At the 9/11 crossroads--Bush's actions caused more damage--Let us commit to nonviolence

The country could respond to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an opportunistic manner defined by ignorance, raw emotion and political cowardice.

Or the country could respond with the seriousness that the incidents of Sept. 11, 2001, demanded.

George Bush chose the cavalier course. His refusal to stretch beyond his own weakness has cost the United States and the world dearly. Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants remain at large. The al-Qaida network remains in place. Terrorist recruitment is, by all accounts, on the rise, and international anger over administration policies makes the United States and Americans traveling abroad ever more vulnerable.

Iraq is experiencing a chaotic civil war. Afghanistan is degenerating toward a similar circumstance. Thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians lie dead, and the prospect for more death and more destruction is virtually guaranteed by the refusal of the president, the vice president and the secretary of defense to admit their errors and change course.

It would be easy on this day of the anniversary to feel almost as frustrated and hopeless as so many Americans did five years ago.

But that it not fair to those good Americans who perished needlessly on 9/11, or to their country. Because while the Bush administration chose the cavalier course, millions of Americans refused to do so.

As this fifth anniversary of their personal tragedy approached, the hundreds of spouses, siblings and parents of victims of the terrorist attacks issued a statement that is far more appropriate in its sentiments and wise in its proposals than any of the president's self-serving election season pronouncements.

"On September 11th, 2001, members of our families became civilian casualties of terrorism," the statement begins. "And while we grieved their loss, we were seized by the urgent desire to spare other families, in any part of the world, the suffering that we were experiencing."

The message from the families then recounts the cruel realities of the past five years for "immigrants and other people perceived to be terrorists, targeted by hate crimes and hateful legislation; those who suffered in terrorist attacks from Bali to Beslan; those killed in the train bombings in Madrid and London; and those in Afghanistan and Iraq who continue to suffer under occupation and the terror of war."

"Today," the families continue, "five years after September 11th, 2001, we see clearly that civilian casualties overwhelmingly have been the common denominator in all that has taken place. We see that the path we have taken has created a world that is less safe, less humane, and less likely to survive. Where we saw children in mortal danger from unexploded cluster bombs in Afghanistan, we now see children in mortal danger from cluster bombs in Lebanon. Where we saw the brutality and inhumanity of Saddam Hussein, we now see the same brutality and inhumanity occurring under U.S. occupation, in Fallujah, in Haditha, in Abu Ghraib ...

"In the days immediately following September 11th, the United States could have asked the world to do anything for us. The U.S. government has instead generated danger, fear, death, and profound grief. On the fifth anniversary of September 11th, 2001, we believe it is time for America to end the cycle of violence. It is time for the United States to become a positive force in world affairs."

On this anniversary, we reject the opportunistic course of George Bush. In its place, we embrace the wiser course along with the promise of those who not only lost the most but learned the most five years ago today.

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It was five years ago this morning when I walked into the newsroom to see the staff gathered in front of the television set that hangs from a wall in clear view of the city and copy desks.

A few minutes before, a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York. Everyone was assuming that it was a little private plane that had strayed off course. Since it was less than two hours before deadline, we immediately began making plans to tear up our original plan for Page A1, figuring that the plane had caused at least some damage to the tower and probably killed a few people unfortunate enough to be on the floors hit by the plane.

It was then that we watched in disbelief as a second plane - no small private Piper Cub, but a big, powerful commercial jet - slammed into the second tower.

I remember getting butterflies in my stomach as a few seconds later a report came in that yet another jetliner had hit the Pentagon and there was concern that other planes were headed for the nation's Capitol and even the White House.

What's happening? we all wondered. Was this the beginning of a new world war that was going to threaten all of us? Would it be long before whoever it was targeted Madison?

We worked feverishly that morning to make sense of it all and by the final home-delivered edition we were able to assemble a much clearer picture of what had happened - a group of terrorists had hijacked four commercial jets and unbelievably had crashed three of them into U.S. targets, killing several thousand innocent people. The fourth plane had crashed before it reached its target, at the time presumably because the passengers had been alerted to the plot and stormed the cockpit to overtake the hijackers.

For the next several days we added pages to the paper to chronicle the hundreds of stories that were flowing from that terrible day. Virtually everyone, Democrats and Republicans and everyone in between, rallied behind President Bush to answer the heinous attack. Soon we were in Afghanistan, where the terrorists were being trained and Osama bin Laden had found refuge. We quickly drove the Taliban from power, but bin Laden was able to escape, presumably to Pakistan, one of our allies.

Today, it's nearly as unbelievable as the events of Sept. 11 that the president and his cohorts some five years later have managed to squander all that good will and unity. Instead of bringing everyone together to fight a so-called war on terror, to find bin Laden and bring him and his henchmen to justice and to make our borders and trade routes safer, he decided to start a war against an unscrupulous dictator who, it turns out, had nothing to do with terror and Sept. 11, 2001.

Worse, the president continues to insist that Iraq represents the "fight against the terrorists," when it is serving to do just the opposite breeding more and more terrorists to make the world less safe. Meanwhile, the real battle against terror gets short shrift because the resources are being squandered on Iraq.

On this, the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, I can't help but wonder who has done more damage to the United States - the terrorists of that day or George W. Bush.

Dave Zweifel is the editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: dzweifel@madison.com Published: September 11, 2006

Today marks two major anniversaries whose legacies have had a profound effect upon the course of human events.

We live in a more fearful world with fewer freedoms, crushing debt and tens of thousands of innocent dead. The terrorists and their evil acts are not solely culpable; our nation's actions prior to and since that awful day are also to blame.

It all could have been averted had we heeded the lessons of that other 9/11 100 years ago.

It was on Sept. 11, 1906, that a London-trained lawyer living in South Africa convened a meeting in Johannesburg that sparked a massive resistance movement that eventually won the independence of his home country from its colonizers and rewrote the rules of revolution.

Mohandas K. Gandhi inspired his countrymen not only to resist the brutal and degrading treatment they were subject to at the hands of the British and others, he convinced them to do it nonviolently.

The word coined to describe Gandhi's methods was Satyagraha (literally: truth force). Although Gandhi used nonviolent direct action on a scale never before seen, he was not the first to articulate or apply it as a political force.

As Walter Wink, professor emeritus of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary, has written, "nonviolence was elaborated by Jainism and Buddhism, given political bite by Jews like the prophets and Jesus, (and) articulated by Christians like Saint Francis."

Sadly, the fundamental nonviolence of Christianity was greatly eroded in the 4th century when church leaders allowed the emperor Constantine to turn the church into an almost wholly owned subsidiary of the state.

Then St. Augustine, drawing heavily on Paul's letter to the Romans but very little on Jesus' own words and actions, penned what came to be known as his "just war theory." Centuries later, the state-ordered King James Bible made things worse by having Jesus say, in Matthew's gospel, "Resist not evil."

All of this set up a false choice for believers when it came to enemies, national or otherwise: Fight and kill them or do nothing.

Despite more accurate translations of Jesus' injunction in Matthew's Gospel (Wink points to the Scholar's Bible, which relies on the ancient Greek: "Don't react violently to the one who is evil"), many churches and states still cling to Augustine's views and the larger myth of redemptive violence, dismissing the third way of nonviolence as impractical in today's world.

But creative nonviolence, as Wink insists, is about the only thing that's ever worked, not just 2,000 or 100 years ago, but also in our time:

"In 1989-90 alone, 14 nations involving 1.7 billion people underwent nonviolent revolutions, all but one successfully (China). During the 20th century, 3.4 billion people were thus involved."

The sharp increase in terrorist attacks around the world since Sept. 11, 2001, shows that counter-violence is increasing, not decreasing. The number and ferocity of terrorists prove the contention of historian and religious scholar Karen Armstrong that religious extremists become even more extreme when attacked because it confirms their fears of being threatened.

That there have been no more attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 is due largely to increased domestic security and intelligence (and international cooperation) and not, as President Bush likes to assert, our military actions overseas.

War not only causes the conditions in which terrorists thrive, it spreads weapons that terrorists like Osama bin Laden can later use against us.

Native-led, strategic nonviolent resistance movements in places like Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan decades ago might have led to more just and stable governments in those countries and therefore far less terrorism around the world.

It is still within the realm of possibility that such movements could yet take root in and transform those countries. Just ask the people of South Africa, Serbia or Chile.

It is especially in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001, that we need to remember the lessons of Sept. 11, 1906. Teaching our children about the man and the movement that rekindled the truth force expressed in all the great spiritual paths is a good start, but we must also, as the Mahatma taught, be the change we wish to see in the world.

This starts by confronting the fears and myths dwelling in our own hearts and minds that diminish our sense of peace, and by resolving to work through our own conflicts nonviolently.

Logical next steps would be to elect and support leaders who wage peace, not war, and to press for the creation of a Department of Peace.

We also might support groups that embody the spirit of Satyagraha like the Nonviolent Peaceforce (www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org), which is carrying out Gandhi's dream of an unarmed, international peace army.

Doing these things also will honor, in the most meaningful way, the memory of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the ensuing attacks and wars.

Sept. 11, 2001, and Sept. 11, 1906, left us two very different legacies. Each can teach us valuable lessons.

Embracing the legacy of 9/11/06 may very well ensure our survival. We must remember both.

Rick Chamberlin is a writer and peace activist from Prairie du Sac. He works in the circulation department of Capital Newspapers. Published: September 11, 2006

Fighting Bob Fest gets progressive juices flowing
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=98327&ntpid=0
By Ellen Williams-Masson
Correspondent for The Capital Times
BARABOO - The nip of fall was in the air, but the flicker of hope fanned by the fifth annual Fighting Bob Fest on Saturday warmed progressive hearts yearning for social justice and government accountability.

Event organizers estimated that more than 5,000 people gathered for the daylong event, which trumpeted the fight for true democracy and economic fairness in the spirit of Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette.

La Follette, a Republican who represented Wisconsin as a congressman (1884-1890), governor (1901-1906) and U. S. senator (1905-1925), fought corruption and was a fierce champion of progressive reforms. "Mere passive citizenship is not enough." - "Fighting Bob" La Follette

Ed Garvey is the editor and publisher of FightingBob.com, an online journal that provides a progressive voice in the mainstream media.

Photo by Ellen Williams-Masson
Advocating government accountability, Senator Tom Harkin, D-IA, chastised Democrats for failing to support a resolution to censure President Bush during the 5th annual Fighting Bob Fest last Saturday in Baraboo.
View all 4 images in this gallery

"One of the most important things you can do in politics is to get people involved in the process, to turn off the cynicism and turn on the idea that there is hope," Garvey said.

A progressive activist and founding organizer of the Fighting Bob Fest, Garvey believes that inspiring people to participate in democracy is the key to change.

"So many people are disgusted with the two political parties, thinking that they are part of the same moneyed interests," he said. "Publicly financed campaigns would take care of virtually all these problems, because then third-party candidates would have a chance, and voters would have a choice."

"Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely." - La Follette

Saturday's program was packed with progressive heroes, including award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of the national radio and TV news program "Democracy Now!"

"Democracy Now!" plays locally on WORT/FM 89.9 and WYOU Channel 4. The Capital Times will begin carrying Goodman's new column, tentatively titled "Breaking the Sound Barrier," beginning Oct. 23.

In her speech Saturday to a packed grandstand, Goodman derided the "ascendancy of the oiligarchy" in the top echelons of power in American politics, citing the connections of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and others in the Bush administration to the oil industry.

"Is it any surprise that we are at war in Iraq?" she asked. "They are hungry for oil."

Goodman believes that it is up to the news media to provide a forum for individual voices so that majority opinion can be heard.

"In this high-tech digital age, what we get from the media is static - a veil of distortion, lies, omissions and half-truths that obscure reality," she said.

"We need a media that creates static. That is defined by the dictionary as 'criticism, opposition, unwanted interference.' We need a media that covers the movements that create static and make history."

"Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves." - La Follette

Gail Lamberty of Roxbury has personified La Follette's wife, Belle Case La Follette, as well as the spirit of the Fighting Bob Fest since the progressive rally's inception.

Dressed in period garb, Lamberty said she was honored to portray a woman who was a leader in the women's suffrage movement.

"It's most important to me to look at Bob and Belle as models of believing in the citizenship, because if there's a time that we ever needed people to take personal responsibility of democracy, it is now more than ever," she said.

Lamberty encouraged people to "get off your behind and do something" to take back control of democracy in the spirit of the La Follettes.

"Take that legacy and make it come alive," she said. "The most radical thing you can do is talk to your neighbor."

"If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another ... after the war is on." - La Follette

A young speaker from Milwaukee gave hope that the progressive torch will be carried by a new generation of Americans.

Fourteen-year-old Andrew Dunn-Bauman participated in the state tournament for middle school forensics last year with a speech titled "Back to the Progressive Future," in which he argued why he should be elected president on the Progressive Party ticket.

"I don't like the Republicans because they are the party of bad ideas, and the Democrats are the party of no ideas," he said after his speech. "It's time for a party of good ideas."

Chris Knief and his wife, Ann Durst, of Madison brought their young daughters to the Fighting Bob Fest in the hopes that "something might seep in" for Lucia and Rosa.

"Sometimes kids might resist your views if you do it too heavy-handedly," Knief said. "This is a great event, and it's nice to be around people who care in the same ways we do. I don't want to proselytize to my kids, but it's something that I want them to see that I care about."

"Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly." - La Follette

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, won standing ovations for his criticism of the Bush administration's "fear-mongering" and squandering of global support.

Stating that Americans have a "massive case of buyer's remorse" after re-electing President Bush, Harkin urged progressives to "provide some adult supervision" by electing a new Congress in November.

"Tell your friends and your neighbors that all they ever needed to know about this election this November, they learned in driver's education," he said. "If you want to go backward, you put it in R. If you want to go forward, you put it in D."

Published: September 11, 2006

Thanks for the post. I sent these geopolitical morons the following letter. A dollar to a donut they will NOT publish this letter:

I read your article on the Internet. I conclude that you either are totally ignorant of the history of the Munich Pact of 1938, or that you are aware of it but are lying to your readers.

If you have the honesty to publish this letter, this is for the benefit of your readers. Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Britain, believed that it was possible to "negotiate" with Adolf Hitler. He did so, and returned with the Munich Pact, which provided "peace for our times," as he announced.

A year later, Hitler invaded Poland, and WW II was on, in Europe. At least 50 million people died in that conflict, lives that might have been saved if Chamberlain had been ignored, in favor of Winston Churchill, who had been warning about the global dangers of Hitler, for years.

You at the Capital Times are deep into the same suicidal denial that animated Chamberlain, and led directly to tens of millions of dead Americans and Europeans.

I condemn your deadly ignorance.

John Armor, Esq.

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