Living dangerously by advocating peace

In only 184 pages Mark Kurlansky’s latest book Non-violence, the history of a dangerous idea packs a mighty, well-researched account of war, peace and non-violence going back centuries. It includes the days of Jesus Christ and the beginnings of Islam right up to the current Iraq war.

An important theme is how war is usually fought by the poor on behalf of the rich. David Low Dodge, who founded the New York Peace Society in 1815, said “Very few … who are instigators of war actually take the field of battle … The great mass of soldiers are generally from the poor of a country [and] for a few cents per day endure all the hardships.”

In World War II, working class districts in England, Germany and Japan were deliberately bombed as a war strategy.

Today, in relation to the war in Iraq, “Every time a voice … of the privileged … who present television news [in America] is heard saluting ‘the courage of our fighting men and women’ … listen closely and you will hear the familiar strain from … Petr Chelcicky the 15th century Czech: the rich bamboozling the poor … The US all-volunteer army is nothing more than a draft of the poor, the disadvantaged, and the unemployed.”

The foreword is by the Dalai Lama who writes “it is important to acknowledge that non-violence does not mean the mere absence of violence ... The true expression of non-violence is compassion, which is not just a passive emotional response, but a rational stimulus to action”.

Mozi (China 470-391 BC) is quoted: “To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers … all recognise and yet when it comes to the greatest crime - waging war on another state - they praise it!

“If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it is white, it would be clear such a man could not distinguish black and white … So those who recognise a small crime as such, but do not recognise the wickedness of the greatest crime of all - the waging of war on another state - but actually praise it - cannot distinguish right and wrong.”

Jesus Christ rejected warfare and killing: “the Christians … became uncompromisingly dedicated to pacifism … For 284 years [they were] an antiwar cult”. The sixth of the Ten Commandments, "You shall not kill", doesn’t say “except in self-defence” nor “except when absolutely necessary”. The Old Testament is full of accounts of warfare and even justifications for them but “This does not change the fact that the central law states ‘no killing’.”

Islam - the root of the word is salam, peace - was founded by seventh century prophet Mohammed whose revelations about society were collected in the Koran. Central is the building of communities with a just distribution of wealth, and Mohammed’s attempt at a perfect society in Mecca “enforced a complete ban on violence”. During the hajj, the required pilgrimage to Mecca, the faithful Muslim was not allowed to carry weapons, even for hunting, or to commit any violence, including words spoken in anger.

Later, Mohammed gave permission to take up arms for those “who have been attacked because they have been wronged”, but he still taught war was a last resort and that God blessed those who took a non-violent path. Jihad originally meant “an internal struggle to become the perfect Muslim”, persuading unbelievers with argument and non-violent activism.

In 1258 Mongols invaded the Islamic cultural centre Baghdad where a young Sunni, Ibn Taymiyah, started writing works on Islamic law. To him jihad meant violent warfare and all fit males had a duty to fight. This is the man quoted by Osama bin Laden, according to Kurlansky.

“Most war-makers try to claim that theirs is a holy war, a just war, that God is on their side”. Images of the Middle Ages and the Crusades, still seen in movies, video games and toys “steep children at an early age in the culture of warfare and killing”. Kurlansky continues, “In 2001, when US President George W. Bush announced his ‘war on terror’, his words echoed the messages of Pope Urban II. He even used the word crusade … Urban’s famous speech had become the standard way to sell a war”.

A wealthy merchant in Lyons in 1170, Pierre Valdes, gave all his material wealth to poor people and persuaded others to do the same. The movement he started, the Waldensians, rejected all killing including capital punishment and refused all military service.

The Anabaptists in Europe had a long history of being persecuted because they refused to bear arms or declare oaths. Today few people swear an oath although young Americans are still required to pledge allegiance to the flag, “one of the first steps in conditioning young Americans for war”.

The Society of Friends, or Quakers, have been pacifists almost since their beginnings in mid-17th century England when they rejected both sides during civil war. They refused to take oaths, tip hats as a sign of respect even in the presence of the king, and to this day many do not use titles, even Mr and Mrs. They were closely linked with the Diggers, a short-lived egalitarian agricultural commune whose founder, Gerrard Winstanley, called war a plague: “Victory that is gotten by the sword is a victory that slaves get one over another.” War was seen to burden the working class, traditionally the source of antiwar sentiment.

Quakerism was exported to America in the shape of William Penn, after whom Pennsylvania was named, a colony that attracted people who denied the state its rights to war, colonial expansion, and slavery. Quakers controlled the Assembly and made rules favourable to non-violent sects. They ran their colony as though it were an independent state, adopted a foreign policy completely out of line with the British Empire, refused to conscript militias to fight the French, and would not fight native Indians, instead negotiating peaceful relations with them.

Kurlansky argues most schoolchildren today are given the impression the American Revolution was a relatively benign war but in truth it was a brutal conflict not only with combat casualties but with bitter feuds between civilians, homes sacked, children viciously targeted, women raped.

The “Founding Fathers” were “far from the most progressive thinkers of the day. Slavery was the most celebrated flaw but they also set the stage for the genocide of some ten million American Indians.”

In the 19th century there were wars between the Maori people of New Zealand and the pakeha, the white race. But a visionary Maori leader, Te Whiti, announced 1869 was to be “the Year of Trampling Underfoot”, meaning the time when those in power were to be humbled without use of force and there was to be a treaty between the pakeha and Maori, between equals. In spite of considerable provocation, Te Whiti insisted “If any man molests me, I will talk with my weapon - the tongue”. When they were attacked, Maoris often responded with song and dance. “Te Whiti and his movement are credited with stopping a war of genocide that would have meant the end of the Maori people … such leaders are rare.”

Denmark managed to stay out of the 1939-1945 European conflict knowing the people could not survive a shooting war, but they opposed German occupiers by other means. “It became a point of national honour to work slowly, delay transportation, destroy equipment, and, above all, to protect anyone the Germans pursued.” They sabotaged trains, went on strike, and when the Germans announced Jews would be deported the Danes hid almost the entire Jewish population of 6,500 and took them by boat to neutral Sweden.

Kurlansky’s section on the Allies’ neglect of Jews in Germany is not pleasant reading. “In recent years, formerly secret documents have been released that make it clear that the Allied governments and military forces were well aware of the genocide in progress and consciously chose not to interfere with it. The claim … that they didn’t know what was happening is simply not true”. Intelligence messages, spies, and escaped prisoners told what was occurring in Auschwitz extermination camp. Jewish organisations asked the Allies to bomb Auschwitz but were told “It is too far away”.

The bombing of civilians in cities in the UK and Germany reads as if the authorities were involved in a football match with the aim to score more civilian deaths than the other side.

Then there was the unleashing of an atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 followed by one on Nagasaki three days later even though “Japan had been ready to surrender before the attacks”. Civilians were the target and in the two cities 100,000 people were killed. The big question is: even if the first bomb was thought necessary to bring an end to the war, why was the second used?

Kurlansky: “atomic energy had been mastered for military purposes and the overwhelming scale of its possibilities had been demonstrated.” Perhaps another way to say it is the Japanese people were used as guinea pigs. “Or perhaps [General, later President] Eisenhower had it right when he observed that once you start the business of killing, you get ‘deeper and deeper’.”

On to the Vietnam War, a particularly painful time for many ex-soldiers still alive in USA and Australia, a war opposed by many civilians, and indeed by many who fought there and later threw their medals away.

Kurlansky: “Since the close of the 20th century it has become commonplace to refer to it as the most catastrophically bloody century in history … In World War I, one-fifth of casualties were civilian … in World War II it went up to two thirds. In 21st century warfare, such as in Iraq, the casualties may be as high as 90 per cent civilian.”

In October 2002 the US Congress voted to give President Bush the authority to attack Iraq because it was building “weapons of mass destruction”. Kurlansky comments “It is a peculiarly accepted notion that the United States, the only country ruthless enough ever to have used atomic weapons - and used them against a civilian population - should be trusted with a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction. But worse, the claim of Iraqi weapons was a blatant lie contradicted by the United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, among many other reliable sources.”

Since Kurlansky’s book was published Bush has announced he wants to send 22,000 more American young people to Iraq. He argues his purpose is to bring democracy to Iraq, although he is flouting democracy in his own country with an Administration not democratically elected but chosen by the president, and the Iraq war is opposed by a majority of the people and in Congress. Bush, like UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and Australian PM John Howard, claims to be Christian but obviously rejects the church’s traditional teaching on non-violence.

Already hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, American and other civilians and military have been killed or severely injured, plus homes, businesses, schools and hospitals destroyed since the US Coalition invaded the country in March 2003. Of the 3,000 US troops killed 76 per cent were under the age of 30 years. Bush says “their sacrifice has not been made in vain”. On location in Baghdad, veteran reporter John Burns of the New York Times asks “What is being fought for in Iraq?”

Kurlansky’s book raises another question in the mind of the reader. Would Bush, Howard and Blair continue the war in Iraq if their own children, other family members, friends in their social class, and families of government members were required to risk death in this distant war?

The 20th century was the bloodiest century in history. However, Kurlansky points out it was also the greatest century for non-violent action. This started with “a peculiar man in India”, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, once described by Winston Churchill as “this one-time Inner temple lawyer, now seditious fakir, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceroy’s palace, there to negotiate and to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor”.

At the end of his book Kurlansky has The Twenty-five Lessons. These include:

Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.
Practitioners of non-violence are seen as enemies of the state.
Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.
A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
People who go to war start to resemble the enemy.
If the violent side can provoke the non-violent side into violence the violent side has won.
The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes.
Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all-volunteer professional military.
Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper”, without limits.
Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.
The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.