[The following are just some ideas I was kicking around during the Bush administration. Pretty simplistic and fairly naive but still has some merit.]
Essay-IdiotsGuideWorldPeace
I’ve been thinking about writing a book called The Idiot’s Guide to World Peace. One basic premise is the “punch in the face” theory. If I walk up to someone and punch him or her in the face then his or her first instinct is to return the favor. America in terms of the CIA and military (as an arm of the government) goes around punching a lot of people in the face. This makes it more likely (not less as the Bush administration purports) that we will get punched. Here is the big idea- Stop punching people in the face! Stay home, staunch our bloody nose, get it reset, and start spreading the word.
Like “Hey, all you South Americans! What say we stop sending our spooks down there to show you how to be experts in the deadly art of face-punching and you stop punching each other in the face? Especially stop punching the poor ones who are too weak from lack of food to recover from the blows.”
We could go to Africa and stand between the punchers and the punches (seeing as we are big and strong) and repeatedly say “Hey! Cut that out!” This may seem simplistic but look at it this way. When the puncher keeps punching but not getting the expected result, he’s going to have to say “What the hell! This ain’t working. I’m gonna ask this bastard what’s up.” And, voila`, diplomatic talks have begun.
Now on to Iraq. Like it or not, we started that brawl. Those Iraqis had nothing to do with the deadly and most devastating punch in the face our nation has ever received. What the Iraqis did have is a very turbulent unfriendly regime that threatened America’s –shh!-oil interests. But, believe it or not, the answer to our problems was not to go punch those people in the face. Now, that whole nation is a continuous free-for-all of face punching and we are in more danger than we ever were!
Here is an alternative. We go to people and say “Hey, buddy, what’s wrong? What is really going on here?” Sometimes, the reaction will be, diplomatically speaking, a punch in the face followed by some instructions to mind our own business. We can react by saying “That is totally uncool and uncalled for but you know where to find us when you want to talk”. Then, we return home and ignore them until they are ready to stop being such jerks. This is, essentially, what we call “sanctions” or “I’m not sharing anything with you until you learn to play nice!”.
Yet, other times, when we employ this alternative approach with no threat of face punching in the offing, we may receive an honest reply such as “We’ve tried this and this and this but things are still really screwed up! Any ideas?” Here, we can begin with the “stop punching concept” and move forward from there.
I know all this seems very silly but it is deadly serious. Let’s take a look at all the things that fit into the broad category of face punching. The biggest and most obvious is out right war. When one nation or an alliance of nations occupies the territory of another nation, slaughtering so-called combatants and civilians indiscriminately, this engenders a level of violence that cannot be ignored and that is always met with more violence. It does not matter what cause or justification is assigned to the initial act of violence, the end result is always great suffering and death. Another form is civil war which can be linked to any number of causes. As we see in some parts of the world, this can lead to the virtual annihilation of whole cultures. Not just by death but through rape, degradation, and shattering of the homeland. Also, there is terrorism. We are currently in the grips of terror. When all feel that they are under constant threat of attack, the overall level of violence continues to escalate. We lash out indiscriminately, hoping to hit a target we cannot see and by this we further degrade any hope of security. A particularly vile form of face punching is torture. There are individuals all over the world who have been stripped of their human rights and are being subjected to unthinkable tortures in the name of national security. When anyone, anywhere can be treated with no human dignity then not a single man, woman, or child is secure.
These are what I consider to be the largest forms of face punching. Yet, as long as we live in such a climate of violence, we will become further anesthetized to the smaller forms that surround us every day: The school yard beatings, domestic abuse, molestation, rape, theft, and murder. We watch all these things on TV in one form or another and have begun to accept them as an unavoidable part of life. We cease to be shocked and horrified and become resigned. We must now learn, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Violence begets violence.”
