New Clear Vision

Pathologizing War, Prioritizing Peace

by Michael N. Nagler

The recent British film, In Our Name, is a returning-soldier drama featuring a married woman, Suzy, who leaves her husband and little girl to fight in Iraq. Because she’s involved in the killing of a little girl during her tour (this part is based on a true story, but it happened to a man) she returns home only to steadily fall apart under the stress of soul-destroying anxieties.  Apparently not much has changed since Coming Home, the Jane Fonda film of 1978.

In real life, Ethan McCord was involved in a now-infamous episode that took a strangely similar turn. It became one of the most shocking (and hopefully awakening) revelations by Wikileaks: the video now dubbed “Collateral Murder” that was taken from an Apache helicopter as its gunners massacred a group of civilians in a Baghdad suburb in 2007. Addressing a Southern California audience about his role in the episode this past June, McCord described how he saw two small children mangled by gunfire from the helicopter and thought of his own two children at home. (more…)

Misconceptions and Machinations Keep Activists Incarcerated in Iran

by Randall Amster

(Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in May 2010, and is reprinted today in light of the recent trial of the two hikers remaining in custody, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal. For more information, please visit their website.)

You’ve probably heard about the three hikers being held in Iran since last summer. Their case has become a political football, highlighting the inherent tensions and absurd machinations of the U.S.-Iran relationship. If you’ve followed the story even casually, you also likely have an impression of the hikers as either being dumb and naive or spoiled kids deserving of their fate. These perceptions are actually well off the mark, and in some ways have served to perpetuate their plight. Incarcerated for nearly a year now, we might finally consider taking a moment to set the record straight, and in the process come to appreciate the dedicated activism of these remarkable individuals. (more…)

Revenge Is Self-Defeating, and War Brings Terror

by Winslow Myers

Our euphoric national mood in the wake of the assassination of Osama bin Laden may make for a reluctance to look once again, or perhaps for the first time, at his demands. There has been almost nothing in the mainstream press that examines his motivations for terrorism.

We prefer a bogeyman of pure evil, because this does not require the kind of introspection suggested by the Society of Friends: what is it in my own inner condition, or that of my country, that might play a part in leading to a phenomenon like bin Laden?

In an extensive 2002 letter to the American people printed in the British publication the Observer, bin Laden laid out his specific justifications for horrific violence against innocents.

He began by citing passages from the Koran that give permission to Islamists to fight “disbelievers.” Immediately this sets up a pathological context, because it contains what philosophers call a performative contradiction: he proclaims Islam as a universal religion, but his vision is radically exclusivist. His illusion is that a universal God is on the side of pure Islam against impure or non-Islamists. (more…)

A Father’s Struggle to End War and Honor His Lost Son

by Pat LaMarche

Bill Adams and his buddies from the Lancaster Coalition for Peace and Justice issued a press release last month.  It said that they were taking a fifty five mile walk from Lancaster, PA to Carlisle, PA so that Bill could drop off some baggage he’d been carrying for more than half a decade.

Bill was ready to let go of a ritual and burden that he’d used to expose wrongdoing on the part of his country.  And his country had been perpetrating this badness for a long time — from way back when he protested the Vietnam War — but now the U.S. thirst for resources and power had exacted a personal price: it had cost him his son. (more…)