How to Work for Peace?

In Let there be peace on earth ..., and then in ... and let it begin with me, I told of my recent peace conversion. A PBS Memorial Day celebration, broadcast from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and intended as a paean to staunch patriotism, included the reading of a series of letters about what the war in Iraq has done to two American military families, taking the life of one husband and nearly that of the other, causing a newborn daughter to never be able to know her father, bringing untold sadness and misery to the wives of the two soldiers ... all this drove home to me that not only this Iraq War but all wars are insane.

But how do I seek peace and pursue it ... meaningfully ... in today's environment?

Is there actually a peace movement today?

According to this section of a Wikipedia article, there is. But reading it and following the links contained therein convinces me that most of its member organizations have main agendas other than peace qua peace, such as libertarianism or the environment or gay rights or radical politics. I resist utopian or ultra-ideological approaches to peacemaking instinctively. It is as if their proponents are saying that we can't have peace until we have a perfect world ... which I think we will never have until we are all perfect people.

Isn't there a more practical way to work for peace?

Besides, I personally feel the basic impetus for peace comes from a gut-level antipathy to war that bypasses all argumentation and nuanced reasoning.

This past weekend I attended a play at a local repertory theater, In The Heart of America, by Naomi Wallace, a searing indictment of war that depicts imaginary (or are they?) atrocities in the Iraq War superimposed with not-so-imaginary ones from Vietnam (think Lt. William Calley and Charlie Company's massacre at My Lai). I was accompanied by a woman friend who was raised in a military family, lost a husband in Vietnam, and would like to be thought of as true to the red, white, and blue ... but who opposes this war and this President.

In our discussion after the play, she told me she'd felt like she was being torn in two. On the one hand, it was hard for her to resonate with the anti-military, antiwar thrust of the play. On the other, she knew that the brutality laid at the feet of the warrior characters was an honest reflection of reality.

I told her about my peacenik conversion on Memorial Day weekend, about how I now see all war — even the so-called "good wars" — as insane.

I went on to present a case for believing that it's an illusion to put different wars in separate cubbyholes, according to how "good" or "bad" they seem to be. I didn't think of alluding to the image at the time, but upon reflection what I should have told her was that every war sows dragon's teeth that grow into new warriors destined to clash in the future.

World War I set the stage for World War II, which set the stage for the Cold War and fears of nuclear Armageddon, which engendered the Vietnam conflict. The "good" (in my estimation) war by which Holocaust-decimated Jews forced their way into their new and rightful home in Palestine, has led to endless bloodshed. Etc., etc., etc.

The "good" wars such as WWII lead people to believe that war can be right and just and honorable.

The "bad" wars such as Vietnam lead patriots to blame a failed war's opponents for "aiding and abetting the enemy" — implying that, next time, job one is to marginalize or silence opposition.

Either way, there will always be a next time. There will never come a time when "war is not the answer."

For war to end, conflict must be resolved peaceably. Diplomacy must be given every chance to work. Aggression must be fended off regretfully, as a last resort. But most of all, people must lose their taste for war.

That happened in Europe following WWII. A continent whose soil has historically been drenched with blood beat its swords into plowshares. Movements of the human spirit away from war are possible.

What would it take to have one here?