Stop the Next War Now (28 page)

In December 2002, NPF representatives from more than forty peace and nonviolence organizations convened near New Delhi and selected Sri Lanka as the site for the NPF’s first pilot project. During its twenty years of civil war, Duncan claims, “Sri Lanka has seen more suicide bombers than Israel and Palestine.” The country is beset by landmines, child soldiers, and abductions, but a cease-fire in 2002—the fourth in twenty years—seemed to offer a window of opportunity.

Fourteen people from eleven countries formed the first group of volunteers, whose members ranged from young adults to a Vietnam veteran. The NPF dispatched two teams to Jaffna in the north of Sri Lanka (with members from Kenya and the Philippines), a team to Matara in the south (with members from Ghana, Japan, and the United States), and a team to Muthur and Trincomalee in the east (with members from Brazil, Germany, Palestine, and the United States).

In Sri Lanka, conflicts rage not only along religious lines (Christians versus Muslims) but also along linguistic lines, with Tamil and Sinhalese speakers frequently identifying the other as enemies solely because of the language they speak. Consequently, Peaceforce members had to learn both basic Tamil and Sinhalese in a grueling four-week crash course.

Linda Sartor, a former middle-school teacher from Sonoma County, California, was one of the peacemakers. Tormented by Washington’s violent bombardment of Afghanistan in the wake of September 11, Sartor wanted to do more than attend protest rallies. She went to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement, flew to Iraq before the invasion to act as a “witness,” and then joined an NPF team in Sri Lanka. She soon found herself stationed in the village of Valachchenai, where Muslims and Tamils ran separate civic offices, schools, and buses, and where some neighbors remain so distrustful that they haven’t spoken for a generation.

The NPF set up its office on a street lined with Muslim shops on one side and Tamil shops on the other, in hopes that the presence of foreigners could help ease the fear and tension. On April 9, a bloody confrontation erupted between political factions, causing thousands to flee. As the only group of internationals in the area, NPF worked with clergy, government officials, and the army to ensure shelter, food, and water for civilian refugees, some of whom had walked twenty kilometers to reach safety.

During the tense electoral period, NPF engaged in preelection monitoring and made repeated visits with police and military officials, as well as the Muslim residents of several internally displaced persons camps. On election day, NPF teams rose before dawn to visit more than thirty polling stations during the eight-hour voting period. NPF workers labored into the night, accompanying ballot boxes to counting stations and monitoring the counting of ballots. The outcome was reported in an official dispatch dated April 12, 2004: “Despite the gloomiest of forecasts, the election was the most violence-free that Sri Lanka had had for some time.”

Oceans away in Iraq, a similar effort was pulled together in the wake of the U.S. attack on the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala in April 2004. Appalled by the civilian deaths, Peter Lumsdaine, a San Francisco peace organizer, sent out a call for volunteers willing to nonviolently challenge the U.S. military offensive. Two weeks later, Lumsdaine’s five-member Iraq Emergency Peace Team was making its way through Najaf’s rubble-strewn streets and preparing to place their bodies between the city’s mosques and the Pentagon’s tanks.

“We understand the dangers of our journey, but we are determined to try and contribute in our own small way to peace and justice for the people of Najaf,” the Peace Team’s collective statement read. “Only when peacemakers are willing to shoulder some of the same risks that soldiers take in war can we begin to move away from the cycle of violence that grips human society at the dawn of the 21st century.”

The efforts by this Peace Team or the Nonviolent Peaceforce may be dismissed as foolhardy or embraced as heroic. Granted, the likelihood of a small number of courageous and determined individuals derailing a billion-dollar military juggernaut is slim, but what might happen if the world had a standing nonviolent army of thousands?

While George W. Bush contends that there is no alternative to a future of endless war, the Nonviolent Peaceforce “is quietly attempting to institutionalize a proven alternative.” If it succeeds, “the world will have two kinds of standing armies to choose from.”

PEACEFORCE RESOURCES

Christian Peacemaker Teams, www.cpt.org

International Solidarity Movement, www.palsolidarity.org

Nonviolent Peaceforce, www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org

Peace Brigades International, www.peacebrigades.org

Voices in the Wilderness, www.vitw.org

Witness for Peace, www.witnessforpeace.org

Chapter 9

PROTECT AND

RESPECT

RESOURCES

VICTORY CARS

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

Arianna Huffington is a nationally syndicated columnist and the author of ten books, including
How to Overthrow the Government
,
Pigs at the Trough
, and
Fanatics and Fools
.

On the way to my daughter’s school this morning, I encountered the usual L.A. rush-hour road rally of elephantine sport-utility vehicles, many of them flying American flags. Taking the cake was a massive SUV proudly sporting half a dozen flags—one on each window and two on the bumper. My first thought was, “How patriotic!” My second was, “How much more patriotic it would be to trade in the gas-guzzling leviathan for something that sips, rather than gulps, at the gas pump.”

Which, thinking globally and acting locally, is precisely what I’ve decided to do with mine.

Though I don’t consider myself an automotive fashionista, I must admit I followed the thundering herd of protective parents unable to resist the allure of what is basically a comfy Sherman tank. My SUV, a Lincoln Navigator, was, I was told, the safest way to transport my kids. And, as a bonus, I could haul around a decent-size Girl Scout troop.

But now we’re at war, right? A new war. Everything has changed, hasn’t it? Perhaps in rhetoric. In practice, what are we being called to do for the war effort other than shop till we drop, eat out, and visit Disney World? Given that our ability to play hardball with nations that harbor terrorists is going to be seriously compromised by our foreign-oil habit, shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to reduce that dependence on oil—starting, say, yesterday?

It’s time for Washington to dole out some tough love to the energy and auto-industry lobbies and help put them on the path of reform, starting with increasing fuel-efficiency standards for all cars, light trucks, and SUVs: this is the single biggest step we can take to conserve energy. Raising the standards from the current 27.5 miles per gallon to 36 miles per gallon would save us roughly two million barrels a day—about the same amount we import from the Persian Gulf.

Washington must also push Detroit to radically increase its production of hybrid cars and must team with corporate America to rapidly accelerate investment in energy efficiency, hydrogen-based technology, and renewable sources of energy like solar and wind. A great model for this is the new Apollo Project (www.apolloalliance.org), a $300 billion program proposed by unions and environmental groups to create three million new jobs while helping America achieve energy independence within a generation.

Because of the corporate takeover of our democracy, Washington has remained firmly stuck in the Dark Ages of energy policy. That’s why Bill Clinton came charging into office promising to raise fuel-efficiency standards to 45 miles per gallon but left without having increased them one inch per gallon. And why George W. Bush can try to score points by proposing to raise the ludicrously low SUV mileage standard by an equally ludicrous 1.5 miles per gallon over his second term in office.

It’s also why the Big Three, once again, have to play catch-up with Toyota and Honda, which have been putting out hybrid cars since 1997. How ironic that if American car buyers want to do something truly patriotic, they have to buy Japanese to do it.

Detroit has sensed that public opinion is shifting and has taken some baby steps toward meeting the rising demand for more socially responsible cars. Now it’s up to all of us to make sure that the pressure and the demand continue to grow. Otherwise, the auto industry will gladly underfund and under-advertise its hybrid models, allowing them to crash and burn—yet more “proof” that American consumers don’t really care about anything other than their precious SUVs.

Consider how many loopholes have already been driven through by light trucks and SUVs, which are allowed to average 7 miles per gallon less than regular cars. And the ultimate absurdity is that if an SUV is massive enough, it is entirely exempt from federal fuel-economy standards. That’s right, build one with a gross vehicle weight of more than eighty-five hundred pounds— like the Ford Excursion or the new Hummer—and the lousy gas mileage doesn’t even have to be reported to the government!

And all the while, oil prices steadily increase. But don’t let the skyrocketing numbers on the gas pump fool you: America isn’t confronting a shortage of fuel; it’s confronting a shortage of leadership.

The public is galvanized for action, just as it was during World War II. Back then, Americans answered their leaders’ call for sacrifice in dozens of altruistic ways: they collected scrap metal to be refashioned as guns, planes, and tanks; planted twenty million “victory gardens”; and made do with three gallons of gas a week—just about what the average SUV devours on a few latte-hauling trips to Starbucks.

Of course, when it comes to acting on our patriotism, we don’t have to wait for our leaders. If they won’t lead, we can just step around them. And when it comes to the vital issue of energy policy, it appears that we’ll have to. As well as giving up our SUVs—or, even better, switching to hybrid gas-and-electric cars that currently get up to 64 miles per gallon—we can all make simple adjustments to wean our country from foreign oil, even if our leaders are too beholden to the energy and auto industry lobbies to guide us.

We can, for example, make sure our tires are fully inflated, reducing gas consumption by 2 percent; we can slow down to 65 miles per hour, reducing highway gas consumption by 15 percent; and we can stop idling our cars in drive-through window and school carpool lanes. At home we can help conserve fuel by turning thermostats down, weather-stripping doors and windows, buying energy-efficient fluorescent light bulbs, and unplugging cell-phone chargers and hair dryers.

Would it be so painful for us to slow down the intravenous drip of oil that keeps hideously anti-American regimes alive? Look at the positive potential of this dilemma: if we were to unleash a new wave of good old American inventiveness, we might be able to regain some of the respect for America that has been lost in recent years. Let’s step up to the challenge!

“As we head to war with Iraq, President Bush wants to make one

thing clear:This war is not about oil, it’s about gasoline.”

—Jay Leno

CONSERVING

OUR RESOURCES

,

RESISTING WAR

JULIA BUTTERFLY HILL

Eco-activist Julia Butterfly Hill rose to international prominence when she sat in a tree for two years to draw attention to the devastation wrought by the clear-cutting of ancient California redwoods. Her organization, Circle of Life, educates people about making sustainable choices in their daily lives.

Every day, the choices we make are either weapons of mass destruction or tools of mass compassion. Every action we take is an opportunity to create peace or hurt, to end the war on the planet or to perpetuate it.

What do weapons of mass destruction look like? Saws that clear-cut the forests. Plastic cups, plastic bags, plastic silverware, plastic to-go containers. Paper napkins, paper plates. Gas-guzzling cars. Books printed in ecologically unsound ways. But above all, our laissez-faire attitude toward throwing things away. I am also passionate about discouraging anyone with consciousness from using water bottles—the water wasted in
making
that water bottle is more than the water that fills the bottle up.

We need to realize that all these kinds of things are literal weapons of mass destruction. Because of this, sustainable choices, including voluntary simplicity; reducing, then reusing, and finally recycling; spending every penny as a vote; and so on, are all tools of mass compassion.

But there are even larger steps we can take to avoid supporting the war— for me, one is choosing not to pay taxes. There’s no constitutional provision mandating that people pay income taxes, because at the time the Constitution was written this new country had just rebelled against taxation without representation. Since 2002, I have not paid my income tax, and now my money cannot go to the war effort. Instead my money is going to projects like native peoples, community gardens, environmental protection, arts and education, and alternatives to incarceration.

Many people prefer to protest on a more symbolic level—for example, by withholding the few pennies or dollars of federal tax on their phone bills every month. This tax began as a war tax in 1914, and although it was supposed to end when the war was over, the people didn’t know any better and so the government kept it. But no one can force you to pay it. Today, a big movement supports these kinds of resistance efforts, a movement that’s been going on for well over thirty years. Visit www.warresisters.org for more information.

We live in very challenging times. Yet we also live in times of incredible possibility. There’s a saying that goes: “When the night sky is at its darkest, that’s the time for the stars to shine the brightest.” We’re in a really dark time right now, which means it is an opportunity for every one of us to dazzle.