Aggression, the Spring of Perpetual Anguish

One of the contributing factors that limits the prospects and success of the peace activists and the anti-war proponents is the perception that their stance as being dictated by their ideological position that can be seen as an abstract concept that does not solve the real problems on the ground. The proponents of non-violent resolutions of conflicts are characterized as naļve and unpractical. There may be some truth to this view, but for the current conflict, there is a reasoned and well-thought position which might be the only way to resolving the current escalation of violence. This view is articulated based on proper understanding of the nature, definition, and dynamics of “aggression”.

Finding the Common Denominator

On a very normal autumn day, on September 11 2001, thousands of ordinary people began their routine. Within minutes, and thanks to a wired world, the nation, and soon after the global community, came to an abrupt standstill. The cause is a brutal attack on innocence. The very essence of life was tested in the most horrible ways. For those who value the sanctity of human life, the boundaries and identifiers melted away in front of the overwhelming human emotion of grief. The scenes and the outcome moved all of humanity to react in condemnation and disapprobation.

Those historical moments have changed the people of the world in a way that was not achieved by numerous declarations and treaties in regards to the recognition of the demand for the protection of the human life as a universal norm. For the next few days, the ethnic, religious, cultural, and class barriers crumbled under the force of the human will to rise beyond all that divides. During those immediate moments, there emerged a flood of human goodwill that was fed by the appalling reality of destruction, violence, and aggression. For few days, the global community found its common denominator: uncompromising aversion to aggression and an obdurate feeling of repugnance towards attacks on human life and human dignity. Then, politics creeps up on us.

Politics thrives on the doctrine of “divide and conquer.” Politicians and professional talking-heads blanketed the airwaves, the print and the electronic media with the usual reductionism. The so-called experts on terrorism and international affairs quickly constructed the familiar binaries of “us and them”, “western and eastern”, “Christian and Muslim”, “moderate and extremist”, “liberal and conservative”, “civilized and uncivilized”, and “American and non-American”.

Within weeks, and as the politicians huddled to formulate their response, the impressive and universal capital of goodwill began to melt away. New battle grounds were formed and new alliances were declared. The new incantation was declared in the simplest of terms to the world: “either you are with us or against us.”

The victims were categorized as “Americans”, the target was identified as the “American freedom”, and the victimizers were labeled as “Islamic terrorists”. What was seen as a global struggle against intolerance, aggression, and lack of respect for life was turned into a national vendetta. A new discourse that relied on the language of brute force like “dead-or-alive”, “smoke them out”, and “nuke them” became the fashion of the new American century.

By mistake or per design, the villain was “humanized” and the evil ways were adopted and legitimized. First, the face of cold-blooded killers was diluted in the crowd of national resistance movements and freedom fighters by the overzealous political opportunism that sought to delegitimize them. Second, the murder of innocent people was decriminalized as an inescapable “collateral damage”. Subsequently, aggression in all its forms was used as a means of resolving national security just as it was used to bring justice to those abused by the power of the state and the terror of dictators. The very universal principle of ending violence and protecting the sanctity of life was rendered by short-sighted policymakers and ideologues into a relative concept that can be trounced. A hierarchized value of life was initiated by blind nationalists and latent racist tendencies of many who found in the notion of “patriotism” a good cover for lashing dissenters and all the “others” into a fury of their venomous hate.

In the name of the peace and security of the powerful and the influential, the week and the voiceless lost all sense of security, peace and the right to live. The world was introduced to a new era; an era where victims are of two categories: the victims with capital “V” whose defenders have the political clout and the military might to avenge them; and the victims with small “v” like the many caught in the crossfire, the more who were under a tyrant who fell from favor with his masters, and the millions who are still struggling for self-determination. They are now direct victims by virtue of living in the battle fields of the war on terror (Afghanistan and Iraq), and indirect victims as their legitimate resistance has been reclassified as “terrorism.”

Those who have a monopoly on military power are now seeking to monopolize their claim on security. Human life is no longer the essence of being. We are in an age were the human life is given a name, a color, a religion, a gender, a nationality, and a flag. We are moving towards an era were the world is inhabited by those who could be killed and those who could not; those who could be victimized and those who could not, those who could receive justice and those who could not. We are witnessing a conflict where some life is worth agonizing for its loss and another is rendered into a cold statistic. We are dangerously witnessing and participating in a process that sterilizes the audiences to the point that we don’t react as humans to those who kill innocent people and don’t even bother to count them. We are living in a time where we all deserve the charge of collective guilt for allowing such harm and aggression to go on in the name of security and peace; that is if our very humanity were to survive this onslaught on decency and common sense.

Being for Peace is not a Seasonal Fashion

The peace movement has been marginalized as non-mainstream partly because those involved in it are seen as seasonal laborers. They come and go with wars. It is argued that they hibernate during peace time and come alive in times of conflict as out-of-touch-with-reality dreamers who have no practical plan. This characterization may hold some truths but it is an overgeneralization nonetheless. The proponents of peace are actually present all the time but it is the interest in their work and their views that lags in the time of peace.

The current conflict cannot be blamed on the inactivity of the anti-war camp; rather, on the decline in the values and the humanity of this civilization which is led by the mighty USA. Wanting peace and avoiding aggression is more than a style of life; it is a platform for a civilization.

Undoubtedly, any civilization consists of a multitude of political tendencies and ideological expressions not all of them are in tune with each other’s aspirations. However, the very nature of a civilization is inductive of this diversity without which it remains a limited and closed homogeneous community that may not survive in a universal market of ideas and values. In order for a community to reach that aspiration of being a leading civilization, it must tolerate all the individual and collective expressions including the most extreme of them all. It is not a civilized way to seek the extirpation of those who do not think like the majority, believe in one official creed, or behave in an orthodox manner.

This country for example still tolerates the Ku Klux Klan and spends the taxpayers’ money to protect them when they demonstrate and parade in the Texan town of Jasper, down Pennsylvania Avenue with the US Capitol in the background, in the streets of Coeur d’Alene of Idaho, and other metropolises; offers tax credit to churches and temples preaching less than tolerant ideas, and distinguishes between the abortion doctors’ killers and the clergymen who preach against abortion. Internationally, this current administration is financially and politically rewarding Pakistan for its good behavior although it was its institutions and security apparatus that raised, trained, and supported the Taliban regime. This and previous administrations afforded military, political and economic support to the Sa`ud family of Arabia despite its tyrannical rule and intolerant ideologies. This administration and its predecessors have chosen diplomacy over big guns in their dealings with outlaw regimes like the old Soviet Union, China, and now North Korea. We all know that the Soviet Union was dismantled without a war or collateral damage.

These and many other cases prove that peace, not war and aggression, is more potent when it comes to defeating tyranny and intolerance. This non-violent approach worked then and we submit that it will work in this case of manifest extremism too. In fact, I would argue that if there are circumstances where the military option is doomed to fail, then those circumstances are the ones in which the world finds itself today.

The doctrine of overwhelming force, the tactics of “Operation Iron Hammer”, and the use of “Mother of All Bombs are not useful tools for fighting an enemy with no territory, no borders, and no flag. An abstract enemy, whose membership increases with every bomb dropped on a civilian, with every house demolished, with every victim of collateral damage, with every claim of occupation, with every act of aggression, and with every display of asymmetrical military power against helpless peoples.

The proponents of peaceful resolutions to world conflicts see all peoples as citizens of the earth. The proponents of war see citizens of other countries as sacrificial lambs who may be offered to the “gods of security” in order to protect themselves from the evil without. The proponents of peace see murder of every innocent life anywhere as a crime against all of humanity; they see as most effective the unconditional protection of human life. In honoring human life, mass murders and violent killers will be deprived of a venue to “humanize” their barbaric acts.

Evidently, the proponents of peace do have a practical plan: end aggression in all its forms, support self-determination movements, align the policy of this nation with rights and interests of the people of other countries and not with their non-representative regimes; and fully and wholeheartedly commit to human rights norms. That is a simple and practical formula that will bankrupt any entity that takes aggression and murder for an ideology. Otherwise, this nation will find itself competing for a title that is least desired in the eyes of the masses of the world and it might as well win it if it stays on the current course: and that title is the badge of the “king of terror”.