I read this letter on another website I frequent.....quite alot of food for thought.

TERRORISM AND NONVIOLENCE BY Arun Gandhi

Understandably, after the tragedy in New York and Washington DC on September 11 many have written or called the office to find out what would be an appropriate nonviolent response to such an unbelievably inhuman act of violence.

First, we must understand that nonviolence is not a strategy that we can use in a moment of crisis and discarded in times of peace. Nonviolence is about personal attitudes, about becoming the change we wish to see in the world. Because, a nation's collective attitude is based on the attitude of the individual. Nonviolence is about building positive relationships with all human beings - relationships that are based on love, compassion, respect, understanding and appreciation.

Nonviolence is also about not judging people as we perceive them to be - that is, a murderer is not born a murderer; a terrorist is not born a terrorist. People become murderers, robbers and terrorists because of circumstances and experiences in life. Killing or confining murders, robbers, terrorists, or the like is not going to rid this world of them. For every one we kill or confine we create another hundred to take their place. What we need to do is to analyze dispassionately what are those circumstances that create such monsters and how can we help eliminate those circumstances, not the monsters. Justice should mean reformation and not revenge.

We saw some people in Iraq and Palestine and I dare say many other countries rejoice the blowing up of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It horrified us, as it should. But, let us not forget that we do the same thing. When Israel bombs the Palestinians we either rejoice or show no compassion. Our attitude is they deserve what they get. When the Palestinians bomb the Israelis we are indignant and condemn them as vermin who need to be eliminated.

We reacted without compassion when we bombed the cities of Iraq. I was among the millions in the United States who sat glued to the television and watched the drama as though it was a made for television film. The television had desensitized us. Thousands of innocent men, women and children were being blown to bits and instead of feeling sorry for them we marveled at the efficiency of our military. For more than ten years we have continued to wreak havoc in Iraq - an estimated 50,000 children die every year because of sanctions that we have imposed - and it hasn't moved us to compassion. All this is done, we are told, because we want to get rid of the Satan called Sadam Hussein.

Now we are getting ready to do this all over again to get rid of another Satan called Osama Bin Laden. We will bomb the cities of Afghanistan because they harbor the Satan and in the process we will help create a thousand other bin Ladens.

Some might say "we don't care what the world thinks of us as long as they respect our strength. " After all we have the means to blow this world to pieces since we are the only surviving super-power. Do we want the world to respect us the way school children respect a bully? Is that our role in the world?

If a bully is what we want to be then we must be prepared to face the same consequences as a school-yard bully faces. On the other hand we cannot tell the world "leave us alone." Isolationism is not what this world is built for.

All of this brings us back to the question: How do we respond nonviolently to terrorism?

The consequences of a military response are not very rosy. Many thousands of innocent people will die both here and the country or countries we attack. Militancy will increase exponentially and, ultimately, we will be faced with another, more pertinent, moral question: what will we gain by destroying half the world? Will we be able to live with a clear conscience?

We must acknowledge our role in helping create monsters in the world and then find ways to contain these monsters without hurting more innocent people and then redefine our role in the world. I think we must move from seeking to be respected for our military strength to being respected for our moral strength.

We need to appreciate that we are in a position to play a powerful role in helping the "other half" of the world attain a better standard of life not by throwing a few crumbs but by significantly involving ourselves in constructive economic programs.

For too long our foreign policy has been based on "what is good for the United States." It smacks of selfishness. Our foreign policy should now be based on what is good for the world and how can we do the right thing to help the world become more peaceful.

To those who have lost loved one's in this and other terrorist acts I say I share your grief. I am sorry that you have become victims of senseless violence. But let this sad episode not make you vengeful because no amount of violence and killing is going to bring you inner peace. Anger and hate never do. The memory of those victims who have died in this and other violent incidents around the world will be better preserved and meaningfully commemorated if we all learn to forgive and dedicate our lives to helping create a peaceful, respectful and an understanding world.

Arun Gandhi Founder Director M.K.Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence 650 East Parkway South Memphis TN 38104 Tel:(901)452-2824; FAX: (901)452-2775 email: gandhi@cbu.edu web: www.gandhiinstitute.org

-- Jason (AJAMA5@netscape.net), September 17, 2001

Answers

This is foolishness. Well meaning, but still foolish. It is people's individual choices that make them what they are, not their circumstances. That is a cop-out. You can take a thousand people living in the same circumstances and out of the lot, no matter how horrible the circumstances, only a few will turn out to be monsters, and then only if the group allows them to get away with it. We all have the potential within us to be monsters, just most of us know we couldn't get away with it, so we seek more acceptable behavior. If you let the monsters continue to get away with being monsters, THAT is what breeds more monsters. No, I don't think the answer is to bomb whole nations into oblivion. There are better ways of dealing with this problem than that. But letting it slide by with "Oh, the poor fellows couldn't help it, look at the environment they came from", is the worst kind of criminal foolishness.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 17, 2001.

Thank you, Jason. The voice of reason, compassion and love is all around us being shouted down by the usual short-sighted, arrogant words of so-called 'patriots'. May we continue to learn from Gandhi's profoundly successful wisdom, and God help us all.........

-- Earthmama (earthmama48@yahoo.com), September 17, 2001.

I too believe that each of us makes our own choices in life. And I think these terrrorists have made these choices in response to what they see as oppression and injustice. Isn't it the same thing we are on our way to doing. There sure is alot of information out there on the web that says to me that we aren't as innocent as we would like to seem. We funded and trained this man as a terrorist to do OUR dirty work not too long ago. And should it be any wonder that he's turned to bite us?

I love out country and our way of life but not at the expense of others. I too wish we could be as concerned about the other guy around the world. After all we're all people, and much more connected than many would like to admit.

I don't claim to be so experienced to know exactly the way to handle this situation but I see war as only adding to the losses. Maybe we better look at what these people are so mad about.

-- Denise (hammj@hotmail.com), September 17, 2001.

No matter what we think the solution is, we cannot change what is about to happen. According to the bible our fate is already written. The Isrealites and the Palastines have been fighting for 1000's of years and will continue to fight until the end of times no matter whether the U.S. has anything to do with it or not. In Revalations there will be major wars (the armageddon) all in the mid east area. And when all the fighting is over with, there will be no winner.

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), September 17, 2001.

It is people's individual choices that make them what they are, not their circumstances. That is a cop-out.

Yep, all those people chose to be in the World Trade Center last week, so they got what they deserved. Circumstances had nothing at all to do with it, right? How is bombing Afghanistan going to bring those people back?

-- Me (NoRambos@here.com), September 17, 2001.

1st of all, we trained these terrorist to fight against the Russians so the Russians would not take over Afghanistan, so should we have done that? Well, I guess you could look at it that Russia would be ruling Afghanistan today instead of the Taliban if we did not train them. Did we honestly think this would be the outcome? I seriously doubt it. Should we have stayed out of it? Don't know. Do you think that if we steadfastly held to nonviolence, then that would make other countries nonviolent? You're dreaming. There is going to be some group, somewhere, that is going to use violence to attain their goal, no matter what we do. And as for impoverished upbringing, Ben Ladin is from a wealthy family. All he lacked was power, and that's his goal now. To tell you the truth, I would love for America to get the heck out of every country, mind our own business and everyone leave us alone. But then ask yourself, should we have done that with Hitler? Should we have practiced nonviolent behavior then? I bet alot of Jewish people wished we would have helped sooner. And as far as us going in and really helping the economy of some countries, as the author stated, do you really think the regimes of these countries want what is best for their citizens? That they are looking out for the welfare of their own citizens? How do we get past these regimes to help, or will the help be welcomed? It's not so simple.

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), September 17, 2001.

I'm all for non-violence and compassion, but let's seriously think about it--what are we actually supposed to do to rid of these terrorists? Do we send them love vibes or what? I don't mean to sound flippant, but I haven't heard one solid plan from non-violent proponents. Let's hear some concrete solutions and I'm willing to listen.

As for the argument that evil people are a product of their environment, there is truth to that--however, I agree that we have more control over our destinies than we may realize. A person chooses to be evil and PC/victim excuses just don't do it for me. These men *chose* to hijack planes and kill civilians, even though they were undoubtedly brainwashed, troubled, possibly even abused people. Human beings are capable of doing right and being resilient when faced with challenges and evil. These men did not make the choice of behaving properly. Thus, I cannot feel compassion for these men.

It is truly difficult for many people, myself included, to fully support peace, love, and tolerance as a personal and political stance. This tragedy has affected me personally and, while I consider myself to be a fair and just person, I am not capable of taking a completely non-violent approach in the solution to this dilema. I believe life involves a combination of approaches, and it also reflects human nature to struggle with violence and peace.

In a perfect world we would all get along.

-- amy (acook@in4web.com), September 17, 2001.

I continue to be amazed that the human mind can not seem to grip the idea that peace and justice can happen without war. We have the opportunity to show ourselves as a peaceful and just people and I just hope we can do it. So far I see very little reason to hope that our leaders will lead us in a rational way to bring the criminals to justice. I sure hope I am wrong.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), September 17, 2001.

"Killing or confining murders, robbers, terrorists, or the like is not going to rid this world of them. For every one we kill or confine we create another hundred to take their place."

This statement is about as impractical and untrue as they come. If I said that every one killed or confined would deter 100 potential terrorists and murderers, would that make it true? What exactly would you do with murderers, terrorists, etc?

Yawn

-- Yawn (BigYawn@not.com), September 17, 2001.

There is no "righteous death" of another human being, you cannot believe in any form of religious doctrine and believe otherwise, even the Ten Commandments clearly states "Thou shall not kill", what do belive in, selective observence of the Ten Commandments?

Even Hitler's reign of terror could have been avoided, the German people were in desperate staraights after WWI and their money was basically worthless. Hitler blamed the whole problem on the Jews control of the banks and gave the people a "scapegoat" to focus on instead of actually working to solve the problem. At any time before Hitler gained total control of the German society had the other major world powers offered to aid and back up the German deutsch mark to some semblence of worth, Hitler's rise to dictatorship would have been avoided. The same thing happened in Italy allowing Mussolini's rise to power.

See? Non-violent method of avoiding WWII, and this is just one possible scenario. As soon as you start thinking in totally different ways that do not involve the nasty human emotions of hate, revenge, and bloodshed to resolve conflict, it opens up a whole new world to you.

My method of resolving this conflict? Increase the chances of it not happening again with the nessessary security on all air craft, trains, buses and even semi trucks. Beef up security to prevent how easy it is to get in this country in the first place. And find out why the Muslims feel we are such a threat, and do all we can to remedy these feelings, despite the costs. After all, the alternative will involve the taking of many lives, and the shedding of alot of blood, and what is THAT worth to you???

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), September 17, 2001.

If you truely want a peacfull end to this chapter of history we must change. You and I must cut our use of oil by 25% now. We maintain the Isreali presents in the mideast as our representative in the oil rich region of the world. Sorry folks religion has nothing to do with it. It's all about oil and always has been. Park the pickup and take a walk and save a life.

-- Del Grinolds (dgrinolds@gvtel.com), September 18, 2001.

I've been doing some research on Afghanistan in particular, and there are a lot of things that *could* be done to help the people there. However, would the Taliban allow the help to come in? Would Osama Bin Laden allow it? It would undermine their control over the people to allow help to come from another source.

And somebody evidently thinks it is wrong to be a patriot and love your country. That it is wrong for us to defend ourselves by force against force. I'm all for peace and peaceful means, but we are not going to make America safe again by turning the other cheek. Those people will only see that as a sign of weakness and attack. No, I don't think America is perfect; we are far from perfect, and maybe we ought not to have any presence overseas. But our people don't deserve to be killed by terrorists any more than any other people deserve to, and measures need to be taken that will stop the terrorist actions. Then if we really think it is our business, we can see what can be done to help the poor nations. But if we don't stop the terrorism, we will *be* one of the poor nations, and even if you may think that America is morally deserving of that fate, you must admit that we wouldn't be able to help others if we had no more resources than they do.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 18, 2001.

Did the attacks last week weaken America? No, it strengthened our national fervor. So now let's turn it around. Will bombing the terrorists weaken them, or strengthen their resolve? Think of the families of last week's tragedy and the suffering they are going through. Our military technology is not precise enough to just kill the terrorists and no one else, we will murder innocents as well. Will they not also have families who grieve, or does their grief not count because they're "over there". It's easy to cry for blood and revenge when the target is somwhere far away, but the President has admitted that there will be domestic targets in the "War on Terrorism". Do we really want to call another war down on our soil? Are we truly prepaired to sacrifice our sons and daughters in the name of revenge? I've seen the faces of the survivors and the families of the missing and it tears my heart to pieces. I will not condone visiting this pain upon another human, no matter where in the world they may live.

-- Sherri C (CeltiaSkye@aol.com), September 18, 2001.

Just my opinion but revenge doesn't even remotely come into the equation as far as I'm concerned. If that was all there was to it, I would say, go ahead and turn the other cheek. We can pick up the pieces and go on. But something has got to be done to make the terrorism STOP!! No, probably not bombing Afghanistan into oblivion, because aside from the moral issues of killing *their* innocent and already impoverished civilians, it would, as has been said a number of times, cause more terrorists to rise up to take their place. But there are things that CAN be done, and *ought* to be done, and when someone is attacking you is NOT the time to cry peace unless you want it under *their* terms.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), September 18, 2001.

It should be obvious to those who have read these well condidered answers that for thinking and rational people there are essentially bipolar views.

No big surprise here - the natural reaction to threat is: fight or flight - and neither of them is "right" or "wrong" - remember that survival is the issue at stake.

Those of us who want to fight let this natural reaction and their emotions take over and lash out, but most of them will not feel good about it the morning after. There are a few, however, who either enter the fray with situational justifications firmly in place (can be read as either vigilante's or terrorists)or develop them quite quickly as a guilt response to their actions. Consider that if your situational justifications are firmly in place and you choose to be a martyr, you are well assured of never having to wake up with guilt (in this life at least)the morning after your act. Also consider that there are some who indeed have no capacity for guilt or remorse.

Those of us who are non violent in nature want to believe that they can generalize from their own frame of reference to include all of humanity and that if you just continue to set the right example, fix grievances, and do the "right thing" that eventually the other party will come around and all will be OK. If you are dealing with rational and clear thinking people this is the approach that should be taken and should, in fact, be the one we live by on a daily basis - a "golden rule" approach. Unfortunately, the flaw in this argument is the initial generalization and it's implicit assumption that you can reason with every individual on the face of the planet.

The facts of life are that all of humanity does not share the same outlook, have the same degree of rationality, or have the same regard for the sanctity of life. There are plenty of people (despite whatever you may choose to believe), even in the good ole USA, that operate on a level of beastiality that is little removed from a "survival of the fittest" jungle rule - why else would a human being drag another behind his pick up truck until the body is just a hunk of raw meat - why else would a human being shoot & kill another for a new pair of sneakers - why else would a human being beat another to death because they were "gay" - why else would a human being kill and torture millions as Hitler and Stalin did (and the list goes on & on)- why else would a human being premeditate the deaths of innocent passengers on an airplane to be used to kill thousands of innocent people at their place of work? Were all the people in Hitler's and Stalin's (and so on) regime criminally insane or deranged, or miscreants? Are you getting the hang of this situational justification and lack of guilt or remorse thing?

Now let's say you're walking in the jungle and you come across a tiger that hasn't eaten in a week. You, as a rational thinker know the tiger has situational justification to eat you (it's hungry)and will have no guilt or remorse about it. You know that it will hunt you down and kill you if you do not do something to deter it. Let's also say that you have the means to deter the tiger by throwing a bunch of steak at it. So for the moment it stops and takes the easy meal that doesn't fight back. Do you think the tiger will never get hungry again? Do you think the tiger just might want to find you again because it knows that it will either get steak or you. Maybe you go through this scenario several times until you finally understand the tiger will never stop unless you leave, it leaves (surprise - he's not leaving becuase he's on thegravy train), or one or both of you are dead. You think long and hard and realize that to uphold your "enlightend view" of the sanctity of life that the only final solution is to capture the tiger, create an escape proof refuge and bear the costs of sustaining it, making sure the tiger can never escape. After all, beasts will be beasts - how sucessful have you been getting your kitty or dog not to hunt regardless of how much you feed them or love them?

What to do with these intractible beasts who commit crimes against humanity?

Quantum leap - right here, right now. I'd vote for Antartica, it's an island no one can swim from, it's no one's homeland, it's big enough and remote enough and there are already facilites that exist. We get an international agreement to underwrite the cost of food & fuel and to patrol and electronically surveil to assure there is no escape. If you're found to be a tiger with crimes against humanity, you get a life sentence with no parole and no outside contact. Tigers get to live with their own and we get to live with our own.

If you don't like that idea, then we'll have to listen to the accountants and shoot the tigers for the paltry price of a bullet to save ourselves the cost of keeping them alive.

What say you?

-- Ken (kackerman@zoomtown.com), September 18, 2001.

Ken, well you gave us some interesting food for thought!Well thought out and insightfull.

-- kathy h (ckhart55@earthlink.net), September 18, 2001.

People want to retaliate because they killed our people. Well, what do you think they were doing? Retaliating because we sent cruise missiles into Afganistan, killing scads of innocent victime, back when we were literally out gunning for Osama Bin Laden. If we bomb again, it's just starting the whole thing over. Disn't you see the newscasts interviewing the new Taliban youth groups? They all think that Osama is the best thing since sliced bread and they all want to grow up to be him. If he is dead, they will get their chance.

-- Soni (thomkilroy@hotmail.com), September 18, 2001.

Ken, exactly! Great post.

-- Annie (mistletoe@kconline.com), September 18, 2001.