“Abolition” isn’t just a fun
word to say.
“I want to abolish prisons,”
doesn’t just mean that you think there are too
many prisons and they are too horrible.
“Abolish the police” isn’t just a hip way to
say “I’m angry at abuse by police.” Abolishing
something means eliminating it entirely, which
often also means creating very different
institutions that do things very differently.
Entirely
means every last speck.
Abolishing
war, and preparations for war, and weapons of
war, and militaries means working for a world in
which there exists not a single member of a
single military or a single weapon. To some that
sounds so big and crazy that they actually relax
about it, treat it as a dream for some distant
future, and maybe even applaud Barack Obama
making speeches about abolishing nuclear weapons
as long as it’s not in his lifetime. But the
logic behind abolishing war makes it an
immediate and urgent project, because the
dangers and damage war creates threaten the
likelihood of any distant human future existing,
and also because there are better alternatives
to war available right here today.
If
you favor war abolition not because you love
simplicity or because you think it’s good for
your inner harmony or whatever, but because
nobody has ever shown you a single instance
where war can do something useful better than
nonviolence can, then you oppose all sorts of
things that are extremely popular, even among
people who call themselves peace activists,
things like:
*
Sending military ships with aid flotillas to
Gaza.
*
Rushing military forces to people’s aid
after
a natural disaster.
*
Funding a green military to fight climate
change.
*
Sending weapons to Ukraine.
*
Cheering for the Russian military in Ukraine.
*
Arming either side of a war in Syria.
*
Attempting militarily to protect Venezuela from
another attempted coup by the United States.
*
Establishing a global antiwar force to oversee
the warless world.
The
reason to oppose a military intervention to Gaza
is not support for genocide or blind allegiance
to principle, but because there are other
better tools more
likely to work to end the genocide. The
existence of those other better tools — openly
acknowledged by many advocates for a military
intervention — is, even though they may not
realize it, a problem for their talk of “do
something,” “stop doing nothing,” “we need more
than rhetoric,” and so forth. Changing the
subject to how horrible the genocide is or how
we’ve failed to stop it — things we all agree on
— is not usually an indication of a failure to
understand what we all agree on, and not usually
an indication of an unwillingness to think or of
a desire to deceive, but rather an expression of
anger and frustration. (So, everybody please
take five seconds and scream as loudly as you
can!) Eventually, though, the subject should
return to what would be best to do to try to end
the genocide — what would be the most likely
actions to actually succeed!
I interviewed one
supporter of military intervention, who readily
agreed with me that governments of the world
cutting off arms and commerce and finances and
travel and diplomatic relations with Israel
would not be “doing nothing” and would in fact
collapse Israel’s economy and end the war. At
the very same time, he wanted Turkey and Iran
and Iraq to militarily attack Israeli cities.
Told this would mean attacking civilians, he
readily agreed. But he said that Israel only
understands violence — which seemed to mean that
it wouldn’t “understand” the collapse of its
economy or the absence of any more weapons. He
also assured me that he is a “pacifist.” Told
that Netanyahu would probably love nothing
better than an Iranian attack on an Israeli city
and a big new war with Donald Trump (and his
not-at-all-fat warriors) at Netanyahu’s beck and
call, my interviewee changed the subject.
That’s
what this supporter meant by “United Nations
Protection Force” — bombing a city or two to
“make a point.” Others mean something different.
Most have avoided giving, and some have
adamantly and repeatedly refused to give, any
clear indication of what they mean at all. They
generally seem to mean a big and impressive
armed military force willing to fight Israel but
guaranteed not to have to fight Israel, because
Israel will bow before it. As soon as you
question their certainty that Israel (and the
United States) will do that, or the wisdom of
risking conflict with crazed governments that
have nuclear weapons, the accusations of
cowardice start flying. But the opposite of
bravery is not always cowardice. Choosing not to
jump off a roof, for example, is not cowardice
so much as sanity. Neither does unarmed civilian
defense require less bravery than armed
protection. (Please
go here for what the heck unarmed civilian
defense is.)
Even
if you think an armed “protection force” is a
good idea — and pretty much regardless of
exactly what you mean by it — the fact remains
that the proposal for it has made moving
governments to other actions, and moving the UN
General Assembly to taking action through a
“Uniting for Peace” measure, more difficult. And
this has flowed right into demanding rogue
actions by militaries separate from the United
Nations. I think one reason for such a misguided
strategy, and for the vagueness about what is
being proposed, and for widespread confusion and
indignation about how Italy and Spain dealt with
the Global Sumud Flotilla is the staggering
incoherence at the core. Many nations are
saturated with U.S.
military bases, troops, weapons, and in some
cases (such as Italy and Turkey) nuclear
weapons. Their own militaries are using
U.S.-made weapons maintained and updated and
trained on by U.S. personnel. When Italy sent a
war ship to join the flotilla, it was either
going to make clear — as it soon did — that such
ships would depart before the flotilla neared
Israel, or it was going to risk conflict with
its U.S. master in the form of Israel. The shock
and outrage when such ships departed depended
not only on having missed the public statements
about their plans, but also on a preference for
Italy risking war with
itself.
We
can fantasize about Israel backing down in such
a scenario. If we want to dream big, we can
imagine Italy leaving NATO and booting out the
U.S. bases. I would have loved that. But we have
to plan for what is likely, and not plan
enormous risks that accomplish little. Either
the ships were going to sail away, or they were
going to risk a dramatic escalation of war that
could have brought in any number of nations. If
Israel had attacked NATO countries’ military
vessels, one longtime dedicated peace activist
told me “I hope that then Israel is given a
taste of its own medicine.” And, just like that,
we’re back to bombing Israeli cities . . . and
perhaps U.S. troops treating Rome like it’s
Chicago. How does that end well?
Now
is not the moment in our discussion for cries of
“But what should we do, nothing?” We supporters
of the unarmed humanitarian flotilla are missing
the purpose and the power of that flotilla — not
to mention the aforementioned (if often
conscientiously forgotten) many
useful steps that
should be taken. The flotilla itself is the
powerful tool, not the war ships. The flotilla
itself boosts the global demand for powerful
actions. Colombia cut off all relations with
Israel because the flotilla was attacked. Why
should any nation not take that step? Why should
any population not demand that its government
take that step immediately? Many are making that
demand right now because of the flotilla! The
bravest and most strategic people we’ve got, the
people on that flotilla, should not look — and
we should not look on their behalf — to the war
machine to save us from the war machine.
Governments
could have, and should have, sent unarmed rescue
ships, not war ships. And those rescue ships
should have stayed with the flotilla to the end.
And if the result was official representatives
of the Italian government among the hostages
taken by Israel, Italy should have — as it
should right now — stopped arming Israel,
stopped arming or trading with any nation arming
Israel, stopped allowing Netanyahu to fly over
Italy on his way to lie to the UN, banned all
trade and travel and financial transactions with
Israel, closed Israel’s embassy in Rome, created
an official holiday for a government-sanctioned
general strike and celebration of dock workers,
and launched a major educational campaign on the
topic of Israeli propaganda. That former Israeli
embassy in Rome would make a great Museo
delle Bugie Israeliane.
Ships
of people trained and equipped to rescue at sea
should accompany the next flotilla, because they
are better at that work, because they can do it
to the end, and because they don’t risk acting
on their military training with their military
weapons when a crisis comes, since they don’t
have those things. This is similar to the reason
that the U.S. military should not, as Trump
says, train for its wars on U.S. cities, why the
so-called “National Guard” should not be going
uninvited into U.S. cities, even if it picks up
garbage or directs traffic. It’s not that we are
cowards in the face of garbage and traffic, but
that unarmed people can do those jobs better.
The automatic weapons get in the way. The
military training gets in the way even more.
Conflicts are provoked. Escalations are risked.
Horrible precedents are set. The rule of law is
damaged. And the war machine is supported.
Supporting
the war machine when there are alternatives to
doing so means gratuitously supporting the
single biggest impediment to global cooperation,
the single biggest waste of badly needed
resources, the single biggest destroyer of the
natural environment, the cause of the nuclear
threat, the justification for government secrecy
and surveillance, and
so on.
Would
it be better for a military to help some people
during a natural disaster rather than nothing?
Of course, but those are not the choices. We are
perfectly capable, here and now, of sending
people trained and equipped for natural
disasters, and not for foreign occupations, to
assist with a disaster while credibly committed
to leaving after they’re done and not taking
over or killing anybody while they’re there. In
fact, why wait for a disaster? Take 4 or 5
percent of military spending and provide the
globe with unprecedented assistance right away,
making the provider beloved rather than
resented.
Why
not thank our wonderful militaries for taking
the climate danger seriously? Well, the U.S.
Secretary of War this week told 800 generals to
deny the existence of any climate danger or be
tossed out on their oversized rears. But
Departments of “Defense” under good liberal
hypocritical leadership around the world are
a massive threat to the climate with no
ability to prevent or mitigate the damage
that non-military institutions cannot do
better.
I
won’t go on. You can read about the
case of Ukraine here.
My goal is merely to encourage thinking about
what total abolition actually involves.
In
that regard, there is an online
conference coming up on exploring
abolition
movements. Check
it out.
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