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March 20, 2002
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
March
19, 2002
Tariq
Ali
Nuke
Iraq?
Phyllis
Pollack
Roger
Daltrey's LA Surprise
Amir Amahdi
War-Mongering
Academics:
The New Tartuffe
Ben White
Bomber
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Fran Shor
Child-Murderers
and Madmen
March
18, 2002
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Crazy
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DeskScan:
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Khanbabyan
The
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Georgia Is Only the Beginning
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Ash
Abdullah
v. Osama
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Weiner
Middle
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Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
Chris
Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
Paul-Marie
de La Gorce
Making
Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
Danny Pearl
Francis
Boyle
Bush
Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
Wayne
Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
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of Freedom, Sir
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Anthrax
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March
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Amira
Hass
Are
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Arabs
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Alexander
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When
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March
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Kay Lee
Dangerous
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John Patrick
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The
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Wole Akande
US
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in the Eyes of Africa
March
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Hani Shukrallah
This
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Tommy
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Bush's
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The Great
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Bush v. Putin
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10
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Footprints
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March 20, 2002
Cluster
Bombs and Political Action
The Politics of Pain and Pleasure
By Robert Jensen
In most situations, people tend to seek pleasure
and avoid pain, which generally makes sense.
I want to suggest that at this moment
in history, U.S. citizens need to invert that. If we want to
become human beings in the fullest sense of the term, if we want
to be something more than comfortable citizens of the empire,
if we want to be something more than just Americans -- then we
have to start seeking pain and reducing pleasure.
By that I don't mean we must become masochists
who live in denial of the joy of being alive. Rather, I mean
that to be fully alive we must stop turning
away from a certain kind of pain and begin questioning a certain
kind of pleasure. I mean this quite literally, and with a sense
of urgency; I think the survival of the species and the planet
depends on Americans becoming pain-seeking and pleasure-reducing
folks.
Let me begin to explain what I mean by
describing two conversations I had with students recently. One
young woman came to my office the day after we had watched a
video documentary in class about the Gulf War and its devastatingly
brutal effects -- immediate and lingering -- on the people of
Iraq. The student also is active in the movement to support the
Palestinian freedom struggle, and the day she came to see me
came during a period in which Israeli attacks on Palestinians
were intensifying.
We talked for some time about a number
of political topics, but the conversation kept coming back to
one main point: She hurt. As she was learning more about the
suffering of others around the world, she felt that pain. What
does one do about such a feeling, knowing that one's own government
is either responsible for, or complicit in, so much of it? How
does one stop feeling that pain, she asked.
I asked her to think about whether she
really wanted to wipe that feeling out of her life. Surely you
know people, perhaps fellow students, who don't seem to feel
that pain, who ignore all that suffering, I told her. Do you
want to become like them? No matter how much it hurts, I said,
would you rather not feel at all? Would you rather be willfully
ignorant about what is happening?
I could see the tears welling in her
eyes. She cried. We talked some more. I cried. She left my office,
not feeling better in any simplistic sense. But I hope she left
at least with a sense that she was not alone and did not have
to feel like a freak for feeling so much, so deeply.
A couple of hours later another student
who had been in a class of mine the previous semester came by.
After dealing with the classroom issue she wanted to address,
we were talking more generally about her interests in scientific
research and the politics of funding research. I made the obvious
point that profit-potential had a lot to do with what kind of
research gets done. Certainly the comparative levels of research-and-development
money that went, for example, to Viagra compared with money for
drugs to combat new strains of TB tells us something about the
values of our society, I suggested.
The student agreed, but raised another
issue. Given the overpopulation problem, she said, would it really
be a good thing to spend lots of resources on developing those
drugs?
About halfway through her sentence I
knew where she was heading, though I didn't want to believe it.
This very bright student wanted to discuss whether or not it
made sense to put resources into life-saving drugs for poor people
in the Third World, given that there are arguably too many people
on the planet already.
I contained my anger, somewhat, and told
the student that when she was ready to sacrifice members of her
own family to help solve the global population problem, then
I would listen to her argument. In fact, given the outrageous
levels of consumption of the middle and uppers classes in the
United States, I said, one could argue that large-scale death
in the American suburbs would be far more beneficial in solving
the population problem; a single U.S. family is more of a burden
ecologically on the planet than a hundred Indian peasants. "If
you would be willing to let an epidemic sweep through your hometown
and kill large numbers of people without trying to stop it, for
the good of the planet, then I'll listen to you," I said.
The student left shortly after that.
Based on her reaction, I suspect I made her feel bad. I am glad
for that. I wanted to make her feel bad. I wanted her to see
that the assumption behind her comment -- that the lives of people
who look like her are more valuable than the lives of the poor
and vulnerable in other parts of the world -- is ethnocentric,
racist, and barbaric. That assumption is the product of an arrogant
and inhumane society. I wanted her to think about why she lived
in a world in which the pain of others is so routinely ignored.
I wanted her to feel what, for most of her life, she has been
able to turn away from.
I do not want to overestimate the power
of empathy to change the world. But without empathy, without
the ability to move outside our own experience, there is no hope
of changing the world. Andrea Dworkin, one of the great feminist
thinkers of our time, has written, "The victims of any systematized
brutality are discounted because others cannot bear to see, identify,
or articulate the pain." [Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The
Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant (New York: Basic Books,
2002), p. 193.] It is long past the time for all of us to start
to see, to identify, to articulate the pain of systematized brutality.
It is time to recognize that much of that pain is the result
of a system designed to ensure our pleasures.
The pain
of cluster bombs
It is my experience that people can feel
empathy for the pain of others in certain situations, such as
the pain of a loved one or friend, or in certain cases the suffering
of people far away who are hit by a natural disaster or cruel
twist of fate. But the key in Dworkin's insight is "systematized
brutality." Empathy seems less forthcoming for those victims,
especially when it is one's own government or society or culture
that is systematizing the brutality.
When that pain is caused by our government,
we are channeled away from that empathy. The way we are educated
and entertained keeps us from knowing about or understanding
the pain of others in other parts of the world, and from understanding
how our pleasure is connected to that pain of others. It is a
combined intellectual, emotional, and moral failure -- a failure
to know and to feel and to act.
Let's take a simple example, the CBU-87,
also known as the cluster bomb, which is a part of the U.S. arsenal.
It is a bomb that U.S. pilots drop from U.S. planes paid for
by U.S. tax dollars.
Each cluster bomb contains 202 individual
submunitions, called bomblets (BLU-97/B). The CBU-87s are formally
known as Combined Effects Munitions (CEM) because each bomblet
has an antitank and antipersonnel effect, as well as an incendiary
capability. The bomblets from each CBU-87 are typically distributed
over an area roughly 100 x 50 meters, though the exact landing
area of the bomblets is difficult to control.
As the soda can-sized bomblets fall,
a spring pushes out a nylon "parachute" (called the
decelerator), which inflates and then stabilizes and arms the
<bomblet.The> BLU-97 is packed in a steel case with an
incendiary zirconium ring. The case is made of scored steel designed
to break into approximately 300 preformed thirty-grain fragments
upon detonation of the internal explosive. The fragments then
travel at extremely high speeds in all directions. This is the
primary antipersonnel effect of the weapon. Antipersonnel means
that the steel shards will shred anyone in the vicinity.
The primary anti-armor effect comes from
a molten copper slug. If the bomblet has been properly oriented,
the downward-firing charge travels at 2,570 feet per second and
is able to penetrate most armored vehicles. The zirconium ring
spreads small incendiary fragments. The charge has the ability
to penetrate 5 inches of armor on contact. The tiny steel case
fragments are also powerful enough to damage light armor and
trucks at 50 feet, and to cause human injury at 500 feet. The
incendiary ring can start fires in any combustible environment.
Human Rights Watch, the source for this
description of a cluster bomb, has called for a global moratorium
on use of cluster bombs because they cause unacceptable civilian
casualties. Those casualties come partly in combat, because the
munitions have a wide dispersal pattern and cannot be targeted
precisely, making them especially dangerous when used near civilian
areas.
Even more deadly is the way in which
cluster bombs don't work. The official initial failure-to-explode
rate for the bomblets is 5 to 7 percent, though some demining
workers estimate up to 20 percent do not explode. That means
in each cluster bomb from 10 to 40 of the bomblets fail to explode
on contact as intended, becoming landmines that can be set off
by a simple touch. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than
1,600 Kuwaiti and Iraqi civilians have been killed, and another
2,500 injured, by the estimated 1.2 million cluster bomb duds
left following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. For decades after the
Vietnam War, reports came in of children and farmers setting
off bomblets. The weapons were also used in the NATO attack on
Serbia.
What does that mean in real terms? It
means that Abdul Naim's father is dead. The family's fields in
the village of Rabat, a half hour from Herat in western Afghanistan,
were sown with cluster bombs, some of the 1,150 reportedly used
in Afghanistan. Some of the farmers tried to clear their fields;
some of them died trying. Out of desperation, Naim said his father
finally decided to take the chance. Using a shovel, the farmer
cast three bomblets aside successfully. The fourth exploded.
The shrapnel caught him in the throat. [Suzanne Goldenberg, "Long
after the air raids, bomblets bring more death," Guardian
(UK), January 28, 2002, p. 12.]
Or consider this testimony from a 13-year-old
boy in Kosovo: "I went with my cousins to see the place
where NATO bombed. As we walked I saw something yellow -- someone
told us it was a cluster bomb. One of us took it and put it into
a well. Nothing happened... We began talking about taking the
bomb to play with and then I just put it somewhere and it exploded.
The boy near me died and I was thrown a meter into the air. The
boy who died was 14 -- he had his head cut off." The 13-year-old
lived, but with both his legs amputated. [Richard Norton-Taylor,
"Cluster Bombs: The Hidden Toll," Manchester Guardian
(UK), August 2, 2000.] When one brings up these unpleasant facts,
a common response is that war is hell, that in war "people
die and things get broken." In this case, 14-year-olds die
and 13-year-olds get broken. We are supposed to brush that aside.
We are not supposed to feel. Dead and broken. Such is war. Such
is life during wartime. While it is true that, as Gulf War era
Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams put it, "There's no nice
way to kill somebody in a war," it is also true that there
are ways to fight a war without cluster bombs.
Let us remind ourselves at this point
that one of the central concepts in international law, in the
law of warfare, is that civilians shall not be targeted. That
means not only a prohibition against the intentional killing
of civilians, but as the Geneva Conventions state, against attacks
that are indiscriminate. Article 51's description of indiscriminate
attacks is: "those which employ a method or means of combat
the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol;
and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike
military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without
distinction." That's a cluster bomb.
It is true that the U.S. military used
fewer cluster bombs in Afghanistan than in the Gulf War or Serbia.
One U.S. reporter explained that Pentagon was "more careful"
than in past conflicts. But careful doesn't seem to include following
international law. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, has said, "We only use cluster munitions
when they are the most effective weapon for the intended target."
In other words, we will use them when we want to. In other words,
the Geneva Conventions don't matter.
Cluster bombs are made by Alliant Techsystems
of Minnesota. I'm from that part of the country. There's a term
widely used there about the friendliness of Minnesotans, who
are legendary for avoiding conflict (at least open conflict)
-- "Minnesota nice." Alliant employs 11,200 people,
most of whom are no doubt nice. Many of the military personnel
who drop cluster bombs and defend the use of cluster bombs are
no doubt nice. Many of the U.S. citizens who don't seem to mind
that we drop cluster bombs are no doubt nice. Minnesota nice.
United States nice.
I wonder what the 13-year-old boy in
Kosovo with no legs thinks about how nice we are?
I want everyone to think about the 13-year-old
boy with no legs and his friend whose head was ripped off. Some
of you may already know about cluster bombs and about such effects.
Some of you may already carry images like this in your head.
If you don't, I want you to. I want to
plant that image, and I don't want you to ever forget it. I want
you to know that the U.S. government's quest for global power,
and the U.S. military's barbaric efforts to achieve that, leave
13-year-olds with no legs and memories of dead friends. The next
time you hear officials and generals say we are fighting for
freedom, think of that. Ask whose freedom we are fighting for.
Remember they are fighting with weapons that you helped pay for.
If the capacity for empathy is part of
what makes us human, what are we to do with that image, that
boy's pain, the pain of the family members? If we had to face
them, what would we say? If we had to face them, would we cry
with them? Should we have to travel to Kosovo to feel that? Should
we feel that simply based on what we know?
We know. We feel. The question remains,
will we act? More on that later.
The costs
of our pleasures
Most people in the United States take
for granted a standard of living that the vast majority of the
world can barely imagine and can never expect to enjoy. Most
of us can recite the figure that the United States is about 5
percent of the world's population yet we consume about 25 percent
of the world's oil and 30 percent of the gross world product.
How is that related to foreign policy and military intervention?
The clearest statement of the connection
came in February 1948 in a top-secret U.S. State Department document,
known as Policy Planning Staff memorandum 23, which defined U.S.
post-war policy in Asia, focusing in particular on Japan and
the Philippines. The policy paper had been drafted by George
Kennan, the first director of the State Department's Policy Planning
Staff. Kennan wrote:
"We [Americans] have 50 percent
of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of the population.
This disparity is particularly great between ourselves and the
peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the
object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period
is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us
to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment
to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with
all sentimentality and daydreaming. ... We should cease to talk
about vague, and for the Far East, unreal objectives, such as
human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization.
The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight
power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans,
the better."
Kennan advocated ditching the idealistic
slogans about freedom, but it turned out those slogans were too
effective for U.S. policymakers to give up. Still, Kennan's statement
embodies the philosophy of a small elite sector of the United
States whose goal is subordinating the interests of other peoples
to the profit needs of American corporations. Most of us are
not part of that sector. But while this nation's foreign policy
and wars are designed to benefit an extremely small sector of
the country, the more general affluence of the culture is an
important part of how those elites win support for those policies
and wars. That is, I think the people in working and middle class
America who live comfortably have come to believe that their
continued comfort depends on U.S. dominance around the world.
I also believe that those working- and middle-class Americans
are generally willing to support policies and wars of dominance
to protect that comfort.
Put differently: If you propose a relatively
cost-free way (that is, few American casualties and limited expenditures)
to continue that dominance and ensure continued material comfort,
it is my experience that most Americans will endorse it, especially
when the deeply ingrained mythology about how the United States
fights for freedom can be tapped.
If I'm right about that, then in addition
to being able to face the pain of the world, we also need to
reduce our own pleasures. The level of consumption in this country
can only be maintained if people in other places (and increasingly
a growing number of people here at home as well) suffer deprivation.
The degree to which people believe that they must keep consuming
at that level to be happy will tend to distort the ability to
see how much pain our pleasures require.
I cannot say with great precision what
a sustainable level of consumption is, nor can anyone else. I
have taken steps to reduce my consumption, but it may turn out
that I will have to take far more drastic steps. In fact, it
almost certainly will turn out that way. But what is readily
evident is that the standard middle-class lifestyle in the United
States is unsustainable over the long term and, if it that lifestyle
were lived by all people in the world, it would be the end of
life on that planet. If everyone in the world lived like we live,
the game would be over.
I think there are self-interested reasons
for reducing our consumption; I think this high-energy, high-consumption
lifestyle actually keeps people from being able to experience
joy in many ways. I don't think there is much authentic joy to
be found in a shopping mall. But I am arguing not only that reducing
one's dependence on those material comforts is a good in itself,
but also is part of a political project of creating a world in
which most people will not have the motivation to support unjust
foreign policy and wars of domination. We need to begin the long
process of taking apart a way of living that is grotesquely wasteful
and based on unjustifiable disparities not only because it right
in itself and in our own self-interest, but because that affluence
tends to divert people from seeing how their affluence is made
possible by brutal policies abroad (and increasingly at home).
At this point, many people will argue
that such attention to questions of personal choices is diversionary,
or that there are adequate resources for all 6 billion people
on the planet to live healthy lives, or that technology will
solve the problems that our high-energy, high-consumption lifestyle
creates. All that is, I believe, obfuscation based in fear. I
do agree that these personal choices will end up being insignificant
without engaging in a larger political struggle to change the
structure of society. But I think they are complimentary, and
I have a hunch one can't go forward without the other.
Political
action
I push these questions of pain and pleasure
because I believe that knowing and feeling can lead to acting,
to collective political action. The goal is not simply to feel,
to sink into despair, to allow the pain to paralyze us, or to
feel guilty about our affluence and become paralyzed by that
guilt. The goal is to transform our society and take the U.S.
boot off the neck of people around the world trying to transform
their societies.
If you think of the boy with no legs
and you cry, that is OK. But we should remember the words of
the great Cuban writer and revolutionary Jose Marti. Before he
was killed by the Spanish for the crime of resisting Spanish
rule, he said, "When others are weeping blood, what right
have I to weep tears?"
Maybe we don't have a right to weep in
the United States. Given how comfortably the vast majority of
us live, maybe we long ago forfeited that right. But whether
or not I have a right to weep, I do. Virtually every day at some
point in the day, I am confronted by some aspect of this pain
and I weep. There is nothing noble about my tears; in some sense,
they are self-indulgent. They are my way of reminding myself
that I am a person, that I haven't completely given up my humanity.
But our tears can be more than self-indulgent,
if they motivate us to act. We cannot stop all the pain of the
world. We all know that simply being alive means we will feel
the pain of disappointment, disease, death. We all will watch
loved ones grow old and die. We will be let down by friends we
trust. That is part of the human condition. But cluster bombs
are not inherently part of the human condition. Wars for domination,
wars to protect privilege, are not inherently part of the human
condition. The fact that such wars have been with us for so long
does not mean they must be with us forever.
These things can be changed by people
committed to changing them. We can organize to force the government
to stop using cluster bombs. Eventually we can organize to force
the government to stop fighting the wars for domination in which
cluster bombs are used. Eventually we can organize to change
the institutions that drive the wars for domination.
There is a better world to be built.
It is a world we can get to only if we confront the pain of this
world. It is a world in which we will have to learn to experience
pleasure in very different ways.
Cluster bombs are not an inherent part
of the human condition. But empathy is. The capacity for change
is, in all of us. But these things are not automatic. The question
is whether we will choose to know, to feel, and to act.
Robert Jensen is
a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin,
a member of the Nowar Collective, and author of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.
His pamphlet, "Citizens of the Empire,"
is available at http://www.nowarcollective.com/citizensoftheempire.pdf.
Other writings are available online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~r
jensen/freelance/freelance.htm. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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