It is tempting to succumb to despair, what with the onslaught of major media coverage telling us all the bad news, dismissing the promising news, and ignoring the good news. Consider the challenges: the unraveling violence of the Egyptian revolution, the 5,000 killed in Syria, climate change and the instability and disasters brought by extreme weather patterns and an ill-equipped global populace with inadequate leadership, the threat of random violence and terrorist activity–Norway, Belgium, India, the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq–and state and cultural violence against immigrants, women, refugees, the poor, GLBTQ persons, and people of color. So where is the hope? Well, in 2011, the fires of our hope were stoked by the global protest movements–the Arab Spring, the Indignados, Occupy Wall Street–of millions of people rising up to say: كفاية …Basta…Enough!
Resistance was in the streets and occupations in city squares. A resounding “no” echoed around the world–what Bernard Harcourt has perceptively termed “political disobedience”–signifying contempt, dissatisfaction, and rejection of entrenched governments and status quo economics. Dictators were ousted in Egypt and Tunisia. Revolutionary fervor was sparked by nonviolent action in Libya, Syria and Yemen. South Korean activists are poised to possibly shutter the building of a controversial US naval base with profound geopolitical implications. Afghan youth are getting organized–an incredible feat considering all the challenges they face. Palestinian nonviolent resistance and the Free Gaza movement is growing as are Israeli protests for social justice. In the US, activists and organizers in Wisconsin and Ohio occupied their state capitals to protest budget cuts and GOP anti-unionism. Undocumented students–DREAMers–took it to the streets and Senators’ offices. Environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, students and citizens staged sit-ins at the White House to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline–whose fate is still TBD but the resistance is growing. And then there was Occupy Wall Street. The movement propelled American activism back into public purview and is proving to be the era where a generation of young people–equipped with the tools, knowledge and experience of the civil rights and anti-war generations–are cutting their teeth in nonviolent social change. We are telling ourselves that there is reason to hope because we incarnate it.

The protests of 2011 are the harbinger of what we’ve already known–what we’ve been waiting and working for–that neoliberalism’s carte blanche as signed by the Washington Consensus is on the way out. The days of political regimes that are not truly democratic (and, apparently, equitable) are–at the very least in ideological terms–numbered. In the 00s, there was an explosion of social commentary on globalization: Thomas Freidman, Naomi Klein, Paul Hawken, Vandana Shiva. Paul Kingsnorth, a British journalist, penned a book whose title has stayed with me: One No, Many Yeses. The catchy, chant-like title offers a simple way to reflect on the the historical moment we are experiencing. As symbolized by Time‘s “Person of the Year,” there is a global “no!” to anti-democratic governments and unfettered capitalism. But at the same time, that singular no of protest is united by the multitude of “yeses” whose global resonance signifies the arrival of a comprehensive vision of nonviolence.

This yes to nonviolence signals the awakening consciousness that summarily connects us to that which is most important in our lives and our communities: the desire to be connected, to live without fear, to be healthy and be in healthy relationships, to be free to have self-determining and mutually-supporting ways of living, working, parenting, learning, teaching, creating, and, yes, even dying. Never before have we witnessed the acute, raw, powerful desire for life in such a way that so many diverse peoples are willingly struggling for that way of being.

Nonviolence–however broadly we choose to define it, whether that be strategically, principally, as a communication technique, as a tactic, as a religious commitment, as a process–has inspired hope, awakened creativity, and substantially changed, once again, the world. Gandhi’s term, “satyagraha,” contains a meaning so varied yet concrete and so distinct yet common that “nonviolence” left lacking. Satyagraha is means and ends. It is an effective tactic of protest, a viable social program and an eternal, utopian hope. The nonviolence in 2012 is shoving the nonviolence of protest into the “constructive program” that rejects the there-is-no-alternative to global capitalism. The nonviolence of 2012 will continue to hold up the alternatives to violence, oppression, and injustice by being the vision it seeks. Democratic participation, consensus-based decision-making, decentralized leadership models, shared responsibility, and economics of common wealth and individual affirmation of uniqueness are being experimented with across the world in thousands of different contexts–and with success! “General assembly” being a household word, the lack of charismatic leadership and establishment confusion over what protesters demand all confirm that nonviolence is more than just protest.

Despairingly, I don’t have much hope in protest alone any more; many of us do not. The record-breaking millions who protested the 2003 Iraq War and the continued political impotence on climate change–like in Copenhagen, 2009, and Durban, 2011–show that the “system” is incapable of responding to genuine democratic sentiments. But the hope of nonviolence, besides having some ability to shake the system into response, is in its birthing new paradigms that are more about praxis and participation than they are about ideology. Through these protests, power is in the process of being fundamentally redefined as something to be shared. Political systems and social relationships–having been more or less stagnant since political liberalism first appeared on the Enlightenment scene and later re-affirmed post-Cold War–are showing early signs of social evolution, an indicator that we are not yet at the end of history. Nonviolence, then, as a common denominator in politics, economics, relationships, and resistance movements can be a guiding–and deciding–force for local and global solutions that are democratically-directed and people-powered. I have hope in 2012!

I blame my parents, who never once took me to the mall to visit Santa Claus when I was young. I also never wrote the old man a “wish list.” So here I am, at 37, sitting down to write my very first letter to Santa Claus.

Dear Mr. Claus,

I hope this letter finds you and the missus well. I know you are known by many names—Kris Kringle, old Saint Nicholas, but I will call you by your American commercial name for the purpose of this letter.

I have been very nice this year: kind to neighbors, generous with my time and energy, a compassionate ear in times of difficulty. I have tried not to complain or gripe or whine too much, even though there is much in the world to be grumpy about. I did not participate in as many “Occupy” events as I should have, but New Year’s Resolution time is almost upon us, and trust me when I tell you that will be on that list.

So, with that preamble, allow me to give you the list of things I want for Christmas this year.

Of course, there is very little that I need—other than very warm winter outfit that will not be too bulky or down-fashion (I am going to spend the first two weeks of January outside demanding that President Obama shut down Guantanamo, close Bagram, end torture and ensure accountability for the architects of this travesty).

So, put that at the top of my list, please. Warm, not bulky, winter coat. This Patagonia one is really nice, but it is made in China. Never mind about that. I’ll just layer up.

Other than that… hmm. I thought long and hard about how to make this a real Christmas wish list and not just a list of all the ills in the world that I want changed.

Food for hungry children. I know that you have an enviable distribution network, so in addition to toys and tchotchkes, could you also hit up all the hungry kids with nourishing food. There are about 16 million “food insecure” kids in this country, so it will take some effort.

Good places for all the Occupy folks to be for the winter. A lot of people dropped everything and “came home” to Occupy Wall Street, Hartford, San Diego and countless other upspringings around the country. They found community, meaning, a platform for their outrage and alienation—and the daily necessities in those anarchic and somewhat miraculous spaces. Now, with spots like Zuccotti Park closed to Occupiers around the country, many of those friends are looking for a place to go. In Providence, Occupiers put it to the city. We’ll leave the park if you open a day shelter for the homeless.

Peace. It’s not too hard, right? I mean, you can fly through the air behind eight tiny reindeer. That stretches the bounds of credibility just as much as the belief that humankind can all breathe air and share space without killing each other, right? Well, maybe it is all a stretch. But especially right now, as the killing returns to Iraq with a vengeance, we need a little help in the peace department. Wasn’t President Obama just crowing about the end of war in Iraq? And now, the papers are full of news of a new wave of bombings and a crippling political crisis: 63 dead in Baghdad and more than one hundred wounded on Thursday.

Good work and more time. I am happily unemployed and feel really privileged to spend my time doing things other than making money. But, I know so many people who are out of work or who are really unhappy in their jobs. And beyond being unfulfilled or bored, there are countless people working in dangerous and unhealthy environments—mining, machine shops, fishing vessels, farms—and who are being exploited. And then there is the modern scourge of slavery and human trafficking. I wish for good work that is meaningful and justly remunerated for all people. And while we are on the subject, just how much are you paying those elves of yours?

I could go on and on, there is a lot to wish for better in the world. But, I will conclude my letter by noting that if you are able to deliver all these things to me on Christmas morning, I would be most grateful (and I would not be the only one). My family is making chocolate peanut butter balls and beer to give to friends and family for Christmas, so we’ll leave some out for you.

By the way, I don’t have a chimney, but you should be able to figure it out.

All the best,

Frida Berrigan

Hakim: We are speaking from the highlands of Bamiyan in central Afghanistan, and we wanted to start off by thanking you sincerely for the guidance and wisdom that you have consistently given through your teaching and speeches in many places. We want to start off with a question from Faiz.

Faiz: In an article by Ahmed Rashid in the New York Times recently, he said that “after 10 years, it should be clear that the war in this region cannot be won purely by military force…. Pakistanis desperately need a new narrative… but where is the leadership to tell this story as it should be told? The military gets away with its antiquated thinking because nobody is offering an alternative, and without an alternative, nothing will improve for a long time.” Do you think there is any leadership in the world today that can propose an alternative non-military solution for Afghanistan, and if not, where or from whom would this leadership for an alternative non-military solution come from?

Noam Chomsky: I think it is well understood among the military leadership and also the political leadership in the United States and its allies, that they cannot achieve a military solution of the kind that they want. This is putting aside the question of whether that goal was ever justified; now, put that aside. Just in their terms, they know perfectly well they cannot achieve a military solution.

Is there an alternative political force that could work towards some sort of political settlement? Well, you know, that actually the major force that would be effective in bringing about that aim is popular opinion. The public is already very strongly opposed to the war and has been for a long time, but that has not translated itself into an active, committed, dedicated popular movement that is seeking to change policy. And that’s what has to be done here.

My own feeling is that the most important consequence of the very significant peace efforts that are underway inside Afghanistan might well be to stimulate popular movements in the West through just people to people contact, which would help impose pressures on the United States, and particularly Britain, to end the military phase of this conflict and move towards what ought to be done: peaceful settlement and honest, realistic economic development.

Abdulai: Dr. Ramazon Bashardost told the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers once that the people of Afghanistan have no choice because all available options in Afghanistan are bad. So, Afghans have no choice but to choose the least bad of the bad options. In this situation, some Afghans, and in particular many in Kabul, feel that the least bad option is to have the U.S. coalition forces remain in Afghanistan. Do you think that the continued presence of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan is the least bad option? If not, what are the possible truly good options for ordinary Afghans?

Noam Chomsky: I agree that there don’t appear to be any good options, and that we therefore regrettably have to try to seek the least bad of the bad options. Now, that judgment has to be made by Afghans. You’re on the scene. You’re the people who live with the consequences. You are the people who have the right and responsibility to make these delicate and unfortunate choices. I have my own opinion, but it doesn’t carry any weight. What matters are your opinions.

My opinion is that as long as the military forces are there, now, they will probably increase the tensions and undermine the possibilities for a longer term settlement. I think that’s been the record of the past 10 years largely, and that’s the record in other places as well—in Iraq, for example. So, my feeling is that a phased withdrawal of the kind that’s actually contemplated may well be the least bad of the bad options, but combined with other efforts. It’s not enough to just withdraw troops. There have to be alternatives put in place. One of them, for example, which has repeatedly been recommended, is regional cooperation among the regional powers. That would of course include Pakistan, Iran, India, the countries to the north, all of which, together with Afghan representatives among them, might be able to hammer out a development program that would be meaningful and cooperate in implementing it, shifting the focus of activities from killing to reconstructing and building. But the core of issues are going to have to be settled internal to Afghanistan.

Mohammad Hussein: It has been announced that the foreign forces would leave Afghanistan by 2014, and transfer responsibility for security to Afghans. However, what we have before us appears to be a very deceitful, corrupt situation of the U.S. government signing a Strategic Partnership agreement with the Afghan government to place permanent joint military bases in Afghanistan beyond 2024. It feels as if, to the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, that the withdrawal by 2014 is therefore inconsequential in light of the larger long term plans to keep forces in Afghanistan. Could you comment on this?

Noam Chomsky: I’m quite sure that those expectations are correct. There is very little doubt that the U.S. government intends to maintain effective military control over Afghanistan by one means or another, either through a client state with military bases, and support for what they’ll call Afghan troops. That’s the pattern elsewhere as well. So, for example, after bombing Serbia in 1999, the United States maintains a huge military base in Kosovo, which was the goal of the bombing. In Iraq, they’re still building military bases even though there is rhetoric about leaving the country. And I presume they will do the same in Afghanistan too, which is regarded by the U.S. as of strategic significance in the long term, within the plans of maintaining control of essentially the energy resources and other resources of the region, including western and Central Asia. So this is a piece of ongoing plans which in fact go back to the Second World War.

Right now, the United States is militarily engaged in one form or another in almost a hundred countries, including bases, special forces operations, support for domestic military and security forces. This is a global program of world militarization, essentially tracing back to headquarters in Washington, and Afghanistan is a part of it. It will be up to Afghans to see if, first of all, if they want this; secondly, if they can act in ways which will exclude it. That’s pretty much what’s happening in Iraq. As late as early 2008, the United States was officially insisting that it maintain military bases and be able to carry out combat operations in Iraq, and that the Iraqi government must privilege U.S. investors for the oil and energy system. Well, Iraqi resistance has compelled the United States to withdraw somewhat from that, substantially, in fact. But the efforts will still continue. These are ongoing conflicts based on long standing principles. Any real success in moving towards demilitarization and reconstruction of relations will have to require primarily the commitment of Afghans, but, as well, the cooperative efforts of popular groups of the Western powers to pressure their own governments.

Faiz: After three decades of war and being at the raw end of regional and global military interference in Afghanistan, the people are feeling lost and without hope. People are even losing hope and not confident that the United Nations, whose charter is to remove the scourge of war from all generations, would be able to offer an alternative solution. We have talked with peace groups about the possibility of a blue ribbon or blue scarf team of individuals, perhaps including Nobel Laureates, who could speak out and make a statement about the dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, and perhaps throw open a debate to the world about alternatives for ordinary Afghans who are losing all hope. Do you think that there is any possibility of the United Nations stepping in to offer a different narrative in these dire straits? And is there any possibility of an independent peacemaking blue ribbon team of peace builders who can offer a way out?

Noam Chomsky: One has to bear in mind that the United Nations cannot act independently. It can only act as far as the great powers will permit—that means primarily the United States, also Britain, and France, essentially, the Permanent Members of the Security Council—which limit what the United Nations can do. It can act within the constraints that they impose, and the United States is by far the most influential.

So, just to give one indication of that, take a look at the record of vetoes at the Security Council. In the early days of the United Nations, beginning in the late 1940s, U.S. power was so overwhelming in the world that the United Nations was basically an instrument of the United States. As other industrial powers recovered from the war and decolonization began, the United Nations became somewhat more representative of the people of the world. It became less controlled by the United States and the U.S. began vetoing resolutions. The first U.S. veto was in 1965, and since then, the United States is far in the lead vetoing Security Council resolutions, which blocks action. Now, Britain is second, and no one else is even close. And that continues now. There will probably be another U.S. veto next week. That’s in general the case. If the United States refuses to allow something to happen, the United Nations can’t do anything. Other great powers have also some influence, but less. So, the real question is, will the United States and Britain agree to permit actions of the kind that are outlined in the question. And I think that can come about, but again, we’re back to where we were before.

Abdulai: On behalf of the Afghan youth in Bamiyan, as well as those listening in from Kabul, we thank you for your time with us. We wish you well, and the best of health.

Noam Chomsky: Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you briefly. It’s a real privilege, and I greatly admire the wonderful work that you’re doing.

While the US will retain a large embassy and two consulates in the country, with 4,000 to 5,000 contractors (down from a high of 180,000), this is a different outcome from the US government’s original expectation of permanently maintaining scores of military bases, including superbases, in the country designed to indefinitely anchor the US geo-political presence in the Middle East. While we may learn later that this long-term strategy, against all political obstacles, remains on track (including a plan for all that oil), the nearly nine-year-old occupation of Iraq is apparently coming to an end.

Except for the occasional newsflash about sporadic violence—and the recent spate of stories about the sheer tonnage of materiel that the US is shipping stateside as it readies its departure—we don’t hear much about Iraq these days. The action has moved on to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. But five years ago, things were very different. The military, political, and economic shockwaves from the US invasion in 2003 were roiling the country, the sectarian violence was mounting, and Iraq was awash in blood and inconsolable sorrow. The human wreckage—as well as the huge economic toll—defied comprehension (and the bloodless number-crunching that surfaced now and then).

In the original run up to the US invasion, millions had mobilized, but after President Bush unleashed his “Shock and Awe” blitzkrieg, this momentum faltered. By 2006, however, US public opposition to the war was again deepening, fueled by the three years of work that the anti-war movement had put in. United for Peace and Justice—a coalition of 1,400 groups—as well as many national organizations (including Peace Action, Veterans for Peace, American Friends Service Committee, and the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance) had worked tirelessly to strengthen and broaden this longing to end the war.

In the midst of this, a handful of us began to develop a new project: The Declaration of Peace.

This initiative was prompted by an email I received on Christmas Day 2005 from Michael Nagler, the nonviolence scholar who now writes for this site. In his note, Michael proposed that, instead of continuing to organize limited or sporadic actions, the anti-war movement should set a deadline for a US withdrawal from Iraq. If this schedule were not met, the government would face widespread civil disobedience. A civil disobedience pledge would be created and circulated (here he was explicitly referencing The Pledge of Resistance, which was organized in the 1980s to protest US war in Central America), and signers would participate in nonviolent action trainings to get ready. Moreover, Michael suggested that this action strategy insist on a concrete peacekeeping alternative and peacebuilding plan.

I vividly recall reading Michael’s email. Moved by its vision, I immediately sketched a strategy paper that I sent off to Michael and a couple of other colleagues. Eventually, we decided to test this idea in the larger movement. A lot of online and face-to-face conversation followed with many existing groups and individuals. We were supported in this process by our own organizations, including Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service, which gave several of us on staff the green light to see where this might go. The campaign emerged as numerous key organizers joined the national organizing committee.

Without presenting a detailed history here, suffice it to say the project gained traction and helped focus the anti-war work that year. We developed a declaration that called for a comprehensive, concrete and rapid plan to end the war in Iraq—and a grassroots nonviolent action strategy if this plan was not established by September 21, 2006, the International Day of Peace. The plan included a prompt timetable for withdrawal of troops; no permanent bases in Iraq; an Iraqi-led peace process for security, reparations, reconstruction and reconciliation; restoration of Iraqi sovereignty over its economic and political affairs; increased support for US veterans of the Iraq war; and the shifting of war funding to meet education, healthcare and employment needs at home.

Signing the Declaration of Peace was a way of backing this plan. But even more importantly, it was a commitment to take public action to help move it forward.

In addition to organizing local campaigns and hosting nonviolent action trainings, signers inundated Congressional offices that summer urging their senators or representatives to sign the declaration. Most demurred, saying they did not sign other people’s pledges. (In more recent years such sentiments haven’t prevented conservative Congress-members from signing Grover Norquist’s pledge to oppose tax increases.) In the end, only 12 members of Congress signed the Declaration of Peace. But this lobbying seemed to have made an impact in other ways. It alerted Congress to the anti-war movement’s growing momentum and may have played a role in shifting the focus of the impending fall Congressional elections from shying away from discussing Iraq at all to making the elections a plebiscite on the war.

In the end, The Declaration of Peace was signed by 20,000 people. It was endorsed by 800 national and local organizations that organized 375 events across the United States, which included hundreds of people engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience, from September 21 through September 30. While it was originally conceived of as a one-time effort, it went on to organize four more campaigns. Some of us associated with The Declaration of Peace also helped create Christian Peace Witness for Iraq, which annually gathered for faith-based nonviolent action in Washington, DC for several years, including a service held in March 2007 at the National Cathedral followed by 222 members of the religious community being arrested as we engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House.

The audacious timeline that The Declaration of Peace set out was not met. It is sobering that US withdrawal from Iraq did not materialize for another five long years filled with more death, destruction, and instability. More somber still is the fact that the vision we struggled for—a plan that would include a peace process that would address security, reconstruction and reconciliation and a “peace dividend” here at home—remained, unfortunately, only a vision. While there were “surges” and “drawdowns” over the last half-decade, no comprehensive plan for genuine peace, reconstruction, and reconciliation was implemented.

At the same time, it is worth noting that, had the anti-war movement not mobilized as it did since 2003, it is likely that the US would have had boots on the ground in Iraq indefinitely (as Sen. John McCain and others have seemed to call for recently). Quite likely US bases would be firmly entrenched there (as they have been in other places following US wars, including Japan, Germany, and Korea). And there would likely have been the continuing provocation and instability that an occupying power incites. Social movements alert, educate, and mobilize the populace to shift its thinking to create the conditions for change. The role of the anti-war movement cannot be overlooked in accounting for this new course.

Nevertheless, much remains unfinished. A key task is accounting for what the US did. Before moving our public awareness to the next battlefield, we are in need of stark truth-telling about what went down: tearing a nation asunder, prosecuting a horrendous counter-insurgency campaign, and conducting systematic torture, all under official pretexts that turned out to be scandalously false.

To engage in the requirements of restorative justice (which, though often ignored by power-holders, are incumbent on us as a society) first requires an engagement with the truth. Without this, we will not only continue this pattern of waging long and costly wars, we will have missed an opportunity for transformation that is sorely needed.

What we know is that we cannot wait for the power-holders to engage in the truth and reconciliation process. It is up to us. And when we have done this, then we—the citizens of Iraq, the US and all the “coalition forces”—can rightly announce a true “declaration of peace.”

When Fiji’s brutally repressive military tried to detain an 80-year-old reverend with the Methodist Church this summer due to his involvement with politics, it caused quite a stir — not only because of his age or his former position as the military’s head chaplain, but also because he refused to let the soldiers take him to the barracks. “I told them, the only way to take me to camp now is bundle up my legs, tied up, and my hands, I will not go with you,” was how he described the incident to New Zealand press. “That is the only way, you carry me to the camp or you bring your gun and shoot me and you carry my dead body to the camp to show to the commander,” he said.

This kind of dissension from a former military official is not typical of the one group of Fijians that actually receives special treatment. Fiji’s strongman Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama goes out of his way not to antagonize the military, which has intentionally trained more soldiers than it could handle in order to supply thousands of them to the British Army, American mercenary companies, and the U.N.’s peacekeeping operations in places like Iraq, Sinai, Lebanon, Sudan, and Somalia.

Lieutenant Colonel Ratu Tevita Mara — profiled in part one of this series as Fiji’s highest-ranking defector — has asked for the use of Fijian soldiers overseas to be stopped until democracy is restored, since he sees the practice as helping to keep Bainimarama in the military’s good graces. “He certainly rewards the military by sending them on peacekeeping duties overseas, and yes of course they get extra allowance, extra money for that,” Mara told me in a recent interview.

Bloomberg News noted in 2007 that Fiji had “positioned itself as a discount-soldier surplus store,” and quoted Bainimarama’s “private-army sales liaison” as saying that “we made a conscious decision to create an army bigger than we need to generate foreign currency.” Private contractors who’ve hired Fijian soldiers for work in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past few years include Blackwater/Xe, DynCorp, Triple Canopy, ArmorGroup, and Global Strategies Group, which even hired a full battalion of Fijian soldiers to secure the distribution of new Iraqi currency in 2003.

A few years ago, Iraq became the biggest source of remittances flowing back to the island nation, with the mercenary companies paying an extra fee to the junta for taking its soldiers. Now, as tens of thousands of U.S. troops prepare to pull out of Iraq by the end of the year, Fiji is being asked to send more of its own soldiers to help fill the vacuum: in front of the U.N. General Assembly in late September, Bainimarama boasted that “with the planned withdrawal of the U.S. Forces from Iraq this year, the United Nations saw fit to increase the size of its Guard Unit,” for which “Fiji was selected to provide the extra personnel.”

Mara told me that “what I’ve been pointing out to the other countries is that you have to undermine the military. That’s the only institution that Bainimarama has in Fiji that supports him. And if the military continues to support him, then the longer he stays in. You certainly can undermine the military support for Bainimarama by threatening to withdraw Fijian soldiers from peacekeeping operations. That will certainly have an effect.” Fijians started an online petition “to stop the deployment of abusive Fijian troops on peacekeeping missions overseas.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tried to defend the U.N.’s continued use of Fijian soldiers at the Pacific Islands Forum in early September, where he said that “at the time of renewing this contract for Fijian soldiers in Iraq there was no other alternatives.” Ki-moon claimed that somehow the U.N. is privy to the internal workings of the junta enough to know who’s behind all of the abuse: “Whoever is known to have violated any human rights, we have not deployed,” he assured.

Mara dismissed this defense, and told me that “those participating in Iraq are regular force soldiers who have been in the army before and after 2006, so how can Ban Ki-moon verify they didn’t participate in the coup or its actions after? Totally impossible.” He said that “it’s a fact that soldiers involved [in the junta's abuses] have been on U.N. missions since the coup in 2006 and continue to do so. There is no way the U.N. can verify the soldiers involved.”

Still, despite the financial incentives offered to the military, Mara said that “I know for a fact that the military is divided in their loyalty to Bainimarama. Even I was accused of plotting a coup against him while I was still in the military. He himself asked me that question, if I was planning a coup against him. And I said that’s totally incorrect. Why would I be wanting to plot a coup against you? I’ve mentioned that regularly — that I don’t believe another military coup will solve things in Fiji. In fact, it will only make things worse. But you can’t rule that out. You can’t discount people taking things into their own hands.”

Despite his years of military training, Mara made clear, “I’ve always advocated a nonviolent approach and a nonviolent end to what’s happening in Fiji. We can certainly influence the military. The majority of the military would like a return to democratic governance. The majority would like a return to normalcy in their daily lives, to live peacefully with each other, talk peacefully without being overlooked all the time. They certainly know that the country now views them as a force used by Bainimarama to oppress them. There are certainly a lot of hard feelings toward them, but in Fiji we’re all related to each other. The barrier is easily broken down by talking to each other.”

The U.S. Embassy in Fiji has likewise noted that regime change will have to be brought about by Fijians themselves: in a 2008 Wikileaks cable, the embassy wrote that “it is very difficult to envision a circumstance in which the United States would preemptively ‘intervene’ militarily,” but noted that “it is conceivable that foreign governments might have to ‘intervene’ to protect foreign citizens if an attempt to remove Bainimarama and his group triggers civil war.”

Before it comes to military action, however, Mara believes that Americans and other internationals can help to weaken the junta by boycotting not only Fijian mercenaries, but also tourism, global brands such as Fiji Water that fund and employ soldiers, and other key lifelines providing millions in cash to the regime. These leverage points — discussed in part three of this series — are those that connect Fiji to the rest of the world, through which the junta makes those of us who pay into them complicit in its exploitation and abuse of the Fijian people.

This welcome announcement was somewhat tempered when further reports revealed that on January 1, 2012, the State Department will command a hired army of about 5,500 security contractors, all to protect the largest U.S. diplomatic presence anywhere overseas. There will also apparently be a “significant C.I.A. presence,” according to the New York Times.

What was I to make of that?

Since the fall of 2003, my anti-war grandmother friends and I had been struggling, demonstrating, petitioning, organizing, yelling, marching, traveling with one singular objective—to end the illegal, immoral war and occupation in Iraq causing so much death and destruction. We later added ending the war in Afghanistan to our agenda. When we first hit the streets, we were a small minority and met with anger. Most Americans backed the war. CNN promoted it like it was the latest blockbuster action movie, and the public cheered as the news channel repeatedly showed the fires ignited by our bombs lighting up the Baghdad sky.

I began Grandmothers Against the War with a vigil in front of Rockefeller Center with just two of us nervous, shivering old ladies on Jan. 14, 2004. Gradually, more and more people joined us—mostly grannies, but also Veterans for Peace and other lone individuals sick about the war. We endured hecklers who would shout such things as “Traitors” at us. One of our Vets for Peace almost got into a fist fight with a particularly obnoxious and persistent passerby.

But, we kept on, heartened that more and more of the crowd gave us thumbs up and yelled “thank you” as the public began to realize what a debacle our occupation was. Foreigners, in particular, applauded us—an Italian man came over to us one day and kissed all 24 grannies standing there on the cheek.

We decided to ramp up our opposition when we became aware that the Bush administration was impervious to the growing public outcry to end the war. Eighteen grandmothers, me included, tried to enlist at the Times Square recruiting station on Oct. 17, 2005, in order to replace young people in harm’s way for a lie. Actually, none of us had grandkids in the military. We did it as a matter of principle on behalf of America’s grandchildren. We figured they were entitled to long lives like we had all enjoyed and should not be forced to endanger their lives and limbs for an unjust cause.

When we were denied entrance into the recruiting station, we sat down on the ground and refused to move. The police arrested us and took us to jail. We knew we were entitled to peaceably dissent, but the cops apparently didn’t! After a six-day trial in criminal court, defended by eminent civil liberties attorney Norman Siegel and his co-counsel Earl Ward, we were acquitted. The resultant world-wide publicity put the peace grannies on the map, and I like to think that our action was perhaps the first significant anti-war protest with legs.

And, that was just the beginning. We launched a mind-boggling series of actions and never paused—even just last week, the Granny Peace Brigade, an outgrowth of Grandmothers Against the War, held a silent vigil at Lincoln Center which received wide attention from the media. Over the years, we went on a ten-day trek to Washington DC, traveled abroad to speak before peace groups, sent 100 grannies to lobby 100 U.S. senators, orchestrated colorful marches across Brooklyn Bridge, performed a whole show written and performed by us and did numerous other creative actions (it’s all chronicled in my book, Grandmothers Against the War: Getting Off Our Fannies and Standing Up for Peace).  

I must say, painfully, that though I enthusiastically supported Pres. Obama during his election campaign, I became disillusioned and disappointed at his failure to bring our troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan. At times as I stood in front of Rockefeller Center, often in heavy rain or blazing heat, I would wonder if there was any point in putting myself through such discomfort. I began to feel discouraged and doubted these wars would ever end in my lifetime. I fully expected to be out there standing on Fifth Avenue until the day I died.

But, now, with this hopeful and unexpected news, I feel that perhaps it’s all been worthwhile. I like to think our granny efforts have been part of the pressure that contributed to Obama’s decision. I don’t know the political maneuvers behind his move—maybe it has to do with tangled foreign policy machinations I can’t begin to understand. Maybe it’s designed to help him get re-elected. Or maybe—just maybe—he did it out of sheer moral principle. I like to think that is his main reason, anyway.

Of course, the more urgent matter is Afghanistan. He says he will bring them home soon. My long immersion in the anti-war struggle, however, has taught me that we can’t count on his doing so unless we keep the pressure on him to end that occupation as well. It will inevitably end some day, but more quickly if we stay mobilized. We can’t clap our hands with joy, unfortunately, until it does.

For now, I will be cautiously optimistic. Dare I say “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, with reservations, as far as the peace grannies are concerned?

I dare.

Today, people in cities from New York to Hong Kong—in both directions—are responding to the longstanding call from the Spainish Indignados for a day of protest against rampant corruption, austerity, and the power of high finance over and against the needs of the vast majority of people. The call has been strengthened, heartened, and echoed in recent weeks by the occupation movement in the United States that began at Occupy Wall Street, on top of this whole year of revolutionary activity, starting in Tunisia. The news is so far highlighting images of protesters damaging property—windows broken, cars on fire—even while briefly noting that, in the vast majority of cases, the protests are entirely peaceful. Typical.

The really important question, though, is whether and how this outburst of outrage will turn into meaningful change in the structures of power. Coordinated, worldwide protests have happened before in recent years—February of 2003, against the war in Iraq, or even 350.org’s mobilization against inaction on climate change in October of 2009. What can the movement do to turn this passion and momentum into a strategy that will really undermine the foundations of the corporate elite’s power? Protests on the streets can only be a beginning. What will it take to make this system cost more to maintain than to transform?

The 792nd consecutive weekly vigil outside of Alliant Techsystems in Minneapolis in August.

As I mentioned in this space earlier, I was recently in Barcelona at the War Resisters International’s seminar on War Profiteering and Peace Movement Responses. It was a really interesting time to be a Yankee abroad. The streets in the city center filled up with protests against budget cuts each evening, and everyone at the meetings was talking about OccupyWallStreet in slightly awed and disbelieving tones—as though to say “even the U.S. of A. is getting with the program.”

I was repeatedly asked where I thought the Occupy Movement was headed, a question I cleverly avoided—“look, is that a tapas bar over there? How do you say, ‘more wine, please’ in Spanish?” It is a good question, but as Donald Rumsfeld used to say: “that’s above my pay grade.”

At the end of each long day participating in different seminar tracks (war and exploitation of natural resources, exposing the bad guys, new trends in war profiteering) and workshops on how to research the arms trade, use social media and campaign against drone warfare, we gathered in the city center for the Trobada, convened by the Center for Study of Justice and Peace (Centre d’Estudis per a la Pau JM Delàs). Lots of people turned out for these nightly events, the one at which I presented drew more than one hundred people on a Friday night (but no one in Barcelona eats dinner before 10 pm anyway).

I spent my 20 minutes trying to sharing some of the peace movement responses to war making and war profiteering. The people of Barcelona found this helpful and inspiring (at least those who were there, or at least that is what they told me) and so I thought I would use my blog post this week to share some of what I said there.

When we spend all our time focused on exactly what is wrong and how big and powerful the wrongdoers are, we can inadvertently give short shrift to the people organizing and struggling and (sometimes) winning, so I want to share some snapshots of U.S. resistance. The international news media has focused some attention on the Occupy Movement, but here are some things you are probably not hearing about:

A few weeks ago, a small group gathered in Washington to protest the annual weapons showcase at a fancy hotel. Representatives from every major weapons manufacturer came together, looked at the latest killing technology and made deals. They also ate very expensive meals—the Air Force Association and Lockheed Martin sponsored a $330 a plate banquet. Outside protesters held signs and read from a statement:

We cannot let the arms merchants, who are displaying the latest killing technology and weapons, conduct their gala banquet without protest.  We seek to give voice to the victims who have suffered and died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere as a direct result of U.S. warmaking, and weapons, like the Drone “Predator” and “Reaper” bombing planes, produced by the arms contractors participating in the Arms Bazaar.

At the beginning of the month, there was a week of action against nuclear weapons and the militarism of space organized out of a small town in Maine that is home to General Dynamics’ military ship building enterprise. The week of action encompassed thousands of people around the world. I like thinking about this group of people in particular. It seems like the script of a sci-fi movie—the battle between the powers that have colonized the heavens for military domination and the communities that want to see the billions of dollars and brilliance of scientists and engineers harnessed for the good of this world.

And on October 2, in Minneapolis, a small group of activists celebrated Mahatma Gandhi’s 142nd birthday and discussed what will happen next, now that Alliant Techsystems—the weapons manufacturer they have protested and vigiled and trespassed at is closing its operations in Minnesota and moving to the Washington, DC area. This cluster bomb maker wants to be closer to its customers. The group has been there every Wednesday morning for 798 weeks. If you know of a good place to vigil, give Alliant Action a call.

Also, last weekend, on the other side of our huge nation, Catholic Worker communities from around the country gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada. The acolytes of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, who believe in the works of mercy, personalism and adhere to a radical vision of redistribution of wealth and power out of the hands of the bosses and bishops and experts and intellectuals and into the hands of the poor gathered in the city that best exemplifies my country’s quest of mindless entertainment, wealth without labor and rapacious consumption of resources. They met and prayed and shared and resisted. Many occupied the Nevada Test Site where nuclear weapons were tested above and below ground for decades and Creech Air Force base where military drones operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are based.

Inspired by the Arab Spring, another group began an open-ended occupation in Washington, DC in a park called “Freedom Square” last Thursday.

These are just a few of the peace movement responses. And there are so many more! Despite the bleak outlook and the dark times, the United States is a nation up in arms: struggling, resisting, and organizing. It is a cause for hope.  We cannot get overwhelmed, we cannot get tired or despondent in the face of all of this. We must continue. We must share information and analysis, we must strategize together. We must.

Quickened by the Arab Spring, the ongoing May 15 movement in Spain, the grassroots uprising in Greece, the student movement in Chile, the month-long occupation of the Wisconsin capitol earlier this year, and many other campaigns chronicled on this site, we are entering a period where the potential for sustained and urgent people-power to tackle the monumental problems facing the planet is growing.

“Sustained” is the watchword. While the one-day protest will continue to be an important tool in the social change toolbox, organizers are increasingly turning to multi-day, multi-week, and multi-month campaigns. They cast a vision of sustained action—and then see if people will say “yes” to it using the most powerful language they have at their disposal: their own bodies.

So far they have. Recent cases include the two weeks of civil disobedience at the White House in August (where 1253 people were arrested opposing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline) and the Occupy Wall Street action that has now entered its third week and is spawning similar actions across the nation.

And now, beginning today, thousands of people are launching an ongoing nonviolent occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC.

“October 2011,” while pegged to the tenth anniversary of the US war in Afghanistan, has a much broader goal than ending this war. It seeks “a democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions,” and lists 15 core issues that it calls on the country to face, including the runaway power of corporations, deepening US militarism, the criminal justice system, and equal access to quality education.

Ongoing nonviolent action is not easy to sustain. The timing has to be right, the context has to be right, and the organizing has to be right. Sometimes the situation is so immediate and life and death that it can light the spark for sustaining such action, against all odds, like the ongoing weekly nonviolent protests in Palestine. In all cases, sustained action requires a deep commitment, a vision, and a willingness to enter the roller coaster of emotions and perceptions—from elation, connectedness, and the power of doing something truly meaningful to fear, boredom, and the creeping feeling that this doesn’t matter at all.

If things move together in the right way, the action may contribute to a political or cultural shift for the good.  At the same time, long after the event is over, we can savor the power of connection and significance we experienced together there. Often rooted in a vision that transcends ourselves—the healing of ourcommunity, our society, our wounded and sacred world—this action can itself offer an experience of healing and transformation. We recognize that we have been part of an enduring struggle for justice that has been deeply immediate and gritty, and at the same time deeply symbolic of the world we long for.

How, though, can we cultivate this sense of commitment, solidarity, vision, and a willingness to take up the roller coaster of enduring action for change?

One way that October 2011 has nurtured this is by asking people to take a pledge.

On the one hand, one can see such a pledge merely as an organizing device. On the other hand, the power of such a device is rooted in the depth and potential of such a commitment.

A pledge, in its deepest sense, is a solemn promise or agreement to do or not do something. Our lives and our history are woven together by such promises. A pledge obligates us to action or to taking a particular approach or direction. It is a way of saying to ourselves and to the world: “This is serious. This important. In fact, this is so important to me that I will commit myself to this matter and make good on my agreement. I will deliver.”

Public pledges have played an important role in organizing campaigns and movements. Gandhi, for example, at numerous moments invited his cohorts to make a pledge to undertake action. Rooted in a tradition of religious vows, he regarded such pledges as sacred commitments and urged people to think very carefully about making such a promise. When the South African government proposed the Asiatic Registration Bill that would require all Indians and Chinese persons in the Transvaal to be fingerprinted and to carry a registration certificate, the assembled were asked to pledge their refusal. But Gandhi cautioned them about such a pledge:

Gandhi rose to remind the audience that a pledge was serious business. It was easy to make in the excitement of the moment but was everyone ready to accept the risks of jail, beatings and perhaps death? ‘Everyone must search only his [sic] own heart,’ said Gandhi, ‘and if the inner voice assures him he has the requisite strength…then only should he pledge himself.” After he finished, the entire multitude rose and swore to disobey the law even if it meant going to jail.”

Once back in India, Gandhi consciously used a pledge in a labor dispute over the wages of mill workers. In addition to counseling the workers to remain nonviolent and disciplined, he asked them to take a pledge that they not return to work until an adequate increase was established. The pledge became a key aspect of the campaign, as Judith Margaret Brown explains in Gandhi, Prisoner of Hope:

Daily the pledge was repeated at the evening meeting, and processions through the city carried banners exhorting workers to keep the pledge. When the owners offered terms lower than those stipulated in the pledge, the workers’ refusal to work became a genuine strike.

Moreover, Gandhi organized a pledge of nonviolent action to resist the hated anti-sedition Rowlatt Bills that proposed to continue martial law in India after World War I.

There are many examples of pledges being used to organize nonviolent action. A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, written and signed by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Marcus Raskin, William Sloane Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, and Michael Ferber, was a commitment by the signers to support draft resisters during the Vietnam War and a call for general resistance to the war.

I have been involved in two pledge campaigns: The Pledge of Resistance and the Declaration of Peace. Seeking to end US wars in Central America in the 1980s, 100,000 people took a pledge to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience or other forms of nonviolent witness. Between 1984 and 1990, thousands of US citizens were arrested for nonviolent action as part of the Pledge. The scholar Christian Smith has documented the effectiveness of this campaign in his book, Resisting Reagan: The US Central America Peace Movement. Since then, a number of “pledges of resistance” have been organized—including one focused on the US war in Iraq and another one concentrating on climate change.

The Declaration of Peace was a campaign in which thousands of people committed themselves to take action backing a declaration calling on the US to create a comprehensive plan to end the US war in Iraq. It organized a series of events across the nation from September 21-29, 2006, which contributed to making the Congressional elections six weeks later a referendum on the war. The DOP campaign continued for the next few years.

Pledges can be effective vehicles for organizing and mobilization. At the same time, their power is rooted in the commitment of each pledge signer to withdraw consent from injustice and violence and to support nonviolent options. Such personal commitment is needed now more than ever. As this crucial season of broadening action unfolds, each of us is being asked: What will I commit to in order to build a more just and peaceful world?

What pledge will we write, sign, and deliver on?

An eye-opening set of experiences to say the least, Kirk—a professor of Religious Studies at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Tex.—interviewed more than 140 people in Iraq, including women spanning three generations currently residing in one of the most war-trodden areas of the world. Her research partner, Sister Patricia Madigan, the Director of the Dominican Centre for Interfaith Ministry, Education and Research from Sydney, Australia accompanied her this year.

“Our culture has been saturated with violence, destruction, and negative images of Iraqis since about 1990,” said Kirk, when asked about her interest in the women of northern Iraq. Through her research, she hopes that we may all “recover our common humanity.”

At the center of her investigations lie women’s voices, experiences, and resilient courage, many of which have been ignored in years past. The women range in age from elderly to little girls. Their education levels are often as disparate; many illiterate grandmothers and mothers determined to work hard to provide better opportunities for their daughters.

Kirk’s research is funded by the Gülen Institute at the University of Houston, an organization affiliated with the Institute for Interfaith Dialogue and founded by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish Islamic scholar who encourages education through respect for diversity, justice and peace. Turkish Muslim volunteers promote Gülen’s movement through schools worldwide, including some that Kirk researched in northern Iraq.

Built in 1994, six years after Saddam Hussein ordered the massacres of 150,000 people in northern Iraq, the Fezalar schools brought education and hope for a better future to the children of this area. This same education is opening the horizons for many young women in this area, providing them with confidence, knowledge and skills that can encourage reconciliation and peace.

Kirk sat with these women in their homes, shared food, and took photos and notes as she documented their experiences.

“We have had wars and wars and more wars,” said one woman. Though peace has yet to be found in northern Iraq, these women’s words and friendship give glimpses of hope. Another woman said that the best thing she has been learning from the Fezalar schools is not to hate. “Hate is a prison,” she said.

Kirk says: “We need to see the faces of children—our human brothers and sisters, so that we may build a future together that gives their children and our children a chance to develop a world of hope and compassion.”

Kirk’s photo exhibit—titled “Iraqi Women of Three Generations: Challenges, Education, and Hopes for Peace”—will be shown in Austin at the St. Edward’s University Library from October 1 to 28.

Since 2007, Sister Martha Ann has been facilitating “Creating Art, Creating Friendship,” Iraqi children and U.S. children exchanging art. To learn more about this visit here and here.   

This exhibit of 23 panels has about three photos and stories of the women on each panel.  The panels are 36 inches tall and 24 inches wide. Use of the exhibit is free through the generosity of the Gülen Institute, but those wishing to host the exhibit must pick it up and return it to San Antonio, TX, or pay shipping charges.  For more information, contact Sister Martha Ann Kirk kirk@uiwtx.edu  Phone:  210-829-3854 or 210-225-3011.

The recent British film In Our Name is a returning-soldier drama featuring a married woman, Suzy, who leaves her husband and little girl to fight in Iraq. Because she’s involved in the killing of a little girl during her tour—this part is based on a true story, but it happened to a man—she returns home only to steadily fall apart under the stress of soul-destroying anxieties.

In real life, Ethan McCord was involved in a now-infamous episode that took a strangely similar turn. It became one of the most shocking (and hopefully awakening) revelations by Wikileaks: the video now dubbed “Collateral Murder” that was taken from an Apache helicopter as its gunners massacred a group of civilians in a Baghdad suburb in 2007. Addressing a Southern California audience about his role in the episode this past June, McCord described how he saw two small children mangled by gunfire from the helicopter and thought of his own two children at home.

McCord, though he is understandably tense, does not seem to be completely  unnerved by the trauma. Instead, it forced him to wake up from the lies that had put him in a uniform to kill other people’s children halfway across the globe, and he took it upon himself to try waking up others. Among people who have lost loved ones to gun violence—like, for example, Azim Khamisa, who now works to dissuade school children from joining gangs after his son was mindlessly killed by one—some have discovered that turning grief and guilt to reconstructive work can be psychologically restorative. But their number is not legion. Many, many more have gone, and are now going, the way of Suzy from In Our Name. According to a covered-up story that is about to be released by Project Censored, a Northern California-based media watchdog service, the number of active-duty soldiers or veterans who have committed suicide has just surpassed the number of those killed in combat.

We are facing a social problem of massive proportions, as our already-grim experience with returning veterans from Vietnam should have warned us. Psychologist Rachel McNair developed the concept of Perpetration Induced Traumatic Stress (PITS) to bring home to us the fact—now dramatically supported by neuroscientists—that you cannot send people out to kill and maim without expecting them to suffer enduring torments themselves, no matter how thoroughly you try to desensitize them beforehand. Thank God! Where would we be if this capacity to respond to the joys and sufferings of others could really be squelched?

There have been admirable attempts to get needed help to these spiritually wounded men and women; but the real answer, the only sane and compassionate answer, is prevention. And that means only one thing: to stop glorifying violence in our social culture and national policy—in other words, renounce war. It won’t be easy. Colonel Harry Holloway, a U.S. Army psychiatrist, told journalist Dan Baum recently, “As soon as we ask the question of how killing affects soldiers, we acknowledge we’re causing harm, and that raises the question of whether the good we’re accomplishing is worth the harm we’re causing … if we get into this business of talking about killing people we’re going to pathologize an absolutely necessary experience.”

But what is the alternative? Those children who opened Ethan McCord’s eyes were killed by a machine in the sky a mile and a half away with 30mm cannon rounds—ordinance tipped with depleted uranium and meant for penetrating armor, not tearing apart human beings. If truth is the first victim in war, humanity is a close second. Thus, if we do not “pathologize” what is truly sick, we end up pathologizing what isn’t: peace. (Remember the “Vietnam syndrome?”) If we do not fear our own bestiality we end up producing a climate that, as none other than General Douglas MacArthur said, “renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.”

Perhaps those who still believe that war is an “absolutely necessary experience” would reflect with us on the following story. It was Poland, in 1942. The Gestapo was raiding the apartment of the Kshenskys, who had participated in the Jewish underground. Finding the “incriminating” evidence, they were about to take the mother, who was home alone with their two-year-old son, out to the courtyard and shoot her when she saw, with horror, that her toddler was playing with the shiny buttons on the Gestapo captain’s uniform. He, too, noticed, and stared down at the child.  After what must have seemed an eternity he looked up, his face totally changed, and said,“I have a son at home just his age, and I miss him very much.” Then he added, “Your son has saved your life,” and ordered his men out of the apartment. The child did not survive the war, but the Kshenskys miraculously did; their daughter, Lili Kshensky Baxter, is a former Chair of the National Council of the U.S. Fellowship of Reconciliation.

There is a way out of this dehumanizing dilemma, and that is to rise up and say, “No!” War is not a necessary evil, nor indispensable activity. It is a horror and a travesty on human nature. We have international courts now; we have nonviolent intervention teams. There is, as there has always been, the possibility of conversation among civilized people—provided we elect them. And there are the arts of nonviolence, of which a Kurdish gentleman in Kirkuk said recently, “It may be slow, but you don’t lose your humanity.” Journalist Marshall Frady has given a beautiful description of how this kind of struggle not only preserves, instead of surrenders, our humanity but makes it into a spreading force:

In the catharsis of a live confrontation with wrong, … an oppressor can be vitally touched, and even, at least momentarily, reborn as a human being, while the society witnessing such a confrontation will be quickened in conscience toward compassion and justice.

That’s the idea behind 10 Years and Counting, a new initiative hatched in the Adirondack compound of the Blue Mountain Center, an activist and artist residency community nestled beside a high-country lake. 10YAC’s goal is this: between September 11th and October 7th of this year—marking the 10-year anniversaries of the 9/11 attacks and the start of the war in Afghanistan—launch an artistic groundswell by coordinating protest and arts events around the country. Their network includes activist groups, including Code Pink and the War Resisters League, as well as arts organizations and galleries. To see some of the visual art, poetry, music, and performances they’ve been gathering, take a look around the 10YAC blog.

But art, for 10YAC, is not quite an end in itself. “One of the most important visions” of the project, according to Alice Gordon, program director at Blue Mountain, is to see “as many Americans as possible getting onto the streets for peace around the anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan.”

Just as the project’s duration comes to a close, an ambitious occupation will begin—endorsed by many of the same organizations, in fact—in Washington DC on October 6th. This convergence may be a chance to see whether 10YAC can really translate its art into mobilization. The October 6ers, anyway, could do worse than take as a rallying cry a poem like this one, recently posted on the 10YAC blog, by Holly Karapetkova:

LOVE AND THE NATIONAL DEFENSE

If love were a dirty bomb, you could set
it off in Washington and it would spread
into the suburbs unseen, contaminate
the air and water. People would breathe it, feed

on it unknowingly and slowly love
would infiltrate their lungs, make their fingers burn.
In a week, you’d see them start to pair up, leave
the office early for lunch and not return;

even the evangelists are born again—
this time to love—they grab the nearest nun,
and scientists are too involved to look
for cures, not that anyone cares. Attack

on US, the foreign press reports
with real concern, seeing the SUVs
abandoned on the interstates, the airports
unguarded, army generals on their knees.

Don’t they know love is always like that,
tearing you out of the spaces you once thought
meant something, making you forget each
last defense, the guns rusting along the beach.

The authorities soon got tired of him, though. Westminster Council tried to remove him because he was a nuisance and “obstructing the pavement”. It failed. By 2005 Tony decided he’d had enough of the name-calling. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act said Mr Haw had to give six days’ notice, if you please, of any demonstration within a kilometre of Parliament. How could he do that? The High Court ruled against it, and said he was legal. But the police never acted as though he was. Any morning they might wake him up with a siren, whoop, whoop, Are you there Brian, yank up his plastic, rifle through his private property right in front of Parliament. Who was abusing whom then? In 2006 78 of them came to tear down his wall of pictures, smashed it, trashed it, left it like a bomb site. Left him with one sign. He stayed, of course.

Those familiar with war protesting in Washington DC will liken him to the great Concepcion Picciotto, “The President’s Neighbor.”

President Obama’s landmark speech on the Middle East at the State Department today is, in many respects, a vindication of the nonviolent revolutions that ousted longtime dictators in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year. He declared, rightly:

Those shouts of human dignity are being heard across the region. And through the moral force of nonviolence, the people of the region have achieved more change in six months than terrorists have accomplished in decades.

The momentum of those and other uprisings throughout the region have given him license to make some pretty serious statements. First, he declared support for the ongoing popular movements in countries like Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain, and backed it up with massive aid packages to the fledgling post-revolutionary governments in Tunisia and Egypt. Second, he called for renewed Israel-Palestine peace talks based on the 1967 borders, to the dismay of Israeli leaders. He compared the Arab Spring’s activists to Rosa Parks and the Boston Tea Party—the gist being, We are with you.

Perhaps more than you might like.

No speech about the Middle East would be complete, of course, without mention of the three theaters where the US military is fighting these days: Af-Pak, Iraq, and Libya. Observes Amy Davidson at The New Yorker:

It was […] striking that, when it came to the countries in which our military is actively, directly committed, Obama’s words were among the least straightforward of the speech. On Afghanistan, he asked that we accept ambiguous terms about indefinite actions—breaking momentum, beginning to come home, continuing a transition—as meaningful ones. Iraq is variously a success story, a cautionary tale, and, oddly, an example of how “sectarian divides need not lead to conflict.” On Libya, he asked for credit for stopping a massacre and the spread of “the message” that force could keep one in power; this had to be artfully said, however, as people are still being killed and Qaddafi has not fallen.

He says all this while denouncing the Syrian regime’s use of force against its people, and al-Qaeda, and Iran. Again, rightly. But, as always, the call for nonviolence stops at the US and its supposed interests. Passing by the AIPAC website today—AIPAC being the major US lobby supporting Israeli militancy—one learns that it was just announced that Obama will appear at their 2011 policy conference. He can’t have said anything too unsettling, by their lights.

Such double-standard-bearing, double-talking use and misuse of nonviolence isn’t new in the rhetoric of and around this Nobel Peace Prize laureate. It began from the first words of his inauguration ceremony, when Diane Feinstein extolled from the steps of the Capitol the nonviolent civil rights movement that made Obama’s election possible in the first place, even as he promised to step up the war in Afghanistan. And today’s major Middle East speech certainly echoes his last one, in Egypt: Nonviolence for everyone else, wars without end for the US.

How many more revolutions will it take for the president to hear to the advice he gives to others for himself?

Osama bin Laden in 1989 in Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden is dead. You’ve seen the news. US troops stormed the mansion where he was hiding, an hour’s drive from Islamabad, in the backyard of Pakistan’s elite military academy. President Obama came on TV last night and announced—victoriously, but without much bravado—what he described as “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda.” He called for unity, like the country experienced after 9/11, when George W. Bush’s approval ratings were soaring. There have been celebrations in the streets of US cities. The stock market even got a spike. But what is there, really, to celebrate? The death of a man? The end of the war on terror?

Celebrating becomes tough when you considers the cost. Bin Laden’s persona has been the totem justifying US war policy since 9/11. The idea was to get ’im, dead or alive. Soldiers have been taught to fantasize about someday nailing him, issuing the payback that he’s had coming since 2001. Politicians have promised his head as the ultimate prize. To that end, there was an invasion of Afghanistan almost ten years ago now, which started a war that is now bloodier than ever. (The CIA reports that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda operatives in that country.) Then there’s Iraq—a country that the US invaded while giving various elusive reasons, most designed to somehow link Iraq to the bin Laden totem in people’s imaginations.

The cost, exactly? There have been as many as a million people killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. More than $1 trillion of US money down the drain. And for what? Ask the architects of this war on terror, and they’ll say that all the armies, and the air strikes, and the torture chambers have been rooting out al-Qaeda and global terrorism for good. But, if you could ask bin Laden today, or yesterday, he might have smiled.

Upon hearing the news last night, former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges said:

We responded exactly as these terrorist organizations wanted us to respond. They wanted us to speak the language of violence. … These groups learned to speak the language we taught them. And our response was to speak in kind. The language of violence, the language of occupation—the occupation of the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—has been the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda has been handed.

Bin Laden was a purveyor of chaos, a master of turning murder into spectacle. One can only hope, for the sake of our own sanity, that he was a madman. But, in certain respects, he also seems to have understood the nature of violence far better than the American foreign policy establishment. He understood how easily it slips and kicks out of any pretense of controlling it, and how addictive it can be for those who like to think of themselves as holding its reigns.

This was a lesson bin Laden first learned when, with US backing, he joined the mujahidin in Afghanistan to fight against the Soviets. It seemed to him, after the Soviet Union fell, that those nine years of costly fighting in Afghanistan brought down the superpower, militarily and economically. An insightful Foreign Policy retrospective reminds us of this:

[B]in Laden has spoken of how he used “guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt.” He has compared the United States to the Soviet Union on numerous occasions—and these comparisons have been explicitly economic. For example, in October 2004 bin Laden said that just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujahidin had destroyed Russia economically, al Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States, “continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” Similarly, in a September 2007 video message, bin Laden claimed that “thinkers who study events and happenings” were now predicting the American empire’s collapse. He gloated, “The mistakes of Brezhnev are being repeated by Bush.”

The US economy, since 9/11, has gone from boom to bust, and from surplus to debt. Few dispute that the country seems to be lunging toward decline, at least by standards like the perception of its military abroad and the invincibility of its industry. China is sopping up the big contracts in Afghanistan. Yet there are more Coalition troops on the ground there now than ever, and less hope for any meaningful victory—except maybe for China.

Whether one approves of such an assassination or not, the “decapitation” strike against bin Laden last night only drives home how beside the point the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been. Bin Laden wasn’t hiding in a cave in Tora Bora. He certainly wasn’t consorting with Iraq’s Republican Guard. He was living, quite comfortably it seems, right under the nose of the Pakistani government, which has received billions of dollars in US military aid since 9/11. One wonders whether, absent the chaos of two distracting and self-destructive wars, finding the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks like bin Laden might have been easier—if, rather than blowing up the whole neighborhood, or the wrong neighborhood, the US and its allies had simply focused on finding the crooks.

Perhaps the only thing that can really count as good news about this, though, is how irrelevant bin Laden has become. The Arab Spring uprisings around the Middle East have shown that the way to create change for the better in that troubled region, and elsewhere, is neither chaotic terrorism nor superpower interventionism. It’s the power of ordinary people, standing up against unjust regimes peacefully, creating a future that refuses to accept the logic of violence, or to equate power with weapons. The protesters in Tahrir Square did more to defeat what Osama bin Laden represents in a few weeks than the whole US military and intelligence and political outfit has managed to do in nearly ten years.