I do not believe the shift is coincidental. I believe it represents a fundamental change in the concept of war—a not-so-secret conviction among various and sundry populations, both oppressed and privileged, that war is, finally, out of date; that it is truly the most inefficient method of achieving one’s (long-term) aims. No matter the paid parades, the forced applause, the instigated riots, the organized protests (pro or con), self- or state censoring, the propaganda; no matter the huge opportunities for profit and gain; no matter the history of the injustice—at bottom it is impossible to escape the suspicion that the more sophisticated the weapons of war, the more antiquated the idea of war. The more transparent the power grab, the holier the justification, the more arrogant the claims, the more barbaric, the more discredited the language of war has become. Leaders who find war the sole and inevitable solution to disagreement, displacement, aggression, injustice, abasing poverty seem not only helplessly retrograde, but intellectually deficient, precisely like the empurpled comic-book language in which they express themselves.
I understand that my comments may appear disjunctive on this date in 2002 when legislatures, revolutionaries, and the inflamed do not “declare” war, but simply wage it. But I am convinced that the language that has the most force, requires the most acumen, talent, grace, genius, and, yes, beauty, can never be, will never again be found in paeans to the glory of war, or erotic rallying cries to battle. The power of this alternate language does not arise from the tiresome, wasteful art of war, but rather from the demanding, brilliant art of peace.
The War on Error
I ACCEPTED this invitation to speak at Amnesty International with instant glee. I didn’t have a second thought about the opportunity to address an extraordinary community of active humanitarians whose work I so profoundly respect. The honor pleased and challenged me and I believed it would be relatively effortless to find something of consequence to say to you. Months later, however, I began to have grave reservations about my early and unthinking enthusiasm. Benumbed with news of ignited chaos, death tolls, manufactured starvation, wars of choice against disarmed countries, I became virtually speechless; startled into mute disbelief; disabled by what I understood to be the equanimity of congresses and inert parliaments going about their business of business. The irrelevance cum sensationalism of mainstream media, its strange quietude on vital issues, its publicity posing as journalism did their job and mangled my own hapless, helpless unspeakable thoughts.
Although an obvious theme for this occasion occurred to me: a rehearsal of salutations and compliments to AI, I realized at last that the time for compliments has passed—although I am amazed by the breadth and depth of AI’s resiliency. I came to believe that this is no time for self-congratulation—although there is room for it; room to recall and marvel at the record AI has garnered, its impact on the lives of the forgotten, and its success in tarnishing the glitz of the mighty.
Unaligned, nobly interventionist, unbrooked by nations and political parties, private interests or public exhaustion, Amnesty International declares states, walls, borders irrelevant to its humanitarian goals, detrimental to its tasks, by summoning responsibility and refusing to accept a myopic government’s own narrative of its behavior.
I can share the seethe of millions, but it won’t do. Rage has limited uses and serious flaws. It cuts off reason and displaces constructive action with mindless theater. Besides, absorbing the lies, untruths, both transparent and nuanced, of governments, their hypocrisy so polished it does not even care if it is revealed, can lead to a wearied and raveled mind.
We live in a world where justice equals vengeance. Where private profit drives public policy. Where the body of civil liberties, won cell by cell, bone by bone, by the brave and the dead withers in the searing heat of “all war, all the time,” and, where facing eternal war, respect for, even interest in, humanitarian solutions can dwindle. Even as the conviction that “the security of every other nation in the world be subordinate to the comfort of the United States” is, finally, being challenged, civil rights and humanitarian solutions are being steadily crushed by the imperatives of that conviction.
Let me describe a little of what is happening in my country.
Death-penalty advocates are more and more entrenched even as thousands of planned executions in Texas are forced into being reviewed because of blatant errors committed in DNA laboratories.
A so-called Clear Skies Act, designed to replace the Clean Air Act, has exactly the opposite effect. Corporations, mining companies, factories can now ignore or delay every environmental safeguard put in place by the previous administration and turn “death by breathing” into gold.
Constitutional rights are facing impoverishment and annihilation as the biggest, most undertold story in the United States is the looming disenfranchisement of the electorate. Under the “Help America Vote” Act of 2002, the new electronic voting machines are said to be unable to do what ATMs and grocery clerks do: provide a paper receipt documenting the voter’s choice; this while any astute hacker can gain access, the largest manufacturer of these new machines is able to calculate (perhaps control) the results in its home office.
Withdrawal from treaties, preemption, dismantlement, mass arrests minus charges or legal representation; judges instructed by the Justice Department to impose maximum terms; whistle-blowers fired; Draconian censorship—these actions are taking place in an atmosphere of aggression, panic, greed, and malice reminiscent of the oppressive political architecture we believed we had demolished. But all this you already know. The history of your activities is the documentation of and intervention into such travesties.
It seems to me that among the several wars being waged around the planet, one is paramount and surpasses in urgency all the others. That is the War Against Error.
“War Against Error” is a phrase originated to describe the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century efforts on the part of institutional religions to correct those whose beliefs were different. In a time when and place where state religion is the norm, apostasy is literally treason. Our modern world has “inherited a fully fledged apparatus of persecution and an intellectual tradition that justified killing in the name of God.” Saint Thomas Aquinas himself wrote that apostates were “to be severed from the world by death.” The point, in that medieval war, was not the inherent evil of the dis- or unbelieving, but his or her refusal to acknowledge his or her mistake. The lesson to be learned was: acceptance or death. A hard education in a difficult school, the doors to which are still ajar. Freely, reverently it is pried open by unbelievers as well as the faithful, by politicians as well as Enron, Halliburton, and WorldCom.
Now that this medieval school has reopened, the old curricula are revised. Rushing to teach the lessons, administrations spin out of control, skipping between the cheating scholar’s expedience and the dullard’s violence; between courses on empire’s fundamentalism and seminars on theocratic domination. And nations and pseudo-states assert powers that would make Caligula smile as they educate their pupils in purging, cleansing, slaughtering. Graduation parties are held where exploitation, assuming the seductive costume of globalism, dances with any willing partner. In its pursuit corporations plop themselves down in every corner of the globe selling “democracy” as though it were a brand of toothpaste, the patent to which they alone control.