On orderly Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 8, 2010
excerpts from an ongoing conversation on ahs-talk@prismatix.com , the humanist sociology (humanistsociology.org) listserv, which incidentally meets next in November in Santa Fe. The posts begin with my latest this pm and go with two other regulars on the list, Megan and Olaf:
I think I would approach both problems as one of orderly, responsible, separation, as between angry distrustful parents in a divorce settlement. Terms of withdrawal are tactical and openly negotiated with folks who will let the withdrawing foreigners move out with a modicum of dignified safe passage. This is how I envision effective peacemaking. Thanks for asking
So, why do think it is ethical to pull out, with severe oppression in the
wake, including executions, etc.? I.e. tremendous suffering of the civilian
population, specifically women? Why is that any more ethical than fighting
against it? Why is it ethical to stand on the sidelines and let (I do not
know how many) North-Koreans die from starvation? Why is it ethical to let
Bob of Zimbabwe do his thing? Why is it ethical to let Iran build a nuclear
bomb? (I mean they have enough oil to do without nuclear power). Why was it
OK to let Hitler invade Czechoslovakia?
Cheers, Olaf.
On Behalf Of Pepinsky, Harold E.
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 12:38 PM
To: ahs-talk@prismatix.com
Subject: Re: [Ahs-talk] Ahs-talk Digest, Vol 11, Issue 16
Megan, is it ethical to continue [fighting in Afghanistan, when you say it is unethical to quit]? l&p hal
Friday, January 8, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
accepting national responsibility
U.S. LIES OF OMISSION ABOUT AFGHANISTAN
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 5, 2010
The difference between the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the lie that al-Qaeda has become our enemy is that with regard to our escalating war in Afghanistan against “students” (which in my part of the world is rendered in Arabic with a capital T), lies are those of omission, of our own responsibility for a succession of post-WWII mass-media-led propaganda campaigns. “Propaganda” in plain English means “public lies and secrets,”
Wikipedia’s al-Qaeda is my primary source today as it was in yesterday’s blog, I am an amateur at intelligence. That said, I have been obsessed with U.S. global policy since my mama took me to hear Eleanor Roosevelt give a free campaign speech for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, in the 800-seat Vets Auditorium theater at the Capitol riverbank in Columbus, Ohio, where I and 700-plus others wrote the bar exam in bluebooks for 22 hours the summer of 1968, just before I went to grad school. I’m not hard to find, newly retired from almost 40 years as a “criminal justice” professor. I just want any reader who doesn’t know me already to know that I write now as an obsessive-compulsively driven student of international relations from long ago. I grew up with academic parents afraid of being suspected of being involved in overt acts In support of “un-American activities.”
Al-Qaeda is merely a name given to a name Bin Laden and a Palestinian Islamic partner for a private business partnership to do pr and fundraising for the foes of “Communism.” The Soviets eventually recognized that occupation of its Afghan border region was about as successful as US takeover of French claims of control in Vietnam from about 52-54 (see Fletcher Prouty’s books). Even the student regime the US military bombed into hiding in Afghanistan, the Taliban government, only controlled Kabul and Kandahar cities at the height of its reign.
No one, no central government, will ever rule Afghanistan.
US forces are not fighting an organization, they are fighting guerrilla resistance, concentrated in centers of Euro-American occupation. Foreigners rapidly seek safer ground; native resistance mounts to foreign occupation and fire the occupiers drop with all due regard for their own personal safety from nighttime skies.
The enemies US occupies are enemies we create. By whatever means available, in my experience, we dispense as much suffering on the families of those we name our enemies, as our “enemies” (whoever might be sympathetic) can match even by blowing themselves up.
There is no al-Qaeda to surrender to US forces. There are grievances to settle. In my experience, mediation and moderation of violent differences begins with the bigger power owning up to how he/she/they have done their own hurting. That is known as “accepting responsibility.” Let’s own it.
We are only making our own problems worse by denying responsibility for this mess.
I can’t tell you how many times my students have lectured me on the importance of being held responsible for the consequences of one’s actions. I step back from national identity and say whoa! My national government is a master at blaming this, that and the other foreign leader or state or organization to make “our” problems “theirs.” I write especially to fellow criminologists who have responded to my blog entry yesterday. From Euro American slaughter of the inhabitants they encountered in North America, isn’t Euro-American patriotism plain denial of political responsibility for human problems? How can owning up to the reality that the greatness of these United States has rested on lies diminish us in the eyes of those who might bomb or shoot us?
Just a few questions that come to mind. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 5, 2010
The difference between the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the lie that al-Qaeda has become our enemy is that with regard to our escalating war in Afghanistan against “students” (which in my part of the world is rendered in Arabic with a capital T), lies are those of omission, of our own responsibility for a succession of post-WWII mass-media-led propaganda campaigns. “Propaganda” in plain English means “public lies and secrets,”
Wikipedia’s al-Qaeda is my primary source today as it was in yesterday’s blog, I am an amateur at intelligence. That said, I have been obsessed with U.S. global policy since my mama took me to hear Eleanor Roosevelt give a free campaign speech for Adlai Stevenson in 1956, in the 800-seat Vets Auditorium theater at the Capitol riverbank in Columbus, Ohio, where I and 700-plus others wrote the bar exam in bluebooks for 22 hours the summer of 1968, just before I went to grad school. I’m not hard to find, newly retired from almost 40 years as a “criminal justice” professor. I just want any reader who doesn’t know me already to know that I write now as an obsessive-compulsively driven student of international relations from long ago. I grew up with academic parents afraid of being suspected of being involved in overt acts In support of “un-American activities.”
Al-Qaeda is merely a name given to a name Bin Laden and a Palestinian Islamic partner for a private business partnership to do pr and fundraising for the foes of “Communism.” The Soviets eventually recognized that occupation of its Afghan border region was about as successful as US takeover of French claims of control in Vietnam from about 52-54 (see Fletcher Prouty’s books). Even the student regime the US military bombed into hiding in Afghanistan, the Taliban government, only controlled Kabul and Kandahar cities at the height of its reign.
No one, no central government, will ever rule Afghanistan.
US forces are not fighting an organization, they are fighting guerrilla resistance, concentrated in centers of Euro-American occupation. Foreigners rapidly seek safer ground; native resistance mounts to foreign occupation and fire the occupiers drop with all due regard for their own personal safety from nighttime skies.
The enemies US occupies are enemies we create. By whatever means available, in my experience, we dispense as much suffering on the families of those we name our enemies, as our “enemies” (whoever might be sympathetic) can match even by blowing themselves up.
There is no al-Qaeda to surrender to US forces. There are grievances to settle. In my experience, mediation and moderation of violent differences begins with the bigger power owning up to how he/she/they have done their own hurting. That is known as “accepting responsibility.” Let’s own it.
We are only making our own problems worse by denying responsibility for this mess.
I can’t tell you how many times my students have lectured me on the importance of being held responsible for the consequences of one’s actions. I step back from national identity and say whoa! My national government is a master at blaming this, that and the other foreign leader or state or organization to make “our” problems “theirs.” I write especially to fellow criminologists who have responded to my blog entry yesterday. From Euro American slaughter of the inhabitants they encountered in North America, isn’t Euro-American patriotism plain denial of political responsibility for human problems? How can owning up to the reality that the greatness of these United States has rested on lies diminish us in the eyes of those who might bomb or shoot us?
Just a few questions that come to mind. Love and peace--hal
Monday, January 4, 2010
New Year's foreign policy letter to President Obama
TAKING OUR HISTORY WITH AL-QAEDA SERIOUSLY
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 4, 2010
Happy New Year!
On a hunch, I have just read Wikipedia’s history of al-Qaeda (“the base”).
President Obama, I sincerely hope that someone who gets this message persuades you to read just this one Wikipedia entry. It is thoroughly fact-checked until 1998, when Wikipedia editors warn that what follows doesn’t meet their standards of credibility.
There’s no getting around it. In 1980, to support resistance to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Bin Laden co-branded the name “al-Qaeda” and got a big international political and financial boost from the CIA ( money muled with drugs via Pakistani friends to mujahidin and to Afghani refugee children getting shelter and education as students [“taliban” {sheez, my computer automatically tried to capitalize that word}]. Beyond Wikipedia on al-Qaeda, it is also well documented that the CIA set up the first labs to convert poppy seeds to opium for global export to fund Cold War effort.)
Mr. President, I have no doubt that you are extraordinary at sorting through complex information. However, I also suspect that all post WWII presidents, except possibly JFK (we’ll never know), have become cloistered in “intelligence” delivered to them. About twenty minutes of your attention to Wikipedia’s history of al-Qaeda might offer you a little perspective on how allies become our most celebrated public enemies, like Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden. Wikipedia indicates that Bin Laden survives by raising funds to support a global guerrilla military front against Euro-American, Judao-Christian military extremism, after his own Saudi family was forced by a government that had sent funds his way, at the behest of the USG, to cut him off and disown him. I am hoping you can escape confinement in the Oval Office just long enough to see how alienating this is to so many people, at home and abroad, most of all those who fear they might be struck from the air by a mechanically indifferent superbomb at any moment. That’s no way to win hearts and minds.
Mr. President, the moral is pretty simple: By every overt, let alone covert, military operation you authorize, we multiply our enemies by multiplying overwhelming casualties, primarily among innocent women and children. Time and again, at home and abroad, we learn that U.S. friendship lasts only as long as it suits selfish American interests. Every time we make demands on our enemies of the day, we reinforce global memories of US government hypocrisy and betrayal. We create our own worst enemies.
It would be silly of me to claim I know what you should do, Mr. President. But in foreign policy, you could make a real world of peacemaking difference by officially recognizing, this way or that, that we will no longer betray those we befriend, and regret having done so. Love and peace, Hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
January 4, 2010
Happy New Year!
On a hunch, I have just read Wikipedia’s history of al-Qaeda (“the base”).
President Obama, I sincerely hope that someone who gets this message persuades you to read just this one Wikipedia entry. It is thoroughly fact-checked until 1998, when Wikipedia editors warn that what follows doesn’t meet their standards of credibility.
There’s no getting around it. In 1980, to support resistance to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Bin Laden co-branded the name “al-Qaeda” and got a big international political and financial boost from the CIA ( money muled with drugs via Pakistani friends to mujahidin and to Afghani refugee children getting shelter and education as students [“taliban” {sheez, my computer automatically tried to capitalize that word}]. Beyond Wikipedia on al-Qaeda, it is also well documented that the CIA set up the first labs to convert poppy seeds to opium for global export to fund Cold War effort.)
Mr. President, I have no doubt that you are extraordinary at sorting through complex information. However, I also suspect that all post WWII presidents, except possibly JFK (we’ll never know), have become cloistered in “intelligence” delivered to them. About twenty minutes of your attention to Wikipedia’s history of al-Qaeda might offer you a little perspective on how allies become our most celebrated public enemies, like Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden. Wikipedia indicates that Bin Laden survives by raising funds to support a global guerrilla military front against Euro-American, Judao-Christian military extremism, after his own Saudi family was forced by a government that had sent funds his way, at the behest of the USG, to cut him off and disown him. I am hoping you can escape confinement in the Oval Office just long enough to see how alienating this is to so many people, at home and abroad, most of all those who fear they might be struck from the air by a mechanically indifferent superbomb at any moment. That’s no way to win hearts and minds.
Mr. President, the moral is pretty simple: By every overt, let alone covert, military operation you authorize, we multiply our enemies by multiplying overwhelming casualties, primarily among innocent women and children. Time and again, at home and abroad, we learn that U.S. friendship lasts only as long as it suits selfish American interests. Every time we make demands on our enemies of the day, we reinforce global memories of US government hypocrisy and betrayal. We create our own worst enemies.
It would be silly of me to claim I know what you should do, Mr. President. But in foreign policy, you could make a real world of peacemaking difference by officially recognizing, this way or that, that we will no longer betray those we befriend, and regret having done so. Love and peace, Hal
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Peacemaking and Violence in Healthcare Reform
PEACEMAKING AND VIOLENCE IN THE HEALTHCARE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
December 24, 2009
I have my utopian visions. I wish that we had single-payer medical care, with all medical personnel on salary, all medical facilities not for profit, and all higher education including medical training free of charge. Although I’ve never been quite sure what political labels mean, I am aware that much of what I wish for places me with “progressives,” “the left,” and makes me “liberal” (or worse).
Early this Christmas Eve morning the U.S. Senate passed a healthcare bill. It has been a messy process. The next step for legislators is to try to reconcile the Senate bill with the House bill. Who knows what new healthcare law, if any, will emerge.
In this the Northern Hemisphere’s season of rebirth, I have been reflecting on my own position, and indeed on the posture I have taken on my “peacemaking” blog. The bulk of my posts have been critical, notwithstanding my posture as one who would learn how to build positive human relations in the face of violence. Last night as I lay in bed to go to sleep, I was struck with the irony that despite my frustration with many of the provisions in the Senate bill, it is a product of the very peacemaking process I advocate as an antidote to violence.
To me, violence is attachment to or fixation on substantive outcome in our relations. In my own relations, notably in the classroom and in victim-offender mediation, I have celebrated surprise, as in what issues are addressed and as in mediation, in outcomes I could not have anticipated. I have noted that when political battles have been won in my favor, backlash (or in CIA-speak “blowback”) has swamped gains I have celebrated. Notably, a consequence of U.S. surrender in Vietnam and degradation and humiliation of President Nixon resulted, I believe, in draconian sentencing laws domestically in the late seventies, and in the landslide victory and worship of a bellicose, corporate-profit-worshiping and re-election of the Reagan administration. Humiliate your political opponents, kill and terrorize your “terrorists,” and they will come back to bite you.
In the face of that historical reality, of what happens in the wake of what Marx called political rather than human emancipation, I remind myself that political like military victory does not pay. I remind myself that in any political process, from response to disagreements with my students or victim-offender differences, the most gratifying responses to entrenched positions are in Roger Fisher’s words “getting to yes!” as participants in political/military processes move from position to negotiating interests a step at a time.
So it is for me now with healthcare legislation. If people can no longer be denied insurance or have it taken away on grounds that they are poor insurance risks, that is to me real, unanticipated progress. While President Obama hedges on campaign promises for a public health insurance option, I find myself concluding, with him, that his approach may do more to resolve healthcare violence in the United States than the Clinton position of trying to dictate law to members of Congress. As I have so often preached, as in the classroom, peacemaking is a process, not an outcome. In life there is no peace, only stepping away from entrenched political positions.
I do not consider myself a Democrat any more than I consider myself a liberal, but I do consider the position of Republicans in Congress to constitute violence, attachment to outcome, in extremis. I guess that makes me about as partisan as Joe Liberman, Ben Nelson, and Bernie Sanders.
For all the negativity I have posted at pepinsky.blogspot.com, in this holiday season, I celebrate the capacity of U.S. senators under a Democratic umbrella to shift from position to interest, negotiating beyond political impasse. I remind myself: trust the process, not the result. Merry Christmas. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
December 24, 2009
I have my utopian visions. I wish that we had single-payer medical care, with all medical personnel on salary, all medical facilities not for profit, and all higher education including medical training free of charge. Although I’ve never been quite sure what political labels mean, I am aware that much of what I wish for places me with “progressives,” “the left,” and makes me “liberal” (or worse).
Early this Christmas Eve morning the U.S. Senate passed a healthcare bill. It has been a messy process. The next step for legislators is to try to reconcile the Senate bill with the House bill. Who knows what new healthcare law, if any, will emerge.
In this the Northern Hemisphere’s season of rebirth, I have been reflecting on my own position, and indeed on the posture I have taken on my “peacemaking” blog. The bulk of my posts have been critical, notwithstanding my posture as one who would learn how to build positive human relations in the face of violence. Last night as I lay in bed to go to sleep, I was struck with the irony that despite my frustration with many of the provisions in the Senate bill, it is a product of the very peacemaking process I advocate as an antidote to violence.
To me, violence is attachment to or fixation on substantive outcome in our relations. In my own relations, notably in the classroom and in victim-offender mediation, I have celebrated surprise, as in what issues are addressed and as in mediation, in outcomes I could not have anticipated. I have noted that when political battles have been won in my favor, backlash (or in CIA-speak “blowback”) has swamped gains I have celebrated. Notably, a consequence of U.S. surrender in Vietnam and degradation and humiliation of President Nixon resulted, I believe, in draconian sentencing laws domestically in the late seventies, and in the landslide victory and worship of a bellicose, corporate-profit-worshiping and re-election of the Reagan administration. Humiliate your political opponents, kill and terrorize your “terrorists,” and they will come back to bite you.
In the face of that historical reality, of what happens in the wake of what Marx called political rather than human emancipation, I remind myself that political like military victory does not pay. I remind myself that in any political process, from response to disagreements with my students or victim-offender differences, the most gratifying responses to entrenched positions are in Roger Fisher’s words “getting to yes!” as participants in political/military processes move from position to negotiating interests a step at a time.
So it is for me now with healthcare legislation. If people can no longer be denied insurance or have it taken away on grounds that they are poor insurance risks, that is to me real, unanticipated progress. While President Obama hedges on campaign promises for a public health insurance option, I find myself concluding, with him, that his approach may do more to resolve healthcare violence in the United States than the Clinton position of trying to dictate law to members of Congress. As I have so often preached, as in the classroom, peacemaking is a process, not an outcome. In life there is no peace, only stepping away from entrenched political positions.
I do not consider myself a Democrat any more than I consider myself a liberal, but I do consider the position of Republicans in Congress to constitute violence, attachment to outcome, in extremis. I guess that makes me about as partisan as Joe Liberman, Ben Nelson, and Bernie Sanders.
For all the negativity I have posted at pepinsky.blogspot.com, in this holiday season, I celebrate the capacity of U.S. senators under a Democratic umbrella to shift from position to interest, negotiating beyond political impasse. I remind myself: trust the process, not the result. Merry Christmas. Love and peace--hal
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Bernie Sanders and Evo Morales: my heroes
Every now and then a truly independent, personally morally responsible, person rises to national political office. Today's democracy.org broadcast from Copenhagen starts with portions of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introducing his single-payer amendment to the health care bill, prophesying that sometime after he is gone, the social good will prevail over the imperative for corporate growth. That was followed by Amy Goodman's interview with Bolivian President Evo Morales--their second democracynow.org exclusive interview at least.
Jill and I visited our Katy three times in Bolivia while she was was an agricultural volunteer in the Peace Corps, and so I pay particular attention to news from that country.
Twice now in Goodman's interviews, I have found myself feeling that here in Mr. Morales is the peacemaking leader I dream of. I encourage readers to see this interview of his, where he concludes that getting better is our primary threat to getting well with our mother earth. Wow Mr. President! Love and peace, hal
Jill and I visited our Katy three times in Bolivia while she was was an agricultural volunteer in the Peace Corps, and so I pay particular attention to news from that country.
Twice now in Goodman's interviews, I have found myself feeling that here in Mr. Morales is the peacemaking leader I dream of. I encourage readers to see this interview of his, where he concludes that getting better is our primary threat to getting well with our mother earth. Wow Mr. President! Love and peace, hal
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Climate Thought for the Day
The Alliance of Small Island States is the canary in the mining of mother earth's fuel for human combustion. Love and peace, Hal
Monday, December 14, 2009
Going Home
THANKS FROM A RETIREE TO MY WELCOMERS BACK HOME IN INDIANA
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
December 14, 2009
In a blog before going back to my Bloomington home of the last 33 years, I wrote “on retirement.” I drove to Bloomington December 6, primarily to celebrate Vinod Krishnadas Thichempully’s dissertation defense, but also to get back in touch with the office staff I so treasure to this day, and to be with students in all three sections of a course on alternative social control systems designed by colleague Ellen Dwyer 34 years ago, which I picked up in 1977.
I can drive to Bloomington in fewer than four hours, and so I expect to pay more return visits. Jill and I closed on our Indiana home of 32 years July 20, and caravanned back to our Ohio home. I write here in holiday appreciation of the welcome I received on my first return, and of what it means to this old man to accommodate to changing homes. I must say I was surprised by my own reactions. On one hand, I felt truly loved and appreciated. On the other hand, I quickly recognized that Bloomington is no longer my home, let alone my business.
The highlight of my return was engaging with students in all three sections of the alternative social control systems class. Any single class is but an episode in anyone’s daily life. In my visits, conversations ranged from deferential, through exploratory, to confrontational: in all cases to me stimulating, both in learning what twenty-somethings are talking about, and in giving me chances to reflect on what I have learned about social control by telling stories to future generations without simply talking to myself. Bloomington, I will always love you. You bring me alive in retirement, just a few hours’ drive from Worthington. All best wishes as our region of mother earth emerges into spring.
Countless are the essays and poems on homecoming. For what it’s worth, this is how homecoming felt to me. Thanks to everyone for your hospitality. Love and peace--hal
Hal Pepinsky, pepinsky@indiana.edu, pepinsky.blogspot.com
December 14, 2009
In a blog before going back to my Bloomington home of the last 33 years, I wrote “on retirement.” I drove to Bloomington December 6, primarily to celebrate Vinod Krishnadas Thichempully’s dissertation defense, but also to get back in touch with the office staff I so treasure to this day, and to be with students in all three sections of a course on alternative social control systems designed by colleague Ellen Dwyer 34 years ago, which I picked up in 1977.
I can drive to Bloomington in fewer than four hours, and so I expect to pay more return visits. Jill and I closed on our Indiana home of 32 years July 20, and caravanned back to our Ohio home. I write here in holiday appreciation of the welcome I received on my first return, and of what it means to this old man to accommodate to changing homes. I must say I was surprised by my own reactions. On one hand, I felt truly loved and appreciated. On the other hand, I quickly recognized that Bloomington is no longer my home, let alone my business.
The highlight of my return was engaging with students in all three sections of the alternative social control systems class. Any single class is but an episode in anyone’s daily life. In my visits, conversations ranged from deferential, through exploratory, to confrontational: in all cases to me stimulating, both in learning what twenty-somethings are talking about, and in giving me chances to reflect on what I have learned about social control by telling stories to future generations without simply talking to myself. Bloomington, I will always love you. You bring me alive in retirement, just a few hours’ drive from Worthington. All best wishes as our region of mother earth emerges into spring.
Countless are the essays and poems on homecoming. For what it’s worth, this is how homecoming felt to me. Thanks to everyone for your hospitality. Love and peace--hal
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