Christmas - the Festival of Peace - in the Year 2002

by Dr Annemarie Buchholz, Historian

The Mother of all Lies

It is with this characterisation that Peter Scholl-Latour begins his new book Kampf dem Terror - Kampf dem Islam? - Chronik eines unbegrenzten Krieges (Battle against Terror - Battle against Islam? - The Chronicle of an Unlimited War). The 'Mother of all Battles' as Saddam Hussein boastfully called his offensive against America and its allies at the beginning of 1991 before his armies were pounded into the dust in the south of Mesopotamia. Today, Scholl-Latour says, the West is in danger of its 'war against evil,' which President George W. Bush has set in motion to destroy world-wide terrorism and which has been set no time and geographical limits, becoming the 'Mother of all Lies.'

No Anti-Americanism

Peter Scholl-Latour's reflections, against the background of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the world today, have nothing to do with anti-American attitude or rather 'Anti-Americanism.' They cannot simply be dismissed by a cheap polemic, which various sources have tried to do recently. And, above all, one cannot deny that Scholl-Latour has a profound knowledge of Islamic history and culture, as well as great respect for his own culture and the culture of other peoples, indeed every culture.

Since the beginning of the Kosovo War we have watched one country after another being made a target. Language as a tool of deception no longer calls wars 'war,' but instead 'campaign,' or 'air campaign' or perhaps 'bombing campaign.' Occupation of a country and installation of a puppet regime is nowadays called 'nation building.' Virtually nobody any more questions this term. 'Are nations really built? Or, rather, do they grow?' was the question asked by the Harvard professor Carl Friedrich in 1963. And there is even less debate on whether 'nation building' is at all possible when you blanket-bomb an area. The old colonial powers, the old Austro-Hungarian monarchy or the former USSR would all be perfectly capable of saying what effects the various forms of dealing with other peoples will have.

On the brink of 30-40 years of war

And because we no longer ask all these questions, do we now find ourselves, at Christmas 2002, on the brink of 30-40 years of war in the world and simply look on and remain silent to the preparations going on around us? 'There was a smell of war in the air,' it was stated in 1938 in the book Beyond Conflict about the history of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. What then happened nobody likes to remember today. However, we should because it would provide us with the foundation we need in order to be able to think and act responsibly.

We are responsible that an excessive arms race is taking place without much questioning. Even countries applying for NATO membership are being made to pay tribute. Anyone who had hoped that after Bill Clinton the White House would guarantee more trustworthy politics, must be sorely disappointed. Before George W. Bush was elected president this was a central election campaign subject. 'America is overcommitted around the world, he said, pushes its weight around too much, and tells other countries how to run their affairs too often. We need to scale back, be humble and get out of the nation-building business.' Things sound a bit different now and war for the next 30-40 years is being heralded. And what are we doing, - we, the citizens of democracies in whose name all this is being done?

Our society today is based on communication, with all the possibilities of information, including those of manipulation, disinformation and deception. But at least the internet user can see how the next one of these wars is being systematically planned and prepared. The political magazines are not too secretive either about what lies ahead. In Newsweek this summer, the headline of a political column was: 'If you want to hit Iraq, use a trigger'.' The weapons inspections could very well serve as such a trigger, said Fareed Zakaria. The UN could set the standards so high that Iraq will hardly be able to fulfill them, and then the war could be started with support from the UN, he explained. Do you remember how a similar trick was used in the negotiations at Rambouillet, based on the 'Annex B,' which did not become known to the members of the 'European Parliament' until the war was well into its second stage. A few weeks ago, the same columnist in Newsweek taught us that the war against Iraq has to be waged 'now or never.' The cat is out of the bag even for the ordinary reader of the political magazines. And we are just watching and describing how the tricks and lies are unfolding? The former Swiss Divisionary Bachofner (a rank that more or less corresponds to that of a Major General) was among the very few to admonish us: 'The war has returned, but we have lost all respect.' Is the acquiescent wait-and-see attitude based on the fact that the Reds and Greens participate in the dance as office incumbents? This may explain the reaction of those who several decades ago, in adolescent age, saw their hopes for a better world more on this side of the political spectrum. Others, in contrast, apparently cannot imagine that America, the friend who brought the Second World War to an end and offered help with its Marshall plan, could be capable of planning such an outrage as a 30-40 year war.

They are also telling us, as citizens, that we are superior to past generations, because we are so clever and thanks to a global flow of information. This is true inasmuch as we know in detail, since the Kosovo war, how, where, why, and to what extent the arms build-up is taking place and what other preparations for war are being made. Washington openly talks about war for the next 30 to 40 years, we all know it. And yet our cleverness is restricted to plain comprehending what happens, as if the history of the past century had not taught us any lessons to reflect on.

Why no more questions?

In Europe in the 60s, the generation of the sons and daughters attacked their fathers fiercely, viciously demanding an explanation for why they had followed Hitler, why they had participated or even only acquiesced. Quarrels opened an abyss, separating families, and neither the now aged parents, nor the children who are now in their parents' role have recovered from this fracture. Only rarely, when a grandchild asks in genuine sympathy what really happened during the war and how civilians survived the nights filled with bomb raids in German cities, do they begin to speak. Most of them, however, remain quiet and their experiences will be buried with them. It is not quite clear today which secret service was really in charge of this aggressive propaganda campaign of the 60s - maybe the East German state security experts that were specially trained to subvert the West; there were 30,000 of them. But we should also not forget that in 1995, it was the USA that declared, as the first country in the world, that 70% of the classified documents from World War II were to remain under lock and seal, notwithstanding the fact that 50 years had elapsed. No historical investigation is possible without 70% of the documents. Perhaps this is deliberate: the generation that suffered in the years 1939-1945 must remain silent forever, and the younger generation becomes exhausted in manipulated debates, so that no genuine discussion can take place - historically, from the point of view of international law, or from a human perspective.

Why has the generation that used to ask questions stopped asking questions since the Iron Curtain opened? Why since then, have they watched the worsening of the situation in the Third World in silence? Why have they suddenly dropped the issue of the 'Middle East'? Why have we all more or less tacitly watched the return of war to European soil?

Perhaps that is exactly what was intended: that joint research, reflection and the drawing of conclusions about the causes of World War II and its course cannot take place anymore; that the ethical maxim 'Never Again War!' is not reinforced and thus cannot serve as a morally stabilizing factor for the young generation; that reflection on war does not become an integral part of personality development for every generation. Conflicts should be resolved around a negotiating table, and not with weapons or by blanket-bombing, which only hits the civilian population anyway. This is what we should conclude from the catastrophe of humanity and what every teacher, if he wants to be civilized, should tell his pupils. Every president, if he wants to be civilized, should tell this to his people. That is what philosophers and theologians, if they possessed a true and profound understanding of their subjects, should explain to their fellow citizens. The younger generation, as difficult as it might be, listens to honest conversations, usually appreciatively, because they want to live on this planet, and because everybody needs peace in order to live.

Wars have always been planned

Wars have never just happened out of the blue. They were planned and prepared by men. Before the Thirty Years' War, when the European great powers decided to go to war, all peacekeeping instruments were annulled, one after the other. The historically detailed volume on the commemorative exhibition of this dreadful period in Europe is extremely informative in this respect. (Heinz Schilling. Aufbruch und Krise, Deutschland 1517-1648).

It has been pretended that World War I was triggered by the legendary shot in Sarajevo. The system of alliances, which caused the war, was developed beforehand in a well considered plan. However, at that time, the citizens of those countries had no say.

World War II did not happen out of the blue either. It was the result of twenty years of politics. 'There was a smell of war in the air,' says a report of the League of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in 1938.

But people have always died in the same miserable way

Various artists have recalled to mind the battlefields of the Thirty Years' War with their depictions of the time. In the period that followed Europe was almost depopulated. Hunger and epidemics added to the plight of the people. The plague wreaked havoc.

Depictions of the battlefields of World War I show that the cannon fodder sent forward by statesmen died in exactly the same way: in the end they were lying in mud. Wild dogs and rats lived off the carcasses. The commemorative exhibitions at Verdun and Hartmannsweilerkopf are important for the lasting impression they leave on school children. The result of that war: roughly 8.5 million killed, 21 million wounded, 7.8 million prisoners of war and missing persons; 750,000 of whom died in Germany from hunger.

In the Second World War it was no different, but the numbers were even more horrific. The inferno of Stalingrad was only a part of what happened. Those who survived do not think back gladly on those times, and yet reflection of that war, reflection devoid of ideological blinkers, is more than necessary in the present day. The result of that war for those that are interested: 27 million dead soldiers, 25 million civilians and 3 million missing persons. The numbers of those who died in the individual warring nations were as follows: 20 million in the Soviet Union, at least 10 million in China, 4.8 million in Germany, 5.8 million in Poland, 2 million in Japan, 1.7 million in Yugoslavia, 600,000 in France, 400,000 in Great Britain and 300,000 in the USA.

Any analysis or debate must be rooted in the desire for peace. This has nothing to do with any doctrine of salvation as so many talk-shows nowadays get their audiences to believe. It is nothing but realpolitik, as none of us can exist on an earth without peace. No prevention, no bonum commune, without peace. Chernobyl has illustrated how far the radioactive fallout can reach, and it expands westward as the globe turns on its axis. However, true prevention means more than that: families and schools that do not forget their educational mission, the defeat of poverty, stable States based on the rule of law, and an international law whose aim is to secure peace. The citizens of Western democracies can take initiative in all these areas. We are not condemned to watch, we can also act.

Christmas is the festival of peace. It is the message of love that makes the difference between the Old and New Testament and it is the distinguishing feature between our high religion and others around the world. And should the Christian peoples of the world that are committed to the New Testament, not the Old, right now - at Christmas 2002 and on the brink of 30-40 years of war to come - be forced into a crime against humanity and humaneness by cheap propaganda such as 'the good and the evil' and 'Anyone who's not with is against us'? War is a threat for humanity. Generations of people have worked on containing it and pushing it back. Are we people today, who are so full of ourselves, supposed to watch how this whip is fetched back and employed - in a well-thought out and carefully planned manner? The Old Testament is one thing - the New Testament quite another. This is also known among those who no longer go to church. And it is known among the Christians in the USA who have gathered as neo-conservatives in the camp of the so-called Christian Zionists and are now making sure the warmongers in the background have a free hand for their plans. Regardless of all erosion of religious values, the Christian population of today still knows that it is not obliged to follow the gods of war and revenge from the Old Testament. If they discuss the topic honestly, it is out of the question for most people that they allow the oil and armaments industry, some small cliques' lust for power, some former Trotskyists or someone acting in the name of the Old Testament to manoeuvre them into war for the next 30 or 40 years. This camp of Protestant Christians will later have to answer the question why they supported this madness - later, when the consequences of these wars have become obvious.

But all secular thinkers will also later be asked why they shared the preparations for war. There is such a thing as an anthropological conscience, the voice of empathy among people which reaches out beyond all religious limitations. This is the voice which enables us not to be indifferent to the poor living conditions of other people on our planet. Generals in past wars had to allow their soldiers the consumption of alcohol to reduce their innate threshold against killing and murdering. The 20th century has added drugs to this. Even the pilot of a bomber who drops his bombs with such precision from a distance of several thousand meters altitude cannot avoid this question. Israeli reservists who refused their service have impressively expressed their scruples at not being able and not wanting to ignore this voice of humanity.

War against the civilian population?

What is called a war against terror today will most probably be a war against the civilian population. 'Bomb them down' was said about Serbia. And after the bombings Serbian tanks returned home undamaged and Madeleine Albright's friends, the KLA, could begin their murdering.

How far does the logic of today's warmongers differ from that of the strategists in the British Parliament before World War II who decided 'to destroy the morale of the enemy civilian population and, in particular, of the industrial workers.' This strategic decision for area bombing opened the floodgates and infringed a natural threshold. In the current situation it is exactly this step that can lead to the ruin of mankind: war is no longer an affair of two armies, but is carried out with the help of area bombings against a defenceless civilian population.

The protection of the civilian population had already been the number one topic of the XVI International Conference of the Red Cross Organisations: the Swiss Federal Council was requested to summon a new conference to work out a new agreement on the application of the Geneva Convention relative to the protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The outbreak of World WarÊII interrupted these efforts. Millions of helpers were active in their national organisations and helped the people in need and saved lives while the associations themselves were subject to massive restrictions from the generals and could only act within a limited framework for the benefit of civilian persons. This will be no different in any future war if respect for the Geneva conventions is as carelessly destroyed as the Americans managed in Afghanistan. Even during the fighting in World War II the International Committee of the Red Cross asked governments for their help in establishing a new convention for the protection of civilian persons, which was then achieved at the post-war conferences of 1946 and 1948. The Stockholm conference of 1948 was presided by Count Folke Bernadotte - one of the undaunted fighters for peace and humanity.

There are still many personalities like him among the citizens of our democracies, but we citizens of democracy also need to grant them a say. However, they are less to be found in the various political parties, whose concern is more with votes and power than with the people in their country and the rest of the world. These upright personalities play more a silent role in society.

The belief in destruction qua destruction

All these fighters for peace and more humanity should be examples to us. They were realists through and through and knew that peace was the prerequisite for any sustainable development; cheap polemics about Messianic tendencies in the world today as are now in fashion among secular strategists and which fill endless talkshows are completely wrong in their case. Why is it that instead we are prepared to leave the fate of humanity to people who are called the 'Princes of Darkness' and who will never take responsibility for the consequences of what they plan? How far do today's planners like Wolfowitz and Perle in their attitude of mind differ from someone like Sir Arthur Harris, the British Commander in Chief of Bomber Command during the Second World War, who unrelentingly stuck to his strategy even though it had clearly failed? Some commentators claim 'that Bomber Harris had managed to secure a peculiar hold over the otherwise domineering, intrusive Churchill.' Was it thus or vice versa? To play the game by splitting responsibility is an ability that governments of today also cultivate. It is as deceptive as making people believe that war-decisions - state decisions on war and peace - are made on the basis of personal feelings of one spokesman or the other. At the time time of Churchill and Harris certain scruple at the horrific bombing of towns and cities were aired. Churchill, it is said, was reassured, obviously under the influence of Harris, who refused to listen to any other opinion on the matter, by the idea that only one, as he said, higher poetic justice was at work, 'that those who have loosed these horrors upon mankind will now in their homes and persons feel shattering strokes of just retributions. A great deal speaks for the fact that, according to Solly Zuckerman, a man had become head of Bomber Command in the person of Harris who believed in destruction qua destruction and who best suited the innermost principle of every war, which was the greatest possible annihilation of the enemy, his cities, towns and villages, his history and his natural surroundings. The bombing war was war in pure, undisguised form. In its development, which contradicts all reason, one can see that war victims, as Elaine writes in her brilliantly clear-sighted book The Body in Pain, are not victims who are brought into the streets for some special purpose, they are in the literary sense this street and purpose itself.' (Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur, p.26f.)

Do we citizens of democracy today really want to make their way of thinking the basic principle of all humanity, or do we want to be human beings, remain or become fellow men to one another? In the Second World War there were also large numbers of people who thought differently, but after a certain point in time the war machine had been set in motion and they were unable to make themselves heard.

'Crescendo of war opponents'?

Europe knows what wars are. The people of America do not. Their towns and cities have never been reduced to rubble; they have never been forced to go thousands of kilometres on endless and murderous refugee trecks, leaving behind their exhausted and freezing relatives, friends, children and babies. They have never experienced the epidemics that rage after every war, plaguing and decimating the remaining population.Most Americans' image of war is based on morally simplistic films and televisions shows which are no more realistic than the old 'cowboys and Indians' stories, in which the 'good guys' always win; and Americans always think of themselves as the 'good guys.' If the people in America knew what war really means in contrast to what the filtered media reports nowadays convey, then they would stop their own war machinery now, at Christmas 2002. Inevitably there would be a 'crescendo of war opponents,' if only because every war strikes back against the country it is started by. If the crescendo of war opponents grows louder, then, as Brzezinski stated in an interview, the Americans will not be able to progress with their 'Eurasia Project' the way they desire. As citizens of a democracy the American people can exert considerable leverage. If they are real Christians, then they know the message of the New Testament. And even if they are secular they will have to ask their conscience - and they will have to nail their colours to the mast and begin to say what they think.

What we will do here in Europe is another story. We know what war is. No intellectual can escape the question of 'war or peace as a maxim of action.' He has to nail his colours to the mast or just have the courage to do it. The sons and daughters who tormented their parents in the 1960s with 'You knew what was going on. Why did you remain silent?' are thoroughly informed about all the preparations. Our own sons even participate, sent with troops to Afghanistan, German tanks wait in Kuwait, German naval aircraft in Kenya and German destroyers off the coast of Somalia. The mission in Afghanistan has already cost lives. How many coffins do we need until we realize that war will not solve any problems? The Austrians, we Swiss and other neutral countries complete this dance under the name of 'Partnership for Peace' - under the command of NATO. In future planned wars as well, it will be their - and our - task to guarantee the success of the area bombing of the Allies - or perhaps only that of America - and afterwards to protect the puppet governments set up against their own people. Brave new world!

And all that is to be done with the taxpayers' money? In our name? Using the moral maxims of 'good and evil' of the Old Testament? Only if you switch off our thinking and strangle our conscience: our conscience, this voice that is so deeply rooted in the human soul which knows what one does and has done to other fellow human beings. Let us reflect on our own foundations and remain human beings!

Literature

Schilling, Heinz. Aufbruch und Krise, Deutschland 1517-1648 (Siedler: 1988), ISBN 3-88680-059-8

Pitt, William and Ritter, Scott. War On Iraq. What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know London/New York, 2002

Dempsey, Gray T with Roger W. Fontaine. Fool's errands, America's recent encounters with nation bulding, Washington, D.C., 2001

Sebald, W.G. Luftkrieg und Literatur, Frankfurt am Main 2002

Scholl-Latour, Peter. Kampf dem Terror - Kampf dem Islam? Chronik eines unbegrenzten Krieges, München 2002

Reid, Daphne A. und Gilbo, Patrick F. Beyond Conflict. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 1919-1994. Genf 1997, ISBN 92-9139-041-0

Masius, Johannes Carolus. Die letzte Seele. Ungewöhnliche Aufzeichnungen aus dem 17. Jahrhundert, Bergisch Gladbach, 2002, ISBN 3-929351-18-8

Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The grand chessboard: American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives, 1997

Brezinski, Zbigniew. 'Europa gibt es nicht in diesem Krieg,' Der Spiegel, 11.12.2001