Come Experience
LOCALNEWS
How Not to Make Peace Can we please have a new U.S. foreign policy?
The Shops & Restaurants
• Bamboo Bar & Grill • Breakwall Cafe • The Feast at LeLe • Friends of Moku’ula • Gaby’s Pizzeria • Gallerie Hawaii • Goofy Foot Surf School • Hecocks Restaurant • I’O Restaurant • Lahaina Print Sellers • Lei Spa Maui • Maggie Coulombe • Maui To Go Arts & Crafts • The Needlework Shop • Pacific’O Restaurant • Seaside Gems Maui • Whalers General Store
20+ Shops & Boutiques • 4 Oceanfront Restaurants • Polynesian Canoe Exhibits www.lahainashops.com • www.lahainarestaurants.com. 8
APRIL 1, 2004
NEWS
BY JOSHUA COOPER
This is “blowback” Political scientists often describe U.S. foreign policy as that of a drunk walking down the street. Ever watch a drunk try to walk down the street? He stumbles from light pole to light pole, careening this way and that, sometimes falling, sometimes running, sometimes walking backwards. He has no real direction or consistency. He just moves in whichever way happens to be most expeditious at that particular moment. Often the drunk walking down the street will start cavorting with unsavory characters. That leads to another term political scientists use to characterize U.S. foreign policy: blowback. That is simply the consequence or consequences that suddenly spring up long after that drunken cavorting. U.S. foreign policy decisions over the last six decades have resulted in blowback on a biblical scale, as well as the needless deaths of thousands of Americans. For instance, the current focus on Saddam Hussein as a priority is radically at odds with the American view from the Ronald Reagan Administration. Back then the U.S. provided the tools for his reign of torture—including taxpayer-funded military assistance and expedited transfers of pesticides, which were later used in the chemical weapons he used to kill Kurds and Iranians. Back then, current Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld even acted as special envoy to Baghdad, meeting with Saddam to see if everything was going smoothly.
The reason for the U.S. assistance was our antipathy towards Iran due to their hostage taking at the U.S. Embassy for 444 days. Of course, we had forgotten the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Iranian government back in 1954, but they didn’t. Like Saddam, the hated and feared Osama bin Laden was also once our friend. In fact, the CIA provided training and assistance to bin Laden and other radically antiAmerican Mujahadin in the 1980s in Afghanistan in their war against communism practiced by the Soviets who’d invaded the country in 1979. Only back then, we didn’t call him a “terrorist”—we called him and his troops “freedom fighters.” Clearly, this manner of conducting foreign policy hasn’t been as successful as we’d like to believe. As citizens, we must read and know history so we can demand a foreign policy that meshes with our beliefs in freedom and democracy and doesn’t turn us into a fiend bent on death and domination of the world’s resources. The pursuit of profit in the name of gross national product must also explore its value in the world and its purpose in relation to people. The U.S. must produce more than landmines, rockets, small arms, stealth planes and mortars. In the rockets fired and bombs exploded, the future rounds of murder and mayhem will detonate on humanity. Iraq and Afghanistan are both further from peace than this same moment last year. The U.S. is hardly alone in this practice. Look at Israel. They’ve been hunting Hamas leaders in the name of extra judicial executions. This week they fired a rocket at the leader, blowing him and his wheelchair into bits and pieces. Yet, the effect has not been what those who pulled the trigger want. There is not more safety and security, but instead hundreds of thousands in the street ready to retaliate. A rocket exploding in the chest of a wheelchair-bound man is a poor substitute for a peace plan. More bombing produces nothing other than more bombing. Israel says it will do this again and again and even announced more names on its assassination list, including PLO leader Yassar Arafat. The hope for humanity rests with nothing less than guarantees everywhere of human rights for all. The work of protecting the rights of all people on every continent rests with states willing to dedicate their natural resources to the goals of ridding the world of war and providing the basic needs for all humanity based on dignity and respect.
MTW