Appeasement? Conservatives (Republicans and Democrats?) appeased Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Ladin, not to mention all the other thugs around the world. We sell the arms. That's appeasement that's worse than Neville Chamberlin, not that the U.S. didn't arm Hitler. The problem with US war mongering is that it has so often been cowardly appeasement. Then we get tough on the wrong folks, the good guys who are pro democracy! Then we get blowback. Then we go out and appease more thugs. We turn Afghanistan over to the war lords that do the real fighting. They commit mass murder and bury the victims in mass graves. Appeasement. Sheer cowardice.

Ok commenters? Which of you support this appeasement? Only those bashing Chamberlain? Fess up. If the shoe fits, wear it.

On the other hand, Nonviolence is what, peaceable confrontation, organizing, negotiation (MLKing). There's plenty of bad nonviolence in the US, judging from what I've seen. A Des Moines group that has been cited at Common Dreams gets arrested but has no systematic plan of action to influence those with the power to decide on issues. They've given up on that. They get arrested but don't ask the PIP (person in power) to do anything. It's just symbolic dramatization.

To me, that doesn't count, because it's not real organizing. Real organizers, well, most or many good ones, are persons-of-action, not philosophers, until they get arrested. ML King may be an exception, but his Letter from Birmingham Jail is must reading for teaching pragmatic nonviolence. I think this crowd could use a dose of Shel Trapp, a master organizer who focused directly on getting the job done. Me too, my weakness is too much philosophizing and not enough pragmatics, but I've had pragmatic man-of-action mentors. Thus I make comments like these. But take note: the real organizers aren't commenting, they're out organizing. And that's the direction I'm heading, back out.

Many of Chomsky's books have Q & A where people ask what to do. Cynthia Peters did an article on this back in 2004 called "Talking Back to Chomsky." I have a zspace blog on it supporting Peters. People don't know what do do when told "no" by the PIP or what to do in response to dirty tricks or greater power. There are great answers out there if you know where to look.

I recommend a pragmatic, well planned group approach based upon Dynamics of Organizing and Basics of Organizing (both online) by Shel Trapp, very simple and pragmatic, and the work of Roger Fisher and others at the Harvard Negotiation Project. Fisher has a great diagram of how to take action in International Conflict for Beginners, and excellent answers. It's packed. Use worksheets from Beyond Machiavelli and Coping with International Conflict such as "Currently Perceived Choice" and "Target Future Choice." Also there's the workbook to accompany Getting to Yes called Getting Ready. (I have the full list of worksheets from these books on computer, as spreadsheets.) His International Mediation has 65 action strategies and I find it useful for dissecting and countering the professionals (ie. congressional staff, they shut people off for a living).

Fisher opposed both the weaknesses of war mongering and those of conventional diplomacy, and, of course, those of appeasement.

I used to buy the Neville Chamberlin argument against appeasement. However it must be remembered that the Allied Powers imposed a punishing peace on Germany that made conditions ripe for Hitler to come into power. The Allies had themselves to thank for the rise of National Socialism. Many of Germany's industries were forced out of existence by trade bans and embargos after the Treaty of Versailles. Ethnic German territories were removed from the Reich. Those conditions plus inflation and the unemployment that resulted in a power vacuum, and uncompensated veterans led Germany close to civil war. Did a similar situation occur with Germany after WWII when the Marshall Plan was utilized? It can probably be argued that altruism was not the motivator but rather it was the Cold War that induced the birth of the Marshall Plan. The possibility of nuclear holocaust may even account for the Cold Peace that followed. At that time we didn't have the element of religious fanatacism driving the process like we do today. I refer to fanatacism from all sides. OK, maybe a bit of christians vs. atheists after WWII but not to the extent we see today in the major religions facing each other in what may eventually be a nuclear showdown. Let's talk and negotiate. Enough of posturing and veiled and not so veiled threats. Shalom, baby.

The nonviolent communication process, developed by Marshall Rosenberg is not easy to implement into everyday language, but is an undeniably powerful tool.
I find it useful in difficult, complex situations, especially when other people are involved - just to find what the best analysis might be. It's not always easy to see what other's (or your own) needs/values are when there is the natural conditioned tendency of coercion/counterattack through guilt, shame, etc.

--------------------

http://www.cnvc.org/

Imagine connecting with the human spirit, in each person, in any situation.

Imagine interacting with others in a way that allows everyone’s needs to be equally valued.

Imagine creating organizations and life-serving systems responsive to our needs and the needs of our environment.

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps connect us with what is alive in ourselves and in others moment-to-moment, with what we or others could do to make life more wonderful, and with an awareness of what gets in the way of natural giving and receiving.

NVC language strengthens our ability to inspire compassion from others and respond compassionately to others and ourselves. NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves, how we hear others and resolve conflicts by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.

Nonviolent Communication Language: It awakens empathy and honesty, and is sometimes described as "the language of the heart."

http://www.nonviolentcommunication.com/

Why is "pacifism is considered fringe and dangerous"?

Answer: Neville Chamberlain.

I speak for myself as one, and I believe we are all a recovering violent people. We have in the last 40 years come to the mind-numbing realization that violence is a useless strategy for resolving conflict in a media-shrunken world, that communication IS. The fear of abandonment underlies our rules to not talk, not trust, and not feel, which are ways of keeping ourselves numb. Those rules, in turn, create the most violent forms of self-abuse and other-abuse we know.

We are just beginning to grasp the true meaning of non-violence. We are at war with ourselves, we are deathly ill with interpersonal and systemic violence inflicted on ourselves. Our vain attempts to be secure have left us exhausted, empty of resources, and questioning. The time is ripe for genuine weeping, empathy for ourselves and others, and a radical shift in our strategies for achieving security, health, and growth. Rugged individualism has lost its virtue. Compassionate communication is the more believable, trustworthy focus of our efforts.

The evolution of humanity demands that we take a develop a state of mind in which relationships define us, and we are no longer materialistic individualists.  We are on the cusp of the touted "paradigm shift," and I am excited to be alive and part of this piece of history.  The revolution, the nonviolence revolution, in my opinion, has already occurred, and most people haven't seen it coming.  This time, there will be no blood.  I think the military-industrial complex will simply dry up and blow away, useless and unwanted.  Tears will be shed, many tears of regret, many tears of joy.

Just as the construction of an atomic bomb became inevitable when the knowledge and technique of doing so became available, so also will war become obsolete because the knowledge and technique for doing so is available. Conflict resolution and peace-building courses of study are now available in over 450 colleges and universities, which was not true 40 years ago.

I see that we are entering an upward spiral of knowledge and abilities that will establish a Department of Peace and will promote, worldwide, the healthy growth and development of children; prosperity and safety for adults; as well as cooperative learning and problem-solving. Such genius will flower that sometime in the future as we look back at the state of humanity that we are in now, it will seem as if we were like the dodo, and we will wonder why and how we were saved from extinction.

But WHY is it that both in the mainstream (corporate) media and in popular culture, pacifism is considered fringe and dangerous, while endless wars are considered normal and endlessly justified? On the face of it, the idea that two groups in conflict might best resolve the issue by having the young men of each group go out and try to kill each other, until one can't take it any more and the other wins--surely that's the craziest possible suggestion for how to resolve conflicts. Yet it's considered normal--by virtually every society. And people talk about the latest war as though it were something that happened to them, rather than something sought to keep the war machine going. And of course, my phrase "two groups in conflict" ignores the reality of modern wars like Iraq--the Iraqis had no conflcit with us, the war was not a means of resolving a disagreement between two peoples. No, it was an occupation of a nation with one of the richest reserves of oil remaining, by the nation that uses the most and has the biggest military. Everybody understands this, but Americans have a kind of schizophrenic thinking, where they pretend, even to themselves, to believe the horseshit advanced as a cover for old fashioned plunder.
What about violence that isn't war--revolutionary violence, such as we might use to rid ourselves of the parasites sucking our treasury dry and sending our young men to one war after another? I have great respect for Derrick Jensen and Ward Churchill, but I disagree about this. Violence is very useful as a tool of oppression, but it doesn't work well for liberation. Two reasonsL one should also choose the weapons to advantage one;s own side, and in a revolutionary struggle the other side has the guns so one should choose something other than weapons as weapons--like ideas, words, public opinion. And secondly, while violence may well achieve goals such as conquest, domination, seizure of territory and plunder, or intimidation, it can't possibly achieve goals such as harmony, justice, equality, democracy. Could you rape someone and achieve greater equality and justice? Imprison people and increase liberation? It's a contradiction in terms.

"When was the last time you saw a recruitment poster or television spot with the message, "Join the Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines to kill and be killed!"? All our images of war are sanitized, and validated by war's false positive associations with hearth, home, freedom. (The only freedoms war allows are the freedoms to fear, to frighten, to kill, to maim and to destroy the hearths and homes of others.)"

What about Afghanistan? Should we just give up on finding the man who attacked us on 911? OBL gets a free pass? What about if he attacks again? I would argue that war is necessary to keep Afghanistan from turning into a safe haven for terrorist. What Obama understands is that war itself is not wrong, there are good wars (Gulf War I) and "dumb" wars (Gulf War II). What is important is that when we put our troops in harm's way they need to be fully supported. Obama rightly points out that by focusing too much on Iraq, we have neglected Afghanistan and Pakistan where the real "War on Terror" should be fought.

You know, I doubt the author would have the courage to say that to the face of an Iraq war veteran. These armchair pacifists are growing tiresome. What have they sacrificed? What gives them the right to slander those who would die for their freedom?

I know we are all angry about war. But please point that anger where it belongs. Not against the troops or Obama, but against the Republicans who caused this war.

To the Barricades !!!!!!!!!

But arm yourselves with flowers - if you think about it - they are much more deadly than bullets in producing change.

But I could be wrong !

Amen brother! I was just citing the glaring absence of peace education in our culture as the hegemony of a sick nation.

The entire right wing and increasingly the left wing, not just Rush Limbaugh's 10 million faithful, constantly blast the "liberal drive-bys" for presenting a one-sided "pro-gay" or "pro-environmental" argument, but where is this ideal balance on an issue as fundamental to morality as violence versus nonviolence?

The military sets up daily recruitment stations in high scools all across the US, but if Stonewall (gays) ever tried to recruit in the high schools, there would be riots from coast to coast!

The pro-war "wackos" have military-sponsored TV shows and movies on every TV, primetime commercials, military-sponsored video games for the kids, toy guns at Christmas (Prince of Peace?), both parties in a "two party system" are strongly pro-war, the US Taxpayers' dollars are being consumed by the DOD at a rate of two million dollars per minute, every minute of the year with the full support of the press (military industrial complex) , and we are supposed to believe that the media is liberal?

WTF?!

If the US Government spent 2 million dollars per minute on Gay rights and fighting racism and protecting the environment, if there were only a few politicians in congress who were pro-war(and the media ignored them), if cultural anthropology and philosophy became core classes required to graduate, and if the DOD had to have a bake sale to buy a bomber then maybe the liberals would be having their way, but until then we have a lot of work to do.

Peace

If there is no action on the part of the citizenry, there will be no change.

To many powerful interests are invested in keeping things the way they are.

There have been people committed to nonviolence in the US for a long time. Howard Zinn discusses it in "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" and has been arrested himself during nonviolent civil disobedience. There are degrees, I think, of people who use civil disobedience as part of their protest per event, such as Granny Peace Brigade.

I'm going to suggest that people give Derrick Jensen a listen before subscribing to this same old tired sermon of "nonviolence": http://essentialdissent.blogspot.com/search?q=derrick+jensen

Between 1962 and 1964, the Kennedy & then the Johnson administration had come to realize that the threat of violence from the right was an assault on democratic order in toto; and that without civil rights legislation nationally, the non-violent would turn to violence. Even those of us who were only children at the time recall that there was an ever-increasing sense that the nation was going to be engulfed in civil war. White voters turned to increasingly repressive tactics in 1968 & '72 to protect them after Martin was murdered.

As ever, Ward Churchill's "Pacifism as Pathology" remains a necessary text for all those who wish to engage in nonviolent actions.

Until the American public wakes up and realize they have been conned and fooled by their own government and the top priority of the military is to support not the average American, freedom,and Democracy but its nihilistic policies where only money and power are of value; nothing will change. When the whore media and the government says support the troops, that is the biggest lie and con and what that means to me is: support the government policy of having our troops being killed and maimed for our hegemony.