[Peace-discuss] while still an active-duty officer, he published his first book, Will War Ever End? A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century

[C. G. Estabrook]

Yeah, I like the Sun.  As it happens, its quotations collections are my bed-side 
reading at the moment.

I read them when I can't sleep, in hopes that they're short enough that I'll 
drop off between one and the next...

On 6/6/11 4:08 PM, Karen Medina wrote:
> [Sam and Allison introduced Stuart to The Sun Magazine. I thought you
> might enjoy this article, or even use some of it on AWARE on the Air.
> -karen medina]
>
> http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/424/fighting_with_another_purpose
>
> THE SUN INTERVIEW  APRIL 2011 | ISSUE 424
> Fighting With Another Purpose: Veteran Paul Chappell On The Need to End War
> by LESLEE GOODMAN
> The complete text of this selection is available in our print edition.
>
> Paul Chappell was born in 1980 and raised in Alabama, the son of a
> Korean mother and a half-white, half–African American father who’d
> served in Korea and Vietnam. Though Chappell had seen how his father
> was troubled by his war experiences, he chose to pursue a military
> career himself, graduating from the United States Military Academy at
> West Point in 2002 and serving in Iraq as an army captain in 2006 and
> 2007. But even as he signed up for a tour of duty, Chappell was
> starting to doubt that war was ever going to bring peace in the Middle
> East, or anywhere else.
>
> A year later, while still an active-duty officer, he published his
> first book, Will War Ever End? A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the
> 21st Century. “I am twenty-eight years old,” he writes, “and I have
> been obsessed with the problem of war for most of my life.” He went on
> to write The End of War: How Waging Peace Can Save Humanity, Our
> Planet, and Our Future. Both books are written in a direct, accessible
> style that avoids blaming the Left or the Right, and his arguments for
> peace have appealed to people of all political persuasions.
>
> Chappell now works at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and travels the
> country talking about the necessity of ending war and “waging peace.”
> He has a website (www.paulkchappell.com) and is involved with the
> American Unity Project (www.americanunityproject.com), which features
> a free online series of documentaries about waging peace. He also
> trains peace activists — a pursuit he believes should be undertaken
> with at least as much forethought and strategy as training soldiers
> for war. He emphasizes that activists must learn to be persuasive, to
> control their emotions, and to empathize with their opponents. Finally
> they must take their calling seriously — as seriously as soldiers
> going into battle. In The End of War, Chappell quotes civil-rights
> activist Bernard Lafayette: “Nonviolence means fighting back, but you
> are fighting back with another purpose and other weapons. Number one,
> your fight is to win that person over.”
>
> Chappell teaches through example. I met him at a weekly peace vigil on
> a downtown Santa Barbara, California, street corner, where he
> demonstrated how to engage even strident opponents with empathy and
> respect. I had lost patience with one such person after ten minutes of
> unproductive dialogue. Then Chappell showed up. He respectfully
> engaged my critic for a full forty-five minutes. Their conversation
> ended with the man thanking Chappell for listening to him and
> accepting a copy of The End of War. A few weeks later Chappell ran
> into the man and learned that he had read the book and had changed his
> mind about war as a means of ending terrorism.
>
> Goodman: Your father was traumatized by his experiences in the Korean
> and Vietnam Wars. Given that knowledge, why did you pursue a career in
> the military?
>
> Chappell: Growing up, I was taught that you must wage war to end war.
> Comic books, action movies, video games, politicians — all said that
> if you wanted to make the world safe, you needed to use violence to
> defeat the bad guys. War was presented to me as the price you had to
> pay for peace, and I thought that peace was a goal worth fighting for.
>
> My father didn’t talk much about his wartime experiences, but I do
> remember him telling me about the suffering children he saw during the
> Korean War. The message I got was that if soldiers had to be
> traumatized to save children in Korea, or to save the Jews in Europe,
> or to protect innocents elsewhere, that’s a sacrifice they were
> prepared to make. I saw soldiers as people who are willing to give
> their lives in order to protect others.
>
> I think a lot of people join the military believing they’re going to
> make the world safer. In the abstract the idea makes sense, because if
> you had a murderer in your home, of course you’d want an armed police
> officer there to protect you. But war is a completely different
> matter. It creates massive casualties — mostly civilian. It wasn’t
> until I got to West Point that I learned war isn’t the best way to
> make the world safe.
>
> Goodman: This is something they taught you at West Point?
>
> Chappell: Yes, West Point teaches that war is so dangerous, it should
> be used only as a last resort. I learned that the United States needs
> to rely more on diplomacy; that politicians don’t understand war and
> are too quick to use it as a means of conflict resolution. West Point
> also teaches that if you want to understand war, you have to
> understand its limitations and unpredictability. World War i and World
> War ii both started out as limited conflicts and grew into global
> blood baths. War is like a natural disaster. You can’t control it.
> Propaganda has made the word war synonymous with security, but in fact
> peace is synonymous with security. In the twenty-first century war
> actually makes us less secure. The United States has military bases in
> about 150 countries; we spend more on war than the rest of the world
> combined; we have the most powerful military in human history; and
> we’re some of the most terrified people on the planet. War and
> military occupation haven’t made us more secure. They’ve made us more
> hated in many parts of the world.
>
> Goodman: Some say we’re hated because we’re free.
>
> Chappell: If that’s the case, then how come the terrorists aren’t
> attacking the many other free countries around the world that don’t
> have soldiers deployed in the Middle East? How come they’re focusing
> so much on us and, to some extent, our nato allies? Look who Osama bin
> Laden was fighting before he fought us: the Soviets. They weren’t
> free. Moreover, when bin Laden was our ally, he apparently didn’t care
> that we were free.
>
> Another factor to consider is that wars are now fought on cnn, Fox
> News, Al Jazeera, and the Internet as much as they’re fought on the
> battlefield. Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
> Staff, said recently that the future of war is about perception, and
> that how we are perceived in the Middle East is vital to American
> security. It’s just common sense that the more we are in the news for
> invading Muslim countries, the less safe we are, because terrorism is
> not a government we can overthrow or a country we can occupy.
> Terrorism is an idea, a way of thinking. A terrorist can plan an
> attack from New York or San Francisco or Miami. Terrorism is a
> transnational criminal organization, and you cannot defeat it by
> invading a country. In fact, when you invade countries, you make the
> problem worse, because you kill civilians and create more resentment,
> more hatred, more enemies. I am increasingly of the mind that there
> are always preferable alternatives to war. Even if war could be
> justified, it’s just not effective.
>
> Goodman: Why do politicians miss this point?
>
> Chappell: When you have the strongest military in history, you want to
> use it. That’s our country’s strength, and people tend to rely on
> their strengths. Diplomacy puts us on more of an equal footing with
> other countries, and we don’t want to give up our advantage. Another
> reason is that there’s so much money to be made from war. In wartime
> the few make huge profits at the expense of the many. Major General
> Smedley Butler, a veteran of World War i, said, “War is a racket. It
> always has been. . . . It is conducted for the benefit of the very
> few, at the expense of the very many.”
>
> Goodman: But don’t we all benefit from our military securing the
> world’s resources?
>
> Chappell: I’m not sure that the Iraq War is just about oil, but I
> think most people will agree that if there were not a single drop of
> oil in the Middle East, we would not be over there. It’s a strategic
> economic interest, but only a very small group of people benefit from
> it.
> It’s not about Americans having access to oil. The primary reason we
> want to control the oil tap in Iraq is because we know that China,
> Russia, India, and other emerging industrialized nations need oil, and
> we want to be the ones who sell it to them. The problem is how much
> these wars cost. Consider what President Eisenhower said about all the
> other things we could invest in — schools, hospitals, highways,
> houses, food — if we weren’t spending so much money on the war
> machine, and you realize that the majority of the population is hurt
> by war. General Douglas MacArthur said that if humanity abolished war,
> the money could be used to wipe poverty from the face of the earth and
> produce a wave of economic prosperity around the world.
>
> It’s not just the ones who go into battle who are harmed. We’re all
> hurt by mounting national debt and lack of funding for social programs
> and infrastructure, while most of the people who benefit from military
> buildups are already rich. You and I are not getting rich off the war
> in Iraq.
>
> Goodman: You’ve said that the military is a “socialist” organization. How so?
>
> Chappell: The military gives you three meals a day, pays for your
> healthcare and your college, and even pays for your housing. On an
> army field exercise, the highest-ranking soldiers eat last, and the
> lowest-ranking soldiers eat first. Leaders are supposed to sacrifice
> for their subordinates. In civilian society we’re told that the only
> thing that makes people work hard is the profit motive. The army’s
> philosophy is that you can get people to work hard based on the ideals
> of selflessness, sacrifice, and service. It demonstrates that people
> will even sacrifice their lives for the sake of others. The military
> also has a motto: “Never leave a fallen comrade.”
>
> If I said to most Americans that we should have a society that gives
> everyone three meals a day, shelter, healthcare, and a college
> education, and that it should be based on selflessness, sacrifice, and
> service rather than greed, they’d say, “That’s socialism.” But that’s
> the U.S. military. A lot of conservative Republicans who think
> socialism is the ultimate evil admire the military.
>
> Goodman: What do they say when you point out to them that the military
> is socialist?
>
> Chappell: I don’t usually use the word socialist with them. When I try
> to persuade people that America should have universal healthcare, I
> say, “You know, in the military we have universal healthcare, and the
> military believes that you should never leave a fallen comrade behind.
> You take care of everyone.” They usually agree that this makes sense.
>
> Goodman: When did this idea first occur to you?
>
> Chappell: When I was at West Point. I don’t think I really knew what
> socialism was at that point, but I knew that West Point was different
> from how I’d grown up. You have a sense in America that you’re all
> alone. It’s survival of the fittest. But at West Point they have a
> saying: “Cooperate and graduate.” Your classmates will tutor you in
> chemistry, physics, calculus — whatever you need. If anyone fails a
> class because of not understanding the material, his or her fellow
> students are partly responsible, because they didn’t aid a classmate
> who needed help. Every professor has to give you his or her home phone
> number and allot two hours a day to additional instruction for any
> students who need it. So you feel as if people care about you. There’s
> a sense of camaraderie and solidarity. Your classmates aren’t trying
> to get a better grade than everyone else; they’ll actually help you
> excel and graduate.
>
> I am not saying that the military is a utopia — far from it. The
> military as an institution has a lot of things wrong with it, but it
> also has some admirable characteristics.
>
> Goodman: After you graduated from West Point, were you initially happy
> to be sent to Iraq? When did you really start to change your mind
> about the war?
>
> Chappell: A lot of my friends at West Point were reading Noam
> Chomsky’s and Howard Zinn’s critiques of American foreign policy, and
> that’s what started to change my mind. In 2006, while I was stationed
> in Iraq, West Point invited Chomsky to give a lecture about whether
> the war in Iraq was a “just war.” I’d never believed that the war in
> Iraq was just. It violated international law, the United Nations
> Charter, and the Nuremberg Principles. It also violated the U.S.
> Constitution, which says that treaties are the supreme law of the
> land. I did see the war in Afghanistan as a necessary evil — at least,
> initially. As I studied Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., however, I
> learned that waging peace is similar to preventive medicine: a more
> effective healing method than the drastic step of war.
>
> Goodman: It’s surprising to me that West Point has students critically
> analyze current military conflicts. How can soldiers risk their lives
> or kill people if they think the conflict they’re engaged in is wrong?
>
> Chappell: Soldiers are always supposed to be thinking. That’s what
> West Point teaches its cadets, who are officers in training. You’re
> supposed to question the orders you’re given, to see whether they
> conform to the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war. Nevertheless it
> can be difficult to go against your fellow soldiers. Take the example
> of Hugh Thompson Jr., the U.S. helicopter pilot who tried to rescue
> Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai Massacre, in which hundreds of
> unarmed women, children, and elderly men were killed by U.S. soldiers.
> He told his machine-gunner to open fire on the Americans if they shot
> at the people he was trying to save. He was given the Soldier’s Medal
> and brought to West Point to lecture, as a way of saying, “Do the
> right thing.” But that was about thirty years after the fact. For the
> first twenty years or so he was an outcast. He received death threats
> from people in the military. So really the message was “Do the right
> thing, and in twenty or thirty years people might appreciate it.”
>
> Goodman: You actually volunteered to deploy in Iraq in 2006.
>
> Chappell: Yes, the mission I volunteered for was to install a new
> system called “Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar.” A mortar is a
> projectile bomb launched from an upright tube. The radar system would
> detect incoming rockets or mortars, and machine guns would shoot the
> explosives down in midflight. So it was a defensive role. If I did my
> job properly, fewer people would be killed.
>
> The way I rationalized my choice was that Gandhi had volunteered as a
> medic in the Boer War and the Zulu War. He didn’t believe in violence,
> but if these wars were going to happen, he thought he should do what
> he could to minimize the loss of life. I don’t know if I made the
> right decision, but that was the way I thought about it at the time.
>
> Goodman: Were you ever in a situation where you felt that your values
> were compromised?
>
> Chappell: No, the biggest dangers I faced were mortar attacks, ieds
> [improvised explosive devices] while we were traveling from base to
> base, and sniper fire while we were installing the radar on the
> perimeter of the bases. I worked closely with a small team of
> soldiers, and unfortunately one of them was killed by a sniper not
> long after I left Iraq.
>
> I have a good friend who changed his job in the army from being a
> shooter to explosive-ordnance disposal — disarming bombs, like the
> soldiers in the movie The Hurt Locker. He wanted a role that was more
> defensive; he didn’t want to kill anybody. You might ask why he didn’t
> leave the military if he was opposed to fighting, but in his position
> is he any more culpable than the rest of us who are paying taxes that
> support the war? Not many Americans are willing to risk going to
> prison to voice their opposition.
>
> Goodman: You said you originally thought the war in Afghanistan was justified.
>
> Chappell: At the time I thought some wars might be necessary, and I
> thought that the Taliban were training terrorists. I didn’t understand
> the nature of terrorism then as well as I do now. Terrorism is an
> ideology, a way of thinking. To fight it, we need to change U.S.
> foreign policy. Eisenhower, the first president to identify Middle
> Eastern unrest as a threat to the United States, said that the reason
> people in the Middle East hate us is that we suppress freedom there.
> We support dictatorships. We prevent democratic progress, which is the
> opposite of what we say we’re doing. We have to practice what we
> preach, which means we can’t talk about human rights and also support
> dictators.
>
> The seed of terrorism grows in the soil of hopelessness, depression,
> and fear; of poverty, hunger, and injustice. Killing civilians and
> occupying countries only exacerbate terrorism. Even the middle-class
> or affluent terrorists feel oppressed and estranged from their native
> culture. We need to fight terrorism the way we go after the Mafia:
> break up their networks, attack their funding, arrest the leaders, put
> them on trial, and send them to prison.
>
> Imagine if America’s reputation around the world were strictly for
> providing humanitarian aid and disaster relief; if, whenever there was
> a disaster, the Americans came, helped, and left. Then, if terrorists
> attacked the U.S., world opinion would be on our side. We wouldn’t
> have to defend ourselves against terrorists; the rest of the world
> would do it for us.
>
> Another big problem with the war in Afghanistan is that the Karzai
> government is corrupt, because any government that cooperates with an
> occupying foreign power is always going to be corrupt. Think of the
> Indians who cooperated with the British. Think of the French who
> cooperated with the Germans. The Karzai government is notoriously full
> of warlords and drug lords. Many Afghans prefer the Taliban — that’s
> how bad it is. Marine lieutenant colonel Christian Cabaniss,
> interviewed on 60 Minutes last year, said that if you kill a thousand
> Taliban and two civilians, it’s a loss. General Stanley McChrystal,
> former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has said the same.
> That was the whole point of the counterinsurgency doctrine: to avoid
> killing civilians, because it creates more insurgents. But when you
> realize that most of the people killed in modern war are civilians,
> you see that we’re fighting a losing battle.
>
> One thing I learned at West Point is that in order to think
> strategically, you must be able to see the world from your opponent’s
> point of view. And from the point of view of the average Afghan, the
> U.S. military is there to keep a corrupt government in power. Many
> don’t see us as peacekeepers.
>
> Goodman: What about in the capital, Kabul? The nongovernmental aid
> organizations there seem to value our presence.
>
> Chappell: We are providing some security in the cities, but
> Afghanistan is predominantly a rural country. If you don’t win the
> hearts and minds of the rural population, you can’t win over the
> Afghan people. The Taliban have a lot of influence in the vast rural
> areas, which are more difficult for American forces to occupy and
> control.
>
> Goodman: What will happen to the rights of Afghan women if we leave
> the country to the Taliban?
>
> Chappell: I think we have to look at why the Taliban came to power in
> the first place. After the Soviets left, the warlords took over, and
> many of them were raping women and pillaging villages. The Taliban
> gained support by stopping the rapes. The leader of the Taliban,
> Mullah Omar, reportedly led his soldiers in the rescue of two girls
> who had been kidnapped and raped by a warlord. So if you’re a
> villager, and you have to choose between your daughter not being able
> to go to school and your daughter being raped by a warlord, which is
> the better alternative? It’s not that the people want the Taliban.
> They just fear the warlords more. Now the Karzai government is
> treating segments of the population so badly that it is making the
> Taliban look like a better alternative. Moreover, the Karzai
> government is no champion of women’s rights.
> Greg Mortenson, the author of Three Cups of Tea and Stones into
> Schools, went to Afghanistan in the 1990s and asked the people what
> they wanted, and their reply was schools, especially for their
> daughters. He says that if you educate Afghan girls to fifth grade,
> three things will happen: birthrates and infant-mortality rates will
> drop; the quality of village life will improve; and mothers will say
> no when their sons ask for permission to make jihad, or holy war.
>
> Americans have a difficult time imagining ways of solving problems
> that don’t involve bombing. That is why many countries question
> whether our intentions are truly to promote liberty, human rights, and
> women’s rights, or whether our motivations are imperialistic in
> nature. If we are occupying Afghanistan to liberate women, for
> example, how do we explain our close alliance with the Saudi Arabian
> government, which oppresses women? Other countries notice that when
> governments cooperate with us and give us access to their oil, we
> couldn’t care less about their human-rights records, and that makes us
> look like hypocrites. Saddam Hussein was executed for crimes he
> committed while he was our ally. We actually increased our support for
> him after he committed those crimes. The only way our actions appear
> consistent is if you assume our foreign policy is about protecting our
> own economic interests.
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss