I.
The current Nobel Peace laureate is continuing his noble and inspiring work of war this week in the latest PR blitz in Afghanistan: "Operation Moshtarak," the much-ballyhooed, extravagantly telegraphed "attack" on the city of Marja. Is it even worth discussing this monstrous sham? The perpetrators of the attack know full well that there will be no "battle." Even the American commanders cannot be so sealed in their arrogant ignorance that they do not know their insurgent opponents will do what every guerrilla army does when facing concentrations of conventional military force: disperse into the countryside, and into the urban populace, biding their time until the occupiers draw down their forces -- and in the meantime launching small ambushes with sniper fire and roadside bombs aimed at the sitting-duck cannon fodder placed in harm's way by their publicity-driven commanders.

And yet, the Western media has fully bought into the hackneyed, transparently false narrative of "the largest military operation of its kind since the American-backed war began eight years ago," with a plucky band of Marines and their faithful Afghan allies facing down "hundreds" of hardened fighters in the "largest Taliban sanctuary inside Afghanistan." The embedded media tracked the countdown to the attack as if they were hunkered down in the landing craft on their way to Omaha Beach. Except, of course, when one is genuinely planning an actual major attack on a strong, entrenched enemy -- as at Omaha Beach -- one does not normally advertise it around the clock for weeks on end beforehand.

If, however, one is attempting to galvanize public support for a long, grinding, bloody war of domination and occupation that has no discernible purpose (none that can be stated in public, anyway), why then, a nice set-piece "battle" which will end in a guaranteed, low-cost "victory" is just the ticket. It will demonstrate that the "new and improved" strategy of your "new and improved" president is "working," and that we are "winning" -- so we can't quit now!

This is of course the same message conveyed many years -- and many thousands of lives -- ago by the fall of Kabul, the "conquest" of Kandahar, and other great triumphs that "cleaned out" the various "largest Taliban sanctuar[ies] inside Afghanistan." But as any ad man can tell you, a commercial brand needs to be refreshed periodically in order to keep pulling in the profits. And the Afghan War brand has been a veritable bonanza, a cornucopia of contracts, corruption, profiteering and political pull for all of the interested parties involved: the various militaries and security apparats (and their contractors), the political elites, the many insurgent factions (loosely and falsely given the single rubric "Taliban"), the warlords, the druglords, organized crime, violent religious extremists -- in short, all those who traffic in hate, death, conflict and fear.

Or as "retired American military officer working in security in Afghanistan" put it to Nir Rosen in Mother Jones:

"Every time our boys face them, we win," he told me grimly. "We're winning every day. Are we going to keep winning for 20 years?"

Yes, mister retired American military officer, that is indeed the plan -- if they can swing it:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb. 17, 2017 -- President David Petraeus' "New Way Forward" in the Af-Pak War got off to a rousing start today as a combined force of U.S. Marines and Frontier paramilitaries launched a new 'warfighter/nationbuilder' offensive against this stonghold of Taliban insurgency. The attack is seen as a vital test of what the president has called his "Counterinsurgency 2.0" strategy, an updating of the highly successful approach that President Petraeus implemented in Iraq, where the 75,000 remaining U.S. advisors and trainers recently marked the 10th anniversary of his victorious surge.....

II.
The true context of the present operation, and the many that preceded it, and the many that will follow it, was put in stark relief by Scott Horton at Harper's last week, when he did us the great service of posting an excerpt from the correspondence between Lev Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi. The exchanges between the young Hindu lawyer and the aging Russian writer burn with a moral fervor and compassion that in our day seem to have come from another planet, not just another century. Here is an excerpt from that excerpt, taken from a letter that Tolstoy wrote (in his strong if imperfect English) just weeks before his death in 1910:

The longer I live – especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death – the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries. ... 

This law was announced by all the philosophies – Indian as well as Chinese, and Jewish, Greek and Roman. Most clearly, I think, was it announced by Christ, who said explicitly that on it hang all the Law and the Prophets. More than that, foreseeing the distortion that has hindered its recognition and may always hinder it, he specially indicated the danger of a misrepresentation that presents itself to men living by worldly interests – namely, that they may claim a right to defend their interests by force or, as he expressed it, to repay blow by blow and recover stolen property by force, etc., etc. He knew, as all reasonable men must do, that any employment of force is incompatible with love as the highest law of life, and that as soon as the use of force appears permissible even in a single case, the law itself is immediately negatived.

The whole of Christian civilization, outwardly so splendid, has grown up on this strange and flagrant–partly intentional but chiefly unconscious–misunderstanding and contradiction. At bottom, however, the law of love is, and can be, no longer valid if defence by force is set up beside it. And if once the law of love is not valid, then there remains no law except the right of might. In that state Christendom has lived for 1,900 years. Certainly men have always let themselves be guided by force as the main principle of their social order. ...

The clear-eyed idealism -- the belief in constant, relentless, non-violent resistance to evil -- that drove Tolstoy, Gandhi and their many spiritual descendants, such as Martin Luther King Jr., are now openly mocked, or else condescendingly discarded as quaint relics, unsuitable for our own tough, savvy times. We saw a prime example of this derision only a few months ago, when Barack Obama, the loudly self-proclaimed Christian, accepted his Nobel Peace Prize with a ringing endorsement of state violence on a massive, savage, overwhelming scale, and an explicit renunciation of non-violence. (For more, see "Miraculous Organ: Blair, Obama and the Narcissists' Defense")

How far we have travelled in the wretched century since Tolstoy's last letter to Gandhi -- a journey into the past, back to the caves, back to the dark forests, where "there remains no law except the right of might."

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Debbie(aussie) said:

	... Another moving article, Chris. Thank you.
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February 14, 2010
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Donald Paulus said:

ABC's Wonderful article, Chris, so cogent and clear. Major powers now have in their arsenals atomic, biological, and chemical weapons. The threats to planetary well being continue to mount as we walk the knife edge of our own mutual destruction. The love that Tolstoy so eloquently cited in his letter to Gandhi seems to be the sine non qua of future existence. I, for one, vote for the end of the use of force to settle issues between opposing groups. I opt for love also and for respect for all sentient beings. Om namah shivaha

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February 14, 2010
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Kenneth Fingeret said:

... Hello Chris, While reading this article I remembered a book and a short story I read around 50 years ago. Both authors Frederik ((Fred) Pohl and Cyril Michael (C M) Kornbluth (science fiction genre) collaborated on "The Space Merchants" (advertising) and C M Kornbluth's short story "The Marching Morons" (world population almost all morons and a small amount of geniuses that hold the world together). Yogi Berra said "It's like deja vu all over again". All I can say to Yogi is "truer words were never spoken". Imagine life imitating art. Who could have predicted our world today. How ironic.

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February 14, 2010
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Expat said:

	... Re: Leo Tolstoy wrote a treatise on "Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence" that, little known, is fundamental to any discussion of the subject. IIRC it predated or was contemporaneous with Gandhi's own position. No library is complete without this volume.
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February 14, 2010
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martin luther blissett said:

saint leo "I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back." Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886) thanks expat & chris for leading us to this fountain oasis within the dark forest. let us work diligently to bring more of the thirsty through the thicket to take a drink.

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February 14, 2010
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john kelley said:

... "And yet, the Western media has fully bought into the hackneyed, transparently false narrative ..." This is from a February 9th article in The Los Angeles Times entitled, 'Marines focus on civilian safety in Afghanistan', by Tony Perry and Laura King. "So in the weeks leading up to the imminent offensive to take the Helmand River Valley town of Marja in southern Afghanistan, the Marines' commander, Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, sat with dozens of Afghan tribal elders, drinking endless cups of sweet tea..." Nevermind that "endless" cups of sweet tea would be one of the most common and overt forms of hospitality in the area... later we get this doozy... "It is also a test of whether a large-scale ground battle can be conducted in a densely populated setting without large numbers of civilian deaths and injuries." Feel better now? It's just a test.

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February 14, 2010
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Michael Hureaux Perez said:

... I, too, would like to see all these conflicts resolved non-violently, but do not believe that our generation is one evolved enough to take this on. I suppose I'm with that camp against the empire that desires infrastructural shake-up, and while not romanticizing war, will accept war rather than allow this imperial nonsense to continue unchallenged. I prefer the sensibilities of a Henry David Thoreau, whose whole bodied contempt for the imperium and for the defenders of human degradation maintained in his plea for John Brown that it isn't the weapon that is the issue, it is the spirit in which it is used. The glorification of a violence that wishes to keep the whole of the world under its bootheel or the violence that it may take to knock that foot off the back of our necks, that's not the same sort of violence, ladies and gentlemen. How far do we carry the unilateral submission to state terror, or the aggression of a much larger bullying presence? Should women submit to sexual or other forms of violent assault? Should victims of racist violence in this country allow the Klan to burn crosses on their lawns, and not respond with the proper seasoning of Klan asses with salt rock (at the very least)? Should I advise my students, who have to deal with gangs and bully recruiters for gangs as soon as they leave the school premises, that they ought not to defend themselves when attacked? I can't do that. And I don't think any of the rest of you really can, either. Or maybe I'm missing something you're saying here. But I do know that MLKing's understanding of the right to self defense was a little more nuanced, that his thinking on non-violence did not abdicate the right of the Vietnamese to defend themselves from U.S. aggression. And if memory serves, while Gandhi was opposed to any form of tactics within his own ranks, he was a little unteachable regarding the rights of people who did not come from his own Brahmin caste, nor did he stand against the allies and their war against fascism in the 1940s. Indeed, he was a canny enough political presence to know that the expense of the war would force some of the older imperial powers to recognize the reality of the Indian independence movement in the years following the war. I accept fully Chris' analysis of the cynical qualities of our contemporary leadership, which are Churchillian in scope. The dismissal that Obama expressed for King's legacy in his Nobel speech should never be forgotten. But by this very same token, we have to know our enemies, and know that they'll swim in oceans of blood here at home before they'll recognize the right of any non-violent resistance to exist.

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February 14, 2010
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Jimmy Montague said:

Force is the only argument -- Force is the only argument that Power understands. Every action that poses a threat to Power invariably results in force because force is Power's solution to everything. Where non-violence is successful in opposition to Power, non-violence succeeds only AFTER Power has applied force with a vigor and a rigor that together convince Power that force will not work. In short: Resistance is useless until dissent proves otherwise, and all proof is stored in the Hurt Locker.

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February 14, 2010
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Michael B said:

Violence Chief of the state monopolies- indeed, no state is conceivable without it, though it will be called "force", not violence. The stenographers of domination systematically conflate necessary ethical distinctions between the violence of the oppressor and the oppressed, between harm to persons and harm to property, between institutionalized violence as opposed to the improvised violence of insurrections. Violence routinized is a mirror of the state, as non-violence advocates are quick to point out; on the other hand, non-violence fetishized is often a mark of privilege.

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February 15, 2010
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