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From: World Beyond War via WorldBeyondWar.org
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Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 9:02 AM
To: miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: When Peace Activists Met With the U.S. Institute of Peace
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
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<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
Cw/h1/Jb9ZUZ-2BHBLFAkQw-2FQ1kTOgGnp2VxPf3ZT0CNCD7HwMg6tDEE84x0LbBOwYpjAMXxNa
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2FV8-2Bo7NRski4mM-3D> When Peace Activists Met With the U.S. Institute of
Peace
By David Swanson
http://worldbeyondwar.org/when-peace-activists-met-with-the-u-s-institute-of
-peace/
I was part of a debate on Tuesday that involved a larger disagreement than
any exhibited at the Democratic presidential candidates debate that evening.
A group of peace activists met with the president, a board member, some vice
presidents, and a senior fellow of the so-called U.S. Institute of Peace, a
U.S. government institution that spends tens of millions of public dollars
every year on things tangentially related to peace (including promoting
wars) but has yet to oppose a single U.S. war in its 30-year history.
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
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taXjy9gmDWwqrjGhVrFSviuNNruurVUoK1Z0Qr63o9Pamj-2Bd-2FOArjYQId6-2BKaG9Gtng3bX
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Z79Dt1Q-2BzIHgeT1ojpX2edaS0BSmx6Crey15HMi3KDQprcsvlbIohtKGxhAyC6ftVhOICGIw-3
D-3D> usip
(Photo of David Swanson and Nancy Lindborg by Alli McCracken.)
Without CNN's Anderson Cooper there to steer us away from the issues into
name calling and triviality, we dove right into the substance. The gap
between the culture of peace activists and that of the U.S. Institute of
"Peace" (USIP) is immense.
We had created and took the occasion to deliver a
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
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hPZdAE9-2B8a-2F46YXEJny1ba3VDPE-2FEx5U1Xm7X-2Bu8Y8nHRNOo6DojGFWHnBi3bz8GFtrR
a574reGQVGjmceZ0UcK6R5TrDcXPBsaVuYmCwmog7rJhu9Pr9RZ2KRmqm6RZ0szc5Dm-2BE4D9ym
7ho-2BtRE5gLTGQ-3D> petition which you should sign if you haven't, urging
USIP to remove from its board prominent war mongers and members of the
boards of weapons companies. The petition also recommends numerous ideas for
useful projects USIP could work on. I blogged about this earlier here
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
Cw/h4/oOrf4U-2FQJ-2Bbavx96gfibBuMzJ1hLtpe-2BGzEWyHX8XdTaO6RnaY5yp6y5NeD85VDQ
32Oq1N4dQtwNVMZ-2B5TcvIRq-2F8uLv8WO63pZkXTkPKJE464zms-2FHCzNUfbbnvlDjOoqJL4k
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kAMf3W3-2FavzWk2cUk-3D> and here
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
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XxwO11IzBddnRAnHlnGJG300w-3D> .
We showed up Tuesday at USIP's fancy new building next to the Lincoln
Memorial. Carved in the marble are the names of USIP's sponsors, from
Lockheed Martin on down through many of the major weapons and oil
corporations.
At the meeting from the peace movement were Medea Benjamin, Kevin Zeese,
Michaela Anang, Alli McCracken, and me. Representing USIP were President
Nancy Lindborg, Acting Vice President Middle East and Africa Center Manal
Omar, Director of Peace Funders Collaborative Steve Riskin, Board Member
Joseph Eldridge, and Senior Policy Fellow Maria Stephan. They took 90
minutes or so to talk with us but seemed to have no interest in meeting any
of our requests.
They claimed the Board was no impediment to anything they wanted to do, so
there was no point in changing board members. They claimed to have already
done some of the projects we proposed (and we look forward to seeing those
details), yet they were uninterested in pursuing any of them.
When we proposed that they advocate against U.S. militarism in any number of
possible ways, they replied with a couple of main justifications for not
doing so. First, they claimed that if they did anything that displeased
Congress, their funding would dry up. That's likely true. Second, they
claimed they could not advocate for or against anything at all. But that
isn't true. They've advocated for a no-fly zone in Syria, regime change in
Syria, arming and training killers in Iraq and Syria, and (more peacefully)
for upholding the nuclear agreement with Iran. They testify before Congress
and in the media all the time, advocating for things left and right. I don't
care if they call such activities something other than advocacy, I'd just
like to see them do more of what they've done on Iran and less of what
they've done on Syria. And by law they are perfectly free to advocate even
on legislation as long as a member of Congress asks them to.
When I had first communicated about our petition with USIP they had
expressed interest in possibly working on one or more of the projects we
proposed, possibly including reports we suggest in the petition that they
write. When I asked about those report ideas on Tuesday, the reply was that
they just didn't have the staff. They have hundreds of staff, they said, but
they're all busy. They've made thousands of grants, they said, but couldn't
make one for anything like that.
What may help explain the array of excuses we were offered is another factor
I haven't yet touched on. USIP seems to actually believe in war. The
president of USIP Nancy Lindborg had an odd response when I suggested that
inviting Senator Tom Cotton to come speak at USIP on the need for a longer
war on Afghanistan was a problem. She said USIP had to please Congress. OK,
fine. Then she added that she believed there was room to disagree about
exactly how we were going to make peace in Afghanistan, that there was more
than one possible path to peace. Of course I didn't think "we" were going to
make peace in Afghanistan, I wanted "us" to get out of there and allow
Afghans to start working on that problem. But I asked Lindborg if one of her
possible paths to peace was through war. She asked me to define war. I said
that war was the use of the U.S. military to kill people. She said that
"non-combat troops" could be the answer. (I note that for all their
non-combatting, people still just burned to death in a hospital.)
Syria brought out a similar perspective. While Lindborg claimed that USIP's
promotion of war on Syria had all been the unofficial work of one staffer,
she described the war in Syria in a completely one-sided manner and asked
what could be done about a brutal dictator like Assad killing people with
"barrel bombs," lamenting the lack of "action." She believed the hospital
bombing in Afghanistan would make President Obama even more reluctant to use
force. (If this is reluctance, I'd hate to see eagerness!)
So what does USIP do if it doesn't do war opposition? If it won't oppose
military spending? If it won't encourage transition to peaceful industries?
If there's nothing it will risk its funding for, what is the good work it is
protecting? Lindborg said that USIP spent its first decade creating the
field of peace studies by developing the curriculum for it. I'm pretty sure
that's a bit anachronistic and exaggerated, but it would help explain the
lack of war opposition in peace studies programs.
Since then, USIP has worked on the sorts of things taught in peace studies
programs by funding groups on the ground in troubled countries. Somehow the
troubled countries that get the greatest attention tend to be those like
Syria that the U.S. government wants to overthrow, rather than those like
Bahrain that the U.S. government wants to prop up. Still, there is plenty of
good work funded. It's just work that doesn't too directly oppose U.S.
militarism. And because the U.S. is the top arms supplier to the world and
the top investor in and user of war in the world, and because it's
impossible to build peace under U.S. bombs, this work is severely limited.
The constraints that USIP is under or believes it is under or doesn't mind
being under (and enthusiasts for creating a "Department of Peace" should pay
attention) are those created by a corrupt and militaristic Congress and
White House. USIP openly said in our meeting that the root problem is
corrupt elections. But when some section of the government does something
less militaristic than some other section, such as negotiating the agreement
with Iran, USIP can play a role. So our role, perhaps, is to nudge them
toward playing that role as much as possible, as well as away from such
outrages as promoting war in Syria (which it sounds like they may leave
largely to their board members now).
When we discussed USIP's board members and got nowhere, we suggested an
advisory board that could include peace activists. That went nowhere. So we
suggested that they create a liaison to the peace movement. USIP liked that
idea. So, be prepared to liaise with the Institute. Please
<http://click.actionnetwork.org/mpss/c/5AA/ni0YAA/t.1r9/PnDgBC_iSnmI4x23txn6
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