Radical Peace: Refusing War

Radical Peace

People Refusing War

William T. Hathaway

Radical Peace: People Refusing War

Copyright © 2010 William T. Hathaway. All Rights Reserved.

Presentation Copyright © 2010 Trine Day, LLC

Published by:

Trine Day LLC

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www.TrineDay.com

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010923363

Hathaway, William T.

Radical Peace: People Refusing War—1st ed.

p. cm. (acid-free paper)

.

(ISBN-13) 978-0979988691 (ISBN-10) 0979988691

(print version)

(ISBN-13) 978-1-936296-30-9 (ISBN-10) 1-936296-30-6

(epub version)

1. Peace—History—Literary collections. 2. Peace movements—History—Literary collections. 3. United States—Military policy. I. Hathaway, William T. II. Title

First Edition

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Printed in the USA

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Publisher’s Foreword

Peace is costly but it is worth the expense.

 —African Proverb

Abandon all attachment to the results of action and attain peace.

—Krishna

All we are saying is give peace a chance.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

—John Lennon

One cannot simultaneously prepare for war and create peace.

—Anon

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

Peace is its own reward.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

—Mohandas Gandhi

There was never a good war or a bad peace.

—Benjamin Franklin

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

—John Fitzgerald Kennedy

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

—Croesus

One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everybody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody’s business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

—Dorothy Thompson

Naturally the common people don’t want war.… That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or 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 to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

—Hermann Goering

You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist.

—Indira Gandhi

Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.

—Robert Fulghum

Peace be with you.

—Genesis 43:23

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

—Matthew 5:9

Onward to the utmost of futures!

Peace,

Kris Millegan

March 19, 2010

For Daniela Rommel and Bob Schuster

Our thanks to Jim Karpen, Michaela Röll, Nora Boeckl, Jessica Strike, Friederike Jörke, Kris Millegan, Russ Becker, Kent Goodman, Ed Bishop, Bob Oates, Keith Wallace, Jay Marcus, Anna-Maria Petricelli, Lisa Hayden Espenschade, and Brad Booke.

Introduction

They have healed the brokenness of my people superficially, saying, ‘Peace, peace.’ But there is no peace.

Jeremiah 8:11

When the prophet Jeremiah wrote those words, he could have been describing the public-relations strategy of the current US government. Barack Obama won the presidency and the hearts of billions around the world by pledging to bring peace. His humanitarian rhetoric promised a new era in American foreign policy, away from armed confrontation and towards cooperation. But since taking office he has increased combat forces in Afghanistan, expanded our air strikes in Pakistan, shifted the fighting in Iraq onto hired mercenaries and local soldiers, and pledged his full support to the heroic CIA. Obama doesn’t want to end the war; he wants to fight it smarter, cutting our losses in some areas while stepping up attacks in others, aiming to salvage a partial victory. The new commander in chief has scaled down the grandiose goals that launched the war, replacing them with a fallback battle plan for maintaining some control over the Iraqi and Afghan governments, oil supplies, and pipeline routes.

So the war continues, now with less press coverage because when mercenaries and local soldiers die, it barely makes the news. The war continues because millions of Iraqis and Afghans refuse to accept US hegemony and are willing to die to defeat it. The war continues with no end in sight because Obama refuses to abandon this drive for hegemony.

He refuses not because he’s evil but because too much is at stake. A defeat in this strategic area would be devastating. Many of the privileged leases that US petroleum companies own on Mideast oil would be canceled. These favorable leases help keep fuel and petrochemical prices comparatively low in the USA. Without them, prices would soar, eliminating much of our economic advantage. The loss of this competitive edge would mark the decline of American dominance. It would be particularly disastrous for the US military, which is the world’s largest consumer of oil. We would become one player among several, no more powerful than the European Union, Russia, China, or India. Obama knows that any US president who moved in such an egalitarian direction would be out of office very soon.

The corporate elite backed him because he could calm the waters of discontent and create superficial changes that would allow them to maintain their power. His eloquence and charisma revived hope in America. We want so much to believe him that we overlook that he’s still killing thousands of our fellow human beings. Obama is proving to be the ultimate cosmetic change. His performance is another American triumph of image over actuality.

A similar swindle occurred in the 2006 election campaign. The Democrats won control of the Senate and House of Representatives by promising to end the war. Instead, a few months later they voted a huge increase in military spending and supported US troop surges.

These betrayals of democracy make it clear our government doesn’t really represent us but rather the business interests. If they need cheap oil, the president and Congress will make war to get it for them, with time-out every few years for some campaign rhetoric about peace.

As disappointment turns to despair, peace activists are seeking new ways to confront state power and stop this killing machine. We’ve moved beyond demonstrations and petitions into direct action, defying the government’s laws and impeding its capacity to wage war. Radical Peace: People Refusing War portrays these efforts. Telling the first-person experiences of war resisters, deserters, and peace activists from the USA, Europe, Iraq, and Afghanistan, it’s a journey along diverse paths of nonviolence, the true stories of people working for peace in unconventional ways.

The book is a group effort with contributions from many activists. What ties us together is the conviction that being peaceful doesn’t mean obeying violent governments. Confronted with implacable militarism, we’ve turned to radical measures to stop it. Our experiences offer many answers to the question, How can I help end war? Not all of us agree with every approach described here, but we all agree the stories deserve to be told.

Our hope is that by going public we will reveal the varied culture of resistance now flourishing within the peace movement and draw more people to it. The movement needs to grow. Only when enough of us act together will we be able to stop war.

This violence must end, and we, the people, are the only ones who can do it. The brutal power-mongers who rule most countries are too ignorant for the weapons they wield, and we can’t let them keep killing. Their juggernaut of aggression continues to roll, crushing multitudes of soft, breathing human beings, creating more counter-violence at every turn, lumbering toward annihilation. Now none of us in any country is safe.

Most of us involved with this book are criminals because we violate that travesty of American freedom, the Patriot Act. In order to survive in these times of infiltration and surveillance, we’re not an organized group but a loose network with many cutouts between us. Rather than coordinated plans, we rely on spontaneous opportunities. The government will send us to prison if it can, and since none of us wants that, names have been changed to protect the guilty. I’m the real-name spokesperson because I live outside the homeland. Plus as a former Special Forces sergeant I’m used to being under attack.

Each chapter tells a different story. Some are told in the voices of the actors. Every one is intensely personal, sometimes brutally so. But all delineate journeys heading somehow toward peace.

Come along with us.

— 1 —

The Real War Heroes

That must be them. Petra took one hand off the steering wheel and pointed to a group of soldiers about two hundred meters away, standing along our road next to a high chain link fence topped with barbed wire.

Traffic was light, but Petra said, "I don’t want any other cars around. She pulled off the road and stopped. Get everything ready."

I crawled into the back of the car and opened the rear hatch to give access to the interior and to raise the license plate out of sight. We wore caps and sunglasses to be less recognizable.

When the road was empty, she started driving again. We approached the soldiers, who were walking in the grass, stopping often to pick things off the ground and put them in sacks they were dragging.

There’s Rick. Petra slowed and drove along the shoulder. A man turned his head at the sound of our car crunching gravel, dropped his bag, and ran towards us with a slight limp. While the guards shouted for him to stop, I thrust my arm out, grabbed Rick’s hand, and pulled. He lunged forward and dived into the open hatch, banging his leg on the edge. A guard was swearing and groping at the holster on his belt. Rick scrambled in, knocking off his glasses, and Petra floored the gas. Our spinning tires hurled gravel behind us then squealed over the pavement. The car slid halfway across the road before Petra brought it under control, and we sped away.

One guard was waving his pistol at us but not aiming it, and the other was punching buttons on a cell phone. Some of the detention soldiers were clapping and shouting envious congratulations, others just stood staring.

I closed the hatch as Petra rounded a corner and headed for the autobahn. Rick lay on the floor trembling and gasping, holding his leg in pain. I gripped him on the shoulder to steady him. Way to go! You’re on your way out of the Army.

His tension exploded into laughter, then tears. Thanks, thanks, he spluttered.

It’s not over yet, Petra said.

Rick breathed deeply, scrinched his eyes to block the tears, and clenched his fists. Not going back.

I tried to calm my own tremors.

Petra drove away from the base through a section of fast-food franchises and striptease bars that bordered it. Rick put his glasses back on; bent at the bow, they sat crookedly on his nose. We put up the rear seat so we could sit without attracting attention, then waited at the stoplight by the autobahn entrance for thirty seconds that seemed like ten minutes, surrounded by other cars full of American soldiers and German civilians, none of whom noticed us. Finally Petra roared up the onramp. German autobahns have no speed limits, and soon the Volkswagen was going flat out at 160 kilometers per hour.

From a small suitcase I pulled out civilian clothes for Rick, and he started stripping off his uniform. Last time I’ll ever wear this thing.

As he took off his shirt, I got a whiff of the sour stench of fear, which I knew well from my own time in the military. He stuffed the fatigues into a trash bag, then put on corduroy pants and a cotton sweater. Now he looked like a young German, but with the buzz cut hair, almost like a neo-Nazi. I set my cap on his head.

At the first rest stop we pulled in and parked beside a van. I gave him the suitcase and a wallet with a thousand euros in it. We shook hands, then hugged. I clapped him on the back. He got out of the car and kissed Petra on the cheek, crying again as he thanked us. With a combination of a glare and a grin, he pushed the bag with his uniform into a garbage can. I got into the front seat of the VW; Rick got into the back of the van, giving us a V sign. The van pulled away, headed for Sweden, where Rick would apply for asylum.

Petra re-entered the autobahn, much slower now because she too was crying, quietly, with a resolute face. He’s out of the war, she said in her throaty German accent. No one’s going to kill him, and he’s not going to kill anybody. She took the next exit, then wended back over country roads towards her home. Now I’m exhausted.

Me too, all of a sudden, I said. This one was hairy. We broke more laws than usual.

Good. Such laws need to be broken. I’ll make us some coffee.

Petra had been the first of our group to meet with Rick. She worked in Caritas, the German Catholic social agency, and a priest had brought him to her office. Rick was absent without leave, AWOL, from the Army, determined not to go back, but didn’t know what to do. He’d heard from another soldier that the Catholic church sometimes helped, so he went there.

The priest was in too public a position to personally do much, but he introduced him to Petra because she was active in Pax Christi, the Catholic peace movement. The priest and the social worker had a tacit don’t ask, don’t tell agreement about her counseling work with soldiers. She didn’t volunteer information, and he didn’t pry.

Petra had various approaches to freeing soldiers. She could help them apply for conscientious objector status, but these days CO applications were usually turned down by the military. She had a degree in clinical psychology and was skilled at teaching GIs how to get psychological discharges, to act the right amount of crazy and handle the trick questions the military shrinks would throw at them. But now those too were usually denied. The military needed bodies — didn’t care if they were crazy bodies.

If neither of these methods worked, and if the soldiers were desperate to get out, she would help them desert, a drastic step because it risked years in prison for them and major hassles for her.

Petra has never been arrested, but based on experiences of others in our group, she could expect to be charged with accessory to military desertion and with aiding and abetting a fugitive. The court process would be a severe drain on the energy and finances of both her and our group, but it is unlikely that she’d actually go to prison. With public opinion already so opposed to this war, the German government wouldn’t want to risk the protests. But she’d probably get a year on probation, lose her job, and have trouble finding another one.

Why did she take the risk? Petra’s grandfather had been an SS trooper, the kind of Christian who unquestioningly supports authority. His children reacted by becoming atheists. Petra became the kind of Christian who opposed authority, including the church hierarchy. She felt stopping war was more important than her personal security.

When she met Rick, she