Waving the World Flag

    Today is Independence Day in the United States of America where I live. This year we decided not to hang the American flag because we have come to realize that the holiday is a celebration of a war, - a war that led to many more wars, including those waged against the native inhabitants of this land. While King George had been guilty of many crimes, the upper class colonists were not free of guilt, resorting to lies in order to convince the colonists to revolt.* It is also interesting to note that other British colonies, including Canada, gained their rights and independence without a war. 

    I have learned about the not-so-glorious side of the Revolutionary War on pages 30-31 of the book, War is a Lie by David Swanson. This one quote from these pages is an eye-opener: "Punishment for infractions in the Continental Army was 100 lashes. When George Washington, the richest man in America, was unable to convince Congress to raise the legal limit to 500 lashes, he considered using hard labor as a punishment instead, but dropped that idea because the hard labor would have been indistinguishable from regular service in the Continental Army. Soldiers also deserted because they needed food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and money. They signed up for pay, were not paid, and endangered their families' wellbeing by remaining in the Army unpaid."** 

    On Independence Day Americans celebrate our freedoms. In recent years I have noticed how many people use these freedoms as an excuse to be self-centered and irresponsible. Yes, in this country we are free to collect weapons of mass destruction, kill each other, spread  disease, and deny others their rights to health, happiness, and prosperity. Another reason not to hang the American flag.

    Since we have decided not to fly the American flag, I wondered if there was a world flag that would better symbolize my identity as citizen of the world. I found the beautiful world flag pictured above, the blue dot symbolizing the earth that all of humanity shares. The semi-transparent background enables us to see our own world or home through the flag, as well as our common home, the blue planet in the center. 

    I found this flag on the website: 1worldflag.com. Some of the impetus for this flag comes from the images of our world as seen from space. As I read on the website: "Only a few national borders are visible from space, like the border between South Korea and North Korea at night. . . .  But most borders are not visible, and other aspects such as fanatical religious, national or ethnic beliefs are likewise hard to grasp by looking at Earth as a whole. New world maps are drawn by climate change and rising sea levels, which do not distinguish between social classes, nor care about carving out borders. The fact that no single nation-state alone can cope with the global risk of climate change creates a new understanding that the principle of independence and autonomy is an obstacle to the survival of the human race."

    Many will call me unpatriotic for stating that I can no longer celebrate Independence Day, and they will be right. As a world citizen, I believe that patriotism and nationalism are dangerous to the survival of the world that I love more than any one part of God's creation. 

*Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell, Propaganda and Persuasion, 3rd ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999, p. 328 

**Robert Fantina, Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776-2006, New York: Algora Publishing, 2006

A World Without War

       

    My first memory of war - not one that I lived through, but one that destroyed the peace of my childhood innocence - was the movie, "War and Peace" that I saw on television at age ten.  The images of violence and suffering broke my heart and I went to bed crying and praying to God for a future without war. 

    My next memory is of an evening news report when I watched the flag-draped coffins being unloaded from a plane from Vietnam. The coffins came out, one after another after another. Why did all of these young men have to die? It didn't make sense to me at age eleven, and it doesn't make sense to me fifty-seven years later. 

    I know that many people believe war to be a necessary evil. People have been at war with each other for as long as history has been recorded. However, I share a belief with many others that it doesn't have to be this way. Project Ploughshares is one organization that holds the vision of Isaiah 2:4:  God shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.

     World Beyond War is another organization that calls itself a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace. World Beyond War was founded in 2014 by David Hartsough and David Swanson. Swanson is the author of War is a Lie in which he details all of the wars in which the United States has been involved, and how not one of them was necessary for the good of our country or humanity. In his book, Swanson presents all of the reasons people have used to justify war over the centuries and systematically refutes every one of these arguments. If you need convincing that war is a barbaric crime against humanity, I highly recommend this book. 

    Wars are fought based on the lies our leaders drum up to convince young people to sacrifice their lives for a false cause. This strategy was glaringly obvious when the USA declared war on Afghanistan in response to the 9/11 tragedy even though the perpetrators of that attack came from Saudi Arabia. The excuse given for bombing Afghanistan was that the The Taliban were sheltering Osama bin Laden in that country. But the Taliban repeatedly offered to negotiate for the handing over of Osama bin Laden, before and after 9/11/01, and "President George W. Bush rejected these offers and continued bombing." (Jeremy R. Hammond, 'Newly Discovered Documents Shed More Light on Early Taliban Offers, Pakistan Role,' Foreign Policy Journal, September 20, 1010.)     The excuse for attacking Iraq was an even more obvious lie. Mark and I knew long before the attack on Iraq that there were no weapons of mass destruction there. We heard Scott Ritter, former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, speak at the state college in Oneonta, New York. During his time as an inspector he and his colleagues never found any weapons of mass destruction. Never mind the fact that many countries, including the USA, do harbor weapons of mass destruction and it has never been a legitimate reason for another country to attack that one.     This brings me back to my premise that there is never a legitimate reason for war. Some people say we will always have war because we have always had war. This type of thinking lacks imagination and faith. I would ask these people to try imagining a world without war and how we can implement it. And I would ask them to have faith in humanity and faith in the divine plan that promises peace on earth and harmony among all people. 

You can sign the Declaration of Peace here: https://worldbeyondwar.org/individual/