Some common sense responses to gun violence

I'll be brief today....I know, I'm never brief....don't worry though, I'm posting a link to a 22 page report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns titled "Access Denied".  Please read it, as I will be referring to it's contents in the near future, hopefully.  http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/9/c1/6/1017/3/access_denied.pdf

Please pay close attention to the summary reccomendations:

• Remove "policy riders" on federal appropriations bills that limit firearms research at the CDC and NIH and provide appropriate funding to study the role of firearms on public health.
• Fully fund the National Violent Death Reporting System and expand it to all 50 states to improve our understanding of the role firearms play in fatalities.
• Reconstitute the research program on gun trafficking at the National Institute of Justice to update and expand our understanding of the market for illegal guns.
• Resume the publication of Justice Department reports on illegal gun markets and trafficking patterns.
• Rescind the Tiahrt Amendments 1

1"Access Denied" by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, January, 2013.

OK.  As I promised I'm staying brief today.  But here's a good couple of hours worth or studying for my peacemaker friends.  You'll probably get nostalgic for my explanations of St. Augustine and Immanuel Kant when you've finished (seriously, it's a good read...but then, so was my philosophy blogging).

Peace to you all.  I'l talk soon.  Feel free to comment/write.

Dealing with it all

I have written and rejected several posts over the past few days.  The shooting in Connecticut has been deeply troubling to me, and I wanted to respond soon after, but found myself unable to make a coherent statement.  So I suppose that I should just remind you to pray, or ponder, or meditate on the lives of everyone deeply affected by this event.  In fact, having read this far, I would ask to to pause briefly and collect your thoughts.
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To date, I have put the prospect for peace in a neat package, with the optimistic, yet I feel sound, belief that we are evolving to a peaceful world.  I can rationalize this belief by pointing to the better governance of nations, the growing access to simple human rights, and, assuming that we are good custodians of the planet, better access to resources.  The process is easy to grasp, but hard to bring about.  That's OK, it is good to have a purpose in life.

I had thought a great deal about what happens when we start to get a handle on the horrendous conflagrations, protracted civil wars to attain dignity to the downtrodden, and all manner of large scale conflict.  Although we have a great mountain to move in that regard, there is still work to be done.  Sadly, we cannot build the bigger peace all the while ignoring our own communities and families.  As I have  said before, peacemaking starts at the personal level and wells up from there.  As we advance civilization beyond wars we will not have a truer sense of peace until we can address the community tragedies that mat be as horrific as in Newtown, Connecticut, or the scourge of domestic abuse, or the violence common among the marginalized in our society.

Yet, if we hold to th principles of a larger world peace,and apply them to our communities, we will see less violence on streets, in schools and in families.  To be sure, we will never eliminate the tragedy of mental illness, or the occasional violent consequences; we probably cannot truly eliminate a social stratification scheme that pushes vulnerable people to the margins, and compels them to lash out; we cannot make every home idyllic.  But we can take determined steps to approach peace for everyone.

There is much more wrong with our stewardship of our communities than manifested itself in the Newton killings.  But if I may, I will address some of the things that might be done which will allow us to avoid some similar events in the future:

• Prioritize mental health - The news reports are awash with our broken mental health infrastructure.  This infrastucture must be rebuilt and cared for.  We also need to care more for one another, and reach out to the lonely, the sad, the bullied, and the poor.  Remember, I said it begins with us as individuals.
• Work for gun control - It's no secret that there is a large segment of society that opposes any gun control.  Often, I find the rhetoric and political tactics of those who would reject all limits of gun ownership as distasteful and dishonest.  Reasonable control of devices designed to kill should be the responsibility of any society.
• Be active - Let your elected representatives at all levels of government know that there is a public safety responibility that they bear, and that we are willing to work with them if they will lead us in building communities which apply common sense laws and reach out to those most at risk as victims of violence, including those driven to cause violence through irrational or desparate means.

Peace to you all.  Please accept my Christmas blessings whether you share in my belief or not.  If you remain troubled, as I do, about this tragic killing, know that you will also see great joy again.

Talking to Iran

I’m going to try to finish my thought on US-Iran prospects for peace tonight.  It’s a good time to reflect, as everyone in the US is preoccupied with domestic budgetary issues (the so-called fiscal cliff), and the Gaza crisis has cooled off.  Sadly, the day following his world premiere into international diplomacy, Egypt’s President Morsi decided he wanted to be the new Nasser, and gave himself extraordinary powers.  I still admire his role is stopping the killing, but what is wrong with Egyptian leadership? 

The new Gaza crisis underscores the fragility of the region, and Iran’s role in making it that way.  But here’s the problem.  If you want to tie all that stuff to talks with Iran, or if Iran does, talks will bog down and stop.  We should be prepared to try to discuss the US-Iran relationship irrespective of Israel, the Palestinians, Hamas, Syria, Iraq, and all of that  We can tell Iran that if they want to discuss regional strategic policy with us, we first need to develop a two way understanding.

Both sides have work to do.  From the US side, we need to acknowledge that we have done a great deal to thwart Iranian national goals, as the primary underwriter of the Shah, and developing the concept of revolutionary Iran as an enemy of the US, using rhetoric like ‘Axis of Evil’ to describe them (well with a couple of other state entities we had issues with).  After thirty years of rule by the Islamic Republic, we should tell them that it is not on our agenda to overturn the Republic, regardless of serious disagreements.

Iran needs to respond in kind, recognizing that we are a nation with a pluralistic culture, part of which embraces Islam among a vast number of other ideas.  We are neither immoral nor amoral.  We need assurances of whatever type they can honestly reply, that they are not going to disrupt the status quo through violent means.

If this beginning feels too ethereal, please understand the amount of hatred which has been hurled both ways.  This basic discussion is to stop the poisonous atmosphere, so that we can lay a groundwork for peace.

With such prerequisite understandings achieved, we need to appeal to Iran over the benefits of non-proliferation.  We need to discuss this with humility as the super-power with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, and we need to acknowledge that as a result we are forced into a terrible responsibility to never again use them in aggression.  If we were to hear Ayatollah Khamenai speak to this moral trap of nuclear weapon possession, then we begin to unwrap the distrust.

In the short term, these talks do little.  If they get Iran to adhere to UN resolutions on enrichment, we can start to unwind the sanctions, and stop discussing ‘red lines’.  Even if we don’t achieve that much, we have the basis for a relationship that isn’t based on mutual hatred.  Let the hawks laugh at this as a ‘soft’ approach, but I cannot imagine a path forward from ‘hard-liners’ in any countries achieving better results.

Peace to all of you.

Hope

Today I’m going to take a break from the troubles of today’s world and dwell on an important topic:  Hope

Of all of the higher thought processes we are endowed with, the idea of hope is unique, and perhaps is one of the most important concepts that cause humanity to stand separate from the rest of the known universe.

Hope is a highly evolved concept, because it is purely forward looking.  Before we can have a sense of hope, we need to imagine different futures, and make discernment over the best outcomes.  It is also my observation that when people make outward proclamations of hope, they tend to be heavily weighed toward what we would universally describe as good; a good in the moral sense that also seems to be uniting in raising humanity.

Hope and Peace are inseparable.  The state of our global community is not a state of Peace, though thankfully, most people in the world enjoy a modicum of peace in their personal lives.  When we look ahead to the lives of our children, we discuss their futures in terms of our hopes for them.  Invariably, people invoke peace as a hope for their children and grandchildren.  This is true in the relative safety of Massachusetts, where I live and write from, as it is in Gaza, Sudan, Syria or anyplace else where one would think that Hope would be hard to come by.

Hope makes us ambitious.  It is Hope that informs us that Peace is so much more than safety from violence, but a sense of security, fairness, access to basic needs and rights, and the desire to perpetuate that deeper understanding of Peace.

Hope grows.  It springs from a passing wish of how things could be, and germinates into a belief of how things should be.  Beyond that it becomes inspiration, where we make that transformation from how things should be to how things will be.  Several months ago, I stated that I believe humanity is on a long road toward true Peace.  Whether, as I believe, a divine guidance leads us there, or if you prefer, the natural ascendancy of mankind makes it inevitable, you can draw the same conclusion. 

Informed, perhaps, by my assertion of eventual peace, it is a wellspring for Hope, that we may see it begin during our lives.  If we are destined to wander in the desert of War for our lifetimes, perhaps we will be graced in our final days by a glimpse of that promise on the far side of the river, comforted that it is the inheritance of our children, who will pass over into a world of Peace.

About Iran and the Gaza Crisis

The day Hamas launched long-range rockets toward Israeli population centers I had tried to post using the comment section under last week's post.  Sadly, my sketchy tech abilities weren't turned on that day I guess, because it never showed up.  OK, maybe a few days' reflection will help me sort through this ugly development.

If you've been a frequent reader, you'll know that I try very hard to maintain a neutral position.  After all, we ultimately need to get everyone together if we're going to have peace.  Sadly, I found that an even-handed approach is not always going to be the best policy.  Regarding the Sudan/South Sudan problems I ultimately got very frustrated trying to avoid criticism of Sudan's President Bashir in the face of outrageous behavior. His South Sudan counterpart, President Kir, was also unneccesarily belligerent, so the whole crisis was a demoralizing display of leadership.

Today's Gaza crisis is larger, and the cast of badly behaving characters is long, and very closely ties to the US-Iran issues that I have been writing about.  What I intend to do today, is to call out the bad policy from all sides, and establish some of my personal biases.  I have no intent of being particularly partisan to one warring faction over the other, and I will try to avoid labelling anyone, but some frank discussion is due here.

I'll take on the state of Israel, and PM Netanyahu first.  I want to be clear that Israel's existence, it's right to be free from violent threats, and it's right to engage in defensive military actions to assert it's rights and the safety of Israeli citizens is just.  From that perspective, Israel has acted justly over the past several days in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.  The air strikes to disarm Hamas and the threatened land invasion are akin to disarming a dangerous person to prevent further harm.  They have not yet reached a point of unjust retaliation.

Sadly, the story is far more complex than stating Israel's right to defend.  Israeli policy of a Gaza blockade has been unjust, and has caused terrible suffering.  Gaza has been, effectively the world's largest prison for several years.  Further, the Netanyahu administration, and the Sharon administration before it, have myopically seen the status quo, where Israel dictates the fate of Palestinians without regard for their rights, as a seemingly permanent state of affairs.

Israel needs to realize that the dignity and autonomy of the Palestinian people is the only long-range strategy that will yield peace.  I am confident that this will be the outcome  at some point in the future,but I would be very happy if Israel would gain some clarity in this regard.

Secondly, I will address Hamas.  I think it is a disservice to everyone to continue to label Hamas as a terrorist organization, and therefore beyond the reach of diplomacy.  They are the democratically elected governmnt of Gaza, regardless of their previous atrocities and their disturbing view of a future Middle East.  Israel and the US have been responsible for empowering Hamas through 'get tough' approaches, which have driven the Palestinians to them for support.

Hamas has acted reprehensively since taking over the government of Gaza.  If Israel has been myopic in their treatment of Palestinians over the past several years*, it is largely because Hamas has stolen their eyeglasses.  They have been violent and unyielding, and can take blame for the shedding of blood in Gaza today.  They need to be negotiated with because they are Gaza's government, but no concession needs to be made in bad faith.  Hamas must either acknowledge a realistic path forward to a peaceful world, or understand that continued belligerence will perpetuate misery and death.  Only they can answer the question of whether they can volve to leaders with their people's interest in mind, or an ugly by-product of poverty and injustice that will need to be resected.

Thirdly, my own country, the US, needs to be considered.  The US is well intentioned, but our self professed dual roles as defender of Israel, and brokers for peace are probably untenable.  For this reason and for internal political reasons, the world's great superpower comes to the table looking like a stumbling oaf.

The pro-Israel lobby in the US has done a great service to the cause of justice and peace, by keeping us in mind of our commitment to defending Israel's right to exist.  It is a matter of good statesmanship to keep our promises and remember our friends.  What we fail to do, however, is to maintain a reasonable sense of arm's-length separation, and advise our friend when they need to consider peace with far more assertion.  The same pro-Israel lobby screams that we are appeasers, or somehow weak if we criticizethe Israeli government, when in fact we could be helping steer them toward a more moderate approach to the Palestinian's that would ultimately be beneficial.  It is also illegal for US representatives to talk to Hamas because they are 'terrorists', leaving us no one to deal with on one side of the table, unless we prefer to pretend that Fatah represents the people of Gaza.

It frustrates me that my country can intend such good, and miss the mark so widely.

Fourth, I will take up the case of Iran.  The current Iranian government may be as bad as we fear they are.  Certainly some of the current 'hard-liners' would relish posessing nuclear weapons, and if fact may be of a mind to use them in anger.  They may be actively working toward these prospects.  If they aren't the primary supporters of Hamas' outrages, and the material source for their medium range missiles, then I would be geatly surprised.  This makes Iran at least as culpable as Israel for locking the people of Gaza behind barbed wire.  Let me be clear.  I am accusing Iran of war-mongering.  I am also advocating negotiations with them.

The regime of President Ahmadinejad will be gone soon.  Engagement with Iran is not only possible, but crucial, and the likelihood of reasonable talks is greatly increased with a new presidency.  Contrary to our pervasive view in the US, fueled by the 1978 revolution, our best chance at peaceful ties with Iran may come from Ayatollah Khamenai, the religious leader in Iran.  The Islamic leaders have been distrustful of their government's prospect of using nuclear weapons, and the ethical concerns of such weapons in general.  The religious leadership might be profoundly different than the caricature we have built of them.  In short, Iran has not acted in the interests of peace recently, but I am hopeful, especially if we give them a fair hearing.

I have saved the good news for last..  When Egypt's President Morsi was elected recently, many shuddered, fearing the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Nonetheless, he strikes a good (hardly perfect but let's not complain) balance between the Egypt revered for the Camp David Accord, and the pro-Palestinian Islamic Egypt.  Moreover, he has taken his position proactively, and made Cairo the center for peace talks.  Right now, he is probably the only person in the world in a postion to offer a peace table, and to his great credit, he's done it.  In days or years to come, he may disappoint us, but today he has marked himself as a world leader and perhaps a peacemaker.

I realize I've been pretty harsh on most of the parties at play today, but I have a high regard for them as well.  The elements of peace are available, and I believe that most are willing to utilize them.  I remain skeptical of Hamas' willingness to do so, but John Lennon used to tell us all to give Peace a chance.

*I will not try to recreate a tit-for-tat countback of who can be blamed for every insult back to Britain's 'liberation' of Palestine from the Ottoman's in 1916 (but I can do a better job than many), because it's time to realize that the back story is nothing but an ugly unchangeable story.  Let's keep to the recent past.

 

Alternative to Negotiating with Iran?

The path to peace isn't going to be easy or quick with Iran.  The US and Iran share distrust and dislike in many respects.  So, a little formal analsysis of the situation is in order.  First, We should consider what the best alternative to a negotiated agreement (i.e. BATNA - for how this analysis works I recommend the book Getting to Yes, by Fisher and Ury).  As I see it, the best alternative is to continue to apply a rigid regime of sanctions on Iran to possibly compel them to cease alleged weapons grade erichment.

The sanctions regime is a good option from the perspective of being a non-violent confrontation.  It offers a potnential end to a long-standing crisis without war.  In turn, the success of sanctions could yield an atmosphere where dialogue could be conducted and relationships created, post crisis.

The negative aspects of a sanctions regime, are numerous.  First, Iran may be able to push past the sanctions and create nuclear weaponry, if we assume that is their intent.  Second, it is a continuation of a long standing face-off between Iran and the US.  For the sake of simplicity, I will ignore the many other players in this issue for now.  It allows a status quo to continue in the Middle East, which serves no one's interests.  Third, the sanctions will end sooner or later, and they merely create a holding pattern until the parties come to the point of agression, or a satisfactory conclusion.  That elusice satifactory conclusion can only come from actions taken by Iran, confirmed and accepted by the US, and allies, and concluded with a negotiated settlement.  So, sanctions are merely a deferral of a negotiated agreement, or a collapse into war.  To avoid war, we must eventually talk with the Iranians.

So, is the real 'best alternative' to negotiation war?  Perhaps. And perhaps it affords us the opportunity to conduct limited warfare.
If a full scale infntry-led war with Iran sounds like a nightmare, perhaps we can engage in tactice we used against Iraq between the Gulf War and the 2003 'shock-and-awe' invasion.  We supressed their military capabilities by force by placing a no-fly zone in place, and tightening a sanctions noose around them.  It was ultimately a failure, when the US 'confirmed' WMD's in Iraq, while at the same time sanctions collapsed.  The US invoked "The Bush Doctrine" and launched a preemtive attack to prevent deployment of the WMD's.  Limited war failed.

Since we have already started a punishing sanctions regime on Iran, it seems unwise to stop those sanctions until we receive some sort of response from Iran.  Nonetheless, we MUST be willing to listen to Iran, and sieze the opportunity to talk.  A surgical strike of a supposed nuclear weapons deveopment site will not in any way I can forsee, stop at a surgical strike, nor is it likely to satisfy skeptics that Iran is no longer capable of nuclear deployment.  Such a move is a prelude to a nightmare war.

In the end, there is no acceptable substitute for negotiated agreement with Iran.

Now it gets quite tricky.  First, what are the parameters to be negotiated, Second, who is present to conduct negotiations, and third, what are the conditions under which negotations are started, and continued.  I'll save the negotiation parameters until the next time.  Meanwhile, I hope you find personal peace, and continue to commit to being a peacemaker.

Why we Must Avoid War with Iran

What do the Vietnam War, the Iraq War and the current Afghan War have in common from the American perspective?  In each case it seemed important to commit troops, wage war against a much smaller nation, and ‘fix’ a foreign policy problem.  The cause could have seemed important; the communist dominoes, the weapons of mass destruction, or the elimination of terrorist havens were all deemed important enough to send Americans to die for.  In all cases, out troops were well trained and possessed weaponry that would presumably defeat all enemies.

War doesn’t work the way we have presumed.  In our most recent adventures we have been quick to gain key military objectives, and drive the enemy into a guerrilla, or ‘asymmetric’ fighting position, where they proceed to fight back ad infinum.  We are left with young men and women in harm’s way, without an outcome that could be deemed victory.

Our exit strategy in all three cases I have mentioned has been to leave a trained native army in place to hold up the government we had helped to create.  This led to a disaster in Vietnam, an emerging situation in Iraq that will probably give us ambiguous results at best, and we worry about our Afghan legacy, with hawkish lawmakers saying we need to devote more time and energy to help the Kharzei regime stand on its own.

Now, we contemplate war with Iran.  The cause seems just; a nuclear Iran is a bona fide threat to Israel.  There is pressure to ‘draw a bright red line’ beyond which, Iran will be subject to our military wrath.  Sadly we should know that making ultimatums will simply lead us into another pointless war.  I specifically mean pointless, because a war in Iran will do nothing to secure Israel from attack.  It will delay Iran’s deployment of nuclear weaponry, but it will make worse the visceral hatred that poisons the Middle East, and we will soon fear the same threat from Pakistan or Sudan, or a radicalized Egypt, or any number of other scenarios.

Once in Iran, what would we do?  It is a large country filled with daunting terrain and an enormous populace, and the cost to wage a war there, in blood and dollars, would dwarf the adventures of the past dozen years.  It would most likely require a much larger military, likely from the re-emergence of a draft.  Still, if it would bring peace, shouldn’t we undertake it?  The prospects of peace through war with Iran are purely rhetorical.  There is only one way to avoid catastrophe, and that is via dialogue.

When I resume this discussion (i.e. post back with your thoughts), I want to tie up a few loose ends on the prospects of war in Iran, such as surgical strike, and ‘no-fly’ strategies, and then talk about the basis for a dialogue, cutting through the clutter, and getting toward some understanding that will benefit not only Iran and the US, but Israel, the Palestinians, and Syria.  It’s good to be writing again!