Op-Ed
Today’s big news stories — the wars, the eco-disasters — all seem to have the same gaping hole in them. This hole is lack of awareness, and its thrum, once you begin to hear it, soon becomes deafening: We can’t go on like this.
We can’t keep playing conquering fool, arrogantly ordering the world to our liking by killing everything that doesn’t fit into it. We can’t keep throwing more of the same at our problems. We can’t keep fighting nature, or one another, and expect somehow to win in the end. We can’t keep buying time at an increasingly horrific price. Time is running out. And petroleum isn’t the only thing we’re addicted to.
“Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds,” the New York Times informed us several months ago.
“To fight them . . . farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides. . . .”
We can’t keep playing conquering fool, arrogantly ordering the world to our liking by killing everything that doesn’t fit into it. We can’t keep throwing more of the same at our problems. We can’t keep fighting nature, or one another, and expect somehow to win in the end. We can’t keep buying time at an increasingly horrific price. Time is running out. And petroleum isn’t the only thing we’re addicted to.
“Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds,” the New York Times informed us several months ago.
“To fight them . . . farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides. . . .”
“Complaints about civilian casualties have also stirred concern among human rights advocates.”
The problem is that a sentence like this — arguably a dead sentence, with a few quasi-facts entombed in an inert moral sensibility — parades as serious news. I mean, it’s lifted straight from the New York Times: from a story about drones, the CIA hit list and our cool new PlayStation way of killing bad dudes (and everyone else in the vicinity). Someone with an active conscience could come upon a sentence like that, in the middle of a painfully ill-focused story on the endless war, and think she must be going insane.
As an archeological find, it’s worth examining in closer detail, but first let me put it in context. The use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan to assassinate Taliban or al-Qaida leaders and other Islamic, America-hating insurgents — with missiles, no less — seems to have hit a snag of legal controversy lately because of the news that one of the people on the list of targets, Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico. He’s an American citizen.
This is where my moral consternation begins, and immediately radiates in several directions:
The problem is that a sentence like this — arguably a dead sentence, with a few quasi-facts entombed in an inert moral sensibility — parades as serious news. I mean, it’s lifted straight from the New York Times: from a story about drones, the CIA hit list and our cool new PlayStation way of killing bad dudes (and everyone else in the vicinity). Someone with an active conscience could come upon a sentence like that, in the middle of a painfully ill-focused story on the endless war, and think she must be going insane.
As an archeological find, it’s worth examining in closer detail, but first let me put it in context. The use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan to assassinate Taliban or al-Qaida leaders and other Islamic, America-hating insurgents — with missiles, no less — seems to have hit a snag of legal controversy lately because of the news that one of the people on the list of targets, Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico. He’s an American citizen.
This is where my moral consternation begins, and immediately radiates in several directions:
Despite what our leaders may profess, U.S. directed torture continues and efforts to obtain redress for victims and accountability from perpetrators are met with systematic obstruction. We know we cannot rely on government, at any level, to take the initiative for accountability.
But we must not be bystanders.
Six years have passed since the release of the gruesome photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, and it is well past the deadline President Obama set for closing the prison camps at Guantanamo. Yet this Administration has steadfastly refused to seek accountability for U.S.-sponsored torture—the murderous extent of which is still being revealed—and invokes the “state secrets” privilege to obstruct prosecution when torture victims, some released without charge, seek legal redress.
These issues are never easy to confront. They require us to break through our denial, take in the horror, and hold it in awareness while we organize for action.
But we must not be bystanders.
Six years have passed since the release of the gruesome photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, and it is well past the deadline President Obama set for closing the prison camps at Guantanamo. Yet this Administration has steadfastly refused to seek accountability for U.S.-sponsored torture—the murderous extent of which is still being revealed—and invokes the “state secrets” privilege to obstruct prosecution when torture victims, some released without charge, seek legal redress.
These issues are never easy to confront. They require us to break through our denial, take in the horror, and hold it in awareness while we organize for action.
The peace movement has made significant progress in the United States since its low point of late 2008, and just about everything anyone in it has done has been a contribution. If everyone keeps doing what they're doing, and more of it, we might just end some wars, eventually. But I think some techniques are working better than others, and that pursuing the most strategic approaches would make victory likelier sooner and longer-lasting when it comes.
There are lots of ways to change Congress that falsely appear easy, that would alter the rules and patterns of behavior if only Congress were already fixed and willing to make the changes, or if we owned the television networks, or if people could suddenly hear what they're paid good money never to hear. But I've got a way to change Congress that is actually easy.
Congress lacks leadership. There is a progressive caucus, but it has never fought for anything. It doesn't fund its members' campaigns. It doesn't withhold votes needed for passing bills. It just does rhetoric. There are committees, but they don't subpoena, they don't send the police to pick up witnesses, they don't fine witnesses who refuse to answer questions. Congress thinks oversight was an oversight. If asked to put future generations into debt to fund wars, Congress asks "Would you like a side of drones with that?" Congress doesn't want power.
Congress lacks leadership. There is a progressive caucus, but it has never fought for anything. It doesn't fund its members' campaigns. It doesn't withhold votes needed for passing bills. It just does rhetoric. There are committees, but they don't subpoena, they don't send the police to pick up witnesses, they don't fine witnesses who refuse to answer questions. Congress thinks oversight was an oversight. If asked to put future generations into debt to fund wars, Congress asks "Would you like a side of drones with that?" Congress doesn't want power.
President Obama must fire General Stanley McChrystal and get out of Afghanistan....for starters.
There is much more at stake here than meets the eye.
History is full of generals with deep contempt for democracy.
General McChrystal has a very particular significance. Last year, as Obama weighed the Afghan situation, McChrystal circumvented him entirely. In an act of profound public contempt, the general went directly to the world media with a high-profile campaign that was entirely inappropriate to a civilian democracy.
He should have been fired right then and there.
But McChrystal used the brass on his chest to sell the nation a bill of goods---that the war in Afghanistan could be "won." It would be "difficult," of course, requiring "sacrifice."
But exactly what "victory" meant, and how that would make the United States safer, more just and prosperous, was never clear.
What WAS clear was who would die and who would pay.
But with the corporate media lapping up his every word, McChrystal upstaged the numerous political, strategic, financial and military experts who disagreed with him.
There is much more at stake here than meets the eye.
History is full of generals with deep contempt for democracy.
General McChrystal has a very particular significance. Last year, as Obama weighed the Afghan situation, McChrystal circumvented him entirely. In an act of profound public contempt, the general went directly to the world media with a high-profile campaign that was entirely inappropriate to a civilian democracy.
He should have been fired right then and there.
But McChrystal used the brass on his chest to sell the nation a bill of goods---that the war in Afghanistan could be "won." It would be "difficult," of course, requiring "sacrifice."
But exactly what "victory" meant, and how that would make the United States safer, more just and prosperous, was never clear.
What WAS clear was who would die and who would pay.
But with the corporate media lapping up his every word, McChrystal upstaged the numerous political, strategic, financial and military experts who disagreed with him.
Effective activism’s a long-haul process, not “save the earth in 30 days, ask me how.” But there are some principles that seem to reoccur for people addressing every kind of challenge from the Gulf Oil spill to inadequate funding for urban schools to how to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq. When I was updating Soul of a Citizen, an activist rabbi who was teaching the book at Florida Gulf Coast University suggested I gather together the Ten Commandments for effective citizen engagement. Calling them Commandments seemed a bit presumptuous, but I did draw together ten suggestions that can make engagement more fruitful. Some I’ve already explored in various Soul of a Citizen excerpts. I’ll explore others in coming weeks, but pulling them together in one place seemed useful.
Suggestion #1: Start where you are. You don’t need to know everything, and you certainly don’t need to be perfect.
Suggestion #2: Take things step by step. You set the pace of your engagement. Don’t worry about being swallowed up, because you’ll determine how much you get involved.
Suggestion #1: Start where you are. You don’t need to know everything, and you certainly don’t need to be perfect.
Suggestion #2: Take things step by step. You set the pace of your engagement. Don’t worry about being swallowed up, because you’ll determine how much you get involved.
“Salt remnants of ancient oceans flow through our veins . . .”
Now, along with endangered species, the Gulf spill has given us a new category: endangered oceans.
The challenges presented by the disaster lay before us in their incomprehensible enormity. To what extent have the hundreds of thousands of gallons of the highly toxic dispersant Corexit 9500 that BP has poured into the Gulf aggravated the ecological horror? How will hurricane season complicate the cleanup? Will the flow of crude continue till Christmas? How many cleanup workers have gotten sick, and why? Might the “relief well” also blow?
We can’t solve our problems, as Einstein said, with the same kind of thinking we used to create them. This sums up the situation for me as well as anything — and pushes my despair up against the door of possibility. We’re at the far edge of the industrial age: the age of fossil fuels. How do we proceed beyond it?
Now, along with endangered species, the Gulf spill has given us a new category: endangered oceans.
The challenges presented by the disaster lay before us in their incomprehensible enormity. To what extent have the hundreds of thousands of gallons of the highly toxic dispersant Corexit 9500 that BP has poured into the Gulf aggravated the ecological horror? How will hurricane season complicate the cleanup? Will the flow of crude continue till Christmas? How many cleanup workers have gotten sick, and why? Might the “relief well” also blow?
We can’t solve our problems, as Einstein said, with the same kind of thinking we used to create them. This sums up the situation for me as well as anything — and pushes my despair up against the door of possibility. We’re at the far edge of the industrial age: the age of fossil fuels. How do we proceed beyond it?
Remarks at the Rutherford Institute, June 16, 2010
I want to save most of the time we have for your questions, so I'll be brief and I'll start with a couple of questions for you. And then I want you to think of questions for me, because otherwise I'll just go on and on about what I want to talk about.
Who can tell me who said this and where they said it? "I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation." -- President Barack Obama, asserting the illegal and unconstitutional power to make war, in a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway.
What about this one -- who and where?
I want to save most of the time we have for your questions, so I'll be brief and I'll start with a couple of questions for you. And then I want you to think of questions for me, because otherwise I'll just go on and on about what I want to talk about.
Who can tell me who said this and where they said it? "I -- like any head of state -- reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation." -- President Barack Obama, asserting the illegal and unconstitutional power to make war, in a Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway.
What about this one -- who and where?
“July 29, 2010: THE GREAT GULF GUSHER, DAY 100.”
“Good evening, and welcome to Nightline. I’m Ted Koppel, and you are not having a déjà vu experience. Yes, I look exactly as I did when this show originally aired in 1980. That is one of the beauties of being an avatar. ABC News Executive Producer, James Cameron, personally convinced me to come out of retirement to anchor Nightline with a promise that I would indeed have a full head of hair to work with. Tonight, I am actually speaking to you from the seventeenth tee of my retirement community golf course in central Florida. The sound of my voice as well as the image of me that you are viewing is, of course, computer-generated. Now, to our top story: The Great Gulf Gusher, Day 100 …”
“November 4, 2010: THE GREAT GULF GUSHER, DAY 196.”
“Good evening, and welcome to Nightline. I’m Ted Koppel, and you are not having a déjà vu experience. Yes, I look exactly as I did when this show originally aired in 1980. That is one of the beauties of being an avatar. ABC News Executive Producer, James Cameron, personally convinced me to come out of retirement to anchor Nightline with a promise that I would indeed have a full head of hair to work with. Tonight, I am actually speaking to you from the seventeenth tee of my retirement community golf course in central Florida. The sound of my voice as well as the image of me that you are viewing is, of course, computer-generated. Now, to our top story: The Great Gulf Gusher, Day 100 …”
“November 4, 2010: THE GREAT GULF GUSHER, DAY 196.”