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Lefties in the Army, A Peacemaker in the White House?
an article by Ron Kraybill
It's the last thing you'd expect from this
administration: Pentagon spokesmen announcing Directive 3000.05 from
the Department of Defense. Henceforth, the making of peace, it seems,
holds equal footing with the making of war. It is now official policy
that "stability operations are a core U.S. military mission" that
"shall be given priority equal to combat operations..."
Stability operations in DoD's words, are "military and
civilian activities conducted across the spectrum from peace to
conflict to establish or maintain order.." Their goal, says DoD, "is to
provide the local population with security, restore essential services,
and meet humanitarian needs", thus helping to "develop indigenous
capacity for securing essential services, a viable market economy, rule
of law, democratic institutions, and a robust civil society."
It gets more interesting. On December 7, President Bush gave
Condoleezza Rice a new role: developing strategies for stabilization
and reconstruction in conflicted countries. This will include leading
interagency planning "to prevent or mitigate conflict", and developing
"detailed contingency plans for integrated U.S. reconstruction and
stabilization" in conflicted areas. It will also include leading
"development of a strong civilian response capability" in hot spots.
What, lefties in the Army? A peacemaker in the White House? We
witness here learnings from the school of hard reality, the results of
deadly encounter with the limits of force as a tool for security. For
well over a year, American military on the ground in Iraq have been
reporting that success there requires more than destroying insurgents.
"As long as there's no water, or clinics, or jobs, we've got no chance
of winning this war," in the words of an Army officer fresh out of
Afghanistan and Iraq. These painful lessons are finally filtering up to
the level of policy.
Might hard reality help Americans to re-examine how to do
national defense? When I write about why the invasion of Iraq damges
our security on the longterm I get a common response: "Face up to the
reality that there is evil in the world! Someone has to destroy the bad
guys!" The reasoning is simple: 1) There is evil in the world; 2) Good
cannot succeed in the presence of evil; 3) Therefore to be safe and do
good we must destroy evil.
Yes, there is evil in the world. Yes, evil endangers good. But
we destroy evil by destroying those who do evil? Not so fast. That may
have been true in a time when wars were fought on battlefields, when
enemies could be slaughtered and left behind in far away places. But
those days are gone. Today enemies blend into civilian populaces and
travel the globe. Cheap access to compact, powerful weapons mean that
hatred we plant anywhere on earth may well follow us home.
To defeat the evil we face today we need to understand how it
spreads. Those who commit evil acts against us are the extreme wing of
a group of ordinary and decent people. The car bombers of Iraq are a
small minority who have chosen barbaric means to accomplish something
that patriots in every country want: the removal of heavily armed
foreigners, who bring cultural and religious values different from
those of many Iraqis, and whose real purpose for the invasion is, they
believe, for the foreigners' benefit.
Here's the rub: The doers of evil in Iraq are embedded in a
larger society. Many share their concerns even while rejecting their
means. Thus every move on our part to destroy evil people gravely
injures good people and stirs hatred against us. The more actively we
campaign to destroy, the faster evil grows.
The alternative? Don't fight fire with fire. Fight fire with
water. Don't destroy evil with evil, overcome it with good. When people
all over the world know America makes their lives better, in terms of
clean water, health, education, jobs, and a say in their own future,
the appeal of terrorists will be limited. We cannot make ourselves
invulnerable to those who hate, but sensible defensive measures can
limit the damage they can cause. And if we are creative, determined and
generous, we make it difficult for their hatred to spread to others.
The good will of our global neighbors will bring us more security in
the long run than all the guns and bombs we could ever accumulate.
There is reason for skepticism about the directives of Bush
and the DoD. But for now we might applaud two moves in the right
direction - and encourage more like them.
Click here for a quick overview of ideas for true security.
This may be reproduced if reproductions contain the following: Copyright Ron Kraybill 2005.
Note: For more essays by the author go to www.RiverhouseEpress.com,
a web source of booklets and edocs on peace including a blog and essays
on alternative security, a conflict style inventory and tools for
dialogue and group facilitation. Subscribe to Paxserve
(listmgr@emu.edu), a listserve that distributes essays on conflict
resolution and alternative security by Kraybill.
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