ROBERT KOEHLER – First you call them terrorists. Then you say you’re defending yourself. Moral problem solved! You can kill as many of them as you want. Well, maybe there will be consequences later (and maybe not), but for the moment you have overcome your own moral barriers and can start doing your job as a soldier: killing people. And in the process, you are making the world – your world, not theirs – safe. War is such a paradox: killing one’s way to peace. But apparently it’s humanity’s primary organizing principle. Citizens of America, citizens of Israel, citizens of Russia . . . citizens of the world . . . this has to change! Now is the time to end war, by which I mean transcend war: disarm, demilitarize.
Tag: Robert Koehler
Ubuntu or Collective Suicide
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – This will never be a perfect world. This will never be a world without conflict. But let’s pause in this moment, calm ourselves, set down our hatred and look each other in the eyes. I am because you are.
Will Greed and Dissociation from Nature Do Us In?
ROBERT KOEHLER – It’s fascinating how “interests” interfere with survival. We prepare for — and, of course, wage — war with an overwhelming percentage of our resources (to the benefit of the profiteers), but we plead poverty when it comes to helping people or, you know, saving the planet.It’s fascinating how “interests” interfere with survival. We prepare for — and, of course, wage — war with an overwhelming percentage of our resources (to the benefit of the profiteers), but we plead poverty when it comes to helping people or, you know, saving the planet.
Mass Murder: New Victims, Same Old Questions
ROBERT KOEHLER – Why is the American sense of justice simply linear and bureaucratic? Why is priority number one, in the wake of such a crime – a crime against humanity – to charge, convict and punish, rather than heal, understand and change? Rupert Ross, in his book Returning to the Teachings, examines indigenous approaches to justice around the world: “The purpose is healing, not punishment – a healing accomplished by the full range of people who were affected by the original event.†This is the core of Restorative Justice.
The Savage We Need to Civilize is Within Us
ROBERT KOEHLER – Robert Koehler asks questions of the United States’ history not in regard to individual, but rather collective — governmental — behavior. He fears that as we unite, we diminish our ability to respect, and understand, the complexity of the universe, and of our fellow humans. We unite around simplistic certainties, and these certainties seem always to involve an enemy, or Other. And empowerment means being able to kill, rather than understand, embrace and learn from — or hear the music of — that Other.
“Usable Nukes” – Our Government’s Latest Security Fantasy
ROBERT KOEHLER – We must free ourselves from the mindset of militarism, which is perpetuated not merely by politicians and generals but, inexcusably, by much of the media, which compliantly speaks their language. In militaryspeak, civilians may be bombed but they’re never murdered, at least not by us. If we can’t avoid acknowledging their deaths, then they become collateral damage, necessary for “the restoration of strategic stability.â€
Transcending ‘the Religion of Whiteness’
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – Are we transcending the religion that gave us slavery?
Trapped at the Border: Their Fate is our Fate – The Immigration Issue is Complex
ROBERT KOEHLER – It’s far too easy to envision the chaos of emigration getting worse, with the world’s poorest (and most deserving) people trapped in ever-intensifying violence and desperation, increasingly walled off from hope by racist ignorance. Something else becomes possible when we begin to realize that unless we change the world, their fate is our fate.
Is There Life Beyond Plastic?
ROBERT KOEHLER – What are we doing to ourselves? Is there life beyond plastic? I certainly have no answers, but the questions flow without stop. And they won’t break down.
Can We Achieve Nuclear Adulthood?
ROBERT kOEHLER – In the linear world of geopolitics, militarism and mysteriously determined “national interest†rule and security means — though it is never put this way — playing games with Armageddon. This is called realism. And those who claim to be realists never — ever, ever — allow a word like “disarmament†into the conversation, much less into the realm of political choice.
War Begets War . . . and Nothing Else
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – “War-making must be renounced. It is past time for the paradigm shift. We have one planet and we must see ourselves as one and we must take a stand.†Dud Hendrick of Veterans for Peace
We Need Disarmament, Not Low-Yield Nukes
ROBERT KOEHLER – Seven-plus decades ago, as humanity was ensnarled in a monstrous world war, its instinct to win — to dominate others above all else — achieved ultimate manifestation: the capacity to annihilate all life on Planet Earth.
The Senate’s “Symbolic” Yemen Vote is Enormously Significant
ROBERT KOEHLER – The Senate’s “symbolic” Yemen vote matters hugely (you might say, in honor of co-sponsor Bernie Sanders). For one thing, Dems gain control of the House next year and the resolution could be reintroduced. Also, according to Reuters, some of the supporters are determined to introduce legislation calling for a ban on weapons sales to the Saudis; in other words, there’s more political action to come regarding U.S. involvement in this war.
Border Security: Wall vs. Principles
ROBERT KOEHLER – Consider the limited thinking that produces a concept such as “border security.†The essential assumption here is that the United States of America is primarily a physical container – three and a half million square miles of freedom and prosperity, whoopee, but the supply is limited. Sorry, have-nots, we don’t have room for you.
Is the U.S. Engaged in a “Great Waking Up?”
ROBERT KOEHLER – We’re stuck, at least here in the USA, with a pseudo-democracy partially but not completely controlled by certain special interests. We possess a fair amount of freedom of thought and action. Maybe it’s not enough to dislodge the entrenched, money-blessed military-industrialism that is our ruling god — but maybe it is, if we can foment a Great Waking Up and start undoing the harm we have been inflicting on ourselves for so long now. The collapse of the Republican Party may signal that change is underway. So is the message from a few millennia back: Love thy enemy as thyself.
Cynically Ignorant Racism Has a Long History, As Well As a Present, In the U.S.
ROBERT KOEHLER – Cynical racism means throwing a bone to the political base, what Matthew Yglesias, writing at Vox, called “the very promise of Trumpism — to narrow the definitions of who belongs, subjecting outsiders to a realm of cruelty and thus bolstering the favored status of the insiders.â€
There is No “Strategic” Use of Nuclear Weapons
ROBERT KOEHLER – Whenever the topic is nuclear weapons, I remain in a state of disbelief that we can talk about them “strategically†— that language allows us to maintain such a distance from the reality of what they do, we can casually debate their use.
Compassionate Immigration Policy: Can We Unlock the Golden Door?
ROBERT KOEHLER – The concept of the nation, an imaginary configuration of interests protected by military strength, is becoming increasingly obsolete. The United States, as the planet’s largest superpower, must find the will and leadership to reopen itself to values beyond those coldly enforced by ICE.
Time for the Truth about Lynchings Past and Present
ROBERT KOEHLER – We’re not who we think we are. We sanitize our past and call it heritage. We sanitize the present and call it justice. It’s time to start looking at the truth in all directions.
Introducing the New Pledge of Allegiance
ROBERT kOEHLER – The challenge presented by Trump requires something more than resistance. I believe it requires reaching for, and pledging our allegiance to, a much larger, more compassionate and peace-oriented country than the one we have now. It requires pledging allegiance to the planet and the future.
Heavily Armed Does Not Equal Being Secure
ROBERT KOEHLER – The more that people lose touch with their own humanity, the more, I fear, they will feel the need to be armed – desperately imagining it’s the same thing as being secure. And the news cycle will continue, endlessly bringing us more of the same.
Greek Financial Debacle is a Crisis of Soulless Economics
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – Austerity, the brutal tool of neoliberal capitalism, stands up to Greek democracy and stares it down. Oh well. We’re remarkably comfortable with soulless economics. Pope Francis, speaking this week in Paraguay, cried to the nations of Planet Earth: “I ask them not to yield to an economic model … which needs to sacrifice human lives on the altar of money and profit.â€
War, Murder and the American Way
ROBERT KOEHLER – Every war and every mass murder spreads fear and hatred — and inspiration — in their aftermath. We can’t go to war without spawning imitators. The day after nine members of Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were murdered, USA Today reported, the vigils at two South Carolina churches, in Charleston and Greenville, were disrupted by bomb threats and the churches had to be evacuated. “At some point,†President Obama said, “we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. . . . ” Until we begin demilitarizing our relationship with the world, such words uttered by presidents are as empty as the words Dylann Roof uttered in prayer at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that fateful night.
Traumatized Soldiers Bring the War Home
ROBERT C. KOEHLER: There’s no armor, it turns out, for conscience. So our men and women are coming home from the killing fields wounded in their heads, used up, greeted only by the military’s own meat grinder of inadequate health care and intolerance for “weakness.â€