a hairsbreadth away from having to have a leg amputated.
The soldier who died took several days in the hospital, back in the U.S.A., to lose his struggle for life, leaving behind an oh-so-young wife who was days away from giving birth to a daughter, a first child who will never know her father. The other wife was there beside her at the hospital, of course, lending support to her own best "war buddy" in an hour of danger and despair ... even though her own husband remained hospitalized in Germany and she knew he might not pull through.
After that presentation, Gladys Knight sang "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." The audience, even if it was a military pageant, sang earnestly along. Then Sarah Brightman and a children's choir sang Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Pie Jesu." Sweet Lord Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world, grant them [the fallen in America's wars] rest everlasting. Not a dry eye in the crowd.
Why can't we have peace on earth? Why can't we have no more fallen?
I want to work for peace.
I was a young man in the 1960s when there was a peace movement opposing the Vietnam War. I was part of it. Why isn't there a peace movement today, opposing the Iraq War?
What would be a constructive way to work for peace now?
It seems to this observer that a peace movement, to be successful, would have to bring a lot of people together. It's no good making a peace movement out of the tiny minority of folks who are naturally disposed to pacifism. Their arguments may be good ones, but they're conceptual, intellectual, high-minded, and based on assumptions that average people don't subscribe to.
Average people are patriots first. They feel a deep connection to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have a horror of repeating the Vietnam aftermath, when returning soldiers were spat upon, ridiculed, and, worse, ignored.
Average people have a difficult time converging the facts that Saddam Hussein wasn't really an al Qaeda facilitator, wasn't really on the verge of getting weapons of mass destruction, with what seems to be the right attitude after 9/11. God bless America. Support the troops. Shoot first and ask questions later. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.
The facts seem to suggest that the Iraq War, and even the more broadly supported conflict in Afghanistan, aren't working.
The attitude seems to require us to have infinite patience anyway.
The indisputable facts are that there are terrorist organizations and whole societies out there that want to do us dirty.
The attitude tells us to arm ourselves and fight.
Yet there is another attitude that is latent in all of us even now: Let there be peace on earth.
How do we bring that attitude to the fore?
It might be the case that we can succeed in ending the terrorist threat only if, however paradoxically, we make peace today and not war. Peace, not just as a far off hope but as something lived here and now, is the only real answer to conflict.
It's Memorial Day 2008, and oldstyleliberal (that's me) feels a positive hunger for peace.
Last night I watched the Memorial Day celebration at the National Mall, at the U.S. Capitol, thanks to the Public Broadcasting System. In one segment, three actors read from letters written by three of the honored guests. Two were the wives of soldiers formerly stationed in Iraq, and the third was the first of the two soldiers. The second soldier is dead, having died in combat only days after helping evacuate the first, his best buddy who had been shot and grievously wounded in a firefight, and who is yet only a hairsbreadth away from having to have a leg amputated.
The soldier who died took several days in the hospital, back in the U.S.A., to lose his struggle for life, leaving behind an oh-so-young wife who was days away from giving birth to a daughter, a first child who will never know her father. The other wife was there beside her at the hospital, of course, lending support to her own best "war buddy" in an hour of danger and despair ... even though her own husband remained hospitalized in Germany and she knew he might not pull through.
After that presentation, Gladys Knight sang "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." The audience, even if it was a military pageant, sang earnestly along. Then Sarah Brightman and a children's choir sang Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Pie Jesu." Sweet Lord Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world, grant them [the fallen in America's wars] rest everlasting. Not a dry eye in the crowd.
Why can't we have peace on earth? Why can't we have no more fallen?
I want to work for peace.
I was a young man in the 1960s when there was a peace movement opposing the Vietnam War. I was part of it. Why isn't there a peace movement today, opposing the Iraq War?
What would be a constructive way to work for peace now?
It seems to this observer that a peace movement, to be successful, would have to bring a lot of people together. It's no good making a peace movement out of the tiny minority of folks who are naturally disposed to pacifism. Their arguments may be good ones, but they're conceptual, intellectual, high-minded, and based on assumptions that average people don't subscribe to.
Average people are patriots first. They feel a deep connection to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have a horror of repeating the Vietnam aftermath, when returning soldiers were spat upon, ridiculed, and, worse, ignored.
Average people have a difficult time converging the facts that Saddam Hussein wasn't really an al Qaeda facilitator, wasn't really on the verge of getting weapons of mass destruction, with what seems to be the right attitude after 9/11. God bless America. Support the troops. Shoot first and ask questions later. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out.
The facts seem to suggest that the Iraq War, and even the more broadly supported conflict in Afghanistan, aren't working.
The attitude seems to require us to have infinite patience anyway.
The indisputable facts are that there are terrorist organizations and whole societies out there that want to do us dirty.
The attitude tells us to arm ourselves and fight.
Yet there is another attitude that is latent in all of us even now: Let there be peace on earth.
How do we bring that attitude to the fore?
It might be the case that we can succeed in ending the terrorist threat only if, however paradoxically, we make peace today and not war. Peace, not just as a far off hope but as something lived here and now, is the only real answer to conflict.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Who Will Listen?
A controversial recent offering from columnist Kathleen Parker, "Getting Bubba," brings out what may be the driving force of Election '08. It once could be called "class resentment," but it's broader than that today.
What is it? The takeoff point to understanding it is embodied in the negativity some voters bear toward Senator Barack Obama, in that he does not impress them as a "full-blooded American."
This seems to be about more than his mixed race. Senator Obama's mother was herself a "full-blooded" (in her case, white) American. She was of no particular religion but had great respect for all religions, meaning that she herself was a freethinker, already out of step with mainstream American religious values. Most American religions tend to be more close-minded, truth be told. Obama's father was a Kenyan, a black African, whose religious background was Muslim.
This also seems to be about more than economic strata, since Obama does not come from wealth.
And it is not much about gender, since Democrats who are fleeing the uncertainty they feel about Obama are running to the supposed safe haven of ... Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
What is it about? Parker puts it this way:
True enough, but it's a culture divide, too. Obama got into trouble for talking about disaffected working Americans who assuage their bitterness by "clinging" to their religion and their guns. At root, the dispute was over cultural differences, not just differences about patriotism.
Obama was likewise in trouble several months ago with African Americans who worried that he's "not black enough." That criticism seems to have died down for now. Yet it pointed to the same kind of anxiety as felt today by working class whites: will this man listen to us?
Or is he too much of an elitist?
It seems to me, the oldstyleliberal who writes this blog, that I myself have been too much of an elitist of late, too inclined to think in terms of wonky positions on issues like health insurance or the war in Iraq, to recognize that my fellow Americans are crying out from their respective communities and armed camps for some unifying national leader to take them seriously and pay them heed.
Meanwhile, the elites are urging upon us an enlightened, multicultural, manifestly relativistic agenda for sweeping change: bold strides along the "information superhighway" into an uncharted future. In that bright future as the educated elites see it, we will all be able to just get along because we will have put aside the benighted, old-fashioned, insular, absolutist beliefs to which we used to cling so desperately.
There are two kinds of American today. One American clings to the old absolutes (never mind that they may be different absolutes, depending on what group he owes his allegiance to). The other American sees all truth as relative, slippery, changeable.
For the old American, the prime value is just that: constancy of allegiance. For the new American, allegiance is itself negotiable.
The American whose constant allegiance is to the old ways is Bubba. Bubba thinks no one up there is listening to him ... and he's right about that. For the bright elites, listening to Bubba would just derail the glorious future they want to hasten into existence. The bright elites must pretend to listen to Bubba, of course, since they need Bubba's vote. But once in office, they'll have their own elitist agendas to see to.
That's why Bubba is so wary of Barack.
What is it? The takeoff point to understanding it is embodied in the negativity some voters bear toward Senator Barack Obama, in that he does not impress them as a "full-blooded American."
This seems to be about more than his mixed race. Senator Obama's mother was herself a "full-blooded" (in her case, white) American. She was of no particular religion but had great respect for all religions, meaning that she herself was a freethinker, already out of step with mainstream American religious values. Most American religions tend to be more close-minded, truth be told. Obama's father was a Kenyan, a black African, whose religious background was Muslim.
This also seems to be about more than economic strata, since Obama does not come from wealth.
And it is not much about gender, since Democrats who are fleeing the uncertainty they feel about Obama are running to the supposed safe haven of ... Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
What is it about? Parker puts it this way:
Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.
True enough, but it's a culture divide, too. Obama got into trouble for talking about disaffected working Americans who assuage their bitterness by "clinging" to their religion and their guns. At root, the dispute was over cultural differences, not just differences about patriotism.
Obama was likewise in trouble several months ago with African Americans who worried that he's "not black enough." That criticism seems to have died down for now. Yet it pointed to the same kind of anxiety as felt today by working class whites: will this man listen to us?
Or is he too much of an elitist?
It seems to me, the oldstyleliberal who writes this blog, that I myself have been too much of an elitist of late, too inclined to think in terms of wonky positions on issues like health insurance or the war in Iraq, to recognize that my fellow Americans are crying out from their respective communities and armed camps for some unifying national leader to take them seriously and pay them heed.
Meanwhile, the elites are urging upon us an enlightened, multicultural, manifestly relativistic agenda for sweeping change: bold strides along the "information superhighway" into an uncharted future. In that bright future as the educated elites see it, we will all be able to just get along because we will have put aside the benighted, old-fashioned, insular, absolutist beliefs to which we used to cling so desperately.
There are two kinds of American today. One American clings to the old absolutes (never mind that they may be different absolutes, depending on what group he owes his allegiance to). The other American sees all truth as relative, slippery, changeable.
For the old American, the prime value is just that: constancy of allegiance. For the new American, allegiance is itself negotiable.
The American whose constant allegiance is to the old ways is Bubba. Bubba thinks no one up there is listening to him ... and he's right about that. For the bright elites, listening to Bubba would just derail the glorious future they want to hasten into existence. The bright elites must pretend to listen to Bubba, of course, since they need Bubba's vote. But once in office, they'll have their own elitist agendas to see to.
That's why Bubba is so wary of Barack.
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