Hope Remains as Violence Fails in Iraq and Beyond (Page 1 of 2)

There comes a time when the failure of violence opens a path to new possibilities.

We are seeing this played out before our eyes on the political stage in this country. Victory in Iraq is coming to the end of its three-year run, and the Beltway ensemble that has carried the play to this point is disintegrating before our eyes. The Bush Boys are stepping aside, albeit unwillingly, and the lead voices in the Congressional Chorus are being replaced.

A new troupe of actors, The Bipartisan Boys, has been hired to take over the roles formerly held by Rumsfeld and Bolton and their buds. Remarkably, the script is being rewritten, and the new leads are being given new lines.

“The solution to Iraq will not be military,” said James Baker who has pulled more than one president’s fat out of the fire.

Normally, I tune out when the entertainment news comes on the radio, but that line caught my attention. What did he say?

He kept talking, about political and diplomatic solutions. And I heard, “Nonviolence. He is saying that violence failed and we have to try nonviolence.”

Of course, the media didn’t catch that subtle shift. The media wouldn’t recognize nonviolence if it broke out in song in front of their cameras. Because nonviolence is often invisible. It’s the what-didn’t-happen. You can’t see what isn’t there, as the weapons inspectors in Iraq after the invasion can attest.

One person not hitting another is not news, obviously. But it is precisely because nonviolence is so hard to see that it doesn’t register in our public consciousness as a viable alternative to solving our problems.

Back in October 2001 just about everybody supported the decision to attack Afghanistan in order to capture Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, and to stamp out the terrorist network responsible for September 11. Some were enthusiastic about “kicking some ass over there”—one fellow actually got out of his car in traffic to scream that at us as we held a peace vigil on the sidewalk. But others were ill at ease and some were flat out distressed. “What else can we do?” they wondered, feeling as though there were no other realistic options.

By the time we got around to invading Iraq, lots more people were paying attention, and many of them had deep misgivings. What had been peace vigils of 10 or 15 people swelled to 750—in Knoxville of all places. And that was on a cold, rainy Saturday in February. The president shrugged off the reports of tens of millions of protesters around the world, several million in this country. Violence it would be, and violence it has been.

The most powerful nation in the world has brought the full force of our military power to bear on Iraq. We put 140,000 men and women on the ground and poured billions and billions and billions of dollars into the war. We deposed an authoritarian ruler and in his place we installed chaos, sectarian violence run rampant, unimaginable corruption and waste, and finally civil war.

Not long ago I heard a Washington, D.C., official say, “We don’t have to wait until everything is perfect in Iraq; we can leave as soon as it starts getting better.”

If that’s the criteria, then we are getting father and farther from our departure date because it is behind us. As long as the U.S. occupies Iraq, things will get worse and worse, so the only way to leave when they are better than today is to have left yesterday. Or the day before.

Now comes the new show. It’s really not the old show at all, say the new writers, but I’m skeptical. I think as long as we have the same producers and the same director, it’s the same show. Act III, I think. The first act closed with the show-stopping Mission Accomplished—who could forget that amazing set—so lifelike—and the hundreds and hundreds of extras? It was nothing short of a triumph of the theater.

The close of Act II was a little more subdued—the president has gone backstage, grumpily, and the Bipartisan Boys are taking the stage. We’ve got 79 ideas, they say. We’ll see.

“There’s no magic formula,” warned James Baker when he stepped up to the microphone. That was the first thing out of his mouth as the report of the commission was released to the media. So let’s take him at his word.