Alone for Peace

Posted on July 31, 2004 in Campaign 2004 Occupation of Iraq Peace

It’s not politics Tuesday or Friday, but hell. This needs to be said. Is a vote for John Kerry a vote for Bush packaged as a Democrat?

It seems that the nation is all caught up in the doubletalk. Having delivered our troops and the people of Iraq into a quagmire, the American public is working hard to forgive itself by reaffirming its commitment to the war against Terror. I see visions of Jimmy Swaggart belching “I have sinned” on the pulpit. I see the drunk sobering up after a binge and promising his wife that he will never do it again while mixing some hair of the dog to ease his hangover. I see Thomas Friedman falling all over himself in explaining why he passed Bush a blank ticket because he failed to catch the Bush lies and then saying that he thinks we need to be there now more than ever. I see John Kerry and John Edwards presenting themselves as the opposition by endorsing and promising to expand the war. John Kerry the man who electrified Congress as a young man with his forecast about how this generation would see veterans as the symbol of the moment when America had the guts to see the pointlessness of our involvement in Vietnam and get the hell out of there.

We haven’t learned the lesson of Vietnam, John. You may show us that clip a thousand times over at the MoveOn site, but your acceptance speech this week had many of us cringing and wondering what happened to you? What happened to everyone around us, including the poet I heard last night who declared that he was a poet for peace, which was distinct from being anti-war he said because he believed that sometimes you do have to “fight” for things. Why does everyone except for a core few seem to bowing down to brown their noses between the cheeks of Ares these days?

America, I shall forgive you seven times seventy million times, but I shall not let up on my message. You cannot call yourself healed or saved until you have learned the lesson of Vietnam and, now, of Iraq: peace is not the ravaged towns. Peace is not the maimed in wheelchairs or the triumph of prosthetics filling the place where there was an arm or a leg before a shell amputated it. Peace is not foreign troops tramping through your streets. Peace is not throwing a few token malefactors against human dignity to the military courts. Peace is not the ravaged towns.

It persists in the hearts of many, who do as what must be done to ensure it. The pacifist does not tell the robbers where to find their helpless victim so that they may finish the job. Peace thwarts the robbers by refusing to speak, by offering one’s own person as a sacrifice. Yes, you can die for peace but you cannot have a gun in your hand when you do so. I am a pacifist and I am proud of what I am. I have worked out a personal philosophy against war which I shall not give up for any man or any woman for any photograph or claim of horror being launched against me or any other human being. This is precious to me because it is my freedom — my freedom quarried and shaped and raised as the foundation of my person — by me, the individual who stands at the highest point of his consciousness and sees well beyond these green lawns, imported trees, and automobiles shining in the sun to see people and their homes, not just in this neighborhood but in neighborhoods around the world.

I do not glory in war and I strive not to use its language to describe what I do celebrate and revere. I do not share in this viscious, metal-screeching harmony. I would sooner be alone than live for steel-spawned conflagration and disruption in any cause championed by any people.

War happens in neighborhoods and peace, too, happens there. You cannot fight for peace: you must stop the clubbing and the shooting and the bombing. You must not blindly refuse or go along with orders. You must register your soul with the highest good and, in the end, you must think everything through. You do not just go along because that seems to be where the wave of meat is headed. Live, breath, and think for peace. Start right now.