黑料正能量

Sometimes one wishes that our experts in peacebuilding at 黑料正能量 (黑料正能量) had called it wrong. One wishes that they had been mistaken in believing that a large-scale U.S.-initiated military response to the tragedy of September 11, 2011, would have serious global repercussions, worsening the destructive impact of the 9/11 attack rather than easing it.

But if you go back and read their , you will see that 黑料正能量鈥檚 conflict transformation professors鈥� , Ron Kraybill, , , , , Nancy Good, and , along with others聽鈥� offered well-reasoned pleas to take a deep breath and to choose a truly restorative path after this tragedy.

They asked their fellow citizens and national leaders to step away from the natural, but ultimately destructive, instinct to strike back at the perpetrators. These professors of peacebuilding explained that such a reaction would feed the cycle of vengeance, cost us friends around the world, result in exponentially more deaths than those killed in the attacks, and actually play into the hands of the terrorists.

Five days after the attack, John Paul Lederach wrote: 鈥淭he biggest blow we can serve terror is to make it irrelevant. The worst thing we could do is to feed it unintentionally by making it and its leaders the center stage of what we do. Let鈥檚 choose democracy and reconciliation over revenge and destruction. Let鈥檚 to do exactly what they do not expect.鈥�

In a local op-ed piece, Ron Kraybill further elaborated: 鈥淢assive retaliation by U.S. armed forces is precisely the response most sought by terrorists. After all, terrorist organizations are relatively small and weak, and a primary goal is publicity and recruitment of new supporters. Their best hope is to provoke a reaction that earns new enemies for us and new sympathizers for the terrorists.鈥�

Jayne Docherty asked that the U.S. 鈥渆xamine and address the conditions and policies that have given rise to the cycles of unrest, violence, and terror that have been escalating around the world.鈥�

Nancy Good, who did her doctorate on psychosocial trauma, wrote: 鈥淲e can鈥檛 transform the presenting conflict without uncovering鈥攐r somehow attending to鈥攖he underlying trauma. The conflict can actually worsen. Victims are re-traumatized and, if the trauma goes unhealed, the victim may become the aggressor; the abused may become the abuser.鈥�

Though Good did not write about this at the time, her message on unhealed trauma is now pertinent to U.S. veterans who are returning, after multiple deployments, with not only physical wounds, but psychological ones.

Kraybill worried that 鈥渙ver confidence in the effectiveness of superior conventional force makes it relatively easy for states to be enticed into costly mobilization.鈥� If, as a result, 鈥渉eavy damage is inflicted on civilian populations, the civilian support base for the 鈥榰nconventional鈥� group will be exponentially expanded.鈥� (Kraybill鈥檚 fears were realized in both Afghanistan and Iraq, though General Patraeus earned wide praised for trying to reverse this tide.)

On the first anniversary of 9/11, Kraybill wrote of grieving over 鈥渢he billions we have wasted on weapons, when true long-term security requires investments of a different kind.鈥� Those 鈥渂illions鈥� quickly became tens of billions, and then hundreds of billions of dollars, spent on warfare and its attendant costs. (For fiscal years 2001 through 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the U.S. 聽spent $602 billion on operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions linked to the 鈥渨ar on terrorism,鈥� as well as on veterans鈥� benefits and services.) Budget experts now speak in terms of trillions of dollars.

It is not a coincidence, unfortunately, that these massive expenditures have helped fuel one of the worst economic recessions in the history of this country鈥攁 recession that has sickened much of the world and rendered it less able to deal with other issues that affect life on earth, such as global climate change.

Though Osama bin Laden is dead, his aim of severely crippling the United States and other perceived enemies lives on.

Let me be clear: none of the 黑料正能量-based experts were arguing to do nothing to address the attacks of 9/11. On the contrary, they were arguing in favor of more effective, more collaborative, less costly, and less self-harmful steps to clean up the soil in which terrorism thrives and to ensure that terrorist groups attract a dwindling number of followers.

Writing in a recent Christian Century (8/11/11, on Peacebuilder Online), John Paul Lederach reflected on the decade since 9/11. He noted that many U.S. citizens were led to believe that the world was divided into 鈥渦s and them.鈥�

鈥淭his was particularly true of how we understood and engaged the Muslim world, at home and abroad,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e spent our national wealth on war and isolating our enemies.鈥�

In contrast, Lederach said the events of the past decade caused him to feel renewed affinity for Jesus鈥� admonition to befriend the enemy: 鈥淲e find this in Jesus鈥� response to people who his closest disciples found unacceptable. He ate with his enemies. He went to their houses and he invited them in.

鈥淣one of this implied that he changed his fundamental beliefs or values,鈥� wrote Lederach. 鈥淚t implied that he reached out and built relationships with those deemed untouchable and a threat. He chose love over fear, engagement over isolation and separation.鈥�

As an example of the possibilities of such relationship-building, Lederach cited the hundreds of Muslims who have gathered with Christians and people of other faiths from all over the world at 黑料正能量鈥檚 since its founding in the mid 1990s. Almost all of these people have returned to their homes, buoyed by new friendships, by new skills for working in their contexts for peace, and by hope for a world where everyone first reaches for the tools of non-violent conflict transformation, rather than for weapons that will further traumatize us all.

[ (MA ’04) is editor in chief for 黑料正能量’s Crossoads听补苍诲 Peacebuilder magazines.]