Peace on Earth: The Prospects

Remember those quaint, nostalgic times when this season was associated with the phrase “Peace On Earth”? That is, way back in the days before our born-again leader with the proclaimed personal ear of God started ordering up wars the way other politicians ask for planning studies? Before our nation became so drunken with manufactured bogeymen and antiseptic media invasions and patriotic warmongering fever that war’s unpleasantness made it something people wished absolutely to avoid? When peace was considered a good thing, not the way of cowards?

I miss those days. A lot of us do.

With Saddam captured and weapons of mass destruction long-forgotten, the remaining justification for America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq is now the establishment of (Western) democracy in Iraq and in the Middle East. This, according to neocon logic, is the only true guarantor of peace and prosperity.

If nothing else, there’s a certain self-fulfilling logic to their assertion -- because if allowed, the neocons would keep waging wars until they got their Pax Americana. But that’s exactly the problem. They’re absolutely correct that people want and deserve the right to determine their own, and their societies’ own, fates.

But that right cannot be imposed at the end of a gun. Even more to the point, if a sign of stable democracy is the orderly transition of power even when the powerful don’t get what they want, it’s America, more than any other single force in the world, that’s standing in the way of global democracy. From trashing the United Nations to routinely breaking global treaties to mounting unilateral invasions, official U.S. policy is now to use force to get what we want, regardless of whether it’s what the majority of the world wants. That’s not democracy.

And so it is, as we celebrate a season of peace on earth, that the world’s most powerful nation is also associated with most of its record number of armed conflicts. Here’s a short list of some of the more notable:

Afghanistan, where U.S. troops present themselves as daily targets in bases across the country, bases ostensibly still devoted to hunting Al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants, but instead mostly focused on protecting themselves from rival warlord armies and gangs who resent their presence and who completely control the entire country save daylight hours in the capital city, Kabul. Meanwhile, the Taliban are quietly making a comeback -- and more “moderate” Taliban elements are working with U.S. forces, a sign of American desperation. And the daily lives of Afghan women are still horrific.

Most of the Islamic world, and a lot of the rest of it, considers the United States to be the force that makes the ongoing brutalization of Palestine possible. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid, most of it military, even though Israel, with the world's fourth-largest military, hardly needs it. Much of the year's military action by Israel has focused on the civilian population of Palestine.

Now, with Ariel Sharon’s parliamentary power stronger than ever and a long, meandering wall being erected that makes the Berlin Wall look like garden fencing, the only hope for peace rests with the war-weariness of ordinary people on both sides of the conflict. Washington, the only power with enough leverage to force Israel to curb its brutal excesses, has done nothing to help. Hey, mind if I tear down your house and "settle" there? The Bible sez it’s OK.

In Central Africa, a brutal war, largely invisible to Americans, has now claimed a staggering four million lives since 1995. A confusing morass of invading armies and mercenaries -- where the forces of Rwanda or Uganda are, on a given day, either being trained by or outgunned by the forces of Bechtel and Halliburton -- has as its heart the mineral-laden eastern region of The Congo, which among other prizes has most of the world’s supply of several rare minerals used in the production of computer chips, keyboards, screens, and semiconductors. The riches wind up in American (corporate) pockets, the end products are bought mostly by American consumers, the guns come from America, and Washington is far more directly involved than virtually anybody realizes. But it’s Africa, so almost nobody here knows or cares.