A Good Day For World Peace

“It’s a good day for world peace.” - Joe Biden, April 24th, 2024

A very fine day for peace indeed! Nothing says “peace” quite like Stinger surface-to-air missiles and other air defense munitions, 155-millimeter shells, Javelin anti-tank guided missiles, cluster munitions and battlefield vehicles. I feel more serene just typing those words.

I started to write about the reinstatement of SAT requirements at many colleges and universities - a different form of violence - but that will have to wait. The President’s breathtakingly clueless comment today about the legislative war package abruptly shifted my focus. 

The $95.3 billion aid package provides $60.8 billion to Ukraine, $26.4 billion in unconditioned military aid to Israel, $9 billion in “worldwide humanitarian aid,” and $8.1 billion for Taiwan and other Indo-Pacific allies. The “worldwide aid” package conspicuously excludes UNRWA, the United Nations agency providing aid inside Gaza. Republicans - and some Democrats - hate the UN, as it occasionally tries, albeit without success, to reign in our chronically belligerent insistence on sovereignty. This is part and parcel with the United States’s refusal to join the International Criminal Court. International accountability is anathema to our exceptional nation.

I’ve lived too long to hope that pacifism will prevail on Earth. Conflict and violence are the punctuation marks in all of human history. But when we fund war, regardless of its proclaimed necessity, it is a very sad day indeed, not a “good day for world peace.”

Let us stipulate, for the moment, that the aid to Ukraine is necessary. But the “domino theory,” so memorable for its dishonesty in the Vietnam era, is equally foolish here. The hawkish fear mongers would have us believe that Putin’s Russia is ready to reprise Hitler and march across all of Europe if we don’t stop them now. Russian troops are having enough trouble advancing a few miles through Ukraine and the Russian military and economy are stretched to the limit. 

Protecting Ukrainians and holding Russia to a stalemate is a reasonable mission, but ultimately the only solution is a negotiated peace that gives a face saving escape hatch for Putin. Outlining such an agreement is far above my pay grade. (I have been appropriately admonished for previously failing to note that release of hostages must be part of any “deal” with Hamas. So noted.)

By contrast, the aid to Israel is an abomination. There is no justification for continued military assault on Gaza.  It is seldom noted that this horrifying debacle would never have erupted had Israeli defenses not been asleep at the wheel. The October 7th Hamas attack was brutal, vicious, psychopathic - and preventable. The Israeli official who was primarily responsible has been dismissed. 

We are directly complicit in slaughter and starvation - as I’ve written before. The Israelis have not eradicated and will not eradicate Hamas or their terrorist allies through vengeful military force. If they - we - have learned anything from history, it is that exporting profound misery has never achieved peace and reconciliation. The ruins of Gaza will be a Hamas recruiting bonanza. Every time we beat someone into submission our moral authority plummets and threats anew grow out of the rubble.

I’ve often reflected on the lessons of human psychology, too often ignored in education and parenting. Among them is the inarguable truth that punishment does not change behavior. It suppresses behavior, which may be rarely necessary for safety and adult sanity. But if the suppression is not followed by rational, positive and loving practices to guide and change behavior, the problem will persist - often more “vigorously.”

This truth is applicable on a broad level as well. Military might will never lead to enduring peace. It should be used as sparingly as possible, until conditions allow every possible transition to reconciliation, compassion and understanding. 

We are supporting Israel in their unimaginably cruel and vindictive war. We have the economic and political “authority” to demand that they change course. I’d like to think that we also have the moral authority, but I fear that our moral authority has been largely squandered. 

Declaring the provision of armaments “a good day for world peace” is demonstrative of our moral abdication.

We should be ashamed.