Muhammar Khaddafy\u2019s brutal reaction to the aspirations of his own people is becoming a textbook case in the futility of opposing the citizens from whose consent a leader\u2019s political authority derives, however illegitimately. Instead, his stubborn egotism has led to absurd violence, even civil war. At moments like this, the world trembles with indignation and apprehensive hope.<\/p>\n
The non-violent invincibility of people power, the argument of Jonathan Schell\u2019s underrated masterpiece of political philosophy, The Unconquerable World<\/a><\/em>, may be coming true before our eyes again as it did in the Philippines in 1986 and Czechoslovakia in 1989. We do not yet know which model will dominate in the short run in the Middle East and Northern Africa, the violence of state power, or the non-violence of citizens seeking their rights as leaders abdicate peacefully. Citizen invincibility is not manifesting in all cases without additional tragic sacrifice to the callous will of dictators. But in the end it will prevail.<\/p>\n Meanwhile we Americans need to acknowledge our own role in the stagnation and double standards pervading desert autocracies. Our subtle oppression has been as abundant as the oil underneath those sands that we covet and even assume is rightfully ours, obtainable by any means necessary. As we condemn Khaddafy\u2019s brutality, let\u2019s not forget our own over-reliance on military \u201csolutions\u201d\u2014rationalized by our own desperate conviction that we can only fight fire with fire, only prevail with raw power, with weaponized drones over Pakistan or million-dollar-a-year soldiers attempting to kill people and win their hearts and minds at the same time.<\/p>\n The subversive and hopeful message of Egypt\u2019s Tahrir Square is that change does not have to come by violence, just as the message from Tripoli\u2014or Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq\u2014is that violence only cycles into worse violence. If unarmed citizens in Tahrir Square can create positive change, why can\u2019t the most powerful democracy on earth choose to bring about change not with military violence, but with magnanimous humanitarian aid and adherence to international laws and institutions? Khaddafy, if he survives, could be brought before the International Criminal Court to be tried for crimes against his own people, no thanks to the U.S., which does not recognize the Court\u2019s legitimacy (though our Ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, did express her happiness that Khaddafy\u2019s case had been referred to the Court).<\/p>\n From what source does civil authority ultimately flow? Isn\u2019t it the deep truth, with variants found in all the texts of the world\u2019s major religions, of the golden rule?<\/p>\n We have already come close, with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, to the polar opposite of this universal rule: if you try to destroy me totally, I will destroy you totally, and if we really let fly with everything we have, we will all be dead ten times over. Khaddafy\u2019s refusal to accept less than absolute control may well lead to his own death.<\/p>\n Enough Egyptian citizens understood that as they wished to be done to, so should they do. In this they demonstrated that the Gandhis and Kings of this world are not some idealistic exception. The strategies of non-violent change have become just as realistic and practical as the notion that dictators can deny their citizens\u2019 aspirations by brute force has become unrealistic and impractical. Building schools for girls in Afghanistan is not only a more realistic way to increase U.S. security than 800 foreign bases; without so many bases we could afford to pay our own teachers and civil servants a living wage in Wisconsin and elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cThose who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable,\u201d asserted President Kennedy in a resonant aphorism. This applies universally, to protestors and the governments trying to appease or oppose them, to near-failed states and to great powers. Non-violent alternatives are available to all governments as well as all protestors. Autocrats can capitulate peacefully and fly into exile, and free and fair elections can, with forbearance and hard work, fill the power vacuum. The mother of all might-have-beens comes to mind\u2014what is happening now in the region could eventually have happened in Iraq without disastrous U.S. meddling.<\/p>\n After 9\/11, stereotypes of a mysterious, unknowable \u2018other,\u2019 an other who hates us for our freedoms, quickly took over. The \u201cenemy image\u201d gripping the collective American psyche morphed from Soviet communists who tried and failed to make peaceful revolution impossible in Eastern Europe, into suicidal Islamic martyrs who tried and failed to make violent revolution inevitable.<\/p>\n Now these Arab and Persian and Sunni and Shia and Coptic Christian \u2018others\u2019 not only have faces and names, they are martyring themselves for the same liberties we ourselves hold dear. On a planet so small that that the news flashes instantly from Wisconsin to Bahrain, Tripoli to Jerusalem, isn\u2019t it time we gave up enemy-images altogether? We are one human family. In the spirit of Tahrir Square, isn\u2019t it time to reject the illusory authority of violence and embrace the unconquerable authority of non-violence?<\/p>\n ___________________<\/p>\n Winslow Myers, the author of <\/em>\u201cLiving Beyond War: A Citizen\u2019s Guide<\/a>,\u201d serves on the Board of Beyond War<\/a>, a non-profit educational foundation whose mission is to explore, model and promote the means for humanity to live without war.<\/em><\/p>\n