Reflections on a Pointless war

I can barely bring myself to check the internet or watch the news because it’s so painful to watch this utterly pointless war, to see the inhumanity of it, its loud, dazzling suffering broadcast to the whole world. In this particular bout of strategy-less, tit-for-tat blood-letting, it is small children, their pale, quiet corpses filled with hot shards of metal, that have come to symbolize the inherent inhumanity of war and the madness of believing that security comes from superior killing power. Everyone watching knows that neither side is going to win this nasty little war; instead, both sides will eventually claim victory, bury their dead and then begin preparation for the next inevitable killing spree. This makes it strategically purposeless violence, almost entirely devoid of rational calculation or historical understanding. It’s a war waged in no one’s name (despite what politicians claim) and it will benefit no civilians in either territory. Only the shareholders of arms producing companies will directly profit from this orgy of mutual terror.

The Israelis have never won any real or long-lasting security through military operations like this, only world-wide vilification and a new generation of Palestinian militants seeking revenge. They are attacking Gaza today because the attack on Gaza four years ago was a total failure and patently counter-productive: it strengthened Hamas’s position in Gaza, hurt Israel’s reputation and led to Palestinian re-armament and a new determination to fight back. That was a war without purpose, as this one is. The real tragedy is that not one single lesson was learned and the same mistake is now being repeated. Either that or it is an exercise in sheer cynicism by Israel’s leaders, and the real point of killing Palestinians is to convince Israeli voters, punish the Palestinian population for its obstinacy, and/or test a new American president.

Hamas militants have likewise never won any concessions from Israel or advanced their cause through the firing of rockets into Israel; they’ve only ever garnered moral condemnation for their lack of concern for Israeli civilian casualties and provoked ever greater levels of bloody revenge from the vastly superior Israeli military machine. The leaders of both sides, it seems, exist in a moral void where they do not care how many people they kill, how many of their own people they sacrifice or what suffering they create, only that they’re seen to flex their military strength. In this respect, this war is a form of politician-led ritualized violence without strategy or rational purpose, and it will only result in suffering and further insecurity for both sides. They might as well shoot themselves for all the effect it will have. From this perspective, it’s a perfect demonstration that the spirit of World War I which we so recently remembered on Armistice Day lives on. Then, as now, we are at the mercy of vainglorious, warmongering, stupid politicians who are perfectly willing to sacrifice the lives of others for the sake of facile gestures.

Watching what’s happening, seeing this madness, I know I have to write something about it. In part, it’s because of the images I’ve seen from this war already: the small bodies of babies pulled from the rubble, the faces of ordinary people contorted in terror, the grief of a father holding his murdered child. You can’t see such things and keep your emotions locked up inside; you’ve got to let the grief out somehow lest it poison you from within. I know there are many other similar conflicts I could write about today: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Kashmir, Tibet, West Papua. There are children dying there too, and in many cases, brutality on an even greater scale.

But this war seems to pull me in somehow; its visceral images seem to demand a response from me. Maybe it’s also because this situation is connected to me in ways that some of these other conflicts are not. After all, Israeli products are on the shelves of many stores in Western countries; the European Union gives Israel preferential terms of trade. I’ve probably bought things in the last year that were made in Israel, or maybe even grown on the West Bank by illegal settlers. In this respect, I am there, in the middle of that fight. Israel also wants to be a Western democracy and its most powerful ally and supporter is the United States, the most important ally of my own country. My national media most often treats Israel as one of ‘us’, a modern, civilized democracy. But it forgets that Israel and New Zealand are both settler colonies struggling to overcome a legacy of invasion, land appropriation and mistreatment of the indigenous people of the land. Despite this history, my government has been more inclined to offer words of support for Israel than to stand up for the rights of Palestinians.

However, these reasons are not that important compared to the fact that I personally know people from Gaza and Israel. I know people in Israel who are suffering tremendous anxiety at this very moment, fearing the roar of rockets about to fall on them or someone they know, and worried about whether the conflict will escalate and lead to a wider war which will result in a general call-up of reservists and put the whole country on a war-footing. I also know that they will be concerned about what this state-sanctioned violence is doing to their own country, to their politics and collective sense of morality and justice. They’ll be wondering what this will mean for the upcoming elections, whether it will play into the hands of the extremist groups who will insist on making things worse for Palestinians, thereby prolonging the conflict and insecurity which they have endured for so long.

I also know people in Gaza, huddling as I write, listening to Israeli planes overhead and then bracing for the next bomb, wondering if their house will be next to be smashed to smithereens. Their sense of vulnerability, impotent rage and helplessness will be suffocating them. They will see the broken bodies of their friends and neighbors and it will traumatize them for years to come, maybe even radicalize them. I remember a former student from Gaza, a young woman who was a member of Hamas but who had come to study conflict resolution with me so that she could try and persuade the Hamas leadership to switch tactics to nonviolent resistance instead. I wonder if she’s been targeted by Israel because she’s a member of what they call a terrorist group, and they don’t care that she’s a nonviolent activist trying to bring about the end of violent resistance. I wonder if years of bombardment and violent attack by Israel have changed her mind and transformed her ideals into militancy.

But what to write in a situation like this? What could I possibly say that would make any difference? Is there any point in giving another potted history of the conflict, a genealogy of how the two parties got to this point? I doubt it; everyone knows what the facts are, even if they have their own interpretation of what it means. Would it help to point out that violence hasn’t worked for either side, that violence has been tried for more than fifty years without any positive benefit, and that alternatives to violence exist if leaders are courageous enough to take a small risk? Would it make me an anti-Semite if I pointed out that trapping so many people in a tiny enclave and then subjecting them to a crushing blockade, assassinating their elected leaders, and refusing to negotiate on the future is likely to lead to the kind of rage and despair that then results in a barrage of rockets, that crushing people for so long and in so many ways leads more often to violent resistance than surrender? On the other hand, would it make me a privileged liberal to suggest that the Palestinians just accept all that oppression and violence and not try and fight back violently, but respond instead with nonviolence and moral force? Or would it just make me naïve to think that nonviolent resistance might have slowed the take-over of Palestinian land more than violent resistance has?

As I watch what’s happening, I feel quite helpless. I feel that I don’t really know anything, and I can’t really say anything without sounding ignorant or arrogant. I am just a human being watching the suffering of others from a great distance. I know it’s selfish and I have no right, but I just wish they’d stop so we don’t have to see any more bodies of little children, any more grieving parents, terrified residents. And I know they could stop if they wanted to, if they had an ounce of humanity, because killing is a choice not a destiny. Especially war; war doesn’t just happen; it’s a decision made by leaders. To end a war like this one just takes a little moral courage from leaders, and from the people who voted for them. It entails a modicum of willingness to admit that violence has failed and that dialogue and peaceful methods ought to be given an equal chance of succeeding. It begins with the recognition that your enemy is a person who suffers too.

My Last Remembrance Day Service

I don’t know why I did it. Deep inside I knew it would be painful and upsetting, but I went along anyway. I guess I had hoped that Remembrance Day events in New Zealand would be a little less militaristic, less overlaid with imperial and patriotic sentiment, than the ones I had attended during my years in the UK. I guess I’d hoped that in the time I’d been away, Remembrance Day services here would have evolved and changed, perhaps into more inclusive, more truthful and pacific ways of remembering and honouring the war dead.

As I walked down Dowling Street to go to the Armistice Day service, I went past a large yellow building which still bore its original name, The Imperial Buildings, across its impressive frontage. The Imperial Buildings look out over Queens Garden, the site where all remembrance ceremonies in Dunedin are held. At the centre of the gardens is a towering marble Cenotaph. It was originally designed to reflect ‘great sacrifices’ and ‘mighty deeds’, and its inscription reads, ‘The Glorious Dead 1914-1918’ and ‘The Glorious Dead 1939-1945’. Facing the Cenotaph is a huge statue of Queen Victoria, after whom the gardens are named. She is flanked by two female figures, one of which holds aloft a broad sword. I presume it’s for smiting the enemies of the British Empire, which undoubtedly would have included the Maori people who once had settlements all around this harbor – and any other people who refused to be taxed or forced into laboring for the colonial economy. It’s noticeable that the local tangata te whenua (the people of the land), have no formal presence at this service. I can’t help but wonder if this is because remembering all who served in the military would involve remembering the British Army laying waste to Maori villages during the land wars, the slaughter of pacification. That’s one form of remembering, one truth about our military war involvement, that probably sits a little too uncomfortably in a service of remembrance. Either way, the shadow of empire hangs silently over everything we do this morning.

There are about 200 of us in a half circle around the Cenotaph, which faces Queen Victoria, who in turn is imperiously looking away over what was then part of her domain. There are quite a few members of the armed forces among the gathering, and lots of people are wearing red poppies and the war medals of relatives. I’m the only one wearing a white poppy. I feel conspicuous and defensive, although no one makes a comment or gives me a hostile look. No one seems to notice me at all.

The service is officiated by a senior padre from the military, the perfect symbol of how the church serves the state and sanctifies its wars. In Britain, I heard stories of padres blessing fighter jets on their way to bomb Muslim towns and villages. I wonder if New Zealand chaplains similarly pray for victory against enemy forces. We begin by singing ‘God Save the Queen’, which seems old fashioned, but nonetheless reinforces for me how much these kind of ceremonies function as rites of nationalism rooted in a history of empire. Asking God to save our gracious Queen, send her victorious, and long to reign over us reignites the imperial past which is all around this place, a past which continues to haunt an ex-settler colony like New Zealand. Interestingly, the service ends by singing ‘God Defend New Zealand’ which suggests to me that Queen and empire come first; the New Zealand nation is just one part of the imperial family we are here to commemorate. It also reminds us that in matters of war, it is always best to have God on your side.

The impression that this is a celebration of hard-earned, war-forged nationhood is reaffirmed when the first prayers are for the Queen, the Governor-General and the Prime Minister. In my mind, I subvert the padre’s prayer by asking God that they will one day use their voices to speak out against the sheer stupidity and inhumanity of war and call for global disarmament and nonviolent solutions to conflict, and that they will show a powerful example by encouraging their children to work for peacemaker groups rather than the armed forces. I pray that our prime minister will stand before the world and reiterate New Zealand’s commitment to nuclear disarmament and making the Pacific nuclear free.

The service is punctuated by the firing of a massive cannon. I am not expecting it to be quite so loud, and I can’t suppress a jump. Car alarms all around the square go off with the force of the sound wave; a young child screams with terror; my ears ring. People in the crowd murmur and shuffle at the sudden noise, but then there are relieved smiles and more than a few looks of admiration at the cannon. I have never heard of using loud bangs and noise to remember something sad and tragic. Tragedies are usually remembered with quiet bells, soft songs, or even silence. So I suppose this monstrous firecracker celebrates victory, and the ‘glorious dead’; but I could be wrong about that. In any case, it reminds me of how terrifying it must be to be on the receiving end of cannon fire, to see people’s limbs torn off and flying through the air. I wonder at how people can systematically build thousands upon thousands of such inhuman weapons, and more besides.

A few minutes later, a spitfire buzzes around the gathering. Again, I’m disturbed at how happy everyone is to see it, how it lightens the mood of the crowd instantly. I reflect on how overt demonstrations of military machines have become normalised at these kinds of events. Why not go all the way and parade our best missiles or maybe a line of tanks, I wonder. Someone ought to at least give a demonstration of how a flame thrower can light a man up like a huge human candle, turning him into a piece of charcoal in less than a minute.

The homily is given by an officer, his chest full of medals. He speaks about how many lives New Zealand sacrificed in the Great War. He says it was meant to be the ‘war to end all wars’, and how he was never really told at school why so many had to die. He doesn’t really tell us either; there’s no mention of empire, and fighting for the Crown’s overseas possessions, or how millions were needlessly slaughtered by incompetence and vanity. There’s no mention of how the original war remembrance services were organized around the theme, ‘never again’, and how women started the Peace Pledge Union to try and ensure their menfolk never had to suffer such horror again. I’m left saddened by the lost opportunity to speak some truth about the evil of war and the necessity of working against its ever happening again.

After this, there’s the mandatory prayer for the service men and women overseas, the playing of the Last Post and the laying of the wreaths. Then we sing the national anthem and people start for the cathedral and the Memorial Day service. I feel sad and a little distressed. I cannot put into words why yet. I’m not sure how I will get through another service, how I will feel at the end of it.

The cathedral service beings with each branch of the military presenting its Colours (service flags) to the presiding priest, who stands them up by the altar, in front of the large cross, like gifts to Christ himself. I am stunned and dismayed to see that the navy and army Colours are brought to the front of the church by servicemen carrying automatic rifles which appear to have full magazines and their bayonets fixed. The sergeant carries a sword and they march in perfect unison. The air force only has one man with a flag, but the top of the flag pole is a metal spear head. I suppose it represents a lance, which in times past was used for impaling enemy soldiers. I did not for one second anticipate that weapons would be part of a sacred ritual in a church. It seems patently medieval and slightly blasphemous to me, and I wonder if Jesus Christ himself would approve. Or, would he say, ‘put away your sword’, ‘blessed are the peacemakers’. I know that some people see no contradiction in it.

Then I look around me. The Great War Memorial Window dominates the front of the cathedral. According to the service sheet, the window represents ‘Victory through Sacrifice’, and contains the Coats of Arms of the Otago and Southland Regiments, and the Arms of New Zealand and the United Kingdom. One of the top line of figures is St Michael, the Warrior Angel. Later, we will all face the window while we listen to The Last Post. The Anglican Church, as the establishment church in New Zealand and Britain, has always had a close relationship with the military, and military symbols are ubiquitous in its buildings. I suppose allowing real weapons into an act of worship is only in keeping with this close historical relationship. Nonetheless, it shocks and dismays me. I wonder if those guns have ever killed people, and if so, what were their names, who were their children, or their parents? Hopefully, they have only ever been fired at targets of humans, not real humans.

After singing ‘God Save the Queen’ again (which is described as ‘The National Anthem’ in the service sheet; apparently we have two national anthems), the priest prays the Bidding Prayer, in which one of the lines is: We affirm again our determination to put an end to all armed conflicts. I can certainly agree with this, although I wonder at the sincerity of it when armed soldiers are invited into the cathedral, and the church has a formal relationship with the military. But then the priest goes on: we express our penitence for those occasions when they become necessary; and we acknowledge with sorrow the suffering and destruction they cause. I can’t help feeling disappointed. This sounds like an excuse, a cop-out. How many times have we heard politicians say the same thing: ‘this war, like the last one and the one before that, and the one before that, is absolutely necessary. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just the way it is. Sometimes you simply have to bomb someone.’ It seems to me that this is how we get away with simultaneously praying for peace and acknowledging the sorrows of war, whilst unceasingly preparing, training and planning for the next one. In this context, committing oneself to peace clearly means preparing for the day you have to bayonet an enemy soldier or bomb his house.

After a hymn, the priest leads us in the Prayers of Approach and Confession. He says the words, Jesus Christ, who teaches us to live peacefully, but I think in this context he does not mean the Jesus who is called the Prince of Peace, and who said ‘put away your sword’, ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, ‘turn the other cheek’, and ‘love your enemies’. I think they mean the Jesus who would train to be a soldier, go to war and stick a bayonet in someone before shooting them in the face; or, the Jesus who would drop bombs from a fighter jet on a house which blows the legs off a little boy playing nearby. I never saw this Jesus in the Bible, but some people claim they do.

The priest then leads us in the ‘Litany of Reconciliation’ from Coventry Cathedral. Having visited the ruins of Coventry Cathedral where there is a peace monument linked to Hiroshima, I can relate to this prayer and am happy to see it here. I silently mouth the words, even though I can’t suppress my doubts about whether we really understand the implications of what we’re saying, or whether we’re really prepared as a society to take the necessary steps to make this prayer a reality:

For the hatred which divides nation from nation, race from race, class from class;

Father, forgive us.

For the covetous desires of nations and peoples to possess what is not their own;

Father, forgive us.

For the greed which exploits human labour and lays waste to the earth;

Father, forgive us.

For our envy of the welfare and happiness of others;

Father, forgive us.

For our indifference to the plight of the homeless and the refugee;

Father, forgive us.

For the lust which uses ignoble ends the bodies of men and women and children;

Father, forgive us.

For the pride which leads us to trust in ourselves, and not in God;

Father, forgive us.

I could be wrong, but this reads like a prayer against the dangers of patriotism and nationalism to me. It sounds like a call for compassion and disarmament and an end to war and all forms of violence. Nevertheless, at the end of the prayer, I can’t help thinking that there are a few other things we ought to be asking forgiveness for:

For the incalculable treasure we have wasted on building weapons of war and mass destruction, treasure which could have been used to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, educate the poor;

Father, forgive us.

For the weapons we continue to build, we continue to amass, and we continue to spread over the whole earth through the unregulated arms trade;

Father, forgive us.

For the uncountable and nameless thousands who have died at our hands and in our name in the Middle East and elsewhere over the past ten years;

Father, forgive us.

For electing leaders who we know are uncommitted to the cause of peace and who are far too willing to sacrifice our young people in unnecessary and pointless wars;

Father, forgive us.

For allowing ourselves to be deceived by lies and distortions and fears and the lack of imagination to find other alternatives to organized killing;

Father, forgive us.

For forgetting the humanity of others and engaging in mass killing and injury in the name of political objectives;

Father, forgive us.

For forgetting to remember the names of those we have wrongly killed in war;

Father, forgive us.

The real readings and prayers continue. A man in a uniform with lots of medals on his chest reads from Micah chapter 4: They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more… I wonder how amazing it would be to bring out the guns the soldiers carried in a few minutes before and beat them into a lump of metal which could be made into a plough. What an amazing demonstration of commitment to peace that would be. It would be in all the papers. There’d be questions in Parliament for sure. I also wonder if we could announce the end of all military training; no more learning war anymore. Instead, we teach peace and nonviolence and conflict resolution. The Lord makes wars to cease in all the world; The Lord breaks the bow and snaps the spear, and burns the shield in the fire. Sadly, Western countries make new and better weapons far faster than God can break them. The world is drowning in guns, making more wars and violent conflicts likelier by the day. I also think that a lot of people would be very sad to see God make all wars cease across the world. Who would we be as a nation if we couldn’t commemorate war? From what would we draw meaning and purpose? Where would our entertainment come from?

Each branch of the military has a special prayer. The Naval Prayer asks God to Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of the enemy; that we might be a safeguard unto our most gracious Sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth. The shadow of the empire returns, as does the spectre of our violent enemies. There are prayers for the Army and the Air Force, and then incongruously, the Police. I can’t help but think that this is not a coincidence or an anomaly. The Police are more and more considered part of the military now. I expect that in future they will have their own Colours and they will march to the front of the church with pistols on hips and swords drawn. We’ll be praying for victory against enemies at home and abroad.

The priest’s procession moves to the Great War Memorial Window. We turn towards it in a shuffling unison. The Last Post is movingly played, and The Ode is read aloud:

They shall grow not old as we who are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them.

We will remember them.

As the notes of the sad music fade away, I feel that I really do want to remember them, and to honour them, those countless men and women slaughtered in an orgy of mass killing for King and Empire, and all the young lives lost since that ‘war to end all wars’. Many of them went to war with noble and good intentions. Most of them were probably good people who felt they were doing their duty, who wanted to serve their country and mankind. But I want to remember them in a way that cannot be used to force me into accepting another war. I want to remember and honour them in ways that will ensure that no one has to suffer like that again. And I want to honour them with the truth, not lies and distortions about how they died for our freedom, for democracy. I think it greatly dishonours them to make up stories that are patently untrue. If their deaths are to have meaning, they must involve a full acknowledgement of the truth: they were slaughtered for no good reason that we would recognize today. Their lives were sacrificed by vainglorious, warmongering leaders. This truth, that soldiers are most often sacrificed by politicians for venal and ignoble reasons, might save the next generation from these horrors, but only if we acknowledge it honestly.

I want to remember them and their victims; all the victims of war, intentional and unintentional. I want to acknowledge that the man or the child accidentally killed by a New Zealand serviceman in Afghanistan has the same right to be remembered and acknowledged as the soldier deliberately killed by a Taliban bomb. Only when we acknowledge and remember the humanity of all people, instead of treating some lives as more worthy and more special than others, can we start to break down the mindset that makes war a seemingly permanent part of our world.

When we say the Lord’s Prayer, I wonder again what God really thinks of it: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be your name, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven. Apparently in God’s kingdom, people train and equip themselves to slaughter others. They drop hugely powerful bombs on cities, including phosphorous bombs and cluster munitions which kill children for years afterwards. Apparently, God’s will is that we pray for peace in church and then go out and prepare for war, making sure that we can pulverize any enemy who we think stands against us. Either that, or we don’t really mean it when we pray these radical words. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Sorry Lord, you might forgive but we don’t. We get even. If they come over here and kill some of our citizens, we certainly don’t consider forgiveness an appropriate response. We go over there and smash them instead. For every one of our civilians killed, we kill ten or twenty or a hundred of theirs.

I am so tired now. I can’t stop the waves of despair and shame and sorrow that sweep over me with every lie, every hypocrisy, every ugly distortion, every hidden violence. I feel a little weepy and want to go home. I don’t want to see any more guns in church or hear any more men in uniform with medals on their chest talk about peace and justice.

And then we sing the final hymn:

I vow to thee my country – all earthly things above –

Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love:

The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,

That lays upon the alter the dearest and the best;

The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,

The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

My eyes swim with tears, and I feel a heavy weight in the pit of my stomach. I can understand it now, I can see it in the words, the sheer madness which makes war, which slaughters and destroys the earth and all that’s good in it. It is that deep patriotic love which asks no questions, and that is willing to lay on the altar all that is dearest and the best, and which makes the ultimate sacrifice, for love of country. This would be mindless fanaticism in anyone else, but for us, for our society, it is noble sacrifice. At the very least, it’s unquestioned, admiral loyalty. But isn’t this at the root of war and violence? Isn’t this unquestioning willingness to kill and die for an abstract notion of ‘nation’ the madness that makes organized mass killing possible in the first place? How can we remember the sorrow of the war dead while singing joyously about this kind of sick, fanatical patriotism? How can we acknowledge that war is destructive and evil, and pray for peace, while we sing in celebration of murderous, obsessive patriotism?

I am stunned by the bitter hatred I feel towards the sentiments of that verse, how inherently mad it seems to me. How it makes me want to scream, ‘No! Stop! Think about what you’re singing! This is sheer madness! Unquestioned dying for patriotism?’ I try to concentrate on the second verse instead:

And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,

Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;

We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;

Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;

And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,

And her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are Peace.

I wonder why this can’t be the only verse we sing of this beautiful tune, and whether anyone else notices the profound contradiction between the two verses. There is another country, one not defined by nationalism and violence, one in which peace, willing suffering and gentleness are its deeper values. It’s a country without armies, without killing, without unthinking patriotism. It’s this country we ought to look forward to, work for, try to create in our lifetime. It’s this country we ought to pledge our allegiance to.

The service ends with ‘The Act of Rededication’. The priest prays: Let us rededicate ourselves to building a world in which there is justice and peace for all, and where women, men and children live a life of full human dignity. We all respond with the words, Lord God our Father, we pledge ourselves to serve you and all people in the cause of justice and peace, and for the relief of want and suffering… I am so tired now, but I really, really want to believe that we mean it. I ache to believe it. And if the service had ended on this note, at this moment, I might well have put aside all the rest of it which seemed ambiguous, and untruthful, and militantly patriotic. I would have gone home with a little hope in my heart.

But then the priest gives a final Blessing in which he asks God to grant peace and concord to the Queen, the one who reigns over us, and for whom our ‘glorious dead’ ultimately sacrificed themselves. The empire and its lies creep back into the service once more. Next, we sing the New Zealand National Anthem in rousing voice, asking God to defend our free land. It reminds us that God is definitely on our side, especially during times of war and conflict. It also reminds us that while we might pray for peace and a world where nations do not hate each other, it is to the nation we owe our greatest love and there is no higher duty than to die in the service of one’s country. For a soaring moment as we sing, we forget that patriotism and nationalism have been the cause of more bloody wars than almost any other force in history, and that patriotism combined with religion has proven to be the single most powerful motivation for inducing men and women to slaughter each other.

The memorial service ends the way it began, with men carrying guns and bayonets who march in perfect time to the altar, collect their Colours from the priest and then slow-step back down the aisle. We all stand in a sign of silent respect as the men with guns and military flags lead the clergy procession. I am now in a deep spiritual agony and can hardly stop myself from sobbing out loud. My wife can see my distress and we don’t stay long at the reception.

I will never go to a Memorial Day service again. At least, I won’t go again until weapons of war are no longer displayed and admired in the ceremony; until the nationalistic flags and emblems which people fight under have no place in the service; until they stop singing songs of empire and nation and patriotic duty and instead sing hymns of peace and human solidarity; until they acknowledge and remember all the victims of war, not just our country’s soldiers; until they pray to God to save and protect the innocent as well as the soldiers on deployment; until they include prayers for all those killed and injured in our name; until they acknowledge those who have demonstrated the courage of their convictions by becoming conscientious objectors and anti-war activists; until they pray against all the demonic forces which lead people to commit violence, including imperialism, nationalism, patriotism, racism, greed, and fear; until they tell the truth about how many of our soldiers died for lies, and empire, and aggression; until they show they really mean what they say and actually start working for disarmament and the de-militarisation of the world; until they beat all the swords and guns into ploughshares, and radically reduce the military budget, and stop spreading weapons to every corner of the globe; until there are as many white poppies worn among the congregation as red ones; until questioning and thinking for oneself is welcomed and valued; until they allow us to remember and honour the war dead in other ways that do not reinforce the practice of war but instead break it apart.

How I was radicalized; or, the effects of opening your eyes

It’s a typical story. There’s nothing unusual or exceptional about it, despite what the so-called ‘experts’ will try and tell you. It’s a well-worn path that so many of life’s travellers have trod leading from a kind of blissful ignorance to an uncomfortable awareness of all the violence cleverly hidden in plain sight; the brutality which daily crushes and bruises the human spirit. It’s really nothing more than a gradual clearing of the eyes, a flowering of sight.

I was radicalized in stages, starting when I was a child growing up in rural Africa. My parents were missionaries in the Republic of Zambia. We lived on a mission station twenty miles down a dirt road that became a river of thick, sticky mud in the rainy season. It was not unusual for the driver of the mission vehicle, on his way to the local town to collect supplies, to have to leave his car mired in the middle of the road to find a local villager willing to lend an ox for an hour to pull the trapped car from the sucking mud. The mission station where we lived had a secondary school and a hospital. It served a large area far from the nearest town, an area without roads, electricity, running water, police, or any vestige of the bureaucratic architecture of the modern state. The people lived in mud huts, kept cows, goats and chickens, and grew maize as their staple food source, selling the surplus to the National Maize Board who, as the sole designated buyer, set the non-negotiable price they would pay for it. It was a system based openly on corruption and exploitation.

One of my early memories of our life in this harsh landscape was noticing how the local African children my own age all had massive swollen bellies which protruded through their tattered clothes on top of spindly legs and dusty bare feet. With a glazed look and mucus lines trailing from their noses and eyes, they would stop and gape at me. Sometimes, one would lean back with an arm crooked on his hip looking just like a heavily pregnant woman. My friends and I, bursting with shiny clean health, and blissfully unaware of the symptoms of malnutrition (we didn’t even know what malnutrition was!), really thought this was hilarious. Did you see that? Look at their huge tummies! They look like your mum who’s having a baby!

A few years later someone, an adult on the mission (I cannot remember now who it was, but I wonder if they ever knew the role they played in my radicalization process) told me why they had swollen bellies; how they must have lived with a gnawing hunger which clung to them every waking minute; how the lack of nutrition that early in life made their bellies swell, their eyes run, their hair change colour; and how it impeded childhood brain development, which probably meant that they would struggle in school, be consigned to a life of manual labour and subsistence in which their own children would no doubt also grow up with swollen bellies, glazed eyes and a brown tinge to their curly black hair. The saddest thing of all is that as adults they would be told by people who should have known better that they were stupid and ignorant because they were Africans. That’s just how Africans are, someone important would say, and everyone would sadly nod their head.

I felt genuinely sick when I heard about the effects of sustained hunger. I wanted to hide myself away, crawl under my bed and close the curtains. I didn’t want to play with my expat friends any more, in case we had to mention it, talk about how we used to joke and giggle at the hungry, staring children. In case we had to remember how we treated food so casually, throwing it away when we didn’t like the taste, dropping unfinished morsels on the very same ground our neighbors’ children would walk in their bare, cracked feet.

I still feel a hot flush of shame even now when I think of it: my younger self, ignorantly laughing at starving children, mocking their misery, completely unaware of my role as a European missionary’s son in the long history of colonialism and neocolonialism, or my place in the violent structures of global capitalism which provides me more wealth than I need to live and life opportunities undreamed of by previous generations, whilst simultaneously consigning other peoples’ children to the poisonous, debilitating pregnancy of lifelong poverty.

This was the first little step on my path to radicalization. I’ve since learned to see and understand the vast, terrifying violence of systematic, human-induced poverty which has most of the world’s people in its crushing grasp, not just in rural Africa, but also in the vast urban slums of the mega-cities of Asia and Central America; the millions of shuffling homeless people sleeping on the sidewalk of every single American city; the unseen and unheard people in the dusty tribal reservations of Australia; the generationally poor masses in the sink estates of Britain, and the decaying worker cities of Russia; and countless others, too many to ever name.

A couple of years ago I returned to Africa, to the places of my childhood. I saw the same children with the same swollen bellies. I quietly swore to myself once again that I would try my best to undermine the global system that made me see these same spindly-legged children over and over again, decade after decade.

Ten years after I had faced up to my cruel laughter I was on a bus, about to be radicalized for a second time.

I was seventeen and had just completed my Cambridge ‘O’ levels, the exams taken at 11:00am in the morning or 3:00pm in the afternoon to coincide exactly with the exams being sat in Cambridge itself. This was, I suppose, to prevent someone in Africa coming out of the exam early and calling long distance to give the questions to someone in Britain. It meant that most of the exams were conducted during the hottest part of the day. My head would be throbbing, my shirt stuck to my back with perspiration by the time I left the exam room.

My parents had decided it was time to return the family ‘home’ to New Zealand (it was a place I had not lived in for more than a few months over my entire seventeen years, but all the adults around me insisted it was my ‘real’ home, despite the fact that I knew no one there and couldn’t even picture it) so I could attend university – if I passed my exams, of course. However, before we left the land where I was born, the place where my only friends were, where all my memories resided, where I’d first kissed a girl and held her hand watching a film, where I’d once caught a snake, seen an elephant in the wild, learned to run for hours at a time, written my first poem; before I left that place, I wanted to hitch-hike down to South Africa, say good-bye to a girl I used to like who lived in Stellenbosch, and see the country the whole world seemed to be talking about. It was 1983 and I wanted to say good-bye to the continent which had made me who I was.

To my surprise, my parents agreed to let me, their seventeen year old acne-ridden, sometimes angst-filled son, hitch-hike alone from Lusaka to Harare, and then down to Pietermaritzburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, up the coast to Port Elizabeth and Durban, and then back to Johannesburg, Harare and finally home to Lusaka – before getting on a plane unaccompanied which flew to London via Luanda and Moscow. (I still remember the tanks surrounding the airport in Luanda, a sure indication that the civil war was only a few kilometres away. It was the middle of the night and the place was full of Angolan soldiers and drunken Russian ‘advisors’, and the toilets were completely dark and flooded.) The only stipulation for my journey was that I had to send a weekly telegram to let them know I was alright. It still amazes me that I was able to do such a thing at such an age, in such a place. I can’t imagine any father or mother today so easily lifting off the lead blanket of anxiety which seems to be every parent’s burden to allow their child to wander the developing world with nothing but a backpack, some cash and a list of names of people who might or might not be able to put you up, should you be able to get to that town in a day.

One hot day I climbed onto a public bus on the outskirts of Cape Town, happy not to be huddling on the back of a lorry or crammed into the cab of a pick-up truck with four large men and a dog. The bus driver, a young blond European with dark sunglasses, looked up in his mirror at an old African woman sitting in the front row. ‘Hey, Mama, get in the back so this bwana can sit down’, he said. ‘Yes, boss’, she answered. Her tired body seemed to creak and groan as she pulled herself to her feet and shuffled down the bus with her bags. In the crowded rear, she was forced to stand looking out the window. I could not see her expression.

I sat down, unable to stem the relief I felt at having a comfortable seat for the next twenty minutes.

In that instant, in the wash of guilt and shame and joy that flooded over me, I truly saw the leering, demonic face of the apartheid system. It was as clear as day and it cut right through me. Its casual barbarity, in which an old woman, most likely bone tired from a long day working as a servant, and weary from an entire lifetime of obtaining permits, security checks, discrimination, crushed aspirations, servitude and exhausting poverty, was made to stand on a bumpy bus so a healthy seventeen year old boy with privileged skin could sit comfortably, slapped me hard in the face, shattering my complacent sense of self.

That was a Damascus moment for me, a real fork in my road. I turned myself around and started for home (wherever that was) that day, vowing never to come back to a country where my skin colour made fellow human beings suffer; where I was made complicit against my will in a vast enterprise of crushing millions of human beings so a chosen few could drink gin and tonic by the pool without the fear of having to share with people they considered inferior; where my own lack of moral courage to recognize suffering and injustice and take a stand against it, and a self-imposed ignorance of my fellow human beings was exposed in a thousand different ways every day I was there.

It was the day I joined the anti-apartheid movement. And the anti-fascist movement; the anti-racist movement; the anti-imperialist movement; the anti-nuclear movement; the peace movement – any movement that sought to resist and oppose and transform all the visible and invisible chains of violence that crush and grind millions of fellow human beings every day. Because I recognised that all these evils were connected. They were all part of the same unjust, violent system. It was the day I decided to become a student, to learn, and to never let my lack of knowledge or understanding be an excuse for insensitivity or unintended cruelty. I suppose it was the day I first became an international politics scholar. You would probably also say that it was the day I was properly radicalized. I opened my eyes and saw the world; and then I saw myself in it.

Twenty five years after forcing an old lady from her seat on the bus, I am sitting in my university office. A very serious but friendly man from the Home Office is asking me about a former student who is now applying to work for the Ministry of Defence. He is applying to become some kind of spy, I thought to myself. Interviewing the applicant’s former lecturers is a standard part of the background security check. ‘So, during the period when you taught [redacted], did he ever express any radical views?’, the serious man inquires. I put my hands behind my head and think hard for a moment. ‘You know, I am very sorry to say he did not. I really try so hard to radicalize my students, you know, to help them see what’s going on in the world, to motivate them to go out and really struggle against all its injustices, to resist and challenge and question the violence inherent to the status quo – to become activists, not just observers.’ I pause. ‘But to my great disappointment, I can honestly say that I don’t remember [redacted] ever expressing any such views. Really, he always kept pretty quiet and I seem to recall that he wrote very average essays’, I say with genuine sincerity.

The man from the Home Office frowns, his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. I don’t think he can see my point at all.

Fantasy and the Epistemological Crisis of Counter-terrorism

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don’t know

We don’t know.

(Donald Rumsfeld, 12 February 2002.)

 

In an earlier blog, I discussed a very weird experience a colleague of mine had in which airport security called the police after finding books on terrorism in his backpack and then decided to send the books back through the x-ray, presumably in case the words and paper were concealing some kind of threat that the first x-ray had failed to detect. I want to suggest that this experience is not an anomaly; it’s not merely an isolated case of some over-eager, ultra-cautious official. Rather, it is emblematic of the current paradigm of counter-terrorism thought and practice, and probably one of numerous similar examples of bizarre official behavior that occurs every day. Apart from searching old ladies and babies’ nappies at airports – practices I have personally observed – a few selected other examples of weirdness by counter-terrorist officials includes: worrying that terrorists could introduce biological weapons into the water supply through fire hydrants; worrying that terrorists might use hand-gliders to deliver suicide bombs; worrying about how candy machines might be vulnerable to terrorists; and worrying that America’s hundreds of amusement and water parks are all potential terrorist targets. What all these examples illustrate is the key role of fantasy in counter-terrorism; that is, officials imagining often unrealistic – or at least reality-enhanced or entertainment-based – possible terrorist scenarios and then treating them as real threats requiring a practical response.

How do we explain this tendency towards fantasy thinking in counter-terrorism? I believe the explanation lies in what we might call the epistemological crisis in terrorism knowledge today. This refers to the profound lack of knowledge about terrorism that officials and experts claim to have: ‘we just don’t know where, when or how terrorists might attack’, they maintain. Terrorism is, according to the experts and officials, fundamentally unknown, incalculable and unpredictable. It’s what Rumsfeld referred to as an ‘unknown unknown’: we don’t even know what it is we don’t know about terrorism. Once officials admit that they don’t know anything about terrorism, then the only way they can possibly detect them and deal with them is to try and imagine what they might do – and imagination inevitably leads to fantasy.

How did we get to this position where not knowing is the main thing we know about the terrorist threat? How did this epistemological crisis – this crisis of knowledge, of what we know or don’t know – first arise? I propose that it took five key steps. First, as sociologists like Ulrich Beck have explained, over the past few decades, traditional risk analysis has been replaced by precautionary thinking, and public officials have come to be preoccupied with the possible over the probable. That is, they’ve come to prioritize and worry about the terrible consequences of potential risks, rather than about the very low probability of those risks actually materialising. For public officials, what could happen in future acts of terrorism now assumes greater significance than what hashappened over the past centuries of terrorist violence or what might actually happen. At the same time, officials have come to believe that society expects them to adopt a zero-risk approach to public safety: no level of risk, even a one percent risk, can now be tolerated. Therefore, officials are bound to take every precaution to prevent public harm from materializing.

Second, terrorism, particuarly since 9/11, has been constructed by academics and the media as fundamentally ‘new’ (the so-called ‘new terrorism’) and catastrophic (‘catastrophic terrorism’ or ‘superterrorism’). Often, these assertions about the nature of terrorism have been accompanied by a series of collectively understood frames and metaphors, including the idea that terrorism can be understood as kind of infectious disease or poison, or a spectre or phantom. Unlike the so-called ‘old terrorism’ of political groups like the IRA or ETA, officials and many ‘terrorism experts’ now insist that today’s terrorism is unlike anything that has come before, and therefore all the evidence, data, and analysis of earlier terrorists is no longer relevant and cannot tell us anything about the current terrorist threat. In other words, it is official opinion that there is no previous knowledge on terrorism which is reliable for telling us about the current terrorist threat. Instead, we are starting from a position of zero knowledge about a threat which spreads like an unknown disease or phantom.

Third, as the famous quotation from Donald Rumsfeld suggests, counter-terrorism officials have come to focus on the ‘unknown’ element of terrorism, especially all the ‘unknown unknowns’ – all the things we don’t even know we don’t know about terrorism. As such, they have embraced ontological uncertainty as the fundamental condition of terrorism knowledge. In effect, they have severed all links to previous empirical evidence and knowledge: if terrorism is defined primarily by what is unknown, then there is no reliable empirical evidence or data which can help us ‘know’ terrorism. In effect, this means there is no reason for empirical evaluation or cost-benefit analysis of current counter-terrorism measures.

Fourth, as I have argued elsewhere, officials have also engaged in ‘knowledge subjugation’ – the process of maintaining a series of ‘known unknowns’, or things we ‘know’ but which we don’t want to ‘know’. This is achieved by suppressing evidence, knowledge and perspectives which challenges accepted ideas (or in this case, accepted ignorance) – such as the knowledge that anti-American terrorism is primarily caused by US military intervention overseas. Instead, officials, the media and many experts assert that we simply do not know why terrorists attack. We don’t know why they do it; it’s completely inexplicable that they would engage in such behavior against us. Unsurprisingly, the deliberate suppression of certain forms and types of knowledge further contributes to the epistemological crisis of counter-terrorism.

Finally, at the same time as terrorism has been constructed as unknowable and unpredictable, and officials have become preoccupied with the possible over the probable, they have also embraced the impossibility of ever completely securing the nation against terrorism. This is evident in the Prepare strand of the UK’s CONTEST counter-terrorism strategy: prepare, in this case, means prepare for catastrophe; prepare for the inevitable terrorist attack which will occur regardless of all the measures undertaken to prevent such an outcome. In other words, official policy is based on the assumption that no matter what they do, or what they know about terrorism, they will never be able to prevent future terrorist attacks.

It is easy to see that the combination of all these assumptions creates a profound crisis of knowledge about terrorism – an epistemological crisis. Faced with this profound lack of knowledge and seemingly permanent condition of uncertainty, counter-terrorism officials are thus forced to use their imaginations to try and detect, prevent and deter terrorist attacks before they occur. Forced to employ imagination rather than empirical evidence, data and scholarly analysis, it is inevitable that officials sometimes resort to fantasy thinking. In other words, in a field defined by a deep and profound epistemological crisis about the nature and threat of terrorism, bizarre counter-terrorism practices are not exceptions; they are the new normal; they are the inevitable response to the condition of unknowing. By my reckoning, you can expect to have your books x-rayed, and your baby’s nappies searched, and your duty free alcohol confiscated, for some time to come yet.

There is no justification for Hiroshima – or the possession of nuclear weapons

I am so tired of arguing about whether the atomic attacks on Japan were necessary for ending the war, or whether they might have saved the lives of thousands of American soldiers who would have otherwise had to invade the Japanese mainland, or indeed, whether the attacks were unnecessary and primarily aimed at the Soviet Union. It doesn’t matter. They were morally wrong and a horrendous crime either way, no matter what policy-makers believed at the time; no matter what cause they were in support of. This is because, as our politicians so frequently remind us about terrorism, there is no cause, no belief, that justifies deliberately targetting civilians. This is the crux of it: nothing justifies incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians. Nothing. It might have been different if they had bombed the Japanese fleet or a military camp. But they didn’t. They targetted a city of civilians, which hadn’t been bombed already, and which was flat so they could determine the subsequent damage. And when the weather wasn’t quite right, they chose another city to obliterate. A case of randomly choosing who will die.

Whether you deliberately kill hundreds of thousands of civilians by instantaneously burning them to a cinder (followed, of course, by months and years of radiation poisoning for thousands of others), or whether you slowly load them into cattle trucks and send them to gas chambers and then incinerate them in furnaces, it is still wrong to deliberately murder civilians. If instead of using a massive bomb dropped from the skies, America had dropped killer squads into Hiroshima to round people up, slaughter them with knives and burn their bodies until Japan surrendered, that would have been equally immoral. The method of killing doesn’t mean very much, although it could be argued that an atomic bomb is more immoral than many others because it precludes civilians from any chance of escape. At least if America had sent killer squads into Hiroshima, most civilians might have had a chance of escape or resistance. With a nuclear bomb, there is no escape, no chance of survival. The point is, there is no legitimate justification for deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. None. No matter what method you use – atomic bombs, conventional bombs, bullets, machetes or gas chambers – it is still wrong.

One of the biggest problems with the continual political and academic attempts to try and justify this horrendous attack on civilians is that it opens the door to future attacks on civilians. It’s a slippery slope to moral nihilism and indiscriminate slaughter. If it’s legitimate to kill 200,000 Japanese civilians to save the lives of American soldiers in the war, or end a terrible war, then why not a few thousand Iraqi or Afghan civilians to prevent another terrorist attack like 9/11? More importantly, if it’s legitimate for America to kill enemy civilians to potentially save the lives of its citizens, then why shouldn’t other nations take the same attitude? And why stop at states? Why not terrorist or militant groups? Why couldn’t terrorist groups argue that killing a few enemy civilians now could save more lives in future? What if a few bomb attacks on the London Underground helped to prevent the invasion of Iraq and thereby saved over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians? Wouldn’t that be the same justification?

In fact, this kind of moral calculation, following the American example, is exactly what we have witnessed ever since. In Osama bin Laden’s statements he frequently referenced the atomic attack on Hiroshima as justification for his own group’s actions. If America can deliberately target civilians to achieve their goals, then why shouldn’t bin Laden? Is it just that some people – the evil ones – are forbidden from deliberately killing civilians, but others – the good guys – can kill hundreds of thousands of civilians as long as it is in a good cause? In some ways, the 9/11 attacks represent the same twisted logic as the original ground zero: deliberately trying to kill thousands of civilians is justified by the rightness of your cause. The real question posed by these continued attempts to justify Hiroshima is: can atrocity against civilians ever be justified, even if the perpetrator believes it’s in a good and noble cause? The answer is, no! Emphatically, no! From this perspective, 9/11 and ground zero Hiroshima are the twin bastards of the same perverted moral logic.

Until America – and all of those who continue to offer legitimacy to its atomic attacks – admit that it was an immoral horrendous atrocity, instead of trying to whitewash it out of history, the belief that targeting civilians is sometimes justified will never be eradicated. Owning up and making a commitment to never deliberately targetting civilians again is crucial because America is an opinion leader – an example to the rest of the world. And if America refuses to apologise for deliberately killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and demonstrating real repentance for this horrific act, then why should any other government apologise for similar acts? Why should China ever apologise or indeed stop attacking civilians in Tibet? Why should Russia repent of its attacks on civilians in Chechnya? Indeed, why should al Qaeda ever apologise, or the IRA, or ETA, or any group that has deliberately attacked civilians?

In the end, if indiscriminately killing civilians is inherently wrong, and if America should apologise for its horrific attacks on Japan, then it must also give up its nuclear weapons, because such weapons can only ever kill hundreds of thousands of civilians. They are indiscriminate. They cannot be used in a war between armed opponents. They are civilian-targetted weapons. At present, America and the other nuclear powers have enough nuclear bombs to kill every man, woman and child on the planet several times over. Threatening to deliberately kill millions of civilians is immoral, and hypocritical. If it’s wrong for terrorists to threaten to kill civilians, and if no cause or belief justifies terrorist targetting of civilians, then the same is true for nuclear weapons. It’s that simple.

Never again. Abolish nuclear weapons now.

The Great Con of National Security

It may have once been the case that being attacked by another country was a major threat to the lives of ordinary people. It may also be true that there are still some pretty serious dangers out there associated with the spread of nuclear weapons. For the most part, however, most of what you’ve been told about national security and all the big threats which can supposedly kill you is one big con designed to distract you from the things that can really hurt you, such as the poverty, inequality and structural violence of capitalism, global warming, and the manufacture and proliferation of weapons – among others.

The facts are simple and irrefutable: you’re far more likely to die from lack of health care provision than you are from terrorism; from stress and overwork than Iranian or North Korean nuclear missiles; from lack of road safety than from illegal immigrants; from mental illness and suicide than from computer hackers; from domestic violence than from asylum seekers; from the misuse of legal medicines and alcohol abuse than from international drug lords. And yet, politicians and the servile media spend most of their time talking about the threats posed by terrorism, immigration, asylum seekers, the international drug trade, the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea, computer hackers, animal rights activism, the threat of China, and a host of other issues which are all about as equally unlikely to affect the health and well-being of you and your family. Along with this obsessive and perennial discussion of so-called ‘national security issues’, the state spends truly vast sums on security measures which have virtually no impact on the actual risk of dying from these threats, and then engages in massive displays of ‘security theatre’ designed to show just how seriously the state takes these threats – such as the x-ray machines and security measures in every public building, surveillance cameras everywhere, missile launchers in urban areas, drones in Afghanistan, armed police in airports, and a thousand other things. This display is meant to convince you that these threats are really, really serious.

And while all this is going on, the rulers of society are hoping that you won’t notice that increasing social and economic inequality in society leads to increased ill health for a growing underclass; that suicide and crime always rise when unemployment rises; that workplaces remain highly dangerous and kill and maim hundreds of people per year; that there are preventable diseases which plague the poorer sections of society; that domestic violence kills and injures thousands of women and children annually; and that globally, poverty and preventable disease kills tens of millions of people needlessly every year. In other words, they are hoping that you won’t notice how much structural violence there is in the world.

More than this, they are hoping that you won’t notice that while literally trillions of dollars are spent on military weapons, foreign wars and security theatre (which also arguably do nothing to make any us any safer, and may even make us marginally less safe), that domestic violence programmes struggle to provide even minimal support for women and children at risk of serious harm from their partners; that underfunded mental health programmes mean long waiting lists to receive basic care for at-risk individuals; that drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes lack the funding to match the demand for help; that welfare measures aimed at reducing inequality have been inadequate for decades; that health and safety measures at many workplaces remain insufficiently resourced; and that measures to tackle global warming and developing alternative energy remain hopelessly inadequate.

Of course, none of this is surprising. Politicians are a part of the system; they don’t want to change it. For them, all the insecurity, death and ill-health caused by capitalist inequality are a price worth paying to keep the basic social structures as they are. A more egalitarian society based on equality, solidarity, and other non-materialist values would not suit their interests, or the special interests of the lobby groups they are indebted to. It is also true that dealing with economic and social inequality, improving public health, changing international structures of inequality, restructuring the military-industrial complex, and making the necessary economic and political changes to deal with global warming will be extremely difficult and will require long-term commitment and determination. For politicians looking towards the next election, it is clearly much easier to paint immigrants as a threat to social order or pontificate about the ongoing danger of terrorists. It is also more exciting for the media than stories about how poor people and people of colour are discriminated against and suffer worse health as a consequence.

Viewed from this vantage point, national security is one massive confidence trick – misdirection on an epic scale. Its primary function is to distract you from the structures and inequalities in society which are the real threat to the health and wellbeing of you and your family, and to convince you to be permanently afraid so that you will acquiesce to all the security measures which keep you under state control and keep the military-industrial complex ticking along.

Keep this in mind next time you hear a politician talking about the threat of uncontrolled immigration, the risk posed by asylum seekers or the threat of Iran, or the need to expand counter-terrorism powers. The question is: when politicians are talking about national security, what is that they don’t want you to think and talk about? What exactly is the misdirection they are engaged in? The truth is, if you think that terrorists or immigrants or asylum seekers or Iran are a greater threat to your safety than the capitalist system, you have been well and truly conned, my friend. Don’t believe the hype: you’re much more likely to die from any one of several forms of structural violence in society than you are from immigrants or terrorism.  Somehow, we need to challenge the politicians on this fact.

Glimpsing the Reality of War

One reason why war seems like a permanent condition of our world, and why it persists as an established social institution, is because it is wrapped up in layer upon layer of lies and distortions, until it is seemlessly transformed from its essence as brutal organised killing into a sometimes necessary, but always patriotic and noble calling. We achieve this amazing transformation through our news media which never shows us the dead and injured bodies of war’s countless victims; through the entertainment industry who give us explosions in stylish slow motion; through the high-sounding words of politicians, priests, and novellists; through the solemn rituals of memorialisation and remembrance, and the gaze of a bronze warrior; through the adoption of convenient euphemisms – collateral damage, payloads, targets, surgical strikes, humanitarian intervention. However, every now and then, an eloquent voice tells a little of the truth about war and for a brief moment, its mezmerising allure disappears and we glimpse its sheer, absurd horror. The question is: how can we turn this moment of realisation into a permanent socially and materially embodied truth, so that no one can ever again be seduced, and the machinary of war can no longer wield its most powerful weapon? Chris Hedges explains this far better than I could in the following article.

War Is Betrayal:Persistent Myths of Combat by Chris Hedges

Those who return to speak this truth, like Goodell or Millard, are our contemporary prophets. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. The words these prophets speak are painful.

As a nation we prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys and girls, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? It is simpler and more comfortable not to hear, to wish only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. This is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions. Not long ago Goodell received a text message from a Marine she had worked with in Mortuary Affairs after he tried to commit suicide. “I’ve got $2,000 in the bank,” the message read. “Let’s meet in NYC and go out with a bang.”

War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans; calls for sacrifice, honor, and heroism; and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. From a distance it seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a bit part in the great drama of history. It promises to give us identities as warriors, patriots, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.

But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion, and pain. Human decency and tenderness are crushed, and people become objects to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naïvely blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, becomes stark. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It might let us see, although the cost is tremendous.

Read the rest of Chris Hedges’ article here.