Indeed, things are bad enough that members of the House select committee on China \u201cwar-gamed<\/a>\u201d a possible military confrontation between the United States and China, should it invade Taiwan. The result was hell for both sides. Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen. War looms!<\/p>\n War is minimally questioned \u2014 taken for granted \u2014 in the mainstream consciousness, or what I would call the consensus groupthink, which is quietly structured into mainstream reporting. Conflict between nations instantly summons the possibility of war; that\u2019s just the way it is, no matter the certainty of \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d Missing from such reporting is any vision of the world that looks beyond the inevitability of war, that transcends militarism. For instance:<\/p>\n \u201cThe concept of \u2018national security\u2019 has been thrown around promiscuously for generations,\u201d Chris Wright<\/a> writes at Common Dreams, \u201cnot only in politics and the popular media but even the international relations scholarship. Rarely is it noticed that the term, unless clarified, is meaningless. . . .<\/p>\n \u201cWas George W. Bush,\u201d Wright asks, \u201cprotecting America\u2019s \u2018security\u2019 by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, thereby massively increasing terror, and terrorist recruiting, across the Middle East? Is the government protecting Americans\u2019 present and future security by subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, thus accelerating global warming?\u201d<\/p>\n And why, he asks, does security not seem to mean spending money, at the level unquestioningly dished out to the Pentagon, on such necessities as national health care, housing, infrastructure repair. Security, apparently, is always \u2014 and only \u2014 a question of maintaining power. It\u2019s not about cooperation, whatever that might mean.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s definitely not about finding a way to dismantle the world\u2019s nuclear weapons, including (oh my God!) our own. As long as maintaining power is the endpoint of political thought, nukes will not go away. The chances are far more likely that they\u2019ll be used.<\/p>\n Yeah, security.<\/p>\n This is bigger than politics, bigger than journalism. Humanity, humanity! Let\u2019s not dismiss our future with a bloody shrug. We can move beyond today\u2019s consensus. As Brad Wolf<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n \u201cWar is a language of lies. Cold and callous, it emanates from dull, technocratic minds, draining life of color. It is an institutional offense to the human spirit.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Pentagon speaks the language of war. The President and Congress speak the language of war. Corporations speak the language of war. They sap us of outrage and courage and the appreciation of beauty. They commit carnage of the soul.\u201d<\/p>\n We cannot leave the human future in the hands of caged liars, also known as politicians. But what is our option? Wolf makes a startling leap of awareness: \u201cA poet is needed to tell the truth. Poetry recognizes not the ideal but the real. It cuts to the bone. It doesn\u2019t flinch. It doesn\u2019t look away.\u201d<\/p>\n These words push poetry beyond anything I had ever envisioned, but as I think about this in my shocked and doubting way, slowly something starts to make sense: Struggling to tell the truth \u2014 to chip off a miniscule fragment of truth from the not-yet-known \u2014 is not the same thing as being right. It\u2019s the opposite of being certain. But truth, when you manage to find words for it, resonates.<\/p>\n So do bombs, you might say, but after a bomb has exploded, there\u2019s nothing left but a few wailing survivors (at best). The basic premise of war is that we<\/em> are good and they<\/em> are evil and, that being the case, kill the bad guys. How does this make us secure?<\/p>\n Hmmm. Poetry, you say? Here\u2019s a fragment of a poem I wrote almost 25 years ago, called \u201cVigil.\u201d I wrote it in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, inspired by the alleged \u201cvigil\u201d some gun-rights advocates held outside the school gymnasium when President Clinton visited, apparently addressing the possibility of gun control. They held signs, some of which declared: \u201cGun Control Kills Kids.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026 I am in awe And life goes on, at least for some, as I veer my pen away from the gun-rights protesters and toward the politicians and militarists of the world. You cannot bomb and slaughter your way to security any more than you can kill your way to the truth.<\/p>\n ______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n War is minimally questioned \u2014 taken for granted \u2014 in the mainstream consciousness, or what I would call the consensus groupthink, which is quietly structured into mainstream reporting. Conflict between nations instantly summons the possibility of war; that\u2019s just the way it is, no matter the certainty of \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[867,417,244,803,2314,725,2797,1126,1050,1855,2462,2571,688,278,1148,961,70,1594,481],"class_list":["post-234877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-anglo-america","tag-bullying","tag-china","tag-competition","tag-corporate-media","tag-culture-of-violence","tag-culture-of-war","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-mainstream-media-msm","tag-military-industrial-media-complex","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-peace-journalism","tag-russia","tag-taiwan","tag-ukraine","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234877","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=234877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234878,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234877\/revisions\/234878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nof the deadeye imperturbability
\nof the armed righteous,
\nwho look upon the world\u2019s suffering
\nand see targets.
\nThey stand in potent prayer
\nwith hands clasped
\nand arms extended,
\njudgment on a hairtrigger,
\nGod in the recoil. \u2026<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Robert-Koehler-pic-e1500749603385.jpg\")
<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"