[Peace-discuss] Worst nightmare…

[Morton K. Brussel]

There are not many articles or opeds like this one in main stream media.

Published on Monday, December 18, 2006 by the Boston Globe
Reject the War
by James Carroll

A parent's worst nightmare is the death of a child. Or is it? What if  
you have two sons, and one murders the other? Wouldn't that be the  
worst thing? But what, then, if you and your spouse recognize that  
you yourselves are the cause of the one son's heinous act, and of the  
other's victimhood? Who could stand such knowledge?

That chain of circumstance, in fact, describes the universal tragedy,  
and it was given masterpiece expression in the story of Adam and Eve.  
The terrible consequences of their banishment from Paradise are  
usually identified as the pains of childbirth and the burden of work,  
but what are those griefs compared with what that couple surely felt  
upon learning of the murder of their son Abel by their son Cain? From  
then on, savage fratricidal war would define the human condition.  
Imagine the steely glances that Eve and Adam must have exchanged at  
the news. And imagine with what self-accusation they must have turned  
from one another. We did this.

Or perhaps not. Was the first act of war followed by the first act of  
denial? The story of Cain ("a tiller of the ground") and Abel ("a  
keeper of sheep") is a parable of primordial conflict between settled  
farmers and nomadic herders, and the lessons are timeless. Each  
warring group claims to have justice on its side, and believes that  
the way to peace is through conquest. War is always fought in the  
name of justice-and-peace. But peace achieved through war inevitably  
leads not to justice, but to conditions that cause the next war.  
History is the record of that succession. Victory through violence is  
the way to further violence. From Cain and Abel to the fratricidal  
wars unfolding today the line is direct. That the territory in which  
those wars unfold is the Levant crescent from which Genesis springs  
is enough to make its author weep -- again.

Instead of the originating sin of parents, the Cain-and-Abel  
combatants of today's Middle East (from the insurgent parties in  
Iraq, to the warring factions of Lebanon, to the antagonists in  
Israel and Palestine, now including the fratricidal Palestinians) are  
burdened by the fatal flaw of the United States of America. The  
indispensable nation, it turns out, proves indispensable only for the  
spread of chaos. The grievances of the Middle East are ancient, but  
so is the capacity for fragile balance, now upset. Iraqis, Lebanese,  
Israelis, and Palestinians all make violent choices and bear the  
weight of violent consequences, but the immediate context within  
which those choices are being made has been overwhelmingly  
established by violent choices made in Washington.

The Bush administration embraced the cult of war when it did not have  
to. Bush re-legitimized that cult, and sponsored it anew. In this, he  
was supported by the American people, its press and its political  
establishment. In the beginning, the nation itself re affirmed war as  
the way to justice-and-peace. We did this. The first fallacy lived.  
By now, even Washington's one self-proclaimed "victory" has led to  
further defeat. The "good" war in Afghanistan put in place structures  
of oppression that promised an inevitable resumption of savagery,  
which has begun.

After murdering Abel, Cain justified his act, and his parents denied  
their responsibility for it. Otherwise, the dread pattern of  
accusation and recrimination would have been checked right there.  
Humans have been enslaved by this dynamic ever since. Does that  
vindicate the United States with a "realist" claim to inevitability?  
No. Because historic moments of ethical recognition regularly present  
themselves, and one just did. The Baker commission, whatever its  
faults, defined the folly of any further American pursuit of  
"victory" in Iraq. Yet, with Bush's mantra of "prevail," other  
"studies" commissioned to dilute Baker's, and fresh Pentagon talk of  
brutal escalation, the aim of victory through mass violence is being  
reaffirmed. The unoriginal sin, by now, but more deadly than ever.

This column began with an eye on the far past. Because of the  
destructiveness of modern weapons, there will be no distant future  
unless humans, having seen through the congenital illusion of justice- 
and-peace through violence, come to the rejection of war. That must  
begin now. Democrats, take heed: Bush must not be allowed to further  
the chaos. Having led the world into this moral wilderness, America  
has a grave responsibility to lead the way out. We have to cease  
killing other people's children, which is the way to stop them from  
killing ours. Stop the war by stopping.

James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
© Copyright 2006 Boston Globe
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