As Albert Einstein said, the one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. As pride comes
before the fall, obliviousness to history could lead our empire to self-destruction (cf. Roman Herzog, The Future
of Remembrance). With its economic and military power, the US claims the right to be right. American
exceptionalism, that America is the "indispensable" nation, or American unilateralism is manifest in US votes
against human rights, land mine removal, small weapons proscription, rights of women and the Kyoto protocol on
global warming. All this is part of our ignoble past like the war on Vietnam, the low-intensity war on Nicaragua,
the NATO war on Yugoslavia and the bombing of Iraq, Sudan, Grenada, Libya and Afghanistan.
Religions cannot justify violence against others although in a fanaticized form they play a justifying and
mobilizing role. The crusade knights used Christianity for militancy and intolerance. Violence in international
relations is the theme of this article.
The military is called to a new identity in the multi-polar world called to sustainable and subsistence economics
in a non-nuclear world. The state was made for individuals; individuals were not made for the state. As the UN
declared security is political not military, the great challenge today is to empower the marginalized, to expand
inclusion and democracy and reinvigorate international institutions like the UN and the World Court.
"Considering the globalized terrorism, security precautions must be improved while avoiding turning our country
into a bunker by valuing security higher than freedom. The perception of the former head of the CIA Robert Gates
is crucially important that terrorism can only be avoided by removing its causes... The world must understand that
redistribution creates security, not armored personnel carriers or anti-aircraft missiles... Only aid to developing
countries can create security." Ernst-Otto Czempiel is a leading peace researcher in Germany.
"One had expected that the great world-dominating nations of the white race to whom fell the leadership of the
human race would have understood that conflicts of interest should be settled in other ways. The attacks shattered
the widespread illusion that the so-called "West" was a model for the whole world committed to the ideals of
humanity everywhere."
Islamic fundamentalism is by definition non-politics: world construction in an ideological field that
categorically refuses the political. A fundamentalism of the standstill announces destruction to the
fundamentalism of boundless growth. Two anti-political systems clash in the present conflict in superficially a
"clash of civilizations". One is essentially remote from the political; the other is on the verge of leaving
behind the structures of political action.
"The Orwellian newspeak about `humanitarian interventions' is necessary to promote acceptance of worldwide
offensive wars. After the end of the East-West conflict, NATO - and the military-industrial complex - needed a
new strategy and a new legitimation for further arms production and wars..."
"The adoption of NATO war propaganda by the media has destroyed what we call a `critical public'... A system that must have recourse to such wars and such lies is not only morally but politically and economically
at an end. What democracy meant in the past has already been destroyed by the MAI and even more by the Balkan
war. This situation presses to a far more radical rethinking than in the past."
Terrorists usually come from the upper class. Bombs alone cannot stop them. Franz Nuscheler is a development
researcher in Germany.
"Stability in the sub-atomic minitiature world arises out of flexibility and cooperation, not separation and
struggle... We all know this natural cooperation from the plant world of our gardens. Carrots and onions thrive
well together... In nature, cooperation is a plus-sum game in which one's own advantage is also the advantage of the
other."
"US policy in the post-war era has cost more human lives than all the terrorist attacks together, not including
those committed with US support. A peace movement that does not forget that is neither emotional nor
anti-American and will not be unhistorical and superficial. No one will deny that the organizations of militant
political Islam represent a danger and must be opposed. Whoever forgets everything else is really naive."
"President George W. Bush leads a country which came on the world stage as the first power of history with the
belief that it needs no foreign policy, no alliance partners and no emotional bonds to other peoples... Since the
triumph of the West in the East-West coinflict, the Americans lived in a dream world." Theo Sommer is a co-editor
of DIE ZEIT.
The completely unlimited war did not first break out on September 11. The war metaphor circulated uninterruptedly
in the past through the daily media. Violence is said to be more effective than dialogue.
"Political solutions are vital. The field on which political solutions arise - through reason, analysis and
differentiated alliances - disappears in total polarization. We must not do this favor to the terrorists." Antje
Vollmer is vice-president of the German Bundestag.
"As the New York Times emphasized, this contempt of constitutional principles... amounts to the establishment of a parallel jurisprudence... Bush's ultra-security state deeply contradicts America's political traditions and can only be institutionalized under the condition of a continuous war... The country could become a "nation of informers according to the model of east Germany in which only white Mormons still feel secure"(Chalmers Johnson).
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