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Alternatives to endless war when dealing with terrorism.
Is there a better way? Update on November 23rd.
By mickielynn on 2015-11-20 07:23:03
: a ~~ This is a very challenging
article to write because there is so much to say! I'm going to limit it to the current context involving the attacks by ISIS in
Paris, Beirut, Baghdad and on the Russian passenger plane. Along with the responses provoked in France, Russia and the
United States. I'll also include one viable alternative which might come out of the multinational negotiations in Vienna to
end the active war in Syria. Then suggest a couple of possible approaches besides the unsuccessful ones that we've tried for
the past 13 plus years (after the terror attack of September 11, 2001.) [caption id="attachment_7785" align="alignleft"
WAR IS GOOD
BUS\NESS.
width="190"] Countering the Militarization of Youth, a project of War Resisters
International[/caption] In many of the comments on my previous article people cited the choices between military action
against ISIS and letting them expand their influence unchallenged. I said that it's not a simple binary choice. The trouble
is that we've lived with militarism as the go to response to violent threats for so long that we've worn a deep rut from which
we can only see the narrow choice of war or no war. We need to climb out of that deep trench and look around us for other
perspectives. Not taking the impulsive, ingrained choice of bombing or invading takes great strength. Or to quote the first
verse of John Gorka's song "War Makes War"
Chorus: War makes war. It won’t bring peace. It just makes more without cease.
Peace will come from what is right. Peace will come from trust. The strength to stop the red, red wheel. To make it lock and
rust. To make it lock and rust.
War makes monsters of us all.
(George R. R. Martin)
izquotes.com
lWe need to break that bloody
cycle and do something different. Case in point; after the actions of ISIS in Paris and against the Russian passenger jet
France, Russia and the United States commenced massive bombing sorties over what they called the "headquarters of ISIS"
in Syria, primarily the city of Raqqa and surrounding areas. But what was actually accomplished by those bombs?
Well for one thing there were thousands of civilians living in those areas and many of them have been killed by the
bombings. To give one example of the kinds of bombings that have been taking place: Russian planes have targeted 10
Syrian medical facilities in October alone.
France, Russia and the United States have launched fresh airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria. This
comes as a U.S.-based human rights group accused Russia of bombing at least 10 medical facilities in Syria last
month. Physicians for Human Rights said it chronicled 16 attacks total on Syrian medical establishments in
October alone, the highest tally in the conflict to date.
THIS WAS A NEIGHBOURHOOD WITH FAMILIES
NO SCHOOLS. NO LAUGHTER. NO PLAY
In addition to the way that an indiscriminate
military response kills and further displaces innocent civilians and provides recruiting material for ISIS. Such a callous
approach increases our losses in the psychological struggle that will be the most important in the long run. Added to that is
the message that the Western countries sent by only mourning the tragic loss of life in France but ignoring the equal tragedy
and loss of life in other countries devastated by ISIS and by Saudi bombing and blockades.
[caption id:
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attachment _7760" align
ra.
November 2015 response to
deaths in several countries caused by ISIS and bi US supported Saudi bombing in Yemen.[/caption] [caption
live in Lebanon
5 have shaken like
id="attachment_7762" align="aligncenter" width="300"] ours on 9/11, -CODEPINK Support for the
people of Beirut after the November 12th bombings.[/caption] Before I discuss the cynical use of the Paris attacks to use
fear and insecurity in attempts to curtail the civil rights, judicial protections and freedom from surveillance of French and
US citizens I'll take this space to describe a couple of hopeful non military approaches to stopping the spread and
empowerment of ISIS. [caption id="attachment_7768" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
4 : Don't bomb ~~~ talk,
negotiate, cooperate in international actions. Photo by Mabel Leon, March, 2015[/caption] One of the most exciting (even in
the heated atmosphere of the Paris attacks) is the work towards ending the war in Syria. If this diplomatic process continues
successfully results could be forthcoming in December!
away from reality, AP reports. Kerry said the ceasefire envisioned by the political process agreed upon in
Vienna on Saturday would significantly help efforts to fight ISIS as well as end the Syrian civil war. “We're
weeks away conceivably from the possibility of a big transition for Syria, and I don't think enough people
necessarily notice that,” Kerry said.[...] Secretary Kerry has done what 55 House Democrats , led by Jim
Himes, urged him to do: get a deal with Russia and Iran to end the Syrian civil war, so the world can cooperate
to confront ISIS. As Rep. Himes said on the House floor at the time , Washington has to accept that a realistic
political deal in Syria that allows the world to focus on confronting ISIS is not going to be “perfect” from
Washington’s point of view.
Here is one of the possible outcomes that the AP article suggests:
Such a ceasefire would free nations supporting Syria's various factions to concentrate more on the Islamic State,
which is ineligible for the truce and has come under greater military scrutiny since Friday's attacks in Paris.
It's hard to resist the visceral response to attack and destroy which is just what ISIS hopes to motivate by its behavior. A
much better approach is to stop the vortex of violence our of which they draw their power and also unite as an international
community to deny them economic power and legitimacy. We can also see that in France and Belgium the action that
ultimately stopped this round of violence wasn't military but was a two country police action (although there is some
question about why 5,000 bullets were necessary among other things). Here's a really good article comparing the results of
our response to 9/11 with alternatives that we could have taken. It's written by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy
Studies.
After the Paris Attacks, a Call for Justice—Not Vengeance The years after September 11 are a powerful
reminder that an “all-out war” on terror only creates more terrorism. By Phyllis Bennis , November 14,
2015 ...Because now everyone knows the devastating wars that killed so many hundreds of thousands of
ordinary people didn’t work to wipe out terrorism. Terrorism survives wars; people don’t. We saw the proof of
that again last night in Paris, and we saw it the day before in Beirut. We were hearing sounds of victory from
US war-makers. The Obama strategy was working, they said. ISIS was being pushed back from Sinjar by
Kurdish militias. A US airstrike assassinated Mohammed Emwasi, known as “jihadi John” from the ISIS videos.
Yet the war—a new version of that same “global war on terror’—is still being waged, and clearly it still isn’t
working. Because you can’t bomb terrorism—you can only bomb people. You can bomb cities. Sometimes you
might kill a terrorist—but that doesn’t end terrorism; it only encourages more of it. Terrorism survives wars;
people don’t. It didn’t have to be that way. A day or so after the 9/11 attacks, we at the IPS received a message
from a colleague of ours, the great Bolivian water-rights activist Oscar Olivera. “We still believe another world
is possible,” he wrote. “We are with you.” Global solidarity with us—with Americans—was real. No longer, not
since our government took the world to war. It doesn’t have to be that way in Paris. It isn’t too late. “We stand
with Paris” is our cry today—as “Nous sommes tous Américains” was the cry of our French comrades 15 years
ago. Maybe they can get it right.
[caption id="attachment_7778" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Ry
HON KHAN ML
? Nor Is \ | yi q
WANT BERCE?
O DRONE KILLINGS
NO ARMS SALES
sign banner at annual dinner, photo by Connie Frisbee Houde[/caption]
= ‘
Mabel Leon with our yard
I just want to point out something that is being attempted in a cynical and lying way to try and use the Paris attacks to
increase and justify surveillance of the people of the United States. It's horrifying and has nothing to do with our safety or
security since our intelligence agencies are given billions of dollars but failed to predict the Paris attacks. [caption
id="attachment_7771" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Don’t let Washington exploit tragedies
to expand mass surveillance.
Photo by Simon Law from
Flicker, 1. “Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism,” The New York Times, Nov. 18, 2015:[/caption] This
will need to wait for another article as it unfolds, but here's a great editorial from the opinion pages of the New York Times
that criticizes the behavior of our intelligence agencies.
Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each
new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their
own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that
to a new and disgraceful low.[...]
And similar kinds of fear induced curtailment of civil rights are also taking place in France. November 23, 2015 Update
about the situations in Europe and in the US in response to the Paris attack and the others that were not really acknowledged:
[caption id="attachment_7788" align="alignleft" width="300"] Articles from
the Center for Constitutional Rights and Fairness and Accuracy in Media report.[/caption] Here are a couple of excellent
articles that discuss the "weaponization of grief" as employed in media coverage of such tragedies and the ways that
perpetuation of such devaluation of some people while focusing on others leads to ever more hatred and violence. These are
the links to the articles:
Nov 16 2015 Context-Free Coverage of Terror Helps Perpetuate Its Causes At the time of the attacks in
Paris, FAIR’s website led with a piece by Ben Norton (11/13/15) about US reporting on the ISIS bombing in
Beirut—noting references to the civilian neighborhood targeted by the bombing as a Hezbollah “stronghold”
(MSNBC, 11/13/15), “bastion” (Reuters, 11/12/15) or “area” (NPR, 11/12/15). Given this framing—and the
generally limited amount of coverage granted to the Lebanese victims—it’s unsurprising that the Beirut terror
failed to provoke the same sorrow, horror and identification among US audiences that the Paris massacres did. It
feels callous to question the allocation of outrage; empathy is in such short supply in this world that one
hesitates to question it when it emerges. But as a long-time citizen of New York City, I’m all too aware of the
weaponization of grief. The outpouring of no-context, ahistorical sympathy after 9/11 helped pave the way for a
violent reaction that killed in Iraq alone roughly 150 times as many people as died in Lower Manhattan that day
—an opportunistic catastrophe that did more to mock than avenge those deaths. [...]
War is not the answer November 17, 2015, By Vincent Warren Last week’s terrorist attacks in Beirut and Paris left 172
people dead, hundreds more injured, and the world reeling in grief and recoiling in horror. The carnage in Beirut drew little
Western media attention or sympathy — indeed, the New York Times impugned the innocence of the civilian victims by
describing the target as a “Hezbollah stronghold” — proving once again that for Americans and Europeans white lives matter,
others not so much. Meanwhile, the Paris attacks have set in motion an all-too-familiar set of responses from government
officials, fear-mongering politicians, and opportunists in what media critic Jim Naureckas has aptly described as “the
weaponization of grief.” Terrorism is once again being conflated with Islam: In the U.S. there are calls to shut down
mosques, increased threats and violence against Muslims, and vows by a majority of U.S. governors to refuse to take Syrian
refugees. That the refugees are fleeing the same violence that has now briefly been visited upon a Western capital is totally
lost on people who cannot see beyond their prejudice to actual people suffering and desperate to escape slaughter. [...]
Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free...
— Emma Lazarus
Fear mongering blames refugees for the
very terror they are fleeing, and erodes
our own civil liberties.
ACLU
