Fighting less & winning more

By Diane Silver

Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine captain, provides perspective today of why a new approach to terrorism is key, and how the kill-them-all strategy can't keep us safe.

In a Washington Post column, Fick talks about his experience teaching counterinsurgency tactics in Afghanistan. One of his key points is that fighting less, leads to winning more. Fick writes:

(O)ne of my many gratifying moments at the academy came at the start of a class on targeting. I told the students to list the top three targets they would aim for if they were leading forces in Zabul province, a Taliban stronghold. When I asked a U.S. officer to share his list, he rattled off the names of three senior Taliban leaders to be captured or killed. Then I turned and asked an Afghan officer the same question. "First we must target the local councils to see how we can best help them," he replied. "Then we must target the local mullahs to find out their needs and let them know we respect their authority." Exactly. In counterinsurgency warfare, targeting is more about whom you bring in than whom you take out.

It's a column well worth reading. In it, Fick provides a very real-world example of how what Carla Goldstein calls "spiritual activism" can work.

Spiritual activism, political revolution & New Age fuzzy thinking

By Diane Silver

At first glance, the idea that political activists should act out of "awareness, compassion and love" seems both ludicrous and suicidal. But acting out of love is the first principle of what Carla Goldstein calls "spiritual activism."

For what it's worth, I wonder if she might be on to something. Following her principle might well provide the key to unlocking the solutions to our most pressing foreign and domestic problems.

I am not suggesting that we open our arms to al Qaeda and say, hey, I love you, shoot me, nor am I recommending that my colleagues in the gay rights movement expect to win equality by hugging Fundamentalists. I quake at the thought of such, shall we say, New Age fuzzy headedness.

Yet I also tremble at the idea that we are going to win our battles by seeking to become more terrifying than our opponents. Right now I worry that we are doing just that. It seems, at times, as if promoting ourselves as the biggest monsters on the block is our only strategy.

In Bush's War on Terror, threatening to kill anyone who threatens us and torturing the people we capture have become standard operating procedures. The neocon solution to terrorism appears to boil down to one simplicity: Kill all the bad guys.

Momentarily leaving aside the morality of such a tactic, I question it's practicality. We cannot, in fact, kill everyone who wants to hurt us. Even if we could, we could not keep from creating more terrorists as we kill the old ones. Every husband or wife we would leave behind could potentially become an enemy. Every brother and sister, every son and daughter, every friend, every acquaintance, every neighbor would have a rock-solid, deep-in-the-heart reason to hate us.

More than that, every one of them would have a personal reason to be terrified of us. Bush and friends foolishly think that creating fear in our enemies will keep them from fighting back. But I ask: Would it stop us if we were in their situation?

I live in Lawrence, Kan., and sometimes I wonder what my neighbors would do it we were facing an occupation like Bush and friends have imposed on Iraq. Even if the invaders were first seen as liberators, how would Kansans feel this many years in and with so many of our neighbors dead or imprisoned? At what point would Kansans take up arms against the people who invaded our country?

Finally, if we felt like our backs were to the wall, and we had no chance except to fight back against the terrifying monsters or die, would we befriend the people who were scaring us? Or, would we fight back any way we could?

To believe that Iraqis and other Muslims are a different breed of human, that they they don't hate and fear and love like we do, is simply crazy. But that seems to be the neocon/Bush belief.

The same is true about domestic issues. Attempting to be the biggest monster in the room won't save Fundamentalists or lesbians or gays or Democrats or Republicans. At times, it seems that fear is the only political tactic that campaigns want to employ. It is true that fear does move voters for an election or two, but I wonder what we create when we only evoke fear in our campaigns? Does such a victory sow the seeds of the next domestic war?

And yes, I know that my discussion of these challenges is too brief and simplistic, but those are issues we can return to on other days. Such is the joy of a blog.

For this moment, though, here's why I think acting out of love and compassion is so important: Acting out of fear makes us stupid. Adrenaline pumps and the primal brain takes over. We don't take time to consider. We don't take time to find lasting solutions. Instead, we go into survival mode.

Personally, I think acting out of fear makes it hard for human beings to see reality. Above all, these days, a good sense of reality has got to be a requirement.

In the second column in her series on spiritual activism, Goldstein touches more deeply on the workings of that first principle, which is:

"We take action that is born out of awareness, compassion and love, not out of reaction, fear and anger."

Goldstein provides some first steps on how to open up and become more loving. My hope is that this modest post will provide some explanation as to why such activities are important.

The courage to open to our hearts has the potential to change everything. Goldstein writes:

As a result of my heartfulness practice, my activism has radically changed. It has gone from being something I do to accomplish a social change goal to a way of being. I have come to understand that the means and the end are equally important, which brings me to know that yelling at “the other side” (or my daughter) is doing exactly the same thing I am condemning – creating fear and anger. The more I get in touch with my own heart, the more I am in touch with the hearts of others and the more interested I become in cultivating peace rather than polarization.

This post continues a journey I began last week when I first commented on Goldstein's work.

I'm calling this a journey because I freely admit that I don't have all the answers, or perhaps even many of them. What I do have is an itch, a sense gnawing at me, that we have to change the way we do politics and activism, or we will never move forward as a nation. I plan to comment on each of Goldstein's columns on spiritual activism in the hope of sparking conversation and finding more answers.

Let us remember who we are

By Diane Silver

On this day 231 years ago, 56 Americans signed their names to a revolutionary document. In so doing, they branded themselves as traitors and risked paying an awful price. They also defined what it means to be a citizen of the United States.

Not only did Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and all the others declare our independence from a king, but they also set forth on paper who we are as a people. We have tried to live up to their ideals ever since. We succeed, sometimes in surprising ways, but we also fail. We stumble. We stagger up. And we try again.

To be a patriot of the United States is to remember who we are.

To be a patriot of the United States is to hold our neighbors and our government accountable.

To be a patriot of the United States is to hold even ourselves to these ideals as difficult as they may sometimes be to follow.

To forget -- to claim that "all" means only our friends, only our family, only our closest neighbors or only the people within our borders -- is to turn our backs on the legacy of our founders. It is to lose our way as Americans.

Two hundred and thirty one years ago, brave people signed their names to the most revolutionary idea of all:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Amid the fireworks and barbeques today, I pray that we can remember what our country is supposed to be.

Even in a time of war, terror and fear, we must remember our ideals. We do not stand for torture, persecution of others, discrimination and the imperial idea that we can do anything we want to anyone who frightens us.

On this day, let us remember who we are.