Memorial Day

Memorial Day would be a fine time to pledge the end of war. Such an effort has always been the moral thing to do, as well as the most intelligent and humane step that might be imagined. Today’s generations have witnessed two additional factors, that make it nothing short of madness to tolerate the institution of war.


One factor is weapons of mass destruction, that multiply war’s horror and destruction to the point of species suicide. The other is the availability of communication and transportation that could permit law enforcement to disable and prevent the endeavors and conditions that lead to war, while providing the conditions of the global democracy that is a pre-condition to the empowerment of global law enforcement.

Nations engage in arms races in the name of security. Today dozens of nations are racing to acquire anti ballistic missiles and drones. Every arms race is a precursor of war, and tomorrow’s war may prove the end war. As General Tasker Bliss, World War I Army Chief of Staff observed, “Has the time come, or is it near at hand, when great international wars must of necessity destroy more than they save? If so, then every such war means a step backwards toward the extinction of what we want to save.”

Nations prepare for war in the name of security. Along the way, though, camp followers are acquired who sully every noble intention and defeat the ultimate security of the populations on behalf of whose security wars are waged. Those camp followers are weapons profiteers, political opportunists, and ideological fanatics, who, together, capture the policy controls of the nations. As the result, to prevent war, as contrasted, with the illusory security of balancing power with military alliances and arms races, would be too radical a goal for any President to champion, as well as too lengthy an endeavor for the scope of any President’s four or eight year term of office.

The human race must work its way around the nation system into which it has divided itself. Some number of persons in some number of countries must self select themselves to create alternative power centers that can begin a decades long move toward global democracy and global law enforcement. With today’s means of communication and travel, and the power centers that modern cities have become, all the essentials are available. And, that our cities are the targets of the war planners of the nations, perfectly justifies demanding an alternate route to the security that armies can no longer assure us, if they ever could.

Survival Instinct, Where Are You?

Neil Genzlinger reviewed the first episode of the Discovery Channel’s 11 part documentary, “Life”(New York Times, 3-20-10). The lesson, it seems, is that the “core of life is an instinct for adapting to ensure survival.” Genzlinger finds “something heartening in the notion that when faced with challenge no animal, however small or overmatched, seems content to just throw in the towel.”


How about big animals? Survival should move to the top of human priorities, judging by the warnings from persons in a position to know about nuclear proliferation and possible terrorist WMD attack. The bi-partisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism, former Cabinet members Kissinger, Schultz and Perry, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority for twelve years Mohamed El Baradei, and many more high officials including President Obama, insist that the world must rid itself of nuclear weapons.

A law-abiding American who has never thought about elemental survival for even a minute, if told that a gunman was stalking him, after informing the police, would change his schedules and routines in a hurry. His response would be radical, uncharacteristic, and ruthless. He would move about differently at different times, interrupt his occupation and family life, flit from tree to tree if he had to be outdoors.

Why don’t we shift radically now that we are threatened as a society? The answer has something to do with the bifurcation between our individual and our social lives. As individuals, alone in a jungle and targeted, we would turn and dodge, run and swim and claw, and exhibit the animal characteristics of our non-human cousins in the television series. As tamed and even sedated members of huge social organisms called cities and nations, on the other hand, we wait for directions from on high - Washington or Moscow or Peiking.

What about these huge brains of ours, thinking again in the context of our animal heritage? Don’t they tell us when to fall back on individual resources, and how to regroup in configurations calculated to counter terrorism and end war, configurations in addition to our configuration as war-prone, weapons-obsessed nations? It is time to summon the survival instinct and rationally evade the vaunted instinct for aggression.

L.A.'s Navy

This month the City of Los Angeles commissioned a ship equipped to screen entire incoming ships for weapons of mass destruction materials while they are underway and before they enter the L.A. and Long Beach ports. (Global Security Newswire, February 12, 2010, quoting CBS News Feb. 10) The City’s Sheriff’s Department also will work with the Coast Guard to board and search incoming ships after they have docked.

Now we are talking - a targeted population acting like a potential victim - ducking and weaving. Not leaving security exclusively to its nation. Law enforcement. Next thing you know Angelenos will be talking about how their city might help drive the world toward progressive, verified arms reductions and peace enforcement. Then, maybe, about the global democracy that must precede effective law enforcement.