Communicating to the World one Person at a Time by risa
If you want to get spun down a dark spiral road of traumatized history and the ethics of the ownership of space you could spend some time as I did today and yesterday trying to ‘get caught up’ on the perspectives circulating around Iraq, Iran and Palestine.
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here’s a bit of the transcript, copied from truthout.org, which was sent to me today with a link to this video, which prompted my sad, frustrated spate of googling and wikipedia reading
He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government “de-Baathified.”He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.
He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.
He and his government told us: America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throes.
He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.
He has insisted it’s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.
He has trumpeted the turning points:
The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam. A provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam. Elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.
He has assured us: We would be greeted as liberators - with flowers;
As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about “stay the course.”
We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And, last night, that to gain Iraqis’ trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.
He told us the enemy was al-Qaida, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.
He told us the war would pay for itself. It would cost $1.7 billion. $100 billion. $400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night’s speech alone cost another $6 billion.
And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.
Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.
Mr. Bush, this is madness.
You have lost the military. You have lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies.
You are losing the credibility, not just of your presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.
And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!
This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your “fellow citizens” you just sent to their deaths.
And for what, Mr. Bush?
So the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?
Good night and good luck.
thanks peru for sharing this with me…
and now stop for a second and compare the opinion expressed above of an American journalist to these words:
My questions are the following:
Is there not a better approach to governance?
Is it not possible to put wealth and power in the service of peace, stability, prosperity and the happiness of all peoples through a commitment to justice and respect for the rights of all nations, instead of aggression and war?
We all condemn terrorism, because its victims are the innocent.
But, can terrorism be contained and eradicated through war, destruction and the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents?
If that were possible, then why has the problem not been resolved?
The sad experience of invading Iraq is before us all.
Can you guess who it is yet?
To sum up:
It is possible to govern based on an approach that is distinctly different from one of coercion, force and injustice.
It is possible to sincerely serve and promote common human values, and honesty and compassion.
It is possible to provide welfare and prosperity without tension, threats, imposition or war.
It is possible to lead the world towards the aspired perfection by adhering to unity, monotheism, morality and spirituality and drawing upon the teachings of the Divine Prophets.
Then, the American people, who are God-fearing and followers of Divine religions, will overcome every difficulty.
What I stated represents some of my anxieties and concerns.
I am confident that you, the American people, will play an instrumental role in the establishment of justice and spirituality throughout the world. The promises of the Almighty and His prophets will certainly be realized, Justice and Truth will prevail and all nations will live a true life in a climate replete with love, compassion and fraternity.
The US governing establishment, the authorities and the powerful should not choose irreversible paths. As all prophets have taught us, injustice and transgression will eventually bring about decline and demise. Today, the path of return to faith and spirituality is open and unimpeded.
We should all heed the Divine Word of the Holy Qur’an:
“But those who repent, have faith and do good may receive Salvation. Your Lord, alone, creates and chooses as He will, and others have no part in His choice; Glorified is God and Exalted above any partners they ascribe to Him.” (28:67-68)
I pray to the Almighty to bless the Iranian and American nations and indeed all nations of the world with dignity and success.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
29 November 2006
With all the hysteria around his holocaust denial, we haven’t heard much about how he reached out to Bush in an 18 page letter a few months ago- the first official contact between the leaders of the United States and Iran since the 1970’s - or about how that letter was never answered, prompting the Iranian president to write directly to the American people, from which I’ve quoted above.
From there I watched a whole series of videos featuring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the subject of Palestine and Israel and talked with Elran about how the tension between people seems to swing big and loud with communication failures, about the way a people’s experience can add huge hurtful context and banks of traumatized assumptions to words. He said that with old, huge problems like this it seems as though the only peace-producing answer, however impossible it seems, would be to communicate with everyone in the world one person at a time, because the possible variations of knowledge and bias and opinion and assumption and error and humanity are so unique and endless.
For this reason I think it’s a mistake to give the darkest interpretations of what a person might mean too much power; similarly it’s a strategic error to confuse the worst, most extreme voices in a culture with the culture as a whole. Ahmadinejad strikes me here by the clarity with which he distinguishes between the mistakes made by the Bush regime and the American people; and though it cannot be emotionally acceptable to a Jewish person to hear him attempt to make distinctions between Jews and Zionists, given how precious Zion is both as an idea in the Jewish religion and as a real asylum in the history, I have to say I kind of appreciate that there is a subtlety suggested here that might not actually be anti-semitic. When he refers to Zionists in the letter is seems he is talking about the hard line, fundamentalist Zionists who want to push deeper into the territory or who acknowledge no other people’s claims to the space. I think. I have no real idea though, the discourse is muddied entirely by emotional propaganda from countless media-enabled individuals who consider themselves stakeholders in this struggle of land and ideas.
All I can say for sure is that closing communication between the leaders of a conflict will only encourage miscommunication, as representatives add distortive filters to the already almost insurmountable divide in understanding. If two people have conflicting versions of history; if they have spent their lives immersed in different stories about different injustices from different power positionnings, then that discrepancy will not be resolved with less direct communication. Censoring media - in Iran or in the US - can perpetuate the cycle of misinformation and reciprocal mistrust. Rejecting attempts at dialogue push the other further into their belief in the exaggerated evil on the other side.
Ahmadinejad in letters and interviews calls for open study - and not just about the Holocaust, which should be studied more so that the stories of all the people ravaged by genocide can be incorporated into the human outcry against murder of all kinds, including the 200 000 + Roma and Arabs killed during the Holocaust, who alone should make the Holocaust worth mention in Muslim history, and including the mass, targeted killing of the Armenian population in the early 20th C. Whether the Holocaust conference was wholly aimed to cast it as a myth, or whether there was some real desire to find out more about a subject that has been completely excised from of the Islamic world, I don’t know. Bush doesn’t know either because he didn’t ask. Instead of leaping to embrace every single kernel of sense as a truly peace-oriented leader woudl do, instead of encouraging every opportunity for connection and the extension of human understanding, it feels like Bush does the opposite, ignoring every flickering chance at peace and new insight, and leaping down the dark paths to world war.
Here’s what I think, and I’ve written on this here before: When two countries are facing off with the world watching and tension mounting at every turn of phrase they should have to talk every single day in as a public a way as possible to diffuse the homogenizing simplicity that produces war with the real mess of conversation, history, opinion and hurt. The United States and Britain have made violent mistakes when it comes to historical Iran; the “Arab world” has suffered from colonial mentality and brutality and speaks from a traumatized place that needs to be valued alongside the trauma of other colonized people. Trauma as a defining feature of our current global civilization and as a shaping influence on hearts and brains should not be underestimated by the people who have long been in the position allied with the colonizers.
Ahmadinejad might be a complete nut, bent on world domination. He may be quietly fueling the fires of 1000’s of rascist groups bent on the destruction of Western Civilization and the murder of Jewish humans and the dehumanizing control of women. I don’t know. None of us know because we’re swamped with hyperbolic media and tightly controlled official narratives from both sides, and the leader of the world’s super power won’t communicate. Why does the US have a historically helpful hotline with Russia, but not Iran, if Iran is the nation’s biggest threat?
Maybe they do, maybe there is more going on here then I can know about. All I’ve got is my sense that one on one interaction, simple hospitality, a show of open minds, communication of a desire to find the point of overlap between your views and the other’s can have huge chemical effects on hearts and minds. We are physically changed by small acts of kindness or trust or healing, and a nation that truly seeks peace and prosperity for the whole planet will make those overtures. Instead we see Bush make perpetual acts which put him in dialogue with the worst of the Other - the terrorist - and which therby amplify the worst’s voice and relevance.
I do not doubt that the extremist networks at work are more horrifying then I can imagine, but I believe they are still a tiny minority in a world of people who, if given a chance, will be much more interested in having jobs, their daily bread, their old age, the space to laugh and live their their lives. Communicate and connect with this population, empower them (us), and you’ll find we can drown out and convert the voices of violence and control simply because the logic of peace and prosperity and kindness is undeniable. Plus you know, we’re more fun to be around.
Here is some more from Ahmadinejad in interview. He creeps me out sometimes, but so do most politicians, you know? although I like Peter McKay’s simple message today.
If you want to start digging into the thousands of years of pained history that sit at the crux of this question, by all means get at it- I suggest maybe starting with the Wikipedia entry on Palestine. But the more you study the more you know- history is always, like the Wikipedia, just a negotiated line between stories. It matters but is also irrelevant when the real question is: can our species survive the challenges ahead? Are we stupidly distracting ourselves with in-species bickering from the global crisis that will follow the end of oil, or the perpetual storm of natural catastrophe, water shortage and disease that will define the advance of climate change?
Keith Olberman’s message in the video at the top of this rambling, sad post is powerful, but I’d add this: a beligerent president of whatever nationalilty does not just put his troops and citizens on the other side at risk. This will not be the dark limit of Bush’s or Ahmadinejad’s legacy if they go as far as they might. They put the whole careful balance of civilization that we take for granted at risk: subtle ethical distinctions and debates; the ability to respectfully disagree; the feeling of security at home; the delight it is possible to take in difference; the basic sense of safety and trust required to take the leap of opening your mind to challenge deeply embedded assumptions. All of this and more, all the good in daily life for all of us, is threatened by a national figure that seeks war. War is not containable, and in a world armed with nuclear weapons the cascading failure of war could be endgame for all of us.
Just as we hope Iraqi’s and others will require their leaders to be peaceful we must do the same. It is ultimately “the people’s” responsibility because it will be “the people” - all of us, not just the enlisted - who will pay the price.
January 24th, 2007 at 9:21 am
“”In the sixth year since our nation was attacked, I wish I could report to you that the dangers have ended. They have not. And so it remains the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement and military action to do our duty, to find these enemies and to protect the American people,” he said.
While Democrats stood silent when the president urged them to accept an ongoing war in Iraq, many seemed receptive to Bush’s call to expand the active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 over the next five years.
“A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time,” he said.
Bush also won more enthusiastic reception when he said the U.S. was working with allies to create a nuclear free Korean peninsula, continuing to fund HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa and trying to raise awareness of the crisis in Darfur. But if tepid applause is an indicator, lawmakers were skeptical about his insistence that diplomatic negotiations are ongoing to bring about “peace to the Holy Land” and “the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security.”"
fox transcipt