Soldiers of Conscience

Last night we went to a screening of the documentary "Soldiers of Conscience" that will air on PBS channels on October 16th. It crosscuts interviews with four U.S. soldiers who became conscientious objectors after some time in Iraq along with some soldiers who do not question their military role. The C.O.'s are very eloquent in recounting their change of heart and the consequences of their respective decisions to stop fighting.

Following the film, there was a discussion led by Producer/Director, Catherine Ryan. One of my favorite authors, Tobias Wolff, was on hand to interview Ryan. He himself is a Viet Nam veteran and wrote "In Pharoah's Army" about his experience. Wolff and one other in the audience raised variations of the same difficult question. Are all wars wrong? One of the C.O.'s says that when people challenge him asking what would have happened had the world not fought to stop Hitler, he responds with his own hypothetical. What would have happened if most German men had declared themselves "conscientious objectors?" Another C.O. in the film says he could no longer fight this particular war of occupation. Wolf and the audience member both cited tyrannies or genocides that seem to call out for armed interventions.

Nobody criticized anyone else for the views or questions they raised, but it seemed that most of the audience felt there was no situation in which war was a good answer. One man, himself a "Viet Nam Vet," said that most of the world calls that war, the American War in Southeast Asia, and considers the three million people we killed to be an atrocity. He decried the fact that our government has never entertained that perspective.

Is there such a thing as a "nation of conscience" that decides to intervene militarily to stop a genocide? Can war and killing qualify as a national act of conscience in the same vein as Denmark's decision to wear yellow stars and protect its Jewish citizens during World War II? How many would condone a person who did not kill an intruder who was about to kill their child, if they had an opportunity to save their child? Where does the slaughter occurring in Darfur fit into this "conceptual dilemma?" In this benighted world, I think there are times when a multilateral force ought to use its violent power for a greater good. Then get off the slippery slope as quickly as possible.

Hooray for Jesse Helms

Former Senator Jesse Helms died last month on July 4th. He was reviled by most anyone with progressive views. During his five terms in the senate, he criticized the Civil Rights Act, school integration, and the Voting Rights Act. He opposed funding for AIDS, funding for the UN, gay rights, abortion, affirmative action, and government appointments of gay persons. His financial support was first and foremost from the tobacco industry.

Yesterday, I read something about him that totally surprised me. Helms was one of five senators who sponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act in September 1988. It was a bill that would have imposed hard-hitting sanctions against Iraq for Saddam Hussein's brutal gassing and genocidal attacks against the Kurds who lived in the rural north. This was before either of the Gulf Wars we fought against Iraq. During his eight-year war with Iran, Hussein demanded all Kurds leave their villages and live in concentrated ghetto towns he constructed further inland from the border. Those who didn't leave their homes were subject to mass executions. The army would take over a Kurd village, round up the men and boys and shoot them. Poison gas was dropped on numerous villages during an eighteen month campaign that extended past the Iraq-Iran armistice. Though the Reagan state department was aware of the campaign, it kept mum because we supported Iraq over Iran. There was no outcry from any quarter to stop the violence as Samantha Power documents in her gripping book, "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide."

After the gassing of a large town, Halabja (3/88), the story finally started to become known. The bill was written by a staff member of Senator Claiborne Pell and Pell approached Helms, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relation Committee. Power writes in her book that Helms "and his wife had been moved by an encounter with three Kurds who were on hunger strikes to protest the Iraqi atrocities, whom they met through their church."

So for all the evils associated with Helms, there is at least one admirable act of leadership in the other column. I'm glad to know that. I'm glad to know that there is something to like about the Senator and that there was a way to reach him and motivate him to do the right thing.

As for the bill, it was passed by the Senate but killed in the House. The U.S. farm lobby prevailed. They did not want to lose all the revenue from their rice and wheat sales to Iraq. Eighteen months later, Hussein was emboldened enough to invade Kuwait.

Genocide Response

On Friday night, Sally and I saw a one-woman performance about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. It was a piece about forgiveness, but I couldn't help thinking about the question of our responsibility as humans and as other countries when a genocide is happening. Until fairly recently it seemed like a no-brainer to me that we should send troops from the UN, NATO, and any other multilateral force to stop a genocide in progress; that it was justifiable violence in a way that no war for oil or territory will ever be. I remember reading how during World War II, Jews begged FDR (unsuccessfully) to bomb all the concentration camps to smithereens, knowing that many Jews in those camps would be killed, but many more would be saved. The horrors and mass insanity of a genocide (In Rwanda 800,000 Tutsi's were hacked to death in 90 days.) seem to justify any type of intervention that could stop it.

It gets more complicated when I think of my 24 year old twins and whether I could bear putting their lives at risk to make that happen in some far away country where we know nobody. Would I go myself? Is the killing of the perpetrators the only way to stop it? In Darfur now, there are some rebel leaders who are political opportunists (according to peacemaker NGO's who spoke on KQED-Forum program) and refuse to seek peace or cease fires while their people are butchered and raped by the Sudanese government and their Janjaweed proxies. That adds another confusing dimension to figuring out our response. I remember the 30th reunion of Stanford grads who had taken over a number of campus buildings during Viet Nam war protests in 1967. The event took place as President Clinton had US troops in Bosnia - ostensibly to end a genocide or ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs. The reunion dinner turned into a two hour debate about whether US and NATO actions could be trusted and whether they were justified.

I'm sure there are ethicists who have discussed this issue from every angle. I'd like to read some to see what resonates for me and whether there are creative approaches that deserve worldwide commitment. The genocides keep coming. In California, our government and media repeatedly caution us to be prepared for the next inevitable big earthquake. There are a variety of supplies and procedures we are all supposed to follow. We have extensive planning in place for rapid responses to devastating wildfires. When it comes to genocide, the intervention procedures are vague and largely undiscussed. Memorials, museums, and theatre pieces provide amazing, important testimony, but where do we learn how to put out the fires?