Peace Kills (15 page)

Of these poor and disenfranchised …

(Why do political
bien-pensants
roll “dispossessed,” “poor,” and “disenfranchised” together, as if they have a natural correlation—like “ice,” “cold,” and “beer”? The Dalai Lama [Peace Prize 1989] is dispossessed. Your parish priest is poor. And Alan Greenspan, as a resident of the District of Columbia, is ineligible to vote in congressional elections.)

… the majority live a marginal existence in equatorial climates. Global warming, not of their making but originating with the wealthy few, will affect their fragile ecologies most.

(Did you see global warming coming out of left field? Anyway, blaming the onset of earth-is-toast on “the wealthy few” seems a tad unscientific for a document that is signed by sixtyfive recipients of Nobels in chemistry and physics. The earth had temperature cycles when the wealthy few were lucky trilobites with extra-rich muck to delve in. And how are we going to solve the problems of those who “live a marginal existence in equatorial climates” such as that of Washington, D.C., if we don't produce more of the industrial prosperity that boils their weather? It's going to take a bunch of Nobel laureates to figure that out. Or not.)

Their situation will be desperate and manifestly unjust.

(Nice verb tense. In Congo, Haiti, Cambodia, and Liberia their situation right now is … ?)

It cannot be expected, therefore, that in all cases they will be content to await the beneficence of the rich.

(I won't make a wisecrack about “cannot be expected … to await the beneficence of the rich.” Specifically, I won't make the wisecrack “and should go get a job.” This would be “manifestly unjust” to the hardworking poor—and dispossessed and disenfranchised—people of the world. Besides, if they got a job, it would worsen global warming.)

If, then, we permit the devastating power of modem weaponry to spread through this combustible human landscape, we invite a conflagration that can engulf both rich and poor.

(Oh, I don't know. We did that in Afghanistan, and it was mostly the Taliban that got conflagrated.)

The only hope for the future lies in cooperative international action …

(Obviously, when it came time for war with Iraq, the cooperative international action-takers at the UN weren't listening to Nobel laureates.)

… legitimized by democracy.

(Well,
we're
a democracy—except occasionally in Florida, during electoral college vote counts.)

It's time to turn our backs on the unilateral search for security, in which we seek to shelter behind walls.

(Good point. Walls collapse. On the other hand, concrete barriers that keep car bombs from being parked too close to public buildings are useful. So is baggage screening, and maybe a missile shield.)

Instead we must persist in the quest for united action to counter global warming and a weaponised world.

(“Weaponise” is my favorite new verb. The pen is mightier than the sword—until you weaponise your ballpoint to fight a man with a scimitar.)

These twin goals will constitute vital components of stability as we move towards the wider degree of social justice that alone gives hope of peace.

(I thought “cooperative international action legitimized by democracy” was “the only hope.” But I guess Nobel laureates, like anybody else, are entitled to change their minds. So “social justice” it is. However, you'd expect Nobel laureates to do the math on this. Divide the gross domestic product of the world by the world's population, and everyone gets $7,200 a year. What kind of basketball are we going to have if Shaquille O'Neal has to take a $21,422,800 pay cut? And a family of four in Tanzania making $28,000
will
buy a used Toyota, which brings us back to global warming.)

Some of the needed legal instruments are already at hand, such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Convention on Climate Change, the Strategic Arms Reduction treaties, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

(And don't forget the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the League of Nations Charter, and the Oslo accords.)

As concerned citizens …

(The rest of us aren't worried at all.)

… we urge all governments to commit to these goals that constitute steps on the way to the replacement of war by law.

(As in the Jim Crow laws, Hitler's Nuremberg Laws, South Africa's apartheid code, whatever legal gimcrackery Stalin used to prop up his show trials, etc.)

To survive in the world we have transformed, we must learn to think in a new way.

(They said it. I didn't.)

As never before, the future of each depends on the good of all.

(No—other way around. The future of all depends upon the self-interested good of each. Adam Smith did a lot of work in
The Wealth of Nations
showing this to be the case. See Book 1, Chapter 2: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Although Adam Smith may be a little right-of-center to win a Nobel. Also, he's dead.)

To sum up, here we have a statement beginning with a thesis that had been disproved before it was uttered and ending with a palpable untruth. The logic meanders. The ideas are
banal. The text exhibits a remarkable prolixity, considering that it's only 284 words long. Is this the best that 103 Nobel Prize winners can do?

Of course, it's always tempting to make fun of the Nobels. (Sidelight: Alfred Nobel owed his wealth not only to the invention of dynamite [see “combustible human landscape,” above] but also to investment in his brothers' successful exploration for oil in Azerbaijan [see “combustible human landscape,” above].) Making fun is especially tempting to those of us who will receive invitations to Stockholm only in the form of Scandinavian cruise-ship brochures. Let me give in to the temptation.

Ernest Hemingway but not James Joyce? Toni Morrison but not John Updike? Dario Fo? Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf? (She wrote
The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
, a fanciful account of a young boy's travels across Sweden on the back of a goose.) And allow me to be the millionth person to point out that among the Nobel Peace Prize winners are Yasir Arafat, Shimon Peres, Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (“If the mushroom cloud doesn't clear up, call me in the morning”). For all I know, the lists of prizewinners in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics are just as wack. I'm not competent to judge. Although Cambridge University professor Brian Josephson (Physics Prize 1973) says, “There is a lot of evidence to support the existence of telepathy.” And the codiscoverer of DNA, James Watson (Medicine Prize 1962), was, at age seventy-three, researching the effects of sunshine on sex drive.

Yet let us be generous. Prize-giving of any kind is no cinch. Nobel committee screwups notwithstanding, Nobel
Prize winners are smarter than we are. And Nobel Prize winners are doubtless as morally alert as we are. Even the Peace Prize winners are probably, on average, decent people. I scanned the list of hundredth-anniversary-statement signatories and didn't notice anyone in obvious need of a swift kick—the possible exception being statement coauthor José Saramago (Literature Prize 1998), a Portuguese Communist who wrote a novel,
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
, in which Jesus tries to get out of being crucified and sleeps with Mary Magdalene. Henry Kissinger and Yasir Arafat did not apply their John Hancocks.

One hundred and three Nobel laureates have provided us with counsel on the political and social future of the world. Any such advice must be worth listening to, and I guess that includes the advice they've given us this time. But where are the words that stir men's souls? That turn their hearts? That change their minds? Where is the “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”? Where is even the “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”? For that matter, where is the “Where's the beef?”

Perhaps the Nobel laureates' statement should be understood as an indictment of our age. We could be living in an era so stupid that even the most intelligent among us are cement-heads. Possibly the laureates' statement is a simple proof, if proof were needed, that nothing good ever comes out of a committee. But maybe the statement contains a deeper message. Maybe the Nobel laureates are speaking, more powerfully than they realize, for radical democratization and perfect egalitarianism. Nothing in their statement indicates that the opinions of common men are worse or more
foolish than the opinions of Nobel Prize winners. Let us have our international actions truly “legitimized by democracy.” When it comes to questions of “What is to be done?” (to quote Lenin, as José Saramago might do), let's ask any old person. Let's ask Mom. Mom says, “Global warming or no global warming, it's cold out. Wear a hat.”

“I'll keep the mohawk until we stop killing people abroad. “

—musician Eddie Vedder, quoted about his hair in the April 11, 2002, issue of
Rolling Stone

The Palestinian Solidarity March had almost all the elements of a classic modern American political demonstration. On April 20, in downtown Washington, a constituency previously not heard from (or not listened to) turned out in impressive numbers. Its representatives looked respectable. They conducted themselves with dignity. They had a grievance. The only thing missing was an intelligible demand.

At least the Nobel laureates had silly ideas; the Palestinian Solidarity marchers wanted the people of the United States to … what? Abandon one of our few allies and take up the cause of Arab regimes that hate us? (And when an Arab regime, such as Saudi Arabia's, does profess friendship, it is the Eddie Haskell to our Wally Cleaver.) Should we, as more than a few placards suggested,
GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST
? Then the frontline Arab states could have a free hand with Israel and recapture the glories of 1949, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982. Are we supposed to invade the region and sort things out? We did in 1991 and were soon to do it again. Support a Palestinian state? We've done that. Maybe we'd better continue to apply combinations of diplomatic pressure and aid incentives, keep formulating Oslo plans that settle everything (in Oslo), and go on folding and refolding that darned Road Map to Peace until it finally fits into the glove compartment of amity. Yet no one mounts a demonstration supporting current policies: the Million Muddlers-through March, with the masses chanting, “Five, four, three, two / We don't have a doggone clue!”

Israel stubbornly insists on existing. The foolish, despotic, and corrupt governments of the Arab countries stubbornly insist on various alternatives. The political and economic situation in Arab lands is so bad that it seems as if the only sensible thing for an Arab to do is get out and go someplace with freedom and opportunities. The people in the Palestinian Solidarity March had done so. Now they'd become a successful immigrant group exercising political power—exercising it to denounce American Zionists, a successful immigrant group exercising political power.

We are in the postmodern era of American political demonstrations. The Palestinian Solidarity March, an indignant
crowd opposed, in a way, to itself, was marching around with little hope of achieving an objective—assuming there was one. This struck a chord. Thousands of other protesters joined in. They held a neo-demo, parodying the actions of the suffragettes, Cox's Army, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War protests. Seeking a clear political response has been replaced by consulting a Magic 8-ball of activist demands: “Reply Hazy, Demonstrate Again Later.”

There were, in fact, three additional pointless marches in Washington on April 20. The Colombia Mobilization Festival of Hope and Resistance gathered at the Washington Monument. The U.S. drug-eradication policy was opposed. Millions of Americans have opposed that policy more effectively with mirrors, razor blades, and rolled-up dollar bills. The Colombia Mobilization also wanted the U.S. Army School of the Americas eliminated, although it has been and is now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This can no longer be called a training ground for Latin American dictators, because Castro is almost the only dictator left. And to judge by the number of Che T-shirts in the crowd, the Colombia Mobilization is on Castro's side.

Then there was the Mobilization for Global Justice, gathered in front of World Bank headquarters. This mobilization was claiming that World Bank development policies were all wrong. A little late. One of the World Bank's own economists, William Easterly, had already published a book in 2001,
The Elusive Quest for Growth
, claiming that World Bank development policies were all wrong.

And on the Ellipse, behind the White House, the U.S. war on terrorism and Israel's West Bank incursions were being denounced by ANSWER. Act Now to Stop War and End Racism is a group that awes any fan of acronyms. I was
distracted from covering their event by an urge to scribble in my reporter's notebook, trying for a one-up: Quotidian Undergraduates Eagerly Supporting Terrorist Internment on Neptune.

The Palestinian Solidarity March began on Connecticut Avenue, at the Washington Hilton, where the somewhat acronym-impaired AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, was holding a conference. Many of the Arab-Americans arrived in family groups. Mothers and daughters were modestly garbed. Men wore crisp sport shirts and creased trousers. The other protesters, not all of them young, came dressed as young protesters. Covering of hair mingled with exposing of midriff. I didn't see anyone doing both, but a number of non-Arab marchers had kaffiyehs inexpertly plopped on their heads. A middle-aged man who was obviously not a Pakistani sported a
shalwar kameez
and walked down Connecticut eating from a box of Wheatette crackers.