The Economist has seen fit to lend its sole obituary in the latest issue to Brian Haw, “peace campaigner,” who died on June 18th. For ten years, he camped outside the British Parliament in protest of his country’s wars abroad. At first, the onetime evangelist was considered, by the likes of Tony Blair, something of a welcome curiosity. Then they realized he was serious.

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.”

Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic congressman from Ohio, is leading a biparistan effort to end the US military intervention in Libya. Earlier this month, he was instrumental in compelling Republican leaders in Congress to pass a resolution criticizing President Obama’s refusal to seek approval for the conflict from the Capitol. Now, he’s leading a group of ten members of Congress who are filing a lawsuit against the president’s disregard of the War Powers Resolution in continuing the conflict.

At 2:17 in the above clip, Kucinich says:

This is about stopping a war now. This is not an academic question. This is about the primacy of the constitution in the affairs of our nation.

And more. Democrats like Kucinich, and Republicans like Ron Paul, are each finding reasons to oppose the war: questionable constitutionality, the absence of moral authority, and the spiraling cost—$10 million per day, reportedly.

Yesterday, the White House tried to explain itself with some crafty reasoning that the War Powers Resolution doesn’t really apply in this case because of the nature of the conflict:

U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.

Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith isn’t buying it. Nor is Cynthia McKinney, the former congresswoman who is currently on the ground in Tripoli, and who rejects the report’s downplaying of the hostilities—or, excuse me, “kinetic action”:

The people of the United States are not getting the truth from the government or the media about the massive destruction in Libya, including the killing of civilians by the NATO bombing campaign. I am here in Libya and we can see the carnage.

Besides, as David Swanson points out, “The Obama report to Congress spends half its time claiming that the United States is not part of the NATO operation in any major way, and the other half warning that the NATO operation would collapse without the United States.” The report continues:

If the United States military were to cease its participation in the NATO operation, it would seriously degrade the coalition’s ability to execute and sustain its operation designed to protect Libyan civilians and to enforce the no-fly zone and the arms embargo[.]

At worst, a contradiction; at best, a convenient gray area for the White House. The report’s logic is troubling to those of us who have noticed how the technologies of war-at-a-distance—like drones, cruise missiles, and smart bombs—only makes killing easier for governments to justify. It also raises important questions about the nature of engagement in multinational military coalitions.

Swanson has organized a statement of opposition to Obama as long as he continues supporting the wars. And, meanwhile, more than a quarter of the Senate has called on the president to scale back operations in Afghanistan next month, as promised.

I was on RT, Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, yesterday to talk about the news that the US has stepped up its covert war in Yemen in recent weeks with increased strikes by fighter jets and armed drones.

One might think that three wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya—would be enough. Apparently, for the United States military apparatus, it’s not. Last month we noted that Congress is trying to amend the War on Terror authorization so as to include conflicts that have no direct relationship to attacks on US soil. Now, there’s word from the Pentagon that cyber attacks on US interests could be grounds for armed retaliation too. Reports the BBC:

In future, a US president could consider economic sanctions, cyber-retaliation or a military strike if key US computer systems were attacked, officials have said recently.

The planning was given added urgency by a cyber-attack last month on the defence contractor, Lockheed Martin.

A new report from the Pentagon is due out in a matter of weeks.

“A response to a cyber-incident or attack on the US would not necessarily be a cyber-response. All appropriate options would be on the table,” Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan told reporters on Tuesday.

AntiWar.com points out that, by this logic, the Iranians are already justified in attacking the US with missiles, considering all the hackers the Pentagon has pointed at them.

When they come, the Pentagon seems to be assuming, we’ll be ready for ‘em. That’s why it has also just announced a plan to vastly expand its fleet of unmanned arial vehicles—armed, remote-controlled drones. These are the same weapons that have made it possible to carry on a shadow war for years now on the Pakistani frontier without need to officially declare that it is happening. With every new gizmo, apparently, it becomes easier and easier to justify killing.

It is a common hope that the latest technologies—smart bombs, stealth bombers, drones, cyber-attacks, and more—will save lives. In the short term, and in a narrow view of whose lives we’re concerned about, this may be true. But each makes violence easier to justify politically, by promising victory at the expense of fewer lives on one’s own side, and therefore each has the effect of bringing us closer to—if we’re not there already—a dystopian scenario of perpetual war. Opposing weapons like this is ostensibly tougher than opposing, say, nuclear weapons; there’s no instant cataclysm, no blinding light. What they promise, instead, is the dull hum of tit-for-tat killing—manageable, profitable, ignorable, almost sustainable, and yet a total, indefensible waste.

The Global War on Terror. Click image for details.

The War on Terror has made defining itself tricky enough; the name of a human emotion makes for no simple criterion for what we’re actually against. For the past decade, that moniker has licensed wars and rumors of wars in all sorts of unlikely places, from Iraq and Af-Pak, to the Philippines and the Horn of Africa. But now there’s a bill in the House Armed Services Committee that promises to expand the scope of the War on Terror even further. Reports Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room:

While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes “an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces,” as “those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens.”

To its supporters, the proposal catches Congress up to the reality of today’s war. There aren’t many al-Qaida members in Afghanistan, but the war there rages onward. Meanwhile, the Obama administration wages a series of secret wars against al-Qaida entities in Pakistan and Yemen. Since last fall, Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the committee, has argued that Congress, which hasn’t voted on the war in a decade, needs to go on record approving or disapproving of the 2011-era war. Essentially, his proposal would bring the secret wars in from the cold.

But some counterterrorism analysts are worried that there’s no way to win a war this broad — only a way to expand it.

“Associated forces” could place the U.S. at war with terrorist entities that don’t concern themselves with attacking the United States. Think Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group aligned with al-Qaida that pulled off the Mumbai bombings of 2008. Under the House language, there’s nothing to stop Obama or his successors from waging war against them. It comes close to “terrorism creep,” says Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University.

Even the Obama administration, believe it or not, is opposed to this kind of expansion of executive authority.

It is not a good time to be a pacifist in the United States.  In fact, it usually isn’t, but with the recent killing of Osama bin Laden and the drunken and not-so-drunken revelry that followed, historical context, international relations, and the long view take the back seat.  As with the events of 9/11 and the ensuing wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, to question – not even dissent from – the legality, efficacy, or wisdom of violence is tantamount to treason (a distinction I don’t find particularly helpful, at least as a Christian anarchist).  But to question the assassination of bin Laden, which is increasingly looking like an execution (but that does not seem to matter to most of us), is to put oneself on the wrong side of justice – at least according to President Obama’s versions of it.

For my part – as so many peace-loving people around the world – the thousands killed during the 9/11 terrorist attacks were tragic and scary.  That sentiment does not matter if I also sympathize with the Afghan or Iraqi people who, too, have been traumatized.  It does not matter if I care about certain adherents of international law that prevent summary executions of people.  There is something wrong with me, says America, that I am disturbed by bin Laden’s death, Obama’s comments, and Americans’ responses.  Again, all of this does not condone anything about bin Laden or al Qaeda – but that does not matter in the age where critical thinking, moral authority, and creative nonviolence are weakness and stupidity at best.

The events of May 1, 2011 held a mirror up to our faces, showing the real depravity – “the banality of evil” to borrow Hannah Arendt’s famous indictment of complicity with authoritarian violence – of who we are as a nation.  I will certainly be labeled any number of grotesque names that one dare not utter in front of grandma, but such is the nature of these kind of events where our true colors bleed through whatever facades we cast upon ourselves.  I have learned more about myself and those around me by how they have responded to the news of bin Laden’s death and the national reactions.  I am heartened, even surprised, that so many others are troubled by the celebrations in the streets.  I find solace that others do not feel more safe that the apparent mastermind of al Qaeda – a claim worth disputing, but, again, such criticality is not welcome in the mainstream political discourse – has been dispatched.

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Maureen Dowd makes a really subtle and interesting point in last week’s New York Times.

Only fools or knaves would argue that we could fight Al Qaeda’s violence non-violently.

Okay, maybe not so subtle. But she must support the claim somewhere, right? Like, with something other than an insult and an assertion?

The subsequent sentence doesn’t help; by then she’s already back to where she began the essay—heckling President Obama’s Republican detractors and defending her right to celebrate bin Laden’s death. Maybe the previous sentence will help us understand why she is calling all the people who have called for more sensible responses to terrorist violence “fools or knaves.”

The really insane assumption behind some of the second-guessing is that
killing Osama somehow makes us like Osama, as if all killing is the same.

I guess we’re “fools or knaves” because we’re insane. And/or because we hold some kind of philosophical position about the nature of killing. It’s a sad reminder of how invisible serious nonviolent points of view are in the mainstream media, and how quickly someone like Dowd thinks they can be dismissed—even more quickly, in this case, than some Republicans’ recent attempts to defend Bush’s torture tactics. We at Waging Nonviolence have our work cut out for us.

I’m curious how many times, though, one can read Dowd’s insults before they simply turn back on themselves.

“The assumption is that bin Laden’s disciples would like nothing better than to avenge his death with an attack in New York,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told reporters this afternoon.

Somehow that thought hadn’t crossed my mind, as I traversed the streets of New York this afternoon. I suppose the media I had seen up to that point was too busy touting the joyousness of the occasion to point out the obvious: violence tends to breed more violence.

Honestly, though, it wouldn’t have mattered. As much as we all seem to understand that basic dynamic, we’re helpless to break the cycle or even criticize it. The people outside the White House last night, cheering bin Laden’s death, were, even according to Police Commissioner Kelly’s logic, safer yesterday, when bin Laden was still alive, than today when he was pronounced dead and buried at sea.

Of course, we’d be even safer if we weren’t at war with several countries in the Middle East and supporting several others that have brutal regimes. To be completely safe, though, we would have to engage in nonviolence, or more appropriately Gandhi’s form of it, known as satyagraha. In that sense, we would be building life sustaining systems in the Middle East, which would dissolve the tension and desperation that breeds terrorism.

Instead, we celebrate the killing of a terrorist—who was largely insignificant just a few days ago—only to potentially reignite his cult and invite them to attack us. To lull ourselves into a false sense of security we populate our major hubs with “anti-terror squads with assault rifles and bomb-sniffing dogs.”

Is this really cause for celebration?

As I learned of the news last night that Osama bin Laden was killed and saw footage of the crowds celebrating outside of the White House and in New York, I couldn’t help but question the impact of his death.

While many seem to think that this news signifies a step towards the eventual demise of Al Qaeda, and an end to the war in Afghanistan, there is considerable evidence that bin Laden’s death may have serious negative unintended consequences.

In the New York Times last year, Robert Wright wrote about a compelling study published in the journal Security Studies by Jenna Jordan of the University of Chicago.

She studied 298 attempts, from 1945 through 2004, to weaken or eliminate terrorist groups through “leadership decapitation” — eliminating people in senior positions.

Her work suggests that decapitation doesn’t lower the life expectancy of the decapitated groups — and, if anything, may have the opposite effect.

Particularly ominous are Jordan’s findings about groups that, like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, are religious. The chances that a religious terrorist group will collapse in the wake of a decapitation strategy are 17 percent. Of course, that’s better than zero, but it turns out that the chances of such a group fading away when there’s no decapitation are 33 percent. In other words, killing leaders of a religious terrorist group seems to increase the group’s chances of survival from 67 percent to 83 percent.

To explain why this might be the case, Wright uses a helpful analogy:

For starters, reflect on your personal workplace experience. When an executive leaves a company — whether through retirement, relocation or death — what happens? Exactly: He or she gets replaced. And about half the time (in my experience, at least) the successor is more capable than the predecessor. There’s no reason to think things would work differently in a terrorist organization.

As the New York Times mentioned, there is also the possibility that “the death of the leader of Al Qaeda galvanizes his followers by turning him into a martyr,” which must not be discounted.

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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.

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