Peace is winnning - war is obsolete
I have a lot of respect for James Carroll, the author of this piece - but when I started to read it I expected more detailed political analysis of the campaign - what I got instead was a very encouraging, broad-ranging analysis of the direction of world affairs - a mega-trend towards peace and away from war.
I had not seen it this way - though this is much the same case that Jonathan Schell is making in "The Unconquerable World." (I say that - but I haven't read the whole book yet.)
Anyway, the essence of Carroll's case is here:
Just as there is a difference between indecision and flexibility, there is a difference between rigidity and commitment. True leadership consists, first, in responsiveness to the unarticulated longings of the people, and second, in the articulation of those longings in the real-world structures of politics. . . .
In the late 20th century, the world made an unpredicted leap toward a new culture of nonviolence. In the West, that took the form of a mass movement away from the nuclear terror of the arms race, with millions of ordinary Europeans and Americans imposing a new demand on governments, a demand that eventually was heard.
In the East, the rejection of violence was at the heart of the democratic revolution that swept away the structures of the Soviet Union, and because the people embraced nonviolence, the dictators did. Against all predictions, the initiative on both sides of the East-West divide belonged to the people, and authentic leadership on both sides consisted in responding to pressures from below.
That the Cold War ended in a nonviolent way is a triumph of popular longing that forced changes in government, not the other way around. The same can be said for simultaneous events in South Africa, Northern Ireland, the Philippines, and Central America. Primacy was with the people. Peace became the process. However incomplete, that is the most important political fact of our time.
The revolution of nonviolence has only just begun, but it will continue to require a dynamic partnership between the people and leaders who know how to listen to the people's longings, articulate those longings, and shape politics accordingly. This is the new century's agenda, the context within which the American presidential campaign is unfolding.
Even the immediate complexities of the war in Iraq -- What now? -- have their urgency within the larger purpose of a global move away from war as an acceptable means of resolving conflict. Iraq, Afghanistan, "preventive war," the "war" on terrorism itself -- all of these are mere detours on the road to a different future, or else there is no future.
That is why George Bush is the personification of the "evil" he seems to think he's fighting. He's taking us back. He's playing on the worst part of our character - the worst of our genetic make-up. He is appealing to the war-lover in all of us.
But just as we all understood that there simply could not be a nuclear showdown between the US and USSR, we need to understand now that 9/11 was as clear a signal as Hiroshima. It told us that our own technology can be turned against us by an enemy willing to die. We are acting as if all we have to do to solve this problem is bomb a few pitiful countries like Afgahnistan and Iraq. But that, of course, exacerbates the problem and brings us closest to the real threat - an attack that uses our own nuclear or biological technology to cause death and destruction on such anincredible level those of us left will look on 9/11 as a minor event.
That's why so many throughout the world are praying that George Bush will be derailed and America will regain its moral footing this November. I can't imagine any other outcome.
Posted by Greg Stone at August 1, 2004 05:57 AM