THE WAR ESSAYS (1) HARNESSING AMERICA’S ANGER FOR WORLD PEACE

By

Kenn Emetulu

The strongest of all warriors are these two – Time and Patience ---Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), War and Peace

When the Twin Towers came down and the Pentagon’s bloodied nose hit the dust, we all erupted in righteous rage. Who are these people? What have they turned our world? As the brave New York Mayor nightly dished out the increasing number of the dead, our bloodshot eyes flash in fearsome anger. But where are our enemies, the erasers of our world? Officially, we’ve been told, they are holed up down there in hell-on-earth, in the bloodstained mountains of famished Afghanistan. Admittedly, it’s probably a plane load of toxic paradox in these times of revanchist jingoism to ask for a little caution – not when the hawks have won the day, not when the die is cast, not when George W. Bush has shown the burning light and lip-smacking desire for vengeance on behalf of the Free World. “This is the first war of the 21st Century!” the refrain goes, but that only means whatever has happened or is happening in Sierra-Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo or Chechnya for the past eighteen months of this new century must be mock battles or that the lives lost are meaningless because they just happen not to be American lives. My heart fails me terribly and I’m afraid I shall be taking my seat with that fast diminishing minority party – the ‘wimps’ who would rather have no more share of the Blood of the Innocents.

Let me make this clear – my call for caution and prayer for peace henceforth is not a plea for mercy. It’s not a case for the perpetrators of the New Evil to go unpunished, or for the world to go quietly back to bed mourning its dead, creaking open another page of expectant catastrophe without addressing the challenges of the last. Rather, it’s a call for courage, for those who rule our world to recognise the all-time elusive principle of common sense, to dig deep and from this rubble of hate and anger fashion a better world. And nothing inspires me greater for this plea than the words of our chief protagonist, George W. Bush, when he addressed Americans and the world. Hear him: “This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilization’s fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom.” My only hope though is that may these words crafted by his brilliant speechwriter, Michael Gerson, reveal ultimately that he found his master’s voice rather than be a mere expression of the fecundity of his own masterful pen. If this is our commander-in-chief’s own article of faith, then I should go to sleep happy that my world is in a safe pair of hands.

But who can close their eyes when the night air rings with these countless declarations of ‘jihads’ and the rapid deployments of these fearsome machines of vast destruction, with young men signing up in record numbers and America urging? Who dares sleep when defence contractors and arm manufacturers rub their hands gleefully at last week’s weapons’ fair in London expectant of another hefty payday, even as the first bodies were being picked at Ground Zero? Respect for the dead just doesn’t seem very appealing when bomb anoraks itch to test the efficacy of their new toys. So, are we really that far off the scenes of the intended battles to be conveniently baying for this much blood? Innocents have died in a blaze fundamentalist inferno no doubt, but does that now mean another tens or hundreds of thousands should follow in the name of Infinite Justice, even if it were to claim the handful of perpetrators of this hideous crime?

This is a call for patience, diplomacy and the genius of The Great Escape - to steal out more than pyrrhic victories from the jaws of death, pulling those needed chestnuts from the raging fire of vengeance. And there is no better time to be brave about this than now that the world economy is in comatose, that hatred rules the roost, that unmentionable disaster has been wrought, that the world craves and cry – not for fire-eating warriors, but for vision, for leadership to take us forward. Surely, all that money being pumped out now for the prosecution of this war should go a long way to save the economy from the wheelchair. No doubt, what happened in America was done by the worst of unreasonable men, the conscienceless dregs of the earth – the most psychopathic of piously posing pontiffs of intolerance. But it isn’t a religious war; it is political. It is a masquerade that has found a mask befitting its hideous face. And now that we’ve seen that face, that nebulous shadow of international terror - identifiable, controllable, extinguishable, should we be adding more fuel to spread its conflagration?

All over Europe and America the peace campaigners are afoot, but the loudest voices have remained those of the righteously vengeful. America the Great must bring down the defilers of its democracy, its freedom; America must lead us all to whip these cowardly beasts, grown so confident as to take on us in broad daylight. Night must befall the face of terror! Paul Wolfowitz, the US Undersecretary of States for Defence calls for the “destruction of states”, the US state Department and their British counterpart concurs that they “are resigned to civilian casualties”. It really doesn’t matter now that the first reason we proclaimed the idiots barbaric was their lack of discrimination between civilian and military targets. The media is ready and they are saying so in a cacophonous deluge. I picked up the Time and opened to read one of my favourite contributors, Lance Morrow, but what did I get? A face-load of fear! There right in my hands was the same man, angry and inconsolable. In a piece titled, ‘The Case for Rage and Retribution’, he admonishes: “What’s needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbour sort of purple American fury – a ruthless indignation that doesn’t leak away in a week or two…” My heart went out to him, but then I realised where such rage had led in the past and sweat broke through my face. Pearl Harbour sort of purple American fury ended with Hiroshima and Nagasaki! God bless our sweet world. And as George Bush once again reminds me, “You are either with us or with the terrorists”, my ‘caution’ placard almost ran down my lump-stuffed throat like a single string of spaghetti. Who dares talk peace when America’s butt is burning? Yet, the case for caution is clear. The case for diplomacy is strong, but more so is the case for the world to see from these dark clouds the merciful silver lining.

Even now, I believe that as the mullahs of Afghanistan sound more and more recalcitrant and the vultures of war encircles its borders, peace and justice can still prevail. We may yet be able to get all what George Bush has asked for and even more without firing a single shot. For a start let us admit, as difficult as it may be for America to accept, that diplomacy has not yet been really exploited to an adequately reasonable level. Let all the ‘Grown-Ups’ of the world find their voice, find their courage, eek out some wisdom and deal with this seemingly arid situation. Let us begin by gathering all those who now line behind the US in a show of solidarity and support, those who are joining with men and material, let us get together all those purple coated monarchs and powerful Muslim leaders around the world, including all those who count Bin Laden or the Taleban amongst friends. Why not encourage these powerful rulers to descend on the mullahs of Kabul, one batch after another, to squeeze out a solution from those still-defiant men?

For one thing, the rule of engagement will weaken their case, even among the so-called faithful ready to fight their wars around the world, because whether we admit it or not the threat is real and there are countless small and vulnerable states that they could very well destabilize in their attempt to cause more security problems for the world. And this sort of engagement may just be all they crave. The Taleban are like babies right now. They need friends, and if this is going to make a few monarchs and presidents eat ostensibly humble pies, smiling, charming and cajoling them to world peace, it would be no great price to pay for the head of Bin Laden and his itinerant consorts. And it must still be remembered that even Bin Laden deserves the full freedom of democratic trial than to be killed in some phoney war, in some phoney shoot-out. There is no better case for the health of the world and his own insanity than to see him sit with Milosevic at The Hague, facing the wrath of international justice. This would serve to extricate the US from his’ and other’s hate campaign and serve notice on others of his ilk that the world as a community, not the US as a vengeful superpower is strong enough to deal with them.

Okay, the mullahs may not likely play ball, they may be too set in their ways, they may really be no different from the terrorists they harbour and indeed, may rather prefer to die fighting the ‘Great Satan’ in hope of some strange eternal reward, etc. Okay, it may seem a weakness to discuss with the Clerics of Terror (even if indirectly), it may be hopeless to hope, but what if they are given the opportunity to say no, no, no, no, no, over and over again until it is clear to everyone that they have practically signed their own death warrants? What would the world lose? What would America lose? After all, one of the supposed and most touted reasons why America is so hated in these constituencies is that she is too arrogant. What this approach would do is to pull the rug from under their feet while presenting America as the opposite of what she’s been accused of. As the days pass by, Bin Laden and his cohorts will lose more and more among the millions that are waiting to spread their jihad around the world. Thus, if there’s a chance that war can be avoided and justice delivered, we must exhaust those opportunities and see what comes. Let us seek to extricate justice from these heart-rending cries of pain.

Let us consider the times we live in and the tasks facing our world. The world economy is grinding to a screech-less halt, the Middle East is razing to the ground, the Balkans is yet to be rebuilt, over a third of Africa is in turmoil, our environment rebels against our odious use and freedom is still far away for almost half of the world’s people. And all these before the Evil Pilots struck. Take out Afghanistan and all the living things in it, would we be safer? Would we have a better world? Would terror go away? It’s okay to say we are taking on terrorists everywhere, but what does that mean? Are we going after the Irish, the Columbians, the ETA, Shinning Path guerrillas, the Hizbollah Hamas, UNITA and the sundry ubiquitous ‘jihadists’ and urban terrorists scattered around our globe? Are we now moving for Saddam, Ghaddafi, Syria, Iran or those young men that constantly kidnap oil companies’ employees in the Nigerian delta or the tourist kidnappers of Philippines and Indonesia? Or are we just facing al-Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden and his band of dwindling hangers-on? Whatever we are doing right now under the leadership of America must only result in one thing – a better, safer and more prosperous world.

For now, I say the merits of diplomacy have not been exhausted, though we’ve had the loud but effective case of the merchants of death on both sides. For now, I say, America search well thy conscience and give us a world we know you are capable of delivering because, all I seem to hear now is the seemingly eternal siren of wailing from the orphans of Iraq, My Lai, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Somalia, Palestine, Chechnya, Mozambique, Angola, Chile and El Salvador. From Guatemala, I still hear the shrill but urgent cries of those little losers, even with Mr Clinton’s apologies of last year still yet to be absorbed. Yes, I hear the bloodcurdling wails of the children of Afghanistan of course, but America’s only promise now is that this time it will be music to my ears, even as US remains “currently its largest source of humanitarian aid”.

But whatever happens, I shall still sit on these deserted minority benches until the patience of diplomacy is exhausted, until everyone more or less agrees that such is the obvious case. Thus, with a quaking heart but firm principles, I say, for the sake of our future, for the sake of a world long raped by inadequate leadership, let’s have a time out; let’s have a time to think. For the sake of all those that have died that we may live to consider what next to do, let’s choose the least destructive yet most effective path to claim justice for the Free World.

Kenn Emetulu, London

September, 2001