By Gerry Hopkin, JD
Maximum respect to all of our veterans, living and deceased — my dad, Roy Peters, a Vietnam War/ Conflict Veteran, included.
We ought to honor those who have fallen in service of country, considering that they have honorably followed the orders of their commanders, trusting in the authority, judicious considerations and wisdom of their superiors.
Hence, it is appropriate that nationstates honor their fallen soldiers, as will soon be the case in the United States of America.
However, it is up to all free citizens, even the soldier despite his/
her obligatory constraints, to demand sound thinking, moral responsibility, accountability and less waste in global military spending and engagements.
Any objective study of history will clearly show that NO war has given any people complete and lasting peace, and that only a few wars or military conflicts have received close to unanimous praise
from observers, or seen as necessary and called-for under the ‘just war theory.’
World War II is one of the few wars that most students of history, except for a modern-day Nazi Supremacist, would posit as justifiable with respect to most of the
means and ends of the Allied forces.
I say most, because there are some like myself, who take exception to the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on grounds that it was done in violation of the proportionality element of the ‘just war theory.’
The bombs which were detonated above those two cities in Japan, essentially destroyed and burnt just about everything and killed, injured and caused to disappear approximately 200 thousand mostly innocent civilians within a radius of over a mile of the ground zero of each.
Yes, it helped to end the war, but the massive loss of lives and the lasting devastating effects of exposure to radiation were excessive and disproportionate to anything known to human warfare until then. Besides, the use of that bomb could have led to an unhealthy escalation of the war too, and it in fact did start the world down a slippery slope of a nuclear arms race in the context of a post World War II (after 1945) cold war, which more than once brought the US and the then Soviet Union, close to attacks that would have amounted to total annihilation.
When and if the heavy-weights engage in war, everyone will suffer.
And since every war, in which the economic giants of the world are involved, is one which will affect the global economy and the local landscape of vulnerable/volatile developing and underdeveloped nation-states, it is imperative that folks in the Caribbean concern themselves with the military actions of the heavy-weights who spar and start unbearably costly wars/military conflicts, from time to time.
It is very much a bread and butter issue for Caribbean folks in the Diaspora and back home, since many have relatives in the military forces of major powers (especially the USA, England and Canada) and many also depend on essential remittances from relatives in these nation-states.
Unfortunately, the ‘just war theory’ has been rendered obsolete by the likes of Osama Bin Ladin (who unacceptably opined that it was fine to callously bomb innocent victims in retaliation to the perceived greed and disrespect of a government) and former world leaders George Bush and Margaret Thatcher (who many scholars agree, disregarded international law with certain military actions they authorized).
Additionally, Bush advocated pre-emptive and retaliatory strikes and Thatcher supported apartheid in South Africa and colonialism in the Falkland Islands in an era of modern self-determination.
Further, we have the likes of fundamentalist believers of various persuasions (from east, west, north and south) who believe that its all about their way of seeing and doing things, or no other way at all.
The only real solution to our problems is the internalization and adoption of the understanding that we are in this experience called life in this global village called earth, together. We are interdependent and we are stewards with a duty to meet our current needs in a manner that would ensure that generations that follow us would also have a place to call home. Its about other-regarding sustainable development; not about communism or capitalism (economic theories), or about democracy or totalitarianism (governmental systems).
It is also about respect for the dignity and rights of each other, for justice and for fairness from and among all people, beginning at the level of individuals in families, all the way up to the level of state-government to state-government.
Any individual, any nation, any ethnic group who/which uses violence to forcefully obtain a political end or to bully another into doing what he/she/it wants others to do, is a terrorist. I learnt this a while back in one of my philosophy courses (Making Moral Decisions) at Loyola Unversity in New Orleans.
We must adopt what Immanuel Kant called the categorical imperative maxim.
Let’s do unto others as we would have them do unto us (a universal maxim) and use/see no one as mere means to selfish ends, which one may easily justify as right through selfish, myopic non-Bible/non-Torah/nonKoran-based sophistry.
It is up to you and me to light a candle today, rather than curse darkness or allowing our world leaders to waste more of our scant resources building and using weapons of mass destruction and sending our men and women to often die unjustifiably and to sometimes (as was the case in Iraq) unintentionally end the lives of innocent mothers and children in the thousands.
It is noteworthy that this discussion here is not merely an academic exercise for me, since my dad who passed away four years ago, was a veteran of the Vietnam Conflict while in the US Army. May his soul, and that of every fallen or naturally departed soldier, rest in peace.
Of course, many of us know that the claim that these military operations are to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction and to defend peace, stability in the name of democracy, is often fallacious. In fact, we know that these missions are actually quite often about protecting allies (who may be democratic or totalitarian/monarchial), about monetary and linked territorial interests, or about avenging some unresolved misunderstanding, allowed to fester into hatred, chaos and destructive violence.
Suffice it to say that we would be much closer to global peace today if we had been devoting more time to understanding why our neighbors are upset with us.
Similarly, our neighbors would be more understanding if we have been engaging them, and vice versa, in dialogue about words, thoughts and actions that offend us and them, all towards better understanding, compromise and sensitivity in an operationalized framework of RESPECT for each other.
Yes, diversity and tolerance do still matter, and this is an understanding and an end that must be understood, articulated and promulgated among and by all regional/Caribbean leaders en bloc in every international body wherein they vote – from the Organization of American States (OAS) to the United Nations (UN).
Let’s arrest the disrespect, the violence and the build-up to wasteful wars, as of today!
Not later.
May Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, one day become days when we would be remembering fewer new fallen soldiers or no
new victims of wasteful, avoidable wars.
Violence at every level – in our homes, on our streets and between nation-states – should no longer be the order of the day.
I cannot help but recall the recent display of hypocrisy, which ensued in the wake of the Obama Administration’s Iran Nuclear De-proliferation Deal, which reactionaries were unfortunately resisting.
It is ironic and highly hypocritical that whereas this new Iran Deal is quite like Nixon’s and Reagan’s past concessions to the Chinese and the Soviets in 1972 and 1982, respectfully, that some of the very architects of those earlier deals which had no human rights improvement stipulations/guarantees/ demands on those foreign governments in exchange for more open US trade and diplomacy, have given President Obama’s internationally accepted agreement with Iran, as well as, his more open policy towards Cuba, failing grades based on their foreign policy agenda.
What we need is serious, realistic, pragmatic dialogue, as well as compromises, negotiation, understanding and sensible accommodations, which would take us to sharing and trading the resources of Mother Earth, which we are accountable for to God, to each other and to generations yet unborn.
and then 