Author: Brian Terrell

In 1978, I was an associate editor of The Catholic Worker newspaper when a review copy of a new book, Confessions of a Catholic Worker by Michael Garvey arrived in the mail. Dorothy Day, the paper’s publisher, waved it off dismissively, saying “I hope that it is HIS confessions, not mine!”

Already hailed as a living saint, Day was not so unworldly as to be unaware of a whole popular genre of such “confessions,” tell-all exposés each more salacious then the last, beginning with Confessions read more

‘How to go forward with Catholic Worker anarchism as the movement nears its ninetieth anniversary and the very concept is denied, slandered and discredited from all sides?’

 

An article written by Catholic Worker and academic Lincoln Rice, Catholic Worker Anarchism at a Crossroads: read more

How to go forward with Catholic Worker anarchism as the movement nears its ninetieth anniversary and the very concept is denied, slandered and discredited from all sides?

By Brian Terrell

An article written by Catholic Worker and academic Lincoln Rice, Catholic Worker Anarchism at a Crossroads: The Difficulty of Addressing Anti-Blackness, published by the Political Theology Network under the aptly named category ‘CATHOLIC RE-VISIONS,’ is troubled with historical inaccuracies and unsupported assumptions, beginning with his premise, ‘As the Catholic Worker movement confronts anti-Black racism more earnestly, questions arise about whether taking an active anti-racism stance can be reconciled with Catholic Worker anarchism, specifically when dealing with the state.’

As the cause for Dorothy Day’s canonization as a saint progresses through the Vatican bureaucracy, there is much discussion about the meaning of the words ‘anarchism’ and ‘anarchist’ as applied to Dorothy and to the Catholic Worker movement that she founded with Peter Maurin in 1933. For many who want to see her sanctity formally recognized, including some Catholic bishops and theologians, the word ‘anarchism’ is a is a scandal to be denied or explained away.

Some, like Cardinal John O’Connor who launched her canonization process in 1997, ‘exonerate’ Dorothy by relegating her anarchism to her sinful, unconverted youth, repented of and forgiven. Another strategy employed for absolving Saint Dorothy from the stain of anarchy, is to claim that the anarchism that she espoused was so completely different from what other anarchists promote that the word does not really apply to her or the Catholic Worker, at all. ‘She preferred the words libertarian, decentralist, and personalist’ over anarchist, religion scholar June O’Connor is often quoted as saying, but it is not clear where that idea came from.

All her life, Dorothy celebrated her anarchism and stressed her solidarity with her anarchist comrades. In 1974, after attending a conference of anarchists, Dorothy wrote, ‘I did not “talk Jesus” to the anarchists. There was no time to answer the one great disagreement which was in their minds–how can you reconcile your Faith in the monolithic, authoritarian Church which seems so far from Jesus who “had no place to lay his head,” and who said “sell what you have and give to the poor,”–with your anarchism? Because I have been behind bars in police stations, houses of detention, jails and prison farms, whatsoever they are called, eleven times, and have refused to pay Federal income taxes and have never voted, they accept me as an anarchist. And I in turn, can see Christ in them even though they deny Him, because they are giving themselves to working for a better social order for the wretched of the earth.’ A pacifist herself, Dorothy owned her kinship even with anarchists who promoted the often violent ‘propaganda of the deed,’ like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, whom in 1975 she described as ‘the two famous and lovable anarchists who were deported to Russia after the First World War.’

Lincoln Rice employs a third way to neutralize the historical anarchism of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker, by equating it with racial liberalism in a way that makes it appear ridiculous and odious to any person concerned with racial justice. His opening question, whether taking an active anti-racism stance can be reconciled with Catholic Worker anarchism, also begs the question whether taking an active anti-racism stance can be reconciled with Black Panther anarchism, except that he also presupposes that anti-racist activists in the affected communities are monolithic in their approach to the state. ‘Often in the news today, anarchism is widely misunderstood,’ writes Livia Gershon in her article The Real Story of Black Anarchists. ‘One myth is that it’s a movement for white people.’ Intentionally or not, Lincoln either does not accept the existence of Black anarchists, past and present, or he judges them and other activists of color who are suspicious of liberal politics as irrelevant. In a 1987 article in The Catholic Worker titled Racism Among Us – Spoken and Unspoken, Jane Sammon suggested ‘How instructive it would be to include the works of such thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, Franz Fanon, and Malcolm X in our Catholic Senior High Schools,’ thinkers who ‘expose the crime of racism and the cutting edge of the long and bitter struggle of the Black people throughout history.’ It would be instructive to include them in a discussion of Catholic Worker anarchism at a crossroads as well.

While Dorothy was inspired by the writings of European anarchists like Peter Kropotkin, her personal experience with anarchism and anarchists began as a young woman when she joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). While she resisted joining the Communist party, Dorothy did join this radical union and was loyal to it her whole life. In the IWW’s founding convention 1905, Lucy Parsons, a Black woman born into slavery, was the only woman to address the assembly. Already an activist for many years when she co-founded the IWW, her 1886 ‘I am an Anarchist’ speech is a classic of American radicalism.

My introduction to anarchism when I first came to the Catholic Worker in New York in the mid-1970s, was Martin Sostre. He was the face of anarchism at the Catholic Worker, meaning that his picture was on the wall and his name was published in the pages of The Catholic Worker newspaper 23 times from 1970 to 1979. Martin Sostre was a Black Puerto Rican activist who ran an anarchist bookstore in Buffalo, was targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO and falsely imprisoned from 1967 to 1976.

Lincoln says, ‘As the Catholic Worker moves forward, Day’s disparaging comments about Black political action bring Catholic Worker anarchism to a crossroads.’ This is one of several provocative allegations made in his short article attributing bad faith or ignorance to Dorothy and the Catholic Worker without providing a citation.

For any white activist to make disparaging remarks about Black political activism, Dorothy Day included, would be discrediting. Such a comment, however inexcusable, would have been exceptional, though, and out of character for Dorothy and not reflective of Catholic Worker anarchism. I am skeptical that she ever made such remarks, but even if she did slip, the overall record of her work shows that ‘respectful differences with esteemed comrades’ is the more accurate description of Dorothy’s and the Catholic Worker’s relationship to Black political action. In 1956, for example, Dorothy wrote in her regular column, ‘even though the editors of The Catholic Worker do not believe in the vote, in elections as conducted today, we do agree that man [sic] wants a part to play, a voice to speak in his community, and this is usually exemplified by the vote.’

‘Despite her espousal of anarchism,’ Lincoln says, ‘Day provided qualified support for Castro’s Cuba.’ He characterizes Dorothy’s support for the Cuban revolution, though, as the rare exception inconsistent with her anarchism, rather than her typical and often stated support for people’s struggles for liberation. Dorothy likewise expressed admiration for the revolutionary Ho Chi Minh before and during the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. Dorothy’s praise for the policies Julius Nyerere, the socialist Catholic president of Tanzania, was particularly effusive. ‘To me (Nyerere’s) Arusha Declaration sounds like Peter Maurin’s ideas incarnate,’ she said.

Dorothy’s regard for peoples’ struggles in the U.S. was just as generous and broad. Dorothy was unwaveringly Catholic, pacifist and anarchist, but she was always able to respect, support, march with and learn from people who were not Catholic, not pacifist and not anarchist. She did not use herself, her faith or her ideology, as the yardstick with which she judged others. ‘I have been reading about Kenneth Kaunda, president of Zambia, a neighboring and even larger territory which used to be part of Rhodesia,’ she wrote in 1970. ‘He and Julius Nyerere in Africa, stand in my mind with Cesar Chavez, Danilo Dolci, Vinoba Bhave, Dom Helder Camara, Mrs. Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and others who have the vision and the integrity which enlightens our minds and brings us bright hope for the future. God is with them. May He bless and protect them.’ In this list of activists revered by Dorothy, none was an avowed anarchist, two were elected heads of African states.

‘Regarding their interactions with local, state, and federal governments,’ Lincoln says, ‘Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement have largely adopted a stance of nonparticipation with few exceptions.’ Lincoln represents Catholic Worker anarchism as something far more rigid, dogmatic and doctrinaire than it is. As in other matters, there is ‘no party line’ in the Catholic Worker regarding anarchism, but Lincoln’s take on it is singular. In 1992, neighbors in our little farm town, Maloy, Iowa, asked me to run for mayor and elected me (with all 12 votes cast!). Aside from some gentle ribbing from friends, no one in the movement criticized me for holding elected office. I even got a shout out from Ric Rhetor in The Catholic Worker newspaper: ‘Brian, now living at Strangers and Guests CW in Maloy, lowa, with his wife Betsy Keenan and children Elijah and Clara, was here in New York at the CW in the 70s. There are 35 citizens of Maloy, and the activist Mr. Terrell is now Mayor! Small is beautiful—it reminds us of how Dorothy Day used to say she could see herself getting involved in local politics if she had stayed in one place long enough —being the indefatigable pilgrim that she was.’

Anarchism in the Catholic Worker tradition is not about ideological purity at the expense of real human needs, nor is it passive nonparticipation in the way Lincoln suggests. ‘At the very hour we go to press there is still doubt as to the outcome of the Burke-Wadsworth Conscription Bill before Congress,’ Dorothy wrote in the September 1941 issue concerning the pending military draft. ‘If the unorganized opposition can keep on protesting and deluge their Congressmen with letters of opposition, there is still a chance to defeat the bill. It is not too late to make your protest’ (bold face in the original).

Some personal examples of engaging the state as an anarchist: During the Iraq sanctions in the 1990s and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Catholic Workers were at the core of protest campaigns aimed at challenging members of congress to break from these policies. I have never voted in a U.S. senate election, but I have been arrested more times that I can remember in the offices of Iowa’s senators. In the 2008 Iowa caucus starting the presidential election process, I canvased each of the broad field of candidates on their position toward the various wars at the time- every one of them was pro-war, of course, and so we organized protests and sit-ins at the various campaign headquarters. I did not go to the caucus because that night I was in jail for trespassing at Obama’s campaign office. Some of our political action friends angrily objected to our activities, insisting that rallying behind whichever Democratic candidate might win an election regardless of how vile and regressive their policies, was the only responsible course to take. From our side, the disagreements were respectful. It has been my experience that it is liberal politics that tends to limit activists’ creativity and not Catholic Worker’s traditional anarchism, as Lincoln believes.

To be a ‘gadfly’ in the face of the oppressive systems, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote from the Birmingham Jail, or to ‘Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence,’ as Henry David Thoreau counseled, and not passivity, is what Catholic Worker anarchism is about. To simply counsel Black families that come into contact with child protective services to not cooperate with the state, as Lincoln suggests Catholic Workers might do, would be a grotesque and irresponsible distortion of our traditional anarchism.

Another position that Lincoln attributes to Dorothy without backing it up is ‘Day wanted to believe that African Americans in the United States could improve their lives without any political involvement.’ This is certainly not true. There are many kinds of ‘political involvement’ and voting is only one of them. Even many those who strongly advocate for the vote recognize that the vote is worthless without other political involvement.  Everyone, Dorothy said, wants ‘a part to play, a voice to speak in his community, and this is usually exemplified by the vote,’ but as Malcolm X warned and many Black activists today believe, electoral politics and the horse trading and compromise that it necessarily entails can be a drain on real political progress.

Lincoln says ‘I believe the primary reason the primary reason for the tepid response of the Catholic Worker movement to anti-Black racism has its origin in racial liberalism—a mindset that does not tolerate “overt bigotry,” but leaves institutional or structural forms of racism largely unaddressed. This viewpoint underestimates the compounded wealth and privileges that white people have accumulated through centuries of Black slavery and anti-Black discrimination, believing that the elimination of overt discrimination alone is an adequate response to racism without any need for restorative policies.’ Lincoln provides no foundation for this belief.

As an autonomous collection of persons and communities, the Catholic Worker movement is more diverse than The Catholic Worker newspaper published by the New York community, but if such a mindset were prevalent, it would be articulated in its pages. The Catholic News Archive catalogues all the issues of The Catholic Worker from 1940 to 2019- a search of the word ‘racism’ in their data base yields 294 hits. In the newspaper and other primary sources, a mindset of racial liberalism that ignores structural racism is not immediately evident, but what appears to be a ‘serious and critical appraisal of how racism infects every aspect of U.S. culture’ is ubiquitous. I offer a few examples almost at random:

Front page of the July, 1970, issue of the paper featured an article by Gerald C Montesano, Black Panther Party: In Quest Of Justice, opens ‘Those of us born white and middle class, have had to learn a new understanding of violence. The Vietnam war, the Black and Third World liberation struggles have given us a new focus,’ and continues with a quote from Thomas Merton, ‘The population of the affluent world is nourished on a steady diet of brutal mythology and hallucination, kept at a constant pitch of high tension by a life that is intrinsically violent in that it forces a large part of the population to submit to an existence which is humanly intolerable… The problem of violence, then, is not the problem of a few rioters and rebels, but the problem of a whole social structure which is outwardly ordered and respectable, and inwardly ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions.’

In the previously mentioned 1987 article in The Catholic Worker, Racism Among Us – Spoken and Unspoken, Jane Sammon insisted that ‘To live in Christ Jesus, we must account for our own sins of racism. We must admit, in the words of Martin King, spoken nearly twenty years ago, that “racism is a way of life for a vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken, acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle – the disease of racism permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly – to get rid of the disease of racism.”’

In December, 1961, The Catholic Worker published ‘The Race Problem and the Christian Conscience’ by Philip Berrigan. Still active in the priesthood at the time, Phil painfully indicts the Catholic Church’s institutional racism and recognizes that ‘the greatest factor in the painfully slow progress of Race Relations in this country is not the racists common to both North and South, but the silence of the “Moderates,” the fact that many good people sit on their hands in a position of safety, watching the life stream pass them by, apprehensive, uncommitted, merely “good.”’ It is worth a look at a scan of that entire issue to see the space that the editors gave Phil’s ‘tepid response’ to systematic racism in their Christmas issue. At more than 8900 words, it starts on page one, fills pages four, five and six completely, finishing on pages seven and eight of a tabloid sized paper.  If not the longest, it has to be in the running for the longest article that The Catholic Worker has ever run.

Thirty-five years later, but still too early to be counted as a serious or critical appraisal, Phil wrote, (Fighting the Lamb’s War: Skirmishes with the American Empire 1996) ‘We (the United States of America) had never really chopped down the slavery tree; we just pretended, now and again, to trim its limbs. The roots grew into our own backyards, wound through our homes, undermined our schools, strangled our sense of reason and fair play. I discovered that the roots of this poisonous tree are inextricable from our economic system. Greed waters these roots, keeps them healthy, enables them to keep expanding their power and influence. Avarice transplants the tree when it isn’t flourishing. Exploitation supplies the tree with nutrients and fertilizer.’ Phil was and he remains one of the most influential leaders in the Catholic Worker movement. In response to Phil’s writings from prison, Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Ture, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the ‘Honorary Prime Minister’ of the Black Panther Party said ‘Philip Berrigan is the only white man who knows where it’s at.’ Lincoln Rice disagrees with Kwame Ture’s assessment of Phil. It is as if the place where a white person can gain a serious and critical appraisal of racism is not the prison but the university.

Lincoln cites ‘the obvious racial divisions in urban houses of hospitality where the staff of almost completely white and the guests are almost completely people of color,’ as if it were a problem never observed or addressed in the past. In 1971, Jan Adams wrote about this, ‘Nor are those at the Worker, who consciously try to overcome hatred, free from the taint of American racism. Much as we try to extend our sense of the human family to every individual who comes to us, our perceptions are colored by living in a racist society. For example, I have caught myself responding less sympathetically to the black alcoholic demanding a clean shirt at a moment when I have five other matters to attend to, than I would to a white man with the same Inconvenient request. …. Interactions between the races at the Worker thus partake fully in the current American agony. Despite great tensions, we stumble along, doing the best we can—hoping to maximize the truthful, loving interaction between unique, often agonized, individuals of both races.’ While Lincoln believes that it has gone unnoticed until very recently, most urban Catholic Workers over the years have felt keenly the tension that Jan articulated.

No one I know in the movement, and I venture that no one ever in the pages of The Catholic Worker, suggests that there is no need for restorative policies in response to racism, but Lincoln provides two examples that he thinks suffice to prove that this is a commonly held belief. ‘First,’ he says, ‘Dorothy Day promoted a colorblind mentality for teaching children about racism, which actually increases the likelihood that a white child will become ingrained with racial prejudices.’ Lincoln provides no context, how, when, where or to whom Dorothy promoted a colorblind mentality for teaching children. If she said something like this, it was a stupid thing to say but is not definitive of her approach to racism, much less that it speaks for the whole movement. Jane Sammon’s previously quoted call for a curriculum to ‘expose the crime of racism and the cutting edge of the long and bitter struggle of the Black people throughout history’ is more representative of views within the movement, past and present, than what Lincoln alleges that Dorothy promoted about colorblind education.

Lincoln’s second example is dubious, as well: ‘Day stated in the 1960s that more would have been accomplished for racial justice if civil rights activists focused less on political rights and more on creating financial and societal infrastructure for African Americans. This argument ignores history, which is replete with examples of successful Black entrepreneurs being intimidated, lynched, or having their businesses destroyed. The worst instance of this was the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, which resulted in whites burning down thirty-five square blocks in the successful Black area of the city and killing approximately 300 African Americans. Black financial and societal infrastructure provided scant shelter from white supremacy in the United States.’

I grant that she said probably something like this once in that decade, but the context would be helpful. In any case, even as Lincoln presents it, his argument equally shows the limits of civil rights activists seeking political rights. History is also replete with potential Black voters and successful Black politicians being intimidated, lynched, or having their elected governments overturned, beginning with the reconstruction era riots. Even constitutionally guaranteed voting rights and the protection of the Union Army provided scant shelter from white supremacy in the United States. That good ideas in history have been met with violent responses does not invalidate them.

The accomplishments of Black business leaders of Tulsa in the early 1900s were heroic and the destruction and murder that followed in the riots of 1921 was horrendous. Connecting Dorothy to them, however, as if the creation of a ‘Black Wall Street’ was what she meant by ‘creating financial and societal infrastructure for African Americans’ dishonors the memories of those who were murdered there. The Black entrepreneurs of Tulsa were not revolutionists like Dorothy, nor anarcho-syndicalists trying to ‘build a new society in the shell of the old,’ like the IWW. They were people of business trying to make a living in the capitalist economy as it was, as they should have been allowed to do in peace. The Tulsa riots happened 12 years before the founding of the Catholic Worker. Even in her youth, Dorothy would never have counseled anyone, white or Black, to emulate Wall Street. The suggestion that the economic solutions she proposed ignore history and contributed to the killing of hundreds of African Americans is absurd.

The distinction between formal and material cooperation with evil that Lincoln wants Catholic Workers to learn from was taught in seminaries for a century and a half before Fr. Paul Hanly Furfey wrote The Fire on Earth. It is used to justify the practice of opting for ‘lesser evils’ that has proven helpful to fascist regimes worldwide and that has dominated liberal politics in the U.S. since the 1960s. It is not Fr. Furfey’s fault that the concept of material cooperation with evil has helped establish the Democratic Party’s ‘

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Am 21. Juli wanderte ich mit drei Catholic Worker-Freundinnen, Susan van der Hijden aus Amsterdam in den Niederlanden, Susan Crane aus Redwood City in Kalifornien und Chris Danowski aus Dortmund in Deutschland durch die Wälder, die die deutsche Luftwaffenbasis Büchel in der Eiffel umgeben. Es war gegen Ende einer „Internationalen Woche“ von Protesten gegen die etwa 20 nuklearen B61-Schwerkraftbomben, die aufgrund eines „nuklearen Teilungsabkommens“ mit den USA dort gelagert werden.

In den vorhergegangenen Tagen hatten wir die Eingangstore der Basis mit unseren Transparenten und Schildern besucht und vor zwei Tagen an der Aktion „Graben für das Leben“ außerhalb der Zäune teilgenommen, nahe des entgegengesetzten Endes der Landebahn, wo deutsche Piloten mit ihren in Italien hergestellten PA2000-Tornado-Kampfflugzeugen starten und landen und täglich üben, US-Atomwaffen über Russland abzuwerfen, falls der Befehl dazu kommt. Heute wanderten wir durch einen Wald toter und sterbender Bäume, der in den letzten Jahren durch Trockenheit, unvorhergesehene Hitze und massiven Borkenkäferbefall als Folgen des Klimawandels dezimiert worden war, zum anderen, weniger zugänglichen Ende der Landebahn.

Auf der Lichtung nahe der Landebahn bemerkten wir zwei Hobby-Späher, die vor uns dort angekommen waren in der Hoffnung, dramatische Fotos vom Abheben der Kampfflieger schießen zu können. Gemeinsam mit ihnen erforschten und überlegten wir, welche zukünftigen Proteste auf dem Gelände möglich wären, aber wir wussten auch, dass eine Aktion unmittelbar bevorstand.

Hinter dem Zaun, der die Basis vom Wald abgrenzte, gab es einen hohen Erdwall, der die Tornados, die ihre Maschinen vor dem Start aufwärmten, vor unseren Blicken schützte. Doch wir hörten, wie das Summen der Machinen sich in ein Dröhnen verwandelte, wir fühlten die Erde beben und sahen und rochen eine bittere und schwarze Wolke, einen stinkenden Pesthauch aus verbranntem und nicht-verbranntem Flugtreibstoff, der hinter dem Erdwall und über unsere Köpfe hinweg sich ausbreitete, bevor die Bomber losbrüllten und sich in die Luft erhoben um das Ende von allem zu erproben.

Nicht weit von hier, wo die Tornados mehr als 13 Tonnen CO2 pro Flugstunde in die Atmosphäre ausspuckten, räumten Städte und Dörfer die Zerstörungen in den Flußtälern auf, die die kürzlichen Regenfälle und Überflutungen hinterlassen hatten, mit zu diesem Zeitpunkt 177 Toten und hunderten Vermissten – an einigen Orten erreichten die Flüsse den höchsten Stand seit 100 Jahren, an anderen seit vielleicht 1000 Jahren.

Die Teilnahme an der jährlich stattfindenden „Internationalen Woche“ war schon durch die Tatsache erschwert worden, dass Deutschland erst wenige Tage zuvor wieder die Grenzen für geimpfte Besucherinnen und Besucher aus Ländern wie den USA geöffnet hatte, und dass seit dem 15. Juli, dem Tag nach meiner eigenen Ankunft mit dem Flugzeug, viele Zugstrecken und Straßen wegen des Hochwassers gesperrt waren. Von den wenigen, die es schafften, sich uns anzuschließen, hörten wir beängstigende Geschichten aus verschiedenen Gegenden Deutschlands. Unsere Zahl war wesentlich kleiner als erwartet, und die Flutkatastrophe bedeutetet, dass wir unsere Pläne für die Woche ändern mussten.

Wir hatten geplant, mit ausreichend Teilnehmerinnen und Teilnahmern die verschiedenen Eingänge der Basis am Freitag den 16. Juli, dem 76. Jahrestag der ersten Atomwaffenexplosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico im Jahr 1945 und dem 42. Jahrestag des Austretens von Uranium-Müll in der Mine von Church Rock, New Mexico im Jahr 1979 – dem größten Unfall mit radioaktiven Material in der Geschichte der USA – gewaltfrei zu blockieren. Wir erkannten, dass so eine Aktion zivilen Widerstands selbst mit unserer reduzierten Teilnehmendenzahl die Polizei von den Such- und Rettungsarbeiten abziehen würde, mit denen viele von ihnen in der überfluteten Region beschäftigt waren. Mitglieder unserer Gruppe trafen sich mit der Polizei und dem Kommandanten der Basis um sie zu informieren, dass es anstelle der Blockade am 16. Juli vor dem Haupt-Eingangstor eine einfache, stille Mahnwache mit Schildern und Transparenten geben, die drei Tage später geplante „Graben für den Frieden“-Aktion aber stattfinden würde.

Das ursprüngliche Konzept dieser Aktion sah ein symbolisches Theaterstück um den neuen schwer bewaffneten Hochsicherheitszaun mit Überwachungskameras, Bewegungsmeldern und tiefen Betonverankerungen herum vor. Der Plan, dass einige von uns mit rosa Spaten graben sollten mit dem unerreichbaren Ziel, einen Tunnel unter den Befestigungen zu schaffen, um auf die Landebahn zu gelangen und sie zu blockieren, während andere sie von einem Picknick auf einer angrenzenden Wiese aus anfeuern sollten, musste an unsere geringe Anzahl und in Anerkennung der Zerstörungen, die in den letzten Tagen um uns herum geschehen waren, angepasst werden.

Die leuchtenden rosa Schaufeln wurden mit schwarzer Farbe überdeckt oder mit schwarzen Bändern versehen. Farbige Transparente mit eher witzigen Parolen wurden zurückgelassen und neue angefertigt, die in Anbetracht der Situation in schwarz und weiss verkündeten: „DIE NÄCHSTE KATASTROPHE VERHINDERN, BEVOR SIE BEGINNT – ATOMWAFFEN ABSCHAFFEN!“

Während der Aktion wurden 14 Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten aus Deutschland, den Niederlanden und den USA am Zaun von einer vielfach größeren Menge an ziviler und militärischer Polizei empfangen, die nach einer Stunde vier der hartnäckigsten Grabenden verhaftete, die bald ohne Anklage entlassen wurden. Obwohl angesichts des mehr als 14 Millionen US-Dollar teuren Zaunes, der Leute wie uns abhalten soll, die zivile Polizei Besseres zu tun gehabt und unsere klar symbolischen Bemühungen hätte ignorieren können, haben uns einige in der lokalen Presse und mehr in den sozialen Medien vorgeworfen, die Polizei und das Militär davon abgehalten zu haben, sich mit den Folgen der Überflutungen zu beschäftigen.

Auf dem Höhepunkt ihrer nationalen Katastrophe waren nur 1000 der 150 000 Soldatinnen und Soldaten im deutschen Militär in der Fluthilfe eingesetzt, und am Tag, an dem wir in Büchel für das Leben gruben, flogen Tornado-Jets über unsere Köpfe und brachten Polizei, Protestierende, Soldatinnen und Soldaten sowie Mitglieder der Presse gleichermaßen dazu, die Ohren wegen des betäubenden Dröhnens zuzuhalten. Damit zeigte sich, was bei Klimaverhandlungen oft ignoriert und niemals erwähnt wird, nämlich der riesige Anteil, den das Militär der Welt an der Klimakrise hat, die USA und ihre Alliierten mehr als der Rest.

Vor der Aktion am Zaun, unter dem Dröhnen der Bomber, rief ein Polizeibeamter meinen Namen und informierte mich, dass ich angeklagt, schuldig befunden und zu 900 € Strafe oder 30 Tagen Gefängnis verurteilt wäre wegen der Aktionen während meines letzten Besuchs in Büchel vor zwei Jahren, gemeinsam mit zwei anderen, Susan aus Kalifornien und Susan aus Amsterdam. Vom Gericht war entschieden worden, dass „durch die gleiche Tat und in Tateinheit“ und „im Rahmen der jährlichen Treffen und Demonstrationen gegen Nuklearwaffen auf der Luftbasis der Kampfflugzeug-Squadron 33“ ich „unbefugt in den militärischen Bereich und seinen Sicherheitssektor eingedrungen“ sei, indem ich Löcher in den Zaun geschnitten hätte. Ich erinnere mich daran, dass damals der Polizeibeamte, der uns festnahm, unangemessen verärgert über das Loch war, das wir geschnitten hatten, aber nicht so sehr bekümmert über die Nuklearwaffen, die er bewachte, oder die Verletzungen des deutschen Grundgesetzes oder den Atomwaffensperrvertrag, die sie darstellen. Bevor ich Deutschland verlies schickte ich eine Berufung gegen meine Verurteilung und das Strafmaß an das Gericht in Cochem in der Hoffnung auf eine Möglichkeit, gegen die angebliche Legalität von Nuklearwaffen vor einem deutschen Gericht argumentieren zu können.

Die Vereinigten Staaten bereiten die Modernisierung der gegenwärtigen B61-Atombomben auf die neuen B61-12 vor, die jede angeblich mehr als 20 Millionen US-Doller kosten werden, und die deutsche Regierung plant, ihre Flotte von Tornado-Bombern bald durch intelligentere Flieger zu ersetzen, womit beide Regierungen Milliarden für Syteme ausgeben werden, die die Schwelle zu einem Nuklearkrieg erheblich senken und zur globalen Erwärmung beitragen werden. Es gibt keine Lösung der Klimakrise und keine Hoffnung für das menschliche Leben auf diesem Planeten ohne das Einbeziehen von Abrüstung und der Beendigung der Kriege.

 

(Brian Terrell ist Friedensaktivist aus Maloy, Iowa)

 

Quelle:

countercurrents.org, 2.8.2021

Am 13. Mai 2013 hielt Präsident Obama vor der National Defense University (Nationale Verteidigungsuniversität) eine längere Rede zum Thema “Über die Zukunft unseres Kampfes gegen den Terrorismus”, in der er zum ersten Mal über das offiziell noch immer geheime Programm der US-Regierung der gezielten Attentate durch ferngesteuerte Drohnen sprach. Ich war in der Lage, diese Rede im Fernsehen aus dem privilegierten Blickwinkel des Insassen eines Bundesgefängnisses zu verfolgen, am letzten Tag einer Haftstrafe aufgrund meines Protests gegen Kampfdrohnen, die von der Whiteman Luftwaffen-Basis in Missouri aus in mehreren Ländern in der ganzen Welt tödlich eingesetzt werden.

In den vorhergehenden sechs Monaten im Bundesgefängnis von Yankton, South Dakota, hatte ich aus der Ferne beobachtet, wie die Diskussion um die Kriegsführung mit Drohnen von einem randständigen zu einem zentralen Thema wurde. Mitgefangene brachten mir Zeitungsausschnitte zum Thema aus ihren heimatlichen Lokalzeitungen und berichteten mir, was sie in den Abendnachrichten gehört hatten. Es schien, dass das amerikanische Volk gerade erst anfing, die Realität und die Konsequenzen von Kriegen und Attentaten wahrzunehmen, die von unbemannten, aber schwerbewaffneten Flugkörpern ausgeführt werden, gesteuert am Computerbildschirm von Kombattanten, die weit entfernt vom Konfliktherd in heimischen Militärbasen sitzen.

Mein eigener Anti-Drohnen-Aktivismust begann im April 2009 mit Protesten an der Creech-Luftwaffenbasis in der Wüste von Nevada. Damals waren selbst ansonsten gut informierte Leute skeptisch, ob so etwas überhaupt möglich sei, geschweige denn sich täglich ereignete. Viele, die davon wussten, akzeptierten die simple und gute Mär von der Kriegsführung mit Drohnen als präzises neuartiges High-Tech-Systems, mit Hilfe dessen Soldaten aus sicherer Entfernung von Tausenden von Meilen diejenigen, die uns unmittelbar bedrohen, mit nur geringen oder ganz ohne Kollateralschäden festnageln können.

Selbst einige unserer Freunde aus der Friedensbewegung zweifelten daran, ob es klug sei, die Aufmerksamkeit auf die Drohnen zu lenken. Müssen wir gegen jeden Fortschritt in der Waffentechnologie protestieren? Können wir nicht Methoden tolerieren, die unterschiedsloses Töten zumindestens verringern? Ist die präzis geplante und ausgeführte Drohnenattacke nicht der Flächen-Bombardierung vorzuziehen? Oder der Invasion? Macht es für die Opfer in jedem Fall einen Unterschied, ob sich an Bord des Flugzeugs, das sie bombardiert, ein Pilot befindet oder nicht?

Die Tatsache, dass vier Jahre später, am Tag vor meiner Entlassung aus dem Gefängnis, der Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten den Einsatz von Drohnen vor dem Land und der Welt rechtfertigt, ist wahrhaft bemerkenswert. Es ist keine Diskussion, die er oder irgendjemand anderes in der Regierung, der Politik oder im Militär angeregt oder auf die die Medien sehnlichst gewartet hätten. Die Tatsache, dass das Thema überhaupt öffentlich diskutiert wird, verdanken wir allein dem bemerkenswerten Einsatz weniger Menschen hier in den USA und in Großbritannien, die in Solidarität mit vielen auf den Straßen Pakistans, Jemens und Afghanistans gegen dieses schmutzige Waffensystem protestiert haben. Gemeinschaften des Protests und Widerstands in Nevada, New York, Kalifornien, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa und England haben das Thema durch kreative Aktionen und juristische Strategien in lokale Foren, Gerichte und Medien gebracht und erfolgreich gefordert, dass das durch Drohnentötungen verursachte Leid wahrgenommen wird. Die Rede des Präsidenten selbst wurde nur durch die Störung unserer Freundin Medea Benjamin davor bewahrt, die schlau konstruierte aber leere Litanei aus Alibi, Halb-Wahrheit und Verschleierung zu werden, als die sie geplant war.

In seinem “Brief aus dem Gefängnis in Birmingham”* aus dem Jahr 1963 bemerkte Dr. Martin Luther King jr., eine Gesellschaft wie unsere sei oftmals “in dem unheilvollen Versuch stecken geblieben, im Monolog zu leben statt im Dialog” und erfordere “gewaltloses Handeln”, um “eine Spannung im Geist hervorzurufen, damit sich der Mensch aus der knechtischen Abhängigkeit von Mythen und Halbwahrheiten in das freie Reich schöpferischer Analyse und objektiver Bestimmung der Werte erheben” kann.

Genau wie bei der Frage der Rassentrennung vor 50 Jahren kann heute innerhalb des Diskussionsrahmens, der durch Höflichkeit und gute Manieren bestimmt oder durch Polizei und Gerichte sanktioniert wird, die objektive Bewertung von Drohnen-Kriegsführung schlicht und einfach nicht geleistet werden. Die gegenwärtige Debatte wird nur durch einige wenige möglich gemacht, die es so wie Medea wagen, sich ungefragt zu äußern oder die ihre Körper einsetzen, um das ordnungsgemäße Ausüben von Verbrechen in unserer Mitte zu verhindern. Vor der Rede des Präsidenten gab es in Umfragen die höchste Zustimmung zur Kriegsführung mit Drohnen, aber schon einen Monat später bemerkte der Drohnenpilot Colonel Bryan Davis von der Luftwaffen-Nationalgarde in Ohio einen Stimmungsumschwung. “In der amerikanischen Öffentlichkeit sind wir nicht populär. An jeder anderen Basis wurde protestiert”, beklagte er sich in einer Lokalzeitung. “Für uns ist das kein warmes Gefühl.”

Die Mär von der humanitären Kriegsführung durch Drohnen hatte in der öffentlichen Meinung in den Wochen vor der Rede des Präsidenten angefangen zu bröckeln und hat seither weiter an Reputation verloren. Schon Monate bevor der Präsident behauptete, “indem wir unsere Aktion präzise auf jene richten, die uns töten wollen, und nicht auf die Menschen, unter denen sie sich verstecken wählen wir ein Vorgehen, das am unwahrscheinlichsten zum Verlust unschuldiger Leben führt”, hatte seine Administration frühere Behauptungen korrigiert, bei den Drohnen-Programmen in Jemen und Pakistan wären keine bekannten zivilen Opfer bekannt geworden – dann hieß es, es gebe einen Todesfall, schließlich gab man eine Todesrate im “einstelligen Bereich” zu. Fast jede Zählung ergab aber zivile Opfer in mindestens dreistelliger Höhe.

Nur wenige Wochen nachdem der Präsident vor der National Defense University gesprochen hatte, veröffentlichte eine Zeitschrift dieser Institution eine Studie, die seine Versicherung, dass “konventionelle Luftwaffen und Raketen weniger präzise als Drohnen sind und wesentlich mehr zivile Opfer und lokale Empörung erzeugen”, widerlegte. Drohnenangriffe in Afghanistan, befand die Studie, gibt es “in einer Größenordnung, die zivile Opfer bei jedem Einsatz wahrscheinlicher macht.”

Eine weitere Zusicherung seiner Rede, Amerika könne “nicht zuschlagen, wo immer wir wollen; unsere Aktionen sind durch Konsultationen mit Partnern und den Respekt vor der Souveränität der Staaten begrenzt”, wurde am 8. Juni widerlegt, als der US-Botschafter in Pakistan vom wütenden Premierminister des Landes bestellt wurde, weil ein US-Drohnenangriff neun Menschen getötet hatte. “Dem US-Chargé d’ Affaires wurde mitgeteilt, dass die Regierung Pakistans die Drohnenangriffe, die eine Verletzung der Souveränität und territorialen Integrität Pakistans darstellen, scharf verurteilt”, so der pakistanische Außenminister. “Die Wichtigkeit wurde betont, die Drohnenangriffe unverzüglich zu beenden.”

“Wir agieren gegen Terroristen, die eine andauernde und unmittelbare Bedrohung des amerikanischen Volkes darstellen.” Früher bezog sich das Wort “unmittelbar” auf etwas, das jeden Augenblick geschehen kann, und der Gebrauch der allgemeingültigen Definition des Wortes könnte mit den Worten des Präsidenten die Garantie bedeuten, Drohnenangriffe würden nur ausgeführt, um “Terroristen” aufzuhalten, die gerade im Begriff wären, Amerikanern unmittelbares Leid zuzufügen. Im September 2011 schlug John Brennan, jetzt CIA-Direktor, vor, dass “ein flexibleres Verständnis von ‘Unmittelbarkeit’ angebracht sein kann, wenn man es mit terroristischen Gruppen zu tun hat”. Dieses flexiblere Verständnis von “Unmittelbarkeit” rechtfertigt die Tötung nicht nur von denen, die bei der Ausübung der Tat ertappt wurden, sondern zielt auch auf jene, die verdächtigt werden, irgendetwas geschrieben oder gesagt zu haben, was irgendjemanden dazu bringen könnte, irgendwann irgendetwas mit einem Angriff auf die USA zu tun zu haben. Eine Person, die von einem Drohnen-Überwachungsvideo aus 7000 Meilen Entfernung erfasst wird, weil sie auf eine Art und Weise handelt, die jemandem ähnelt, der vielleicht eines Tages Gewalt ausüben könnte, kann jetzt als unmittelbare Bedrohung eliminiert werden.

In Hinsicht auf die Tötung Anwar Awlakis, eines US-Bürgers im Jemen, versicherte uns der Präsident: “Offiziell gesagt, ich glaube nicht, dass es in Übereinstimmung mit der Verfassung ist, wenn die Regierung irgendeinen US-Bürger ohne ordentliches Verfahren verfolgt und tötet – ob mit einer Drohne oder einem Gewehr.” Der generelle Gebrauch des Ausdrucks “ordentliches Verfahren” erzeugt die falsche Vorstellung, hier würde das Recht des Bürgers auf ein Gerichtsverfahren vor der Exekution zugesichert. “Dies ist schlicht nicht korrekt”, so Generalbundesanwalt Eric Holder. “‘Ordentliches Verfahren’ und ‘Gerichtsverfahren’ sind nicht dasselbe, besonders nicht, wenn es um die nationale Sicherheit geht. Die Verfassung garantiert ein ordentliches Verfahren, kein Gerichtsverfahren.” Von einem “ordentlichen Verfahren” kann nun gesprochen werden, wenn der Präsident aufgrund geheimer Beweismittel entscheidet, dass ein Bürger sterben soll.

Die Drohnentechnologie verändert unsere Sprache über eine Neudefinierung von Ausdrücken wie “Unmittelbarkeit” und “ordentliches Verfahren” hinaus. Indem wir eine interkontinentale Atomwaffe “Peacekeeper” genannt haben, sind wir schon über Orwellsche Euphemismen hinausgegangen. Diese neuen “hunter-killer”-Plattformen (Jäger-Mörder-Plattformen) tragen Namen wie “Predators” (Raubtiere) oder “Reapers” (Sensenmänner) und werden wohl bald von “Avengers” (Rächern) und “Stalkers” (Pirscher) verdrängt werden. Die Botschaft, die sie überbringen, ist eine Rakete namens “Hellfire” (Höllenfeuer).

In Iowa, wo ich lebe, hat die in Des Moines stationierte Einheit der Nationalgarde ihre F-16-Jagdbomber durch ein Kontrollzentrum für Reaper-Drohnen ersetzt. Diese Veränderung wurde begleitet von der Umwandlung des Namens von “132nd Fighter Wing” (132. Kampf-Flügel) zu “132nd Attack Wing” (132. Angriffs-Flügel). Dieser Wandel ist mehr als symbolisch – ein “Kampf” hat per Definition zwei Seiten, und das Wort umfasst irgendeine Art von Gleichwertigkeit. Es gibt so etwas wie einen fairen Kampf (aber natürlich wurden die F-16-Bomber des 132. Flügels nur gegen wehrlose Zivilbevölkerung an Orten wie Irak und Panama eingesetzt), und ein Kampf hat normalerweise eine Art von Lösung. Ein “Angriff” jedoch ist eben nur das. Ein Angriff ist einseitig, etwas, das der Verfolger dem Opfer zufügt. Ein Kampf mag manchmal gerechtfertigt sein, ein Angriff nie. Es gibt keine Theorie des “gerechten Angriffs”. Das Aussortieren von unschuldigen und schuldigen Drohnenopfern ist sozusagen eine Zeitvergeudung. Alle sind gleichermaßen Opfer.

Vielleicht hat George Kennan dies in einem Strategiepapier, das er 1948 für das Außenministerium verfasste, kommen sehen. Um die unterschiedliche globale Verteilung des Reichtums nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg zu bewahren (“Wir besitzen etwa 50 Prozent des Reichtums der Welt, aber nur 6,3 Prozent der Bevölkerung”) schlug er vor, “wir sollten aufhören, über vage und irreale Themen wie wie Menschenrechte, die Verbesserung des Lebensstandards und Demokratisierung zu sprechen. Der Tag ist nicht fern, an dem wir mit klaren Machtkonzepten operieren müssen. Je weniger wir dann von idealistischen Slogans behindert werden, desto besser.” Die Rede vor der National Defense University stellte eine Peinlichkeit an idealistischen Slogans dar, befasste sich aber auch mit kühlem Pragmatismus mit klaren Machtkonzepten.

“Mich und alle, die meiner Befehlskette angehören,”, so der Präsident am 23. Mai, “werden diese Todesopfer für den Rest unseres Lebens verfolgen.” Diese Worte klangen einige Tage später ehrlicher, als sie in den Fernsehnachrichten des Senders NBC von Brandon Bryant ausgesprochen wurden, ein Drohnen-Operateur der Luftwaffe, der gestand, von den 1600 Todesfällen, an denen er beteiligt war, verfolgt zu werden. Bryant gestand, seine Aktionen bewirkten, dass er  sich als “herzloser Soziopath” fühle, und er beschrieb eine seiner ersten Tötungen, als er in der Creech-Luftwaffenbasis in Nevada saß, während sein Team auf drei Männer feuerte, die eine Straße in Afghanistan entlang gingen. Dort war es Nacht, und er erinnerte sich, wie er das Thermalbild eines der Opfer auf seinem Computer-Bildschirm erblickte: “Ich beobachtete, wie dieser Typ verblutete, und, ich meine, Blut ist heiss.” Bryant beobachtete, wie der Mann starb und sein Bild verschwand, während der Körper die Temperatur des Erdbodens der Umgebung annahm. “Ich kann jedes kleine Pixel sehen, ich schließe einfach meine Augen.” Die Entfernung des Drohnenkriegers ist kein Schutz vor der moralischen Zerstörung des Krieges, und auch dies sind Opfer, in deren Namen wir ebenfalls protestieren.

Wir können nicht in die Herzen des Präsidenten und jener in seinem inneren Kreis blicken, aber es fällt nicht schwer daran zu zweifeln, dass sie sich wirklich vom Tod der Menschen, die auf ihren Befehl hin von Drohnen getötet wurden, verfolgt fühlen. Wenn sie nicht von ihrem eigenen Gewissen verfolgt werden, fällt vielleicht uns die Verantwortung zu, sie zu verfolgen.

* zitiert nach: Die Zeit für schöpferischen Protest ist gekommen. Der Brief aus dem Gefängnis in Birmingham, in: King, Martin Luther, Schöpferischer Widerstand, hrsg. von Heinrich W. Grosse, Gütersloh 1985, übersetzt von Ruth Rostock und Alfred Schmidt

On May 23, 2013, President Obama gave a major address from the National Defense University, ON THE FUTURE OF OUR FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM, in which he acknowledged for the first time the US government’s still officially secret program of assassination by remotely controlled drones. I was able to watch this televised speech from the privileged vantage of a federal prison on the last day of a sentence resulting from my protest of drones lethally operated from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri over various countries around the world.

Over the previous six months in the Federal Prison Camp at Yankton, South Dakota, I had watched from afar as the discussion on drone warfare emerged from the fringe and into the mainstream. Fellow prisoners brought me clippings on the subject from their local newspapers and kept me apprised of what they heard on the evening news. The American people seemed to be just awakening to the reality and consequences of wars being and fought and assassinations carried out by unmanned but heavily armed planes controlled by combatants sitting at computer screens at stateside bases far from the conflict.

My own anti-drone activism began with protests at Creech Air Force Base in the Nevada desert in April, 2009. Even some otherwise well informed people were skeptical, back then, that such things were even possible, much less happening daily. Many who were aware accepted the simple and happy narrative of drone warfare as a precise new high-tech system in which soldiers from a safe distance of thousands of miles can pin point those who mean us imminent harm with little or no collateral damage.

Even some among our friends in the peace movement questioned the wisdom of focusing attention on drones. Must we protest every new advance in weaponry? Can’t we allow for methods that are at least improvements on indiscriminate carnage? Is not a precisely aimed and delivered drone attack preferable to carpet bombing? Is it not preferable to invasion? Does it make a difference to the victims, in any case, whether there is a pilot in the plane that bombs them or not?

The fact that four years later on the day before my release from prison, the president of the United States was defending the use of drones before the country and the world is truly remarkable. This is not a discussion that he or anyone else in the government, politics or the military encouraged or one that the media was anxious to take on. The fact that the issue is up for discussion at all is due to considerable efforts of the few here in the US and the UK in solidarity with many in the streets in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan protesting this foul weaponry. Communities of protest and resistance in Nevada, New York, California, Missouri, Wisconsin, England and Iowa thrust the issue into local forums, courts and media through creative actions and legal stratagems, effectively demanding that grievance over drone killing be heard. The president’s own speech was itself only rescued from being the cleverly constructed but empty litany of alibi, half-truth and obfuscation that it was intended to be by the interruption by our friend, Medea Benjamin.

In his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., noted that often a society like ours “bogged down in the tragic attempt to live in monologue rather than dialogue,” requires “nonviolent gadflies” in order to “create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal.”

As with the issue of segregation 50 years ago, so today the parameters of discussion allowed by politeness and good manners or sanctioned by the police and courts simply cannot abide the objective appraisal of drone warfare that the times require. The discussion such as it is, is made possible only by some who dare speak out of turn, as Medea, or who use their bodies to intrude on the orderly commission of criminalities in our midst. Before the president’s lecture drone warfare’s approval rating was at the top of the polls but a month later drone pilot Col. Bryan Davis of the Ohio Air National Guard noted a turn of the tide. “We are not popular among the American public, every other base has been protested,” he lamented to a local paper. “It doesn’t make you feel warm inside.”

The narrative of humanitarian war via drone had begun to unravel in the public eye in the months leading up to the president’ speech and has since fell further into disrepute. Months before the president made the assertion in his May 23 speech that “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life,” his administration had already revised earlier claims that the drone programs in Yemen and Pakistan had yielded zero known noncombatant deaths to one death to finally admit to a death toll in “single digits.” By almost any accounting the noncombatant tolls in those countries have been at least in the hundreds.

Just weeks after the president spoke at the National Defense University, a journal published by that institution published a study that debunked his assurance that “conventional airpower and missiles are far less precise than drones, and likely to cause more civilian casualties and local outrage.” Drone strikes in Afghanistan, the study found, were “an order of magnitude more likely to result in civilian casualties per engagement.”

Another assurance given in this speech, that “America cannot take strikes wherever we choose; our actions are bound by consultations with partners, and respect for state sovereignty,” was discredited on June 8 when the US ambassador to Pakistan was summoned by the prime minister of that country angry over a US drone attack that killed nine people. “It was conveyed to the US chargé ď affaires that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strikes, which are a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs. “The importance of bringing an immediate end to drone strikes was emphasized.”

“We act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” Formerly the word “imminent” referred to something about to happen at any moment and using the generally accepted definition of the word one might construe in the president’s words a guarantee that drone strikes are used only to stop “terrorists” engaged in acts that would cause immediate harm to Americans. John Brennan, now director of the CIA, suggested in September 2011 that “a more flexible understanding of ‘imminence’ may be appropriate when dealing with terrorist groups.” This more flexible understanding of imminence justifies the assassination not only of those caught in the act, but also of targets who are suspected of having written something or said something to make someone think that they might have something to do with an attack on the US someday. A person who is caught on the drones video feed from 7,000 miles away as acting in a manner consistent with someone who might harm one day may now be eliminated as an imminent threat.

Referring to the killing of Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen in Yemen, the president assured us that “for the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any US citizen — with a drone, or with a shotgun — without due process.” The general usage of the words “due process” would cause the misapprehension that the right of a citizen to have trial by jury before being executed is being reaffirmed here. “This is simply not accurate,” says Attorney General Eric Holder. “‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.” The burden of “due process” can now be met when the president decides based on secret evidence that a citizen should die.

Drone technology is changing our language beyond redefining terms like “imminence” and “due process.” We have progressed, too, beyond Orwellian euphemisms such as naming an intercontinental nuclear missile “Peacekeeper.” These new “hunter-killer platforms” bear names like “Predators” and “Reapers” and may soon be supplanted by “Avengers” and “Stalkers.” The ordinance they deliver is a missile named “Hellfire.”

In Iowa where I live, the Air National Guard unit based in Des Moines has replaced its F-16 fighter planes with a Reaper drone control center. This transformation was marked by changing the units name from the “132nd Fighter Wing” to the “132nd Attack Wing.” This change is more than symbolic- a “fight” by definition has two sides and the word implies some kind of parity. There is such a thing as a fair fight (of course the 132nd’s F-16s were used only on all but disarmed populations in places like Iraq and Panama) and a fight usually has some kind of resolution. An “attack” however, is just that. An attack is one-sided, something that a perpetrator inflicts on a victim. A fighter might sometimes be justified, an attacker, never. There is no “just attack” theory. The parsing out of innocent and guilty drone victims is in a sense a waste of time. All alike are victims.

George Kennan, might have seen this coming in a policy paper he wrote for the State Department in 1948. In order to preserve the global disparity of wealth post World War II (“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population”) he suggested that “we should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” While the speech at the National Defense University was an embarrassment of idealistic slogans, it also dealt with straight power concepts with chilling pragmatism.

“For me,” the president said on May 23, “and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live.” Those words had a truer ring a few days later spoken on NBC news by Brandon Bryant, an Air Force drone operator who confessed to being haunted by 1,600 deaths he took part in. Bryant admitted that his actions made him feel like a “heartless sociopath,” and he described one of his first kills, sitting in a chair at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada when his team fired on three men walking down a road in Afghanistan. It was night in Afghanistan, and he remembers watching the thermal image of one victim on his computer screen: “I watch this guy bleed out and, I mean, the blood is hot.” Bryant watched the man die and his image disappear as his body attained the ambient temperature of the ground. “I can see every little pixel, if I just close my eyes.” The remoteness of the drone warrior is no protection from the moral damage of war and these are victims as well and it is on their behalf as well that we protest.

We cannot know the hearts of the president and those in his inner circle but it is not hard to wonder whether they are truly haunted by the deaths of those killed by drones at their commands. If they may not be haunted by their own consciences, perhaps the responsibility of haunting them falls to us.

Speaking from the White House on August 31, President Joe Biden lied to the people of the U.S. and to the world: “Last night in Kabul, the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan — the longest war in American history.” The U.S. war on Afghanistan did not end— it has only adapted to technological advances and morphed into a war that will be more politically sustainable, one more intractable and more easily exportable. As the president admitted, “We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries.  We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.  We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed.”

Five days before, on the evening of Thursday, August 26, hours after a suicide bomb was detonated at the gate of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport killing and wounding scores of Afghans trying to flee their country and killing 18 U.S. soldiers, President Biden spoke to the world, “outraged as well as heartbroken,” he said. Many of us listening to the president’s speech, made before the victims could be counted and the rubble cleared, did not find comfort or hope in his words. Instead, our heartbreak and outrage were only amplified as Joe Biden seized the tragedy to call for more war.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay,” he threatened. “I’ve also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose and the moment of our choosing.”

The president’s threatened “moment of our choosing” came one day later, on Friday, August 27, when the U.S. military carried out a drone strike against what it said was an ISIS-K “planner” in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province. The U.S. military’s claim that it knows of “no civilian casualties” in the attack is contradicted by reports from the ground. “We saw that rickshaws were burning,” one Afghan witness said. “Children and women were wounded and one man, one boy and one woman had been killed on the spot.” Fear of an ISIS-K counterattack further hampered evacuation efforts as the U.S. Embassy warned U.S. citizens to leave the airport. “This strike was not the last,” said President Biden. On August 29, another U.S. drone strike killed a family of ten in Kabul.

The first lethal drone strike in history occurred in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, when the CIA identified Taliban leader Mullah Omar, “or 98-percent probable it was he,” but the Hellfire missile launched by a Predator drone killed two unidentified men while Mullah Omar escaped. These two recent instances of “force and precision” ordered by Biden twenty years later, marked the presumed end to the war there just as it had begun. The intervening record has not been much better and, in fact, documents exposed by whistleblower Daniel Hale prove that the U.S. government is aware that 90% of its drone strike victims are not the intended targets.

Zemari Ahmadi, who was killed in the August 29 drone strike in Kabul along with nine members of his family, seven of them young children, had been employed by a California based humanitarian organization and had applied for a visa to come to the U.S., as had Ahmadi’s nephew Nasser, also killed in the same attack. Nasser had worked with U.S. Special Forces in the Afghan city of Herat and had also served as a guard for the U.S. Consulate there. Whatever affinity the surviving members of Ahmadi’s family and friends might have had with the U.S. went up in smoke, that day. “America is the killer of Muslims in every place and every time,” said one relative who attended the funeral, “I hope that all Islamic countries unite in their view that America is a criminal.” Another mourner, a colleague of Ahmadi, said “We’re now much more afraid of drones than we are of the Taliban.”

The fact that targeted killings like those carried out in Afghanistan and other places from 2001 to the present are counterproductive to the stated objectives of defeating terrorism, regional stability or of winning hearts and minds has been known by the architects of the “war on terror,” at least since 2009. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have access to a CIA document from that year, Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Tool. Among the “key findings” in the CIA report, analysts warn of the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT). “The potential negative effect of HLT operations, include increasing the level of insurgent support …, strengthening an armed group’s bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group’s remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.”

The obvious truths that the CIA kept buried in a secret report have been admitted many times by high ranking officers implementing those policies. In 2013, General James E. Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reported in The New York Times, “We’re seeing that blowback. If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted.” In a 2010 interview in Rollingstone, General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, figured that “for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies.” By the general’s equation, the U.S. created a minimum of 130 new enemies for itself in the strikes ordered by President Biden on August 27 and 29 alone.

When the catastrophic consequences of a nation’s policies are so clearly predictable and evidently inevitable, they are intentional. What has happened to Afghanistan is not a series of mistakes or good intentions gone awry, they are crimes.

In his novel, 1984, George Orwell foresaw a dystopian future where wars would be fought perpetually, not intended to be won or resolved in any way and President Eisenhower’s parting words as he left office in 1961 were a warning of the “grave implications” of the “military-industrial complex.” Wikileaks founder Julian Assange noted that these dire predictions had come to pass, speaking in 2011: “The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the U.S. and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

No, the war is not over. From a nation that should be promising reparations and begging the forgiveness of the people of Afghanistan comes the infantile raging, “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay” and while pledging to perpetuate the conditions that provoke terrorism, the parting taunt “and to ISIS-K: We are not done with you yet.”

In the simplistic dualism of U.S. partisan politics, the issue seems to be only whether the current president should be blamed or should be given a pass and the blame put on his predecessor. This is a discussion that is not only irrelevant but a dangerous evasion of responsibility. 20 years of war crimes makes many complicit.

In 1972, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote: “Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings. Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, [and] in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” All of us in the U.S., the politicians, voters, tax payers, the investors and even those who protested and resisted it, are responsible for 20 years of war in Afghanistan. We are also all responsible for ending it.

 

May 20, 2021

In its deadly attacks in densely populated Gaza, the Israeli Defense Force is employing a technique they call “roof knocking.” First drones fire small missiles without warheads on a residential building, intended only to shake the building before armed missiles destroy it minutes later. The IDF calls these “warning shots” and they are often preceded by telephone calls to some residents telling them to flee from the impending obliteration of their homes.

The Jerusalem Post celebrates the tactic as humane and moral, “How the IDF invented ‘Roof Knocking’, the tactic that saves lives in Gaza.” “How are you? Is everything okay? This is the Israeli military. We need to bomb your home and we are making every effort to minimize casualties. Please make sure that no one is nearby since in five minutes we will attack,” is the standard phone call to building residents, sounding more like a deadly threat than a friendly heads up or a lifesaving warning. Those who do not get the call but only hear the buzzing of the drones and feel their homes shake from projectiles banging on their roofs might be more likely to hunker down inside than to risk taking to the streets, as if there is any safe refuge in Gaza today anywhere.

Likewise, when drones are also being adopted by police departments in the United States, their use is touted as a less violent alternative to conventional methods. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by police officers in Minneapolis, and the deaths of countless other people of color, demands for police reform are being made in cities across the United States.  In response to this urgent crisis, some police departments are straining their credibility by offering drones as a solution to tensions between police and the community. Police in Chula Vista, California, for example, claim that their drones are “a tool for de-escalation,” one that they say “fosters public trust.”

In the private sphere, a South African firm called Desert Wolf is marketing a “Skunk” drone to mining firms facing labor disputes, armed with pepper-spray ammunition, dye-marker balls and solid plastic balls, blinding lasers (prohibited for use in war under the Geneva Convention) and on-board speakers that can scream orders to people on the ground. “We designed and developed the Skunk because of a huge safety risk that had to be addressed,” said Desert Wolf’s managing director Hennie Kieser, citing a strike over pay in 2012 that resulted in 44 deaths at a South African platinum mine. “By removing the police on foot, using non-lethal technology, I believe that everyone will be much safer.”

Marketing the public image of the drone as a kinder, gentler, safer way to make war, to quell striking workers or to police our cities might have begun with President Obama, who justified drone assassinations, insisting that “by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.” In truth, most of those killed in U.S. drone attacks are civilians, few are combatants by any definition and even the small number of those targeted as suspected terrorists are victims of extrajudicial executions. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Obama’s first term, General James E. Cartwright, had already noted “blowback” from the drone program: “If you’re trying to kill your way to a solution, no matter how precise you are, you’re going to upset people even if they’re not targeted” and General Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s commander of forces in Afghanistan, warned that “For every innocent person you kill, you create ten new enemies.”

One of the greatest dangers posed by the proliferation of drones around the world today is exactly that illusion of their precision and safety. Those who use and profit from drones can wash their hands of the horror and bask in their stated good intentions, but the people who are targeted know them as tools of racism, terror and repression.

The illusion that war can be made safer and the control of repressed people made kinder through the use of drones only makes war and repression more likely and spawns a cycle of violence that is even more intractable. Despite the self-serving defenses offered by the IDF, the Chula Vista police department, Desert Wolf and Barack Obama, aerial weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance are a scourge to be eliminated.

 

Brian Terrell participated in the first anti-drone demonstrations in the United States at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base in April, 2009, and since then has served seven months in jails and prisons for protesting at drone bases. He is based on a Catholic Worker farm in Maloy, Iowa, and is an organizer for the new Ban Killer Drone campaign.