All we are saying is give peace a chance ….

Renton de Alwis

This time last year I wrote this column, when disappointment set in about the manner in which world’s leaders were handling peace. No different to how it is anywhere in the world the peace agenda is dotted with various self serving agenda of politicians. From time to time, we are reminded that we need to rethink peace and revisit the glorious dividends it can bring humanity.  Yet, destructive weapons manufacture is still one of the biggest industries in the world and so is the waste generated through unscrupulous consumption. The ‘self’ in the agenda of running affairs of nations is the key determinant of all involved in it. Hearing calls of protest about the wrongs we see around us, I repost this today with the hope that some thought will be directed to peace, its value and its dividends.  

My column title today will be familiar to most in my generation as the title of one of John Lennon hits which touched most hearts and minds at that time, being a theme song for the anti-Vietnam protesters in the late sixties and the early seventies. The song’s chorus was on the lip-tips of most every one at the time. They all loved freedom, called for peace and stood against intervention and oppression. The lyrics of that song, like most other from this sensitive artist were simple, yet all encompassing. As illustration here are a few lines from the song:

“Ev'rybody's talking about
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.

All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance” 

Not much changed

Why am I now thinking of Lennon? No! It’s not John Ono Lennon’s birth or death anniversary anytime soon. Those happen to be in October and December. Nor is it because of any event due soon to celebrate the achievements of Beatles in the world of music of that unforgettable era.

Seeing what happens around us, I simply wondered if that that much has changed between those days of the Vietnam War, a good forty over years ago and now. Much was written and much was talked about on ‘lessons learnt’. Reports were made and committees sat mostly to determine the fate of US soldiers that went missing in action and/or to determine where US went wrong in fighting that war. While hundreds of thousands of Americans protested the killing of a million Vietnamese; annihilating whole villagers and families, mothers, fathers and families of US soldiers sent out there for the task, wept for their own sons who never came home.

The Art of War

In the aftermath of that tragic period in human history, in 2003 a documentary film was made with the title ‘The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara’ by an American film maker Errol Morris. This ‘award winning’ film featured the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and documented his observations of the nature of modern war and of the nature of modern warfare.

Driven perhaps by the need to leave a classic work on military strategy akin to the ancient Chinese ‘The Art of War’ of Sun Tzu behind, RSM’s outlining of the lessons were as follows: 1. Empathize with your enemy, 2. Rationality will not save us, 3. There's something beyond one's self, 4. Maximize efficiency, 5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war, 6. Get the data, 7. Belief and seeing are often both wrong, 8. Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning, 9. To do good you may have to engage in evil 10. Never say never and 11. You can't change human nature.

McNamara, coming from a business background and being a former CEO of the Ford Motor Company, brought in ‘systems management’ techniques in running the war machinery of the US. Interestingly, upon retirement McNamara served as the President of the World Bank, creating an interesting precedence of bringing his learnt skills at war making into the sphere of global lending and financial management.  

Regime Change

Similarly, Henry Kissinger, the then US Secretary of State and another key architect of that scenario was associated with several other interventions such as the India-Pakistan War of 1971, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, where Israel gained territorial advantages over Egypt and Syria, causing regime change in Chile when popularly elected Salvador Allende was ousted by Augusto Pinochet in  a military coup in the same year, the 1975 annexation of East Timor by Indonesia and the involvement in the Cambodian conflict.

In 1973, Henry Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Vietnam’s Lee Doc Tho for the Paris Peace Accords of 1973; "intended to bring about a cease-fire in the Vietnam War and a withdrawal of the American forces". This prompted American singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer to famously quip in an ironic reference, that the award ".. makes political satire obsolete".

Later years in joining the academia he was touted as a top diplomat and peacemaker involved in advisory capacities in addressing US’s disputes with India, China and Iran. It is interesting that he once stated; "Vietnam is still with us.  It has created doubts about American judgment, about American credibility, about American power--not only at home but U.S. involvement throughout the world.  It has poisoned our domestic debate.  So we paid an exorbitant price for the decision that we made in good faith." The good faith he talked about was in defense of what Lennon in his song lyrics referred to as ‘this ism’ against ‘that ism’. 

‘Hope for Change’

When Senator Barack Obama was running for US Presidency in 2008, he gave us all hope of seeing ‘real change’. That fever of hope and change reached beyond the US electorate and touched even minions the likes of me elsewhere on the planet. I for one, in spite of talk ‘that nothing much would change’, was hopeful that we were to see a new dawn. A new dawn of a process to end waging of war and creation of conflict, giving peace a real chance to flourish was what I longed for. I was hopeful that this man, with a diverse racial and ethnic background will be able to able to reach out, to bring the diverse belief systems together recognizing the diversity of each. I hoped that attempts at causing regime change would be a thing of the past.

I was longing to see trust and bridges of honest bondage being built with the closing of the Guantanamo detention facility which he himself saw as a Bush era blunder of “running prisons which lock people away without telling them why they’re there or what they’re charged with.” The January 2009 deadline for the facility’s dismantling is long gone and the Military Tribunals which he said “failed to establish a legitimate legal framework and undermined our capacity to ensure swift and certain justice” are back in operation after his recent reversal of the two year order to stay halt on that process.

Sovereignty of Nations

In an address he made at the New Economic School in Moscow in mid 2009, President Obama stood firm in his defense of the sovereignty of nations in reference to Russia’s position in the Federation of European nations. He stated that “America’s interest is in an international system that advances cooperation while respecting the sovereignty of all nations. State sovereignty must be a cornerstone of international order. Just as all states should have the right to choose their leaders, states must have the right to borders that are secure, and to their own foreign policies. That is true for Russia, just as it is true for the United States. Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy.” Yet, the Obama administration’s support for the ‘Lisbon Treaty’, a blueprint for creating a European federal ‘Super State’ through Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as “a major milestone in our world’s history” nullifies that earlier pledge.

On the climate change mitigation front too my hopes have been shattered. The US is yet to sign the Kyoto protocol and is causing huge dents in the ability of other nations to move forward in taking real action on this front, even when there is scientific evidence backing the realization that there is not much time left for us in reversing the process of global warming. 

The Human Spirit

Our hope was rekindled when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack H. Obama in 2009 "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". As a citizen of Mother Earth and of nation Sri Lanka, my own hope still is that America and the Obama administration will be able to take politics from it’s often used tag of being the ‘Art of the possible’ to a greater height, where it will give a fresh breath of life to ‘Hope and change through a rekindling of the goodness of the human spirit.’

And that takes me back to John Lennon’s other hit “Imagine all the people” and I join in singing its chorus;

“You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
and the world will be as one”

 

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Peace - 4beatles.net