It all felt
wild and uncontained, like on the playground. I was the outsider kid,
wrong jacket, wrong hat. Or maybe I just stepped out of my car at the
wrong time. With a whoop they were on me, surrounding me, laughing.
What great fun.
"What is seen with one eye has no depth."
I'm thinking, as I ponder the wisdom of Ursula LeGuin, that American culture is at the end of what it can accomplish with its single-eyed vision. For all our material progress, for all our ability to dominate just about anything or anyone we encounter -- this is our history, our manifest destiny -- things are falling apart in every sector of society.
When the Nobel Committee awarded its annual peace prize to President Barack Obama, it afforded him a golden opportunity seldom offered to American war presidents: the possibility of success. Should he decide to go the peace-maker route, Obama stands a chance of really accomplishing something significant. On the other hand, history suggests that the path of war is a surefire loser. As president after president has discovered, especially since World War II, the U.S.
“We must pursue peace
through peaceful means… in the final analysis, means and ends must
cohere.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.; The Trumpet
of Conscience
“I learned to slip back
and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each
possessed its own… structures of meaning, convinced that with a bit
of translation on my part the two worlds would eventually cohere.”
Barack Obama; Dreams
from My Father
As we demonstrated at the White House last Monday calling for an end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, we could hardly have imagined President Barack Obama would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize four days later.
While the award came as a surprise, it is somewhat understandable. We have met and conversed with peace activists from around the world over the last year, and we've observed a palpable, nearly desperate, universal hunger (obviously shared by the Nobel Committee) for a more peaceful, less militaristic U.S. foreign policy.
I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize.
Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry
Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes.
While waiting to be processed
at the Anacostia Park Police Station, I was drawn to a mounted post-9/11,
Bush-era FBI reward poster. "The Cost of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance",
propagated the sign. The unrestrained madness is as prevalent today
as it was eight years ago: Obama is continuing Bush's war folly.
Duelling was once regarded as an entirely appropriate way for two gentlemen to resolve a dispute.
Today, a gentleman challenging another to a duel would be regarded as peculiar. Duels have become obsolete in the civilized world.
Could war also become an outdated method of conflict resolution – particularly as we enter an era of intensified global conflict over dwindling resources?
MADRID - Activists from many nations will set out from New Zealand Saturday on a march for peace and non-violence that will cover more than 90 countries on five continents, winding up on Jan. 2 at the foot of Mount Aconcagua, in western Argentina.
The coordinator of the march activities in Spain, José Manuel Muñoz Felipe, told IPS celebrations were held simultaneously Friday in more than 300 cities in about 100 countries, "calling for nuclear disarmament, an end to war and the elimination of all forms of violence, whatever pretext or argument is used to justify it."
