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PEACE LINES
MESSAGERIES
DE LA PAIX
www.peacelines.org
Newsletter n°115
April 2023
1993-2023 Thirty Years Later
On the Mistakes of War
To think it all started thirty years ago, this continuous commitment to peace…. It was born in the summer of 1993, when it was reported that Sarajevo was besieged, and peace pilgrims were expected to reach the starving city. Sarajevo, where the first World War was triggered, on a fateful day of June 1914, when the Archduke of Austria and his wife were assassinated, at point-blank range. The assassins’ motive was to free Bosnia Herzegovine from the Austro-Hungarian rule, and establish a South Slav, Yugoslav, state. Instead, the shadowy game of alliances led to the first world conflagration with its horrific toll of 20 million killed, half of them civilians, and 20 million wounded, maimed.
This is where we come from. We the French, the Russians, the Germans, the Austrians, the British, the Italians, the Serbs, and so many more. It is easier to point to the European countries who were wise enough not to get involved into this mass butchery. Namely, the Swiss, in the very heart of Europe, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, the Spaniards, and few others.
Twenty-one years later, the Second World War was initiated among the very same belligerants, within the same vortex of European nations, this time with a toll of 50 to 70 million killed. Fewer peoples were strong enough not to get caught into this « civilized » inferno – the Swiss, always, the Spaniards to a large extent, the Portuguese.
Why reminisce ? As I write these lines, April 23, 2023, I have received a message from skydiving friends who inform me that our airfield is being occupied by troops for about three weeks, due to « military training inter-armies of great amplitude ».
« Ne remuez pas les bottes ! C’est mon principe. » Arthur Rimbaud, August 25, 1870
Reasons to worry : over thirteen thousand people have been killed since February 2022, and through the « jeu des alliances » more and more countries are implied, not only the U.S.A. but Germany and France, England, Poland, selling weapons of all kinds, a flourishing business if any – last year alone, Ukrainian imports of armament were multiplied by 60.
Now, if you take a look at the seven main world exporters of deadly devices, you will find the USA on top, with 40% of the lethal trade, followed by Russia, with 16%, little France with 11%, China with 5.2%, Germany with 4.2%, Italy with 3.8%, the United Kingdom with 3.2%, and Spain with 2.6%. Source : https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/l-ukraine-troisieme-importateur-mondial-les-ventes-d-armes-dans-le-monde-en-cinq-infographies-2001505 and SIPRI.
Not that we need any kind of moralistic finger-wagging at anyone in particular. Just delve into history, to get a better perspective at where we come from, where we’re going.
The major war the US were actors of, after WW II and Korea (1950-1953, over 4 million killed, most of them Korean), was Viet-Nam, for which Robert McNamara was the « architect », as Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968. By many in his homeland, he was considered as the brain behind the three million Vietnamese killed that the US left behind, after their defeat and hasty retreat in 1975.
You should really listen to the same man, thirty years after he took office in Washington. When asked by Carl Bernstein, for TIME magazine, whether the war in Iraq was moving out of control in early 1991, he retorted :
« No military operation can be totally under control, especially one with high-tech weapons. »
« I tell you Jesus Christ himself can't keep one of these things under control. »
This was a man in his 75th year speaking, long considered a « falcon », and by no means a pacifist at any time of his life. I cannot even begin to say how moved I am by this confession, simple and straightforward as it is.
Ever since I first read it, thirty-two years ago, it has stayed with me.
Robert McNamara (whose middle name is Strange) passed away in 2009. Strange indeed. Bless his soul. I mean, the courage it has taken him, for such a coming out.
What was true then, is just as true, or truer today.
« It's not just events moving out of control. […] because of misinformation and misperceptions, there are misjudgments as to where a nation's interests lie and what can be accomplished. – [Take the missile crisis, for example, 1962] you cannot imagine the extent of misjudgment, misinformation. Events were really out of the control of either party, though both the Russians and we were trying to maintain control. »
Don’t we feel like repeating the content of this expertise ! You cannot imagine the extent of misjudgment, misinformation and misperceptions involved in the political processes leading to sending men to their untimely death and demise.
Please listen to Robert S. McNamara. He can be found online :
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,972307-5,00.html
« The consequences of military action are unpredictable. I learned this as Secretary [of Defense] time after time after time. »
And if you wonder why the heartbreaking horror inflicted to Ukrainians on both sides of the divide, has not spread even farther, take the case of Viet-Nam, China & Russia vs the US and their allies, when after a few years the commanders did not know what to do, and decided « one of the greatest bombing campaigns in the history of warfare » :
- Q. You thought the bombing would work at the time?
- A. No, I didn't think it would work at the time.
- Q. Why undertake it then?
- A. Because we had to try to prove it wouldn't work, number one, and other people thought it would work.
Isn’t just this exactly as they always do ?
I had read the Bernstein interview of Robert St. McNamara, when it was published, in February 1991 – just one week before the end of the Gulf War. Had he somehow whistled the end game ?
How we all forget fast… The toll : over one hundred thousand killed among the Iraqi people, less than 300 for the U.S. and its usual allies, the U.K., France, Germany, Canada, Italy… Was war over in early March 1991 ? By the end of the same month of March 1991, it broke out in the Balkans, in Bosnia. First in Croatia, then Slovenia. Who remembers the bombings of Vukovar, Dubrovnik ?
The question, for me then, and for some others in France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Sweden, Belgium… was : We cannot let this happen, and look the other way !
If you take a closer look at Europe as a geographic entity, you realize that its center of gravity actually is in Switzerland. Between Zurich and Davos. You could also say it is in Austria, in Innsbruck. Checking upon the maps, you then realize that the distance from Davos to Dubrovnik is 800 km, to Sarajevo : 745. From Zürich to Sarajevo : 860 km. The dreadful fire of war was at our door.
The problem, though, was to find volunteers to go there. Guess what, nobody wants to go to war ! Even as a peace volunteer. You can’t blame them, can you ? Showing clearly that men get dragged into war, it doesn’t fall on them naturally.
Plus, what fleet, what means, did we have ? Was there a We only ?
The picture of four standing people shows our first volunteer, in the winter of 1993, with three British soldiers of the U.N.Protection Force, around a meagre fire of planks, on the Diamond Road, the only mountain track open, from Split on the coast to Sarajevo and the north of Bosnia. On the left you see a small Renault van, filled with solid food, milk, books, blankets, under the label HUMANITARNA POMOC (pronounced Pomotsh), our first two words in Serbo-Croat. Pomoc meaning Aid, Relief.
Such was our pass, across the sixty-some checkpoints on our way. To protect us, and all civilians, you had these men of the UNPROFOR, at the most dangerous spots. And protect us, they did, indeed, including a tank which fired a shell at a sniper who was taking aim at us. Praise be to these British and French soldiers of peace who paid a heavy price in casualties to contain the devastation. Over 60,000 people lost their life in this war. The lessons to us were many :
- You do need an efficient, reliable army to stem the rogue elements who behave as war profiteers, or terrormongers.
- You can’t feed hundreds of thousands of people. Food alone is not the issue.
- You won’t play Santa Klaus for a week and then disappear.
- You had better find ways of acting upstream, on the fabric of war.
- In this enterprise you need help from people of authority & prestige.
- It is a long struggle, that only ends with a « return to normal ».
- You will save countless numbers of unknown people on the way, and you may save your own soul, but you will lose some others that you thought you knew.
- Anyway, never expect anything in return.
- You need to be strong to sustain, and dedicated within to really pursue.
- There is no frontier between others and self. Empathy prevails.
You wonder where the astronaut comes into this picture.
His name is Edgar Mitchell, and he is one of the twelve men who walked on the moon. Also the author of books well worth reading, The way of the explorer, Earthrise, Reflections of the Moon, We Are One…
We, who were nobodies thirty years ago, who had nothing, who did not know anything either abour the Balkans, we needed support from bigger people. Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14), with his space colleagues Russell Schweickart (Apollo 9), J-F Clervoy, Umberto Guidoni, came to our rescue in 2005, on our fourth campaign, Against Terror, For Common Sense (« Because we are all human beings »). We definitely had come to the conclusion that we needed a global view from above, to distanciate ourselves from exclusive, partisan sides. That will be another story.
Back to our beginning, we, who had nothing, borrowed combis from second-hand car dealers, obtained food from generous directors in malls, gas-oil from oil field prospectors… The support we needed on a « moral » ground, we fast received from none others than Coretta Scott King (Martin Luther King’s widow), Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Reverend Tutu, Pdts Gorbachev and de Klerk, Arafat, PM Rabin…
Such commanding voices were heard through the battlefields. It worked. The Sarajevo-Zenica Call was aired on the radios, on tv in Bosnia, and through the world.
« ENOUGH ! Enough blood ! Enough speeches ! Enough alibis ! »
As for the young man crouching with his hand on a friendly wild roe, he is our new Thoreau, and has lived seven years in the woods. His name is Geoffroy Delorme, and he has been lecturing to teenagers and adults about saving our environment. Looking at it from the moon, you’d say he is one of the best guardians actually fighting for peace through the true riches, preserving what is left around us.
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