Joseph Gainza: Bomb Iraq and Syria? NO

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Joseph Gainza, the founder of Vermont Action for Peace and the producer and host of “Gathering Peace” on WGDR and WGDH. He lives in Marshfield.

I try to avoid knee-jerk responses, even when the issue is about something in which I am emotionally and intellectually invested. Especially then. The use of violence to resolve conflict is one of those issues.

The rise of the Islamic State and the reported and actual atrocities they are committing gave me pause. What is the appropriate response when thousands of men, women and children are on the verge of being slaughtered as were Yzidis on that northern Iraq mountain? I was terribly conflicted and have to admit to a small sense of relief when the U.S. began to bomb the attackers, allowing the Yzidis to escape destruction.

I realize that my reaction was primarily based on a humanitarian impulse, but not entirely. I also recognized that I was reacting out of fear. Such horror as was reported to be carried out by the ISIS forces, and their swift conquest of cities and villages in Iraq, instilled in me a dark fear, a fear I carried around for a number of days. I felt as if my own life was being threatened. The beheading of James Foley, and later Steven Sotloff, deepened my sense of dread.

At that moment, I was vulnerable. I was vulnerable to the news reports and the calls for more military action. I wanted something done to expel this fear. I nearly succumbed to the barrage of fear mongering which members of Congress and the commentariat inflicted on us. But I began to hear the fear in their invectives. I began to see one more instance of how fear, and a relatively easy acceptance of violence, combined with a lack of more peaceful proposals, could move people to support a military response. I heard echoes of a statement by Hermann Goering, second only to Hitler in the Nazi regime, from a Nuremberg prison:

“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”

I realize that my deep concern for the loss of innocent life, my own fear, and my strong desire that something be done to stop the forces perpetrating so much violence, left me vulnerable to manipulation by those “opinion makers” who see the only legitimate response to violence as being more and greater violence. I could see how easy it would be to accept the excuses given for using military violence to end the threat of ISIS, and to forget that history demonstrates time and again, the reasons given for going to war are rarely, if ever, the true motivations. This was not an easy time for me, but it has helped me to better understand those, who, despite our very recent tragic history of wars of aggression, now support a re-injection of U.S. military force in Iraq and extending it into Syria. “What else,” these folks might ask, “are we to do, let the slaughter happen?”

Here, it is so important that we maintain a historical memory; that we not allow our leaders to strip events of their historical and political contexts. Without those contexts we are forced to make judgments based on woefully inadequate information, so we go along with what our leaders tell us is the only alternative. It is then that the horrors of the moment and the, perhaps unconscious, fear that they provoke become the overriding drivers of our action. We fall in line behind the war hawks; I imagine Goering would smile in approval.

The U.S. has just been through two of the longest wars in our history. Billions of dollars, some say trillions, have been squandered, tens of thousands of U.S. American lives have been lost or horribly damaged, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis have perished or been severely wounded. What have we to show for it? Are either Afghanistan or Iraq at peace with governments representing the interests of their people? After 13 years of war is the U.S. any more secure? Or have the actions of our government served as the greatest recruiter of terrorists?

So now the U.S. will be bombing in Iraq and Syria in order to destroy the ISIS terrorists, a group which did not exist before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. With our weapons, either sold to combatants in the region or left behind by our withdrawing forces, this terrorist group is stronger than any enemy the U.S. has faced in decades. The president announced that it may take three or more years to “defeat” them. Will we defeat them the way we defeated the Taliban who now control major portions of Afghanistan? Will we defeat them the way we defeated the Iraqi “insurgents” who now are killing scores of their fellow citizens every week? Will we defeat them the way we defeated the Vietcong?

It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. President Obama is neither stupid nor insane; I believe he entered office with the intention of turning this country away from a militarized foreign policy. He inherited two wars; he has tried to end them with honor. But he is president of a nation so deeply militarized that we allow our police to be armed with the ability to destroy a national enemy rather than to protect and serve the public; we talk seriously about arming our teachers, we allow our citizens to move about in public with weapons to kill those we fear.

As president, Mr. Obama has been militarized, as all who hold higher office in this nation must be or they are charged with being “soft,” “weak” or “naive,” with allowing the decline of “American power.” Strength, in a militarized society is defined by how large are your military forces, not by the well-being of your citizens or the health of you natural environment. A look at the national budget reveals how militarized we have become.

The world contains much danger, cruelty and violence. Mr Obama, as every modern president before him, says he wants to rid the world of those who make it so. We are told that only the USA has the ability to set things right, we are the “indispensable nation.” We are led to believe that the U.S. government only reacts to the aggression of others; the problem is “out there.” Yet, a closer review of our history reveals that the U.S. does not simply react to the chaos of the world, we are a major force creating it.