Can We Just Talk?
Can We Just Talk?
By L. Dianne King
Bremen, GA
I don`t know much about war. And I`m certainly no foreign policy wonk. I don`t even have a degree in political science. So maybe I don`t have much to contribute to the discussion of American policy toward Iraq, Iran, the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, or North Korea.
I do, however, have some considerable expertise in human relations. With a Ph.D. in Counseling and 25 years of experience working with college students, I dare say that I know a thing or two about people and how they respond to one another. That said, I am going to jump into the discussion about what is going on in the world today, and our government`s actions and reactions thereto.
Our leaders (of all stripes) declare that we are at war. We certainly have lots of troops deployed and rattle our sabers quite a bit. And our nation and the nations of our allies have been attacked. However, it is not sovereign nations attacking. The terrorists that struck us most blatantly on 9/11/01 were not sponsored by any nation. They may have been encouraged, supported, and supplied by a state, but they were not acting on behalf of any state.
War used to be solid, something one could wrap one`s mind and hands around. A nation attacked us or our allies, and we responded. That made sense in the two world wars. And we could stretch the point to explain our involvement in Korea and Viet Nam. Even the first Gulf War was an engagement to keep our friend (and oil supplier) safe and free from Saddam.
The terminology of war became fuzzy when one president declared a war on poverty, and another a war on drugs. Fine sentiments, but there was no nation-state against whom to war, just a nebulous social problem that needed to be solved. And to date, we have not made particularly good progress in these wars.
Now we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Afghanistan made sense, since we were certain that the 9/11 terrorists, or at least their ilk, were trained in Afghanistan. The war with Iraq is one we started, because we thought they might have weapons of mass destruction, and besides, we didn`t like Saddam Hussein. (No one seems to want to talk about that unfortunate picture of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam when we were encouraging his war with Iran.)
Most recently, British officials thwarted a plan to blow up at least ten jet liners flying into the U.S. And we pussy-foot and supply Israel with weapons so they can destroy much of the nation of Lebanon in their understandable desire to defeat the terrorist organization Hezbollah.
It seems to me that the war on terrorism is more akin to the war on drugs and the war on poverty, than it is to any of the conventional wars we have fought. The "enemy" is nebulous-he has no government authority, no ambassador to eject from the U.S. Also, this enemy persists in pockets of disaffected young people who may live in most any country in the world, as was the case with the British plot. I hope we don`t plan to attack England to try and ferret out those terrorists!
I did have a point when I started this, so let me get to it. The watchword since 9/11 has been that we do not talk with terrorists, with nations we believe sponsor terrorism, or with nations who won`t do what we tell them to do when we tell them to do it. Interesting strategy, but I believe it is flawed.
At present Kim Jung Il is, we believe, sitting on a few nukes without the capacity to send them very far, though he seems to be working toward that end. In an effort to not "reward" his bad behavior, we have him in an extended international "time out." No talking until you decide to do what Uncle Sam told you to do.
We are beside ourselves because Iran insists on developing nuclear capacity. We will send the European Union as our surrogate to try and bully them into obedience, but we won`t talk with them, which leaves us in a mess with the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. We refuse to talk with Iran, who we believe supplies Hezbollah with weapons, and we refuse to talk with Syria, because we believe it backs Hezbollah. We may be entirely right about these two nations encouraging and assisting Hezbollah in its terroristic behavior. But what do we achieve by refusing to talk?
Current events leave one wondering whether there may indeed be an all out conflagration between Muslim and Arab countries, Israel, and the West (I am not predicting Armageddon, just a huge and hurtful war). The president says that the terrorists hate our freedom. I think they hate our heavy-handedness in the affairs of their collective lives over centuries past.
I cannot begin to explicate the reasons for all this turmoil over all these years. And I can only begin to speculate on the current motivation of young men and women to give their own lives for the purpose of hurting Americans and other Westerners. But one thing I know. We will never understand it, and never diffuse this vitriol, unless we LISTEN to the people who are motivating and motivated to do this.
If there are people who believe, as they profess, that their goal is to rid the world of Israel and the United States, how did they get there? Is this what they really want, or would they settle for something less, something we might even be willing to do? What if they just want an apology and for us to keep our nose out of their lives? Regardless, do we really think we can kill them all and then have a peaceful world? If we could, what would that say about us in terms of morality?
No, I do not want to send the terrorists to therapy. But it strikes me as a strategic as well as a moral advantage to let them have their say. Isn`t that what they are trying to do with their bombs?
I am sure that I am quite naïve about world affairs. Certainly we cannot sit by without any response if others harm us. But I cannot see any way to reach peace if we continue to act warlike. I do not suggest that we lay down arms, never to pick them up again (although that would be a wonderful world), but is it really necessary to put up the most basic barrier-the refusal to communicate-between ourselves and those who have a beef with us, and with whom we have a beef? If a husband and wife, or brother and sister, or pair of college roommates, took this approach, we would rightly label their behavior childish, selfish, and unproductive.
In my years of working with students and experiencing various conflicts, the first question I always asked was, "Have you talked with this person about the problem yet?"
Talking is often difficult, frequently painful, and it doesn`t always solve the problem. But failing to talk has no solution and only leads to continued conflict or to a relationship destroyed and replaced by a huge, empty gulf. As someone who has spent her years helping sort out roommate conflicts and parent/student difficulties, I know. Is it possible this also applies to world peace?
If I could, I would say on behalf of the United States to all those involved in conflict in the world, "Can we just talk?" What could it hurt? And what if it helped?
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