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Authors: Medea Benjamin

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This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again, across Latin America, Africa, and Central and Southeast Asia. It has cost millions of lives. It goes without saying that every war the empire wages becomes a Just War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media. It’s important to understand that the corporate media doesn’t just support the neoliberal project. It
is
the neoliberal project. This is not a moral position it has chosen to take; it’s structural. It’s intrinsic to the economics of how the mass media works.

Most nations have adequately hideous family secrets. So it isn’t often necessary for the media to lie. It’s what’s emphasized and what’s ignored. Say, for example, India was chosen as the target for a righteous war. The fact that about 80,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian security forces (making the average death toll about 6,000 a year); the fact that in March 2003, more than 2,000 Muslims were murdered on the streets of Gujarat, that women were gang-raped and children were burned alive and 150,000 people driven from their homes while the police and administration watched, and sometimes actively participated; the fact that no one has been punished for these crimes and the government that oversaw them was reelected—all of this would make perfect headlines in international newspapers in the run-up to war.

Next we know, our cities will be leveled by cruise missiles, our villages fenced in with razor wire; U.S. soldiers will patrol our streets, and Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia, or any of our other popular bigots could, like Saddam Hussein, be in U.S. custody, having their hair checked for lice and the fillings in their teeth examined on prime-time TV.

But as long as our “markets” are open, as long as corporations like Enron, Bechtel, Halliburton, Arthur Andersen are given a free hand, our “democratically elected” leaders can fearlessly blur the lines between democracy, majoritarianism, and fascism.

No individual nation can stand up to the project of Corporate Globalization on its own. Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the neoliberal project, the heroes of our time are suddenly diminished. Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in opposition, when they seize power and become heads of state, become powerless on the global stage. I’m thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero of the World Social Forum last year. This year he’s busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits, and purging radicals from the Workers’ Party. I’m thinking also of the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his government genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a massive program of privatization and structural adjustment, which has left millions of people homeless, jobless, and without water and electricity.

Why does this happen? There’s little point in beating our breasts and feeling betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent men. But the moment they cross the floor from the Opposition into Government they become hostage to a spectrum of threats—most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader’s personal charisma and a CV of struggle will dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works, or for that matter, how power works. Radical change will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.

It was wonderful that on February 15 last year, in a spectacular display of public morality, ten million people in five continents marched against the war on Iraq. It was wonderful, but it was not enough. February 15 was a weekend. Nobody had to so much as miss a day of work. Holiday protests don’t stop wars. George W. Bush knows that. The confidence with which he disregarded overwhelming public opinion should be a lesson to us all. Bush believes that Iraq can be occupied and colonized—as Afghanistan has been, as Tibet has been, as Chechnya is being, as East Timor once was and Palestine still is. He thinks that all he has to do is hunker down and wait until a crisis-driven media, having picked this crisis to the bone, drops it and moves on. Soon the carcass will slip off the bestseller charts, and all of us outraged folks will lose interest. Or so he hopes.

So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the U.S. occupation and that we believe that the United States must withdraw from Iraq and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has inflicted?

How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let’s start with something really small. The issue is not about
supporting
the resistance in Iraq against the occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are they old killer Ba’athists? Are they Islamic fundamentalists?)

We have to
become
the global resistance to the occupation.

Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for the empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India and Pakistan we must block the U.S. government’s plans to have Indian and Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after it.

The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity and establish American hegemony at any price, even if it’s apocalyptic. The World Social Forum demands justice and survival.

For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war.

Note:
This piece is an excerpt of a speech delivered at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, January 16, 2004, and published as “Do Turkeys Enjoy Thanksgiving?” in Arundhati Roy’s
An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire
.

PART I:

 

 

A PASSION

 

FOR

 

PEACE

Chapter 1

 

 

IT STARTS

 

WITH

 

ONE VOICE

REGAINING MY HUMANITY

CAMILO MEJIA

Camilo Mejia was the first American veteran of the Iraq war to publicly refuse further service in Iraq. His application for discharge as a conscientious objector was rejected by the military. He was found guilty of desertion and was sentenced to a one-year prison term in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He was released February 15, 2005.

 

I was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 and returned home for a two-week leave in October. Going home gave me the opportunity to put my thoughts in order and to listen to what my conscience had to say. People would ask me about my war experiences, and answering them took me back to all the horrors—the firefights, the ambushes, the time I saw a young Iraqi dragged by his shoulders through a pool of his own blood, or an innocent man decapitated by our machine-gun fire. The time I saw a soldier broken down inside because he had killed a child, or an old man on his knees, crying with his arms raised to the sky, perhaps asking God why we had taken his son’s life.

I thought of the suffering of a people whose country was in ruins and who were further humiliated by the raids and curfews of an occupying army.

And I realized that none of the reasons we were given about why we were in Iraq turned out to be true. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. We weren’t helping the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi people didn’t want us there. We weren’t preventing terrorism or making Americans safer. I couldn’t find one reason for my having been in Iraq, for having shot at people and having been shot at.

Coming home gave me the clarity to see the line between military duty and moral obligation. I realized that I was part of a war that I believed was immoral and criminal, a war of aggression, a war of imperial domination. I realized that acting on my principles was incompatible with my role in the military, and I decided that I could not return to Iraq.

By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military or been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, I did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me— they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared with the price paid by Iraqis and Americans who have given their lives. Mine is a small price compared with the price humanity has paid for war.

Many have called me a coward, while others have called me a hero. I believe I can be found somewhere in the middle. To those who have called me a hero, I say that I don’t believe in heroes, but that ordinary people can do extraordinary things. To those who have called me a coward, I say that they are wrong but that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people; the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill; the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body; the fear of abandoning my daughter, the people who love me, the man I used to be, and the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.

I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat, and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who call me a coward are also right. I was a coward, not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being, and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified. I did not want to stand up to the government and the army; I feared punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at that moment I was a coward, and I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

I also apologize to the Iraqi people. To them, I say I am sorry for the curfews, for the raids, for the killings. May they find it in their hearts to forgive me.

One of the reasons I did not refuse the war from the beginning was that I was afraid of losing my freedom. Today, as I sit behind bars, I realize that there are many types of freedom, and that in spite of my confinement I remain free in many important ways. What good is freedom if we are afraid to follow our conscience? What good is freedom if we are not able to live with our own actions? I am confined to a prison, but I feel, today more than ever, connected to all humanity. Behind these bars I sit a free man because I listened to a higher power, the voice of my conscience.

During my confinement, I’ve come across a poem written by a man who refused and resisted the government of Nazi Germany. For doing so he was executed. His name was Albrecht Haushofer, and he wrote the following poem as he awaited execution.

G

UILT

The burden of my guilt before the law

 

weighs light upon my shoulders; to plot

 

and to conspire was my duty to the people;

 

I would have been a criminal had I not.

I am guilty, though not the way you think,

 

I should have done my duty sooner, I was wrong,

 

I should have called evil more clearly by its name

 

I hesitated to condemn it for far too long.

I now accuse myself within my heart:

 

I have betrayed my conscience far too long

 

I have deceived myself and fellow man.

I knew the course of evil from the start

 

My warning was not loud nor clear enough!

 

Today I know what I was guilty of...

To those who are still quiet, to those who continue to betray their consciences, to those who are not calling evil more clearly by its name, to those of us who are still not doing enough to refuse and resist, I say, “Come forward.” I say, “Free your minds.”

Let us, collectively, free our minds, soften our hearts, comfort the wounded, put down our weapons, and reassert ourselves as human beings by putting an end to war.

BREAKING THE

 

CODE OF SILENCE

NANCY LESSIN

Nancy Lessin is a cofounder of Military Families Speak Out, an organization of over two thousand families who oppose the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Nancy’s stepson Joe served with the marines in Iraq in spring 2003.

 

In the U.S. military there is a code of silence that extends to the families of servicemen and servicewomen and beyond. The troops must obey the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the congressional code of military criminal law that, in part, puts limits on free speech. Soldiers can be punished, for example, if they engage in speech or conduct that is “to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces, or conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces.” The Supreme Court has often reinforced the limits on service members’ rights to free speech. And the court of public opinion has been harsher: many in the United States—both within and outside the military—believe that speaking out against actions taken by the military is a betrayal of the troops, especially in times of war.

Civilian families of service members are just that—civilians who are legally free to criticize the government and the military. But the vast majority of military families have never spoken out, even when they have strongly disagreed with decisions that affect their loved ones. An unwritten policy as strong as any force of law keeps them silent—much as it keeps the rest of the nation silent too. In the fall of 2002, my family decided to break that code of silence.

BOOK: Stop the Next War Now
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