All we are saying is give peace a chance…
 My
column title today will be familiar to most in my generation as the
title of one of John Lennon hits which touched most hearts and minds at
that time, being a theme song for the anti-Vietnam protesters in the
late 60s and the early 70s. The song’s chorus was on the lip-tips of
most every one at the time.
They all loved freedom, called for peace and stood against
intervention and oppression. The lyrics of that song, like most other
from this sensitive artist were simple, yet all encompassing. As
illustration here are a few lines from the song:
“Ev'rybody's talking about
Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance”
Not much changed
Why am I now thinking of Lennon? No! It’s not John Ono Lennon’s birth
or death anniversary anytime soon. Those happen to be in October and
December. Nor is it because of any event due soon to celebrate the
achievements of Beatles in the world of music of that unforgettable era.
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Care for
the world |
Seeing what happens around us, I simply wondered if that much has
changed between those days of the Vietnam War, a good 40 over years ago
and now. Much was written and much was talked about on ‘lessons learnt’.
Reports were made and committees sat mostly to determine the fate of US
soldiers that went missing in action and/or to determine where US went
wrong in fighting that war. While hundreds of thousands of Americans
protested the killing of a million Vietnamese; annihilating whole
villagers and families, mothers, fathers and families of US soldiers
sent out there for the task, wept for their own sons who never came
home.
The Art of War
In the aftermath of that tragic period in human history, in 2003 a
documentary film was made with the title ‘The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons
from the Life of Robert S. McNamara’ by an American film maker Errol
Morris. This ‘award winning’ film featured the life and times of former
US Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and documented his
observations of the nature of modern war and of the nature of modern
warfare.
Driven perhaps by the need to leave a classic work on military
strategy akin to the ancient Chinese ‘The Art of War’ of Sun Tzu behind,
RSM’s outlining of the lessons were as follows:
??Empathize with your enemy,
??Rationality will not save us,
??There's something beyond one's self,
??Maximize efficiency,
??Proportionality should be a guideline in war,
??Get the data,
??Belief and seeing are often both wrong,
??Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning,
??To do good you may have to engage in evil
??Never say never and
??You can't change human nature.
?McNamara, coming from a business background and being a former CEO
of the Ford Motor Company, brought in ‘systems management’ techniques in
running the war machinery of the US. Interestingly, upon retirement
McNamara served as the President of the World Bank, creating an
interesting precedence of bringing his learnt skills at war making into
the sphere of global lending and financial management.
Regime change
Similarly, Henry Kissinger, the then US Secretary of State and
another key architect of that scenario was associated with several other
interventions such as the India-Pakistan War of 1971, the 1973 Yom
Kippur War, where Israel gained territorial advantages over Egypt and
Syria, causing regime change in Chile when popularly elected Salvador
Allende was ousted by Augusto Pinochet in a military coup in the same
year, the 1975 annexation of East Timor by Indonesia and the involvement
in the Cambodian conflict.
In 1973, Henry Kissinger shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Vietnam’s
Lee Doc Tho for the Paris Peace Accords of 1973; "intended to bring
about a cease-fire in the Vietnam War and a withdrawal of the American
Forces". This prompted American singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer to famously
quip in an ironic reference, that the award ".. makes political satire
obsolete".
Later years in joining the academia he was touted as a top diplomat
and peacemaker involved in advisory capacities in addressing US’s
disputes with India, China and Iran. It is interesting that he once
stated; "Vietnam is still with us. It has created doubts about American
judgment, about American credibility, about American power - not only at
home but US involvement throughout the world. It has poisoned our
domestic debate. So we paid an exorbitant price for the decision that we
made in good faith." The good faith he talked about was in defense of
what Lennon in his song lyrics referred to as ‘this ism’ against ‘that
ism’.
‘Hope for Change’
When Senator Barack Obama was running for US Presidency in 2008, he
gave us all hope of seeing ‘real change’. That fever of hope and change
reached beyond the US electorate and touched even minions the likes of
me elsewhere on the planet.
I for one, in spite of talk ‘that nothing much would change’, was
hopeful that we were to see a new dawn. A new dawn of a process to end
waging of war and creation of conflict, giving peace a real chance to
flourish was what I longed for.
I was hopeful that this man, with a diverse racial and ethnic
background will be able to able to reach out, to bring the diverse
belief systems together recognizing the diversity of each. I hoped that
attempts at causing regime change would be a thing of the past.
I was longing to see trust and bridges of honest bondage being built
with the closing of the Guantanamo detention facility which he himself
saw as a Bush era blunder of “running prisons which lock people away
without telling them why they’re there or what they’re charged with.”
The January 2009 deadline for the facility’s dismantling is long gone
and the Military Tribunals which he said “failed to establish a
legitimate legal framework and undermined our capacity to ensure swift
and certain justice” are back in operation after his recent reversal of
the two year order to stay halt on that process.
Sovereignty of nations
In an address he made at the New Economic School in Moscow in mid
2009, President Obama stood firm in his defense of the sovereignty of
nations in reference to Russia’s position in the Federation of European
nations. He stated that “America’s interest is in an international
system that advances cooperation while respecting the sovereignty of all
nations. State sovereignty must be a cornerstone of international order.
Just as all states should have the right to choose their leaders, states
must have the right to borders that are secure, and to their own foreign
policies. That is true for Russia, just as it is true for the United
States. Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy.” Yet,
the Obama administration’s support for the ‘Lisbon Treaty’, a blueprint
for creating a European federal ‘Super State’ through Secretary of State
Hilary Clinton as “a major milestone in our world’s history” nullifies
that earlier pledge.
On the climate change mitigation front too my hopes have been
shattered. The US is yet to sign the Kyoto protocol and is causing huge
dents in the ability of other nations to move forward in taking real
action on this front, even when there is scientific evidence backing the
realization that there is not much time left for us in reversing the
process of global warming.
The Human Spirit
Our hope was rekindled when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to
Barack H. Obama in 2009 "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen
international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". As a citizen
of Mother Earth and of nation Sri Lanka, my own hope still is that
America and the Obama administration will be able to take politics from
it’s often used tag of being the ‘Art of the possible’ to a greater
height, where it will give a fresh breath of life to ‘Hope and change
through a rekindling of the goodness of the human spirit.’
And that takes me back to John Lennon’s other hit “Imagine all the
people” and I join in singing its chorus;
“You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
and the world will be as one”
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