April 2003

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

SHORT TAKES

"How many divisions does the pope have?" Stalin asked sarcastically when told that the Holy Father objects to his actions. Today, the question is: how many divisions does world public opinion command?

All over the world, the public opposes the war. There is an immense majority against it even in countries whose leaders have joined Bush's "coalition." For the first time, there is something that can be called "world opinion." Only the future will tell if this constitutes a real force. Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of American democracy, once said that no country could conduct its affairs without "a decent respect for world opinion."

Perhaps the 21st century will witness a struggle between the brute force of a mighty military-economic super-power and world public opinion, assisted now by modern technology

This is a war fought by mercenaries. The fighters are professional soldiers, the sons of the poor, many of them black. Therefore it is easy for middle class citizens, and especially the Republican voters, to approve of the war. It is not their sons who will be killed.

In the past, the European left demanded the abolition of the professional army and the introduction of general conscription. At the time, that was a "progressive" idea. When the left put on weight, it forgot all about it. The Vietnam war was still fought by drafted soldiers. Resistance to the war grew when the body bags started to arrive. George W. Bush, who supported the war with all his heart, took no part in the fighting. Father arranged a job for him back home. He was just another shirker.

Jefferson again: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

--Uri Avnery, 3/23/, Gush Shalom

From MoveOn, a catalyst for grassroots involvement, supporting busy but concerned citizens through online activism. www.moveon.org

American media outlets have chosen to stifle or simply not show the most terrible and saddening aspects of this war. They are reluctant to air the voices of critics who are raising important questions about its effectiveness and purpose. And they appear to have acceded to the Bush Administration's desire to black out pictures or footage of civilian casualties.

Now more than ever, it's important that the media report the full story, unvarnished and unspun. But all we see on TV are retired military officers and Administration officials narrating a clean and precise war that bears little resemblance to the chaos, bloodshed, and tragedy on the ground.

We need to demand the full picture. Please consider joining the MoveOn Media Corps, a group of committed online activists who will keep the media accountable. The action ideas we send you won't generally take longer than 15 minutes, but to be part of the Corps we ask that you commit to taking up to one action per day. The actions include calling media outlets when they air especially bad coverage, pushing Clear Channel radio to stop censoring anti-war songs, or writing letters to the editor.

Sign up now at: <www.moveon.org/mediacorps>

As if the light were not a storm targeting you.
As if in the hollow you could hide, or wait it out.
As if you would not be drained of everything red in your body.
As if you could hold your breath the entire time.
As if you thought you were safe and not lying.

--Fred Marchant, 2003

The Nuremberg Principles, developed from the trials of Nazi war criminals at the end of WWII, dictate that if we see war crimes about to occur, we cannot simply say we will not participate; we must be actively opposed to and interfere with those activities, or we are complicit in them, just as Germans who did nothing to stop Nazi atrocities were judged guilty too.

Principle I
Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

Principle II
The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law.

Principle III
The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.

Principle IV
The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

Principle V
Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

Principle Vl
The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

A. Crimes against peace:

i. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances;

ii. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).

B. War crimes:

Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.

C. Crimes against humanity:

Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

Principle VII
Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principles VI is a crime under international law.

From a speech by Dennis Kucinich at the California Democratic Convention in Sacremento, March 16:

...All of this in the name of eliminating phantom weapons of mass destruction. Mr. President, I was a child of America's inner city neighborhoods, and I have inspected weapons of mass destruction, and I am calling upon your Administration to eliminate them in a nonviolent manner.

Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor education is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction.

Let us support with gratitude our loved ones who serve. We know they are fearless, ready to put their lives on the line. Let us support the troops, but not the mission. Let us support the troops, but not the Administration. Let us support the troops by bringing the troops home, alive and healthy.

This Administration is calling on Americans to support the troops. And how do they support the troops who have served? Veterans health benefits cut. Six months wait to get medical assistance. Doubling of co-payments for prescription drugs. 17,000 new nursing home beds are needed, yet it has cut 5000 beds. No money in the budget for shelter for 250,000 homeless veterans. It has, however asked for $108 million for new cemeteries. Support the troops, indeed.

• In Memoriam -- Eugene J. Carroll and Herbert Aptheker

--Excerpted from the Washington Post

We mourn the loss of a tireless and aggressive advocate of global nuclear disarmament. Retired Adm. Eugene J. Carroll Jr. died Feb. 19 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after a heart attack.

After retiring from the Navy, Adm. Carroll served as vice president of the Center for Defense Information, where he did research and analysis on a variety of military and defense programs.

In his final years in the Navy, Adm. Carroll became increasingly troubled by his perception that a nuclear weapons drift had become, in fact, a nuclear weapons rush. "I just felt we weren't going to the right places or doing the right things," he told The Washington Post in 1981.

In an article titled "The Case for Nuclear Abolition," Adm. Carroll wrote, "During the horrible confrontation with the Soviet Union we called the Cold War, I frequently stood nuclear alert watch on aircraft carriers. For a period of time my assigned target was an industrial complex and transportation hub in a major city in Eastern Europe... My bomb alone would have resulted in the death of an estimated 600,000 human beings. Multiply that by 40 or 50 times and you can understand what two carriers alone would have done. It is from up close and personal experiences that I came to understand that nuclear weapons are truly unusable, worthless for any rational military purpose. Fought with nuclear weapons, the war destroys whatever the objective might have been."

In 1996, he was one of 62 generals and admirals from 17 nations to sign a public statement calling for nuclear abolition. "We have been presented with a challenge of the highest possible historic importance: the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free world. The end of the Cold War makes it possible--the dangers of proliferation, terrorism, and a new nuclear arms race render it necessary."

Adm. Carroll's family requests that donations in lieu of flowers and other gifts be made to a Center for Defense Information memorial fund established in his name. <www.cdi.org>

--This is an abbreviated version of an obituary by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in the New York Times on March 20.

Herbert Aptheker, the Marxist historian best known for his three-volume Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States and for editing the correspondence and writing of his mentor, W. E. B. DuBois, died on March 17. He was 87.

Along with his work on black history and his outspoken defense of civil rights, he was known as a dominant voice on the American left in the 1950s and '60s and as one of the first scholars to denounce American military involvement in Vietnam. His political views, and particularly a fact-finding trip to Hanoi and Beijing in 1966, resulted in threats by Washington to revoke his passport, a move that provoked a high-profile debate about the legality of State Department travel restrictions. Although he wrote, taught, and lectured widely, his only major attempt at elective office was an unsuccessful campaign for the House of Representatives from Brooklyn in 1966 on the Peace and Freedom ticket. Among his lasting contributions was the editing of the DuBois letters. Writing in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, the historian Eric Foner called The Correspondence of W. E. B. DuBois (Massachusetts, 1973-1978) "a landmark in Afro-American history."

When DuBois appointed Mr. Aptheker his literary executor in 1946 and turned over to him his vast correspondence, the move was criticized in the black intellectual community. Some felt that as a white man, Mr. Aptheker could not truly identify with the black American experience. Others thought that for DuBois to have chosen an avowed Marxist to edit his papers was to make him vulnerable to the accusation that he himself was opposed to the American way of life.

Yet Mr. Aptheker's editing was greeted with wide praise. Reviewers said that his own extensive writing on African-American history had clearly prepared him for the task. Jay Saunders Redding, the black author and teacher, wrote in Phylon, a journal founded by DuBois, that "what gives a special importance to the letters it contains is the light they shed on the why and how of this history and on the men and women who made it."

Herbert Aptheker was born on July 31, 1915, in Brooklyn. He graduated from Columbia University in 1936, completed a master's degree there in 1937 and a doctorate in history in 1943. His dissertation was published under the title Black Slave Revolts (Columbia, 1942). In September 1939, just after he began working toward his doctorate, he joined the Communist Party, because, he said, he saw it as an anti-fascist force and a progressive voice for race relations. He was a hostile witness before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951, and throughout the 1950s he remained on the defensive for his radical views, experiencing violent threats and close federal surveillance.

After he returned to New York after serving in the military during World War II, he applied for a teaching position at Columbia and was advised that because of his politics he would never be hired. In fact he was excluded from academic life until 1969, when student demands for a course on black history led to an invitation to teach at Bryn Mawr College. Yet throughout his long career he lectured informally on black history. He was DuBois lecturer at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from 1971 to 1972, a professor at Hostos Community College of the CUNY, and visiting lecturer at Yale and the UCBerkeley Law School.

Mr. Aptheker's trip to Hanoi and Beijing in January 1966 with Staughton Lynd, then a history professor at Yale, and Tom Hayden, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society, stirred a whirlwind of debate over Washington's travel restriction. The widely publicized visit was billed as a mission to sound out the government of North Vietnam about the possibility of a negotiated end to the Vietnam War. Federal law on the broadly drawn State Department rules was unsettled. In one case that seemed to put Mr. Aptheker in the clear, the Supreme Court had held unconstitutionally broad a regulation that barred all Communists from traveling in all countries where passports are required. But when the three men returned, the State Department, which viewed their trip as meddlesome, took steps to restrict their travel, though it eventually backed down.

In 1942, Aptheker married Fay Philippa Aptheker. They had one child, a daughter, Bettina, a leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement who is professor and chairwoman of Women's Studies at UCSanta Cruz.

Aptheker saw his friendship with DuBois as formative. He recalled how in the late '40s they shared an office on 40th Street in Manhattan when DuBois was director of publicity and research for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. One day, Mr. Aptheker recalled, DuBois "said to me, 'Herbert, any time you have a problem, don't hesitate, just ask me." This meant, he said, having access to one of America's most dynamic minds. "Imagine what that meant to me. I had it right here, and I had the New York Public Library across the street!"

The family asks that donations in Aptheker's memory be made to the Middle East Children's Alliance, 905 Parker St., Berkeley, Calif. 94710, or the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Blvd., New York, N.Y. 10037.

• Letters

Michael True, Worcester, MA
For many years and for many peace activists in New England, the late Russell Johnson was AFSC. So his death in February has significance far beyond the life of one man. He was a force in the movement not only in this region, but in other parts of the world, where he traveled, lectured, and conducted seminars. With his late wife, Irene, he gave special meaning to issues relating to Asia, because of their extended visits to China and the Philippines and his role as head of the Quaker Seminar on Southeast Asia.

A major achievement of Russell's public life was his ability to evoke thoughtful responses from a broad range of audiences, including Rotary, Kiwanis, and VFW Clubs, college, university, and church groups. He, with Mulford Sibley and Howard Zinn, is the most effecive speaker on foreign policy issues that I have ever heard.

No one ever asked Russell a "dumb" question, for he always responded in a way that drew from the questioner his or her deepest concerns. He also gave to American language one of its most penchant phrases, "the violence of the status quo," naming precisely what was implied by the more cumbersome designation, "the military-industrial-university complex."

I shall always remember Russell Johnson as "the speaker," arriving for a class or meeting or public lecture, genial and friendly in his Minnesota manner, with a generous display of books, pamphlets, reprints, and thoughtful up-to-date reflections on recent developments. As Chair of the AFSC Peace Education Committee, he drew people from a wide range of backgrounds and interests. Because of our meeting through Russell, Jim Noonan, Waterbury, CT, Kathy Knight, Newton, MA, and I initiated the New England Catholic Peace Fellowship (1971-96), now Massachusetts Pax Christi. He was a peacemaker, justice-seeker to whom many of us owe a great debt, a person whose memory we honor and celebrate for all his contributions to the common good. Praise him!

There will be a memorial service for Russ Johnson at the Unitarian Church in Petersham, MA on May 25 at 2 pm.

Paul Lacey, Richmond, IN, is the Clerk of the AFSC Board of Directors. He sent this letter to AFSC staff nationwide.

Dear Friends:

In the past weeks I have been doing research for a paper on two American poets, Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, whose long, loving friendship foundered on the issue of how to oppose the American War in Vietnam. Duncan was fearful that Levertov's passionate commitment to the Movement was leading her to internalize and then express the same kind of violence that had created the war itself. As I have reluctantly re-immersed myself in that time, I have been reliving the anger, outrage, despair which fueled the lives of so many people I loved, passions which led some to suicide attempts, to breakdowns, to violence and years lived underground, in some cases to lives which have never recovered. Last night, reading the Duncan-Levertov letters, and feeling sad at the inevitable and heartbreaking separation I was about to witness, I took a break and turned on the television. There I learned that the US had launched an attack on a "target of opportunity" in Baghdad and that President Bush would speak to the nation in fifteen minutes.

Since the President's ultimatum, and even more now, we are being urged to "support our servicepeople." I am unwilling to be co-opted into acquiescence to this war, tacit approval of it, in the name of "support." But I care deeply for those, many of them idealistic young men and women, many of them "weekend warriors" who have joined the service out of motives of patriotism and the need to supplement their income, who are now in harm's way. And I can give them the kind of support my conscience requires.

I can, and do, pray for their safety. I can and do pray for their families, for the parents and spouses who have shown brave faces in sending their loved ones into war, for the young children who know only that a parent has gone away to do something others say is necessary and courageous. I can and do pray that they are not called to do things which will afflict their memories and torment their spirits for the rest of their lives.

I cannot pray only for one side in this war, however, as much as my love and care for my fellow Americans fills me. I have to pray for the parents and spouses and children of our adversaries, for the safety of those who are going out to kill or be killed on both sides. I cannot pray for victory; I can only pray for peace and pray to be shown how I can be an instrument of peace.

You and I are surely still called to express opposition to this war in concrete ways, but we are also called to look beyond it to bring our resources and energy to the humanitarian needs which war creates.

Robert Duncan writes in a letter of late 1966, "...we pray that compassion will grow in our hearts where outrage now burns." That is not passive acquiescence to the evil of war but an opening to what will transform our helplessness into positive action, our despair into hope, our anger into a service of love.

Writing all this, I distrust my own words, feel distaste for what might be too smooth and glib. If personal pain alone confers the right to speak of hope and compassion, I know I have not earned the right to say these things. But for what help they are in affirming our companionship in this sorrow and our desire to have our outrage turn into compassion, I send them to you.

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