Peace

In 1967 I stand at the Sunday vigil now up to a dozen people, inspired by the woman who stands there in all the weather of snow, rain, icy cold, muggy hot -- every Sunday.  A white van circles around Court Square, once, twice, three times…  It disappears for awhile; then a man with a 35mm camera appears and stands in front of us taking our pictures.  I ask who he is; someone casually says:  he’s an FBI agent.

I hand out leaflets.  A woman stops, addresses me directly:  I won’t take your leaflet.  My husband works at Pratt and Whitney (the maker of bombers sent to Vietnam, many many bombers).  His job puts food on the table that feeds our children.  Supporting this takes away his job.  What he does is the right thing to do.

In 1970 the vigil crowd swells to hundreds.  The crowd is restive, wants to lower the flag to half staff honoring all US and Vietnam dead; they chant for the mayor.  They are increasingly agitated as no mayor appears to speak, or to hear their request.  A group of us race up city hall steps into the reception area, rush right into the mayor’s office. 

Sitting there is the vice mayor who explains that the mayor is out of town.  Even so, could he in the mayor’s stead order the flag lowered.  He responds he doesn’t have that authority, the supervisor of the janitors has that authority.  I step forward:  so let’s be clear, you’re saying that you have the authority of the mayor to run the city in his absence, but you don’t have the authority to direct the supervisor to lower the flag.  He grins:  that’s right. 

In 1966 I’m a student on the campus of American International College.  The definition of a college includes living on campus, although every student’s dream is to live away from home and off campus.  At AIC, we’re all commuters; we matriculators refer to the alma mater as Almost In College.  I'm not fond of the place because I’d rather be at UMass where the beatniks are.

I’m at AIC, a rebel without a cause.  Whenever on the campus, I want to act like I’m away from home.  I hang out with a group of poets that morphs somewhat.  We are sort of hippies, sort of existentialists, sort of beatniks; sort of not.  We write an underground newspaper, start a coffee house, go to coffee houses together. This is an enclave of rebellion.

On a cold Sunday I pass Court Square in Springfield, Massachusetts -- one lone woman stands with a sign saying something about some place called Vietnam.  I bring this news to the group.  We casually study pacifism.  We connect with two radical history professors, one is a pacifist and the other is a historian; they say this Vietnam “Conflict” needs scrutinizing.  It’s the right thing to do.

On a crisply clear fall day in 1966, I stroll the small campus; some tables have been set up in the quad.  There are books, pamphlets covering the tables; staffed by slender unassuming young men.  They’re representatives of the pacifist way. 

I have an attraction for books; I head in that direction.  A pack of frat boys descends on the display.  They verbally harass one of the guys, spit in his face.  He stands there without flinching.  One of the frat boys grabs a book, sets it on fire.  That makes me an activist, that burning of the book.  Books are sacred in a free society.

At UMass in 1970, I write several peace movement letters to the editor, against what is now called a war.  Each time, the next issue publishes a respondent to my previous letter, protesting my opinion on war.  It’s always signed with the same name. 

The next semester, I meet the fellow a woman friend is dating.  It turns out he’s a Vietnam veteran.  It turns out he’s the respondent.  We have a very long conversation about my opinions, his experience.  He admits he argues my opinion because he has to believe that the terrible things he sees and maybe even does in Vietnam are the right thing to do.

War Crime

The Israeli government is saying now that they want to change the rules of war.  They say this probably in response to the Goldstone report which may result in trials of government and military officials under the old rules of the Geneva Convention.  Our own president Bush did change the rules of war.  Oddly no one is talking about bringing officials of his administration before international courts.  Terrorists have changed the way war is waged.  They won’t be tried for their atrocities; they’re just killed or, as the Pakistani government says “eradicated.” It could be and once was said “exterminated.”

Oh yeah it could be argued that the numbers aren’t as great, that the intention isn’t as focused, that the means aren’t as methodical.  Then what we are doing is justifying just a little killing which isn’t just at all.  War is intentional, focused and just plain mean, with or without the rules of war.  It is premeditated intention:  bomb the hell out of them until they are all dead or until they have surrendered unwillingly until the next time.  And there always is a next time, another war, another killing spree.

There is no other animal that does this, not one.  Do the bears of the Rockies go to war against the bears in the Sierras; uh no.  The only other species I know of that has wars are ants.  So we, the lords of the animals, turn out to be no better than bugs.  We’re just another bunch of ants swarming in a furious melee, covering a sidewalk or a country with dead and/or mutilated bodies.

There is little evidence that much of anything is being done to change going to war at all. 

War is a failure of the rule of law; under any other circumstances the taking of human life is considered the crime of murder.  War is a crime.  War is a failure of law.  The criminals are found on all sides usually among those in authority who perpetrate, exaggerate, perpetuate the violence in lives, language and legions.

We don’t suddenly just go crazy and have our nasty wars because someone took out 3000 people in cruelly spectacular fashion.   There is method to this madness.  We go to war because some demagogue that the federal government put into place decided to be ungrateful at some point; he thought he had enough of our weapons to turn on us.  We go to war because some central Asian peasants nearly melted probably billions of dollars of gold in the basement of too tall towers.  We go to war because there is need for an oil pipeline that can’t be built in a country of people that isn’t open to being exploited; a country of people that could care less about being western civilized.

It would be easy to say that war is between them and them while us stay at home and choose sides like some team sport spectacle. We live in a society in which words like “killer” and “bomb” are accepted as accolades.  We live in a society that promotes violence, allows its citizens to carry guns, allows police forces to carry guns,. We live in a society that produces films like “There Will Be Blood”, that thinks that Quentin Tarantino films are cleverly unusual.  We live in a society that gives rise to new expressions like the aestheticization of violence.

When I was a kid, I had toy guns in the days when the toys looked like the real thing.  These toys were often passed off as real guns for purposes of store robberies.  So now the guns are orange and such colors so as not to be confused with the real guns; they are still guns.  There are a plethora of video and arcade games whose only theme is murder and mayhem.  It is often said that these games prepare youth to be in the military operating drones in this country while bombing people to death in a country thousands of miles away.

What happened to pinball machines in arcades which aren’t designed for any kind of killing.  When will we "study war no more" and eradicate this violence among people.  Enough.