October 2, 2006

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

The Limits of Violence as a Political Tool

President Bush likes to present himself as the hard-nosed realist. Someone who knows that the only way to protect yourself or your nation from bullies and other violent enemies is to strike hard with overwhelming force. This led to the Bush Administration’s adoption of a policy of preventative or preemptive war. It also led to the establishment of secret prisons where those he considered enemies could be held indefinitely with no appeal while being subjected to humiliation, degradation, and outright torture. “Shock and awe” was to be the tool that Americans used to pursue their interests and convince people around the world to think like us and live like us.

Anyone who doubted the wisdom of this or objected was branded as “soft on terrorism,” unreliable, and unfit to govern if not outright disloyal.

That hard-nosed realism, however, has been bearing only bitter fruit so far. We invaded Afghanistan and quickly overthrew the Taliban rulers with the help of local warlords. Now we have many different petty tyrants ruling the countryside and raising a record crop of heroin poppies. Those that supported the Taliban or simply their local warlord are staging an increasingly sophisticated insurgency targeting NATO and American troops. And the country remains fractured, war torn, poverty ridden, and undemocratic.

Of course things are even worse in Iraq where sectarian violence is slowly leading to the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and regions. Members of the very Iraqi government we support are leading some of the most notorious death squads. The country seems to sliding inevitably into the break up envisioned in the constitution that was adopted last year. In the new Iraq, a Shi’a-dominated south allied with Iran, a Kurdish-dominated north dreaming of an autonomous country swallowing parts of Iran, Syria, and Turkey as well as Iraq, and a Sunni-dominated greater Baghdad, the role of democracy is anything but clear. What is clear is that the violence is continuing unchecked: one atrocity justifying another. The Americans are an occupying force that almost all of the warring parties attack. Our occupation of Iraq has become a magnet drawing violent anti-Americans into Iraq to join in the bloodshed.

Violence has a way of perpetuating itself. There is a magnetism to it drawing on primordial impulses to attack the “alien other.” All constructs of civilization unravel as blood lust and revenge burst loose and ordinary people find themselves enthusiastically doing brutal and degrading things. When the self-feeding violent rage finally stops, we are all appalled at what we did. We find our minds and souls damaged and our ideals mangled.

Bush’s national policy of organized violence built upon a major strengthening of the police powers of the federal government at home and the preemptive use of the military force abroad may not be the “realistic” approach to protecting this nation and its ideals it claims to be.

The efficacy and necessity of violence to change an evil world have been challenged by some of the most dramatic political changes over the last century. Consider the fall of the Soviet Union, the shift from apartheid to black majority rule in South Africa, and the success for the Civil Rights movement in the American South.

As Ronald Reagan famously commented, the Soviet Union was an “evil empire” that held its own people and many other nations in a smothering totalitarian bear hug. It had the second most powerful army in the world, a hideous secret police, and control of almost all of aspects of society. Yet with patience and resolve, the citizens of its eastern European satellites systematically began to resist in a nonviolent manner. They organized their own social, cultural, and economic outlets, slowly undermining the legitimacy of the occupying force and its puppets. The result, ultimately, was the collapse of the Soviet empire: Troops and police and government officials chose not to follow orders and use violence to quell the nonviolent revolution.

White South Africa also set up a totalitarian police state to allow the white ten percent to dominate the other ninety percent of the population. Patience and largely non-violent resistance ultimately overwhelmed a repressive regime that did not hesitate to use violence against its black population. Think of Nelson Mandela sitting in prison for 30 years.

Our civil war may have ended formal slavery in the United States, but the Southern states quickly adopted alternative arrangements so that they could continue to dominate African Americans. Blacks were blocked from voting and holding office. Their schools were appallingly inferior. Local law enforcement officers working with extra-legal groups such as the Klan used the violence of lynching to terrorize the Black population. Yet ultimately, a movement led by young southern Blacks was able to undermine a 300 year old Southern racial tradition, and they did it with conscious use of nonviolent tactics.

Our own recent history should teach us some lessons about how to support change, democratization and respect for our ideals around the world. Organized vicious violence on a scale aimed at “shock and awe” has been failing. Systematic and emphatic nonviolent resistance to tyrannical regimes has been working.