{"id":203139,"date":"2022-01-17T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=203139"},"modified":"2022-01-13T04:51:11","modified_gmt":"2022-01-13T04:51:11","slug":"untangling-ourselves-from-the-dark-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/01\/untangling-ourselves-from-the-dark-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Untangling Ourselves from the Dark Side"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>12 Jan 2022 – <\/em>Guess what? I direct the following insight to, among others, the U.S. Congress, which annually and without comment, with only a few objectors, passes a trillion-dollar (and growing) military budget, by far the largest such budget on Planet Earth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cYou cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The words are those of Albert Einstein<\/a>, in a letter to a congressman 75 years ago. He adds, pointing out a truth that is still waiting to resonate culturally and politically: \u201cThe very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words take a while to sink in, but as they do, some crucial \u2014 crucially ignored \u2014 realities emerge. The first is that waging war, or not, is a choice<\/em>. Mainstream geopolitical reporting pretty much ignores this miniscule reality and covers the ever-simmering possibility of war \u2014 here, there and everywhere \u2014 as though it\u2019s beyond human control, like a hurricane or a flood or a volcanic eruption. It\u2019s certainly beyond the control of ordinary folks like you and me, who are spectators in the process and nothing more.<\/p>\n

Robert Farley, for instance, writing at Business Insider<\/a> about the planet\u2019s vulnerable geopolitical future, discusses what he calls the \u201cmost dangerous flashpoints for the eruption of World War III\u201d \u2014 disputed and problematic sites such as Ukraine, Taiwan, Iran and North Korea \u2014 where the big powers . . . Russia, China, the USA . . . might lose it with one another.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not criticizing his political analysis, simply noting his portrayal of the planet\u2019s dominant nations as smugly objective forces. For instance: \u201cThe pandemic isn\u2019t over,\u201d he writes, \u201cbut it is becoming part of the background noise of international politics, and great powers are recalibrating and reasserting their interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

What \u201cinterests\u201d is he talking about? The unaddressed assumption here is that there is nothing more than a simplistic military-political will operating at the national level across Planet Earth, a will that is only capable of asserting itself through violence, including nuclear violence, and with seriously limited capacity for self-reflection and no complex understanding even of its own interests. And this is our future: We\u2019re probably going to blow ourselves up.<\/p>\n

And, my God, there is indeed way too much truth to this, but if the mainstream coverage surrenders to this partial truth and leaves Einstein out \u2014 leaves out the fact that war is never inevitable and always a choice \u2014 the truth threatens to become absolute. This is what I truly fear.<\/p>\n

The interest of power, when it reaches a certain level of dominance, is more power. Period. And confronting this interest requires the courage Einstein spoke of. Here\u2019s an example of the difficulty involved in doing so, even if you are, let us say, president of the United States, and happen to believe in the U.N. Treaty<\/a> on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which became international law in 1970. Article VI of the treaty reads:<\/p>\n

\u201cEach of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uh . . . that was half a century ago.<\/p>\n

Kim Petersen<\/a>, addressing the matter, noted that Barack Obama \u2014 the guy who, before he took office, promised to do such things as close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp \u2014 also expressed commitment to a reduction in the country\u2019s stock of nuclear weapons. What he wound up doing instead, Peterson writes, is \u201cauthorizing a $1 trillion nuclear modernization.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s going on? \u201cYou cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.\u201d Electing a president who promises hope and change obviously isn\u2019t enough. The reality of our government is deep. There is a dark side, much of which is \u201cclassified,\u201d and it could well be that the dark side rules, no matter who is president. But acknowledging this doesn\u2019t mean surrendering to the inevitability of World War III \u2014 rather, just the opposite. Only by acknowledging that we live in something that isn\u2019t really (or fully) a democracy can we truly start to become players in the planet\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Dick Cheney<\/a> put it when he spoke on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d several days after 9\/11: \u201cWe also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. . . . A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we\u2019re going to be successful. That\u2019s the world these folks operate in, and so it\u2019s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s twenty years later. The U.S., operating on the dark side \u2014 and with the participation of four presidents \u2014 has dropped 337,000 bombs<\/a> on countries across the Middle East, as well as legitimized torture in its secret prisons, in the process feeding and expanding terrorism, i.e., war itself. Waging war means waging terror. It means operating on the dark side.<\/p>\n

This is not how we will survive. This is not our future. This is not our choice. We have enough of a democracy to listen to Einstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war.\u201d<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

12 Jan 2022 – \u201cYou cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.\u201d The words are those of Albert Einstein. He adds, pointing out a truth: \u201cThe very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[867,2462,112,1765,95,70,1594,481],"class_list":["post-203139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-anglo-america","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-pentagon","tag-us-congress","tag-us-military","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}