Activist Letters
The Letters
column in this issue of the NVA is devoted to the continuing dialogue on U.S.
intervention in Bosnia inspired by David McReynolds article
in our last issue and by a subsequent posting of his over the Internet on the
same subject.
The Crime in Bosnia
David McReynolds position piece "The Crisis in Bosnia: What Can Pacifists Say?" says, in fact, all too little. McReynolds calls the destruction of Bosnia a "great tragedy," as if it were an act of blind fate. In fact, it was a crime. Those of us who oppose military intervention in Bosnia have a special responsibility to find other means to put pressure on the political criminals. Having destroyed the Bosnian state in all but name, these criminals are now carving it into authoritarian military fiefdoms. The United Nations, the European Union and NATO have been thoroughly complicit with the genocide perpetrated against the Bosnian Muslims for the past four years. The U.N. "Protection Forces" provided no protection, but merely managed the war: keeping the Sarajevo airport open for bureaucrats but not allowing the besieged residents to leave, using firepower to enforce the lines between the zones of control but not against aggression, controlling the mobility of civilians but not military forces. They also sold arms on the black market to all sides.The NATO forces now replacing the U.N. forces are turning the authoritarian Croatia of Franjo Tudjman into a client state, while the warmonger Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia is suddenly embraced as a man of peace. The beleaguered Muslims are left with the mere fiction of a pseudo-state to pacify world opinion. Worse still, the independent media, peace activists and anti-nationalist opposition in both Serbia and Croatia, who rejected the war from the beginning, are further sidelined by the official embrace of authoritarian despots. McReynolds acknowledges the existence of such groups, and says "we support them ... with all our hearts." Our hearts, alas, mean little to them. We must support them with our active solidarity. In rejecting the Western media s demonization of the Serbs and guarding against the development of Croatia into a client state, we must also avoid a simplistic equivalism. McReynolds assigns guilt for the destruction of Bosnia to Milosevic, to the Muslims, to Tudjman, and "above all to the European politicians who let Germany incite the war by recognizing Croatia, the spark that se this timber ablaze."
While the Muslim leadership is hardly to be exonerated, it is a cynical self-delusion to imply that they share the blame equally with Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb cohorts, Karadzic and Mladic. And while Germany s complicity in the war is great, Berlin s imperial intrigues would have been stymied without the cooperation of the local demagogues. Croatia, recall, had already been in flames for six months before the German "incitement" of recognition. Finally, in opposing military intervention, we must be careful not to let pacifism slip into passivism. McReynolds closes by stating that "we oppose sending U.S. military forces on a mission we do not believe they can fulfill because they cannot substitute for the work that must be done by the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and can be done only by them." No historical analogy is ever perfect of course, but this hands-off stance was not that taken by friends of freedom and democracy in the Spanish Civil War. McReynolds is correct that "we can support the civil society in the former Yugoslavia." This is the work that falls to those of us who oppose the institutionalized racism and militarism here in the West to organize effective solidarity with our natural allies in the Balkans.
Bill Weinberg,
Balkan War Resource Group/ Neither East Nor West
New York, NYPeace Is Difficult
With great respect for David McReynolds, I would offer the following comments in departure from his views on Bosnia.I appreciate Mr. McReynolds difficulty with finding answers regarding Bosnia. This is true for most Americans, including the President, including me. The subject is one of the most subtle and complex that ever called our attention as a nation, partly because an outright threat to U.S. interests or allies is not obviously present (underscore "obviously"), a threat to the U.S. mainland is not present and a threat to the oil supply is not present. The only thing left is a threat to something less tangible but just as important.
To make clear my perspective beforehand, I myself am not a war resister but a resister of bad war policy. I resisted the Vietnam war policy. I resisted Reagan s arming of the contras. Such resistance was a war in itself.
However, had I been of age at the time (51 now), I would not have resisted American involvement in World War II against Germany, Italy and Japan. I believe they, their ideas and their troops had to be vanquished in no uncertain terms at the expense of American loss of life.
An extension of this colors my views on Bosnia, because I believe we must stand against mass extermination of people wherever we can. Preferably, to make it stick, we must try to find a foothold to prevent murder of civilians via internal commitment of the parties. In the case of Bosnia, President Clinton had to force the issue of internal commitment by ordering NATO air strikes and bringing the parties to Dayton. He took a risk. So far, it s worked to make a start on something that may fail or may succeed. We ll have to see. At least we will have tried, which is no small effort having no small consequence. Certainly, the whole thing may fail. But President Clinton is distinct in one respect from other Presidents who took us into Vietnam, Somalia, Panama, Granada, Lebanon, Nicaragua. Clinton has asked Americans to make the unusual choice of going to Bosnia, not to wake war but to make peace. I am surprised that Mr. McReynolds, who calls himself a pacifist, does not appreciate this simple fact. Perhaps he thinks that peace is something won peacefully. Many have tried this. The prayers of monks and transcendental meditaters may have an effect. But the effect they have may be to moe us to the martial actions necessary to force warring parties to halt their inhumane slaughter. Perhaps I m missing something here, but during my 50+ years of life, where war has been going on, peace has required warlike means to achieve, if only by deterrence.
In any case, the goal of peace is becoming lost in the media-political shuffle. In the popular debate, peace is seen as a weak objective, not very macho, not Reaganesque, especially some other nation s peace, a nation God knows where, full of rival tribes we don t understand. The price of peace in terms of American bodies seems too much to spend. We tend to want to stay home and, as Mr. McReynolds notes, attend to our own peacekeeping within. Such isolationist tendencies are understandable and have been the rule rather than the exception in American history. America is famous for being dragged kicking and screaming into foreign conflicts.
When we consider "war," I suggest to Mr. McReynolds that there is a grave difference between the nature of the war in Bosnia vs. the corporate war on workers in the U.S. that causes thousands of layoffs and thousands of homeless on the streets; between wholesale ethnic cleansing that slaughters thousands of young men and many women in Bosnia vs. the discrimination in the U.S. against minorities, people of color and gays; between the rape of thousands of Bosnian women vs. the deprivation of American women of their freedom of choice. Although blood has been shed domestically at Kent State, in Chicago in 1968, in the deep South, and in deep South Central, for example nothing "here" compares to "there" in terms of bloodshed. The difference between here and there is the difference between extreme discomfort and even loss of freedom vs. fairly predictable nearly universal death.
Why does Mr. McReynolds frame the question as "either/or" when we can do both? We can fight our internal political battles here and we can go and do something over there that is stronger than letting the Bosnian war go on. It s not about "tax dollars." Both here and abroad, it s about morality. It s about voices raised, resistance applied, courage to be vocal and involved, effort to enter local civic action groups, public service, political office and/or military service.
This, for me, follows A.J. Muste s "What do we do now?" We fight for peace and justice here and we fight for peace and justice abroad. We do both. It s something to do with the nature of being alive.
If anything, I would turn Mr. McReynolds challenge around. If we have the guts to stand up and go to Bosnia, do we have the guts to do as much here at home to fight to right the wrongs of corporate and racist elements in America? I m sure Mr. McReynolds is working hard to change things, as he says. But we ve all got to work harder to fight the nonviolent but otherwise vigorous and never-ending fight. He s right. The war is here as much as there. "There" doesn t discount "here." It s holoversal and reverberates back and forth. It s everywhere.
I mention Clinton because I happen to agree with what he has finally done in Bosnia. I disagree with the idea that one year is long enough to be effective. I disagree with his rhetoric about "NATO s credibility," although I understand he was speaking to those who respond to such rhetoric and I don t hold it against him that he is a politician. He would never have been elected President if he wasn t (perhaps Mr. McReynolds wishes the do-nothing-in-Bosnia Mr. Bush had been elected).
Regarding justice, by the way, I am confident that after the Bosnian factions are stabilized and peace takes hold, the criminals against humanity will be brought to justice. You ll notice that President Clinton has ordered a widening of the Dayton Accord to include protection of investigators. Step by step. We must be patient.
There may be casualties, yes. There may be tragic accidents with land mines in the Bosnian snow. But having come this far as a nation from our founding in a revolution assisted by the Frech and having come this far after four years of Bosnian brutality while politically conflicted European countries let the war go on, having now achieved a signed commitment by the parties to make a try, the cost of our not trying is too high. It may not work. But we have to try. It s not about military authority but moral authority. Our moral authority lies in the modeling of trying our best. Abandonment now would be an immoral American course so long as we mouth the values that brought this country into existence. We re not there because "we have the power." We re there because we have a morality that, from time to time, unevenly to be sure, we live up to.
I hope that Mr. McReynolds considers my remarks in the spirit of genuine exploration of an intractable problem that challenges anyone who takes the sacredness of human and all other life seriously. I commend him for his keenness of heart and mind in his search to find a way to make a better world. I invite him to take my hand in the darkness as we make our way together.
Jane Wardlow Prettyman
Santa Barbara, CAVet for Peace and Clinton
I support Clinton s dispatching 20,000 U.S. troops into Bosnia. As I told a reporter from our local newspaper, "The alternative is even worse."David McReynolds accurately described what was happening: "Old men have had to watch their sons throats cut in front of them, ... mothers have seen their daughters raped, ... thousands of unarmed civilians have been killed." Jerry Genesio, Executive Director, Veterans for Peace, Inc., who saw the horror first-hand while leading an ambulance convoy into Bosnia to bring out wounded children for free operations in the United States, stated to me, "We can t let the killings and horrors keep going on and on." Clinton should be praised for his attempt to end the killing and bring peace to Bosnia. If fighting resumes he will most likely lose the presidency. I ve never been more optimistic about real progress toward greater peace in the world than now. Most people, I believe, still seem to think that wars are inevitable, but I do not know of any other time in history when so many conflicts were in a process of being resolved nonviolently there are the peace agreements in Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine, there was former President Carter s visit to North Korea, and now Clinton is sending troops into Bosnia to "stop a war." Political Science Professor Robin Remington of the University of Missouri, whose specialty is former Yugoslavia, says that she saw the different ethnic and religious groups living and working together congenially and believes that the Bosnian people will return to that congeniality again. Most people there are sick of war and killing and want to come forth and rebuild their communities. Clinton s sending our troops with others gives this possibility a real chance the only chance, in my opinion.
Certainly there are many risks and the future is uncertain. We have in the past sided with Croatians and Muslims against the Serbs, and there is a danger we will not be fair to all sides in the future. I disagree with sending in more arms; I wish our troops were trained in conflict resolution. But with all the uncertainty, the killings have stopped and real peace has a chance that it did not have before.
In 1951, as an artillery officer in the Korean War, I directed thousands of rounds at the young men across the front line. I was taught then to call them "the enemy." Finally, their mortar fire hit me, killing the men in front of and behind me. I spent six months in U.S. army hospitals recovering. It wasn t until I saw the Vietnam War on television that I realized what I had done in Korea. I ve tried to turn my guilt and depressed feelngs into positive actions for peace and justice ever since.
Veterans for Peace has adopted and now promotes conflict resolution and peer mediation programs, and I am now the coordinator of a conflict resolution and peer mediation project for my local school district. These programs teach students and others a process for resolving their own conflicts nonviolently. We also support training of student peer mediators who then teach and lead fellow students to resolve their own conflicts.
The 1996 Veterans for Peace National Convention will take place Aug. 30-31 in Columbia, Mo., and will have joint programs and speakers with the university s Peace Studies Program. Speakers will include Akihiro Takahashi, former director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and atomic bomb survivor, and nationally syndicated columnist and Director of the Center for Teaching Peace, Colman McCarthy. The proposed theme for the convention is "Pathways to Peace." I hope that many veterans will join Veterans for Peace, P.O. Box 3881, Portland, ME 04101, and come to our convention. We may differ on how to arrive, but we agree on working for peace.
Charlie Atkins
National Board member, Veterans for Peace
Columbia, MO[Top of Page]
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Last updated March 15, 1996. NVWeb, Philadelphia USA