Peace Authority Supporting War Effort
By Ron Swallow
05 November, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Founded in 2003, the Dayton International Peace Museum (DIPM) has received considerable attention from our local newspaper, the Dayton Daily News (DDN). Ironically, several of DIPM’s projects, especially those reported in DDN, seem to support US foreign policy and its wars of aggression.
For instance, on December 10, 2009, DIPM celebrated that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course, Obama had already escalated the number of troops in Afghanistan and “stayed the course” in Iraq.
More recently, on Sunday October 3, 2010, DDN published an article entitled, “Exhibit Teaches that Education Promotes Peace”. The exhibit documents the work of “Montana resident Greg Mortenson” and “his organizations- the Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace”. The article reports that these organizations have helped construct 151 schools and educate 64,000 mainly female students in Afghanistan and Pakistan, since 1993.
Unlike the celebration of Obama receiving a peace prize, the problems with this article are somewhat subtle. This story involving DIPM probably constitutes more mainstream press than the remainder of the local peace community receives in an entire year. The mainstream media lends legitimacy, not in reality, but in perception. Regardless of the exhibit’s relative value, very few people will visit it at the museum compared to the number who saw this article. And because this article reinforces myths that legitimize the validity of our government’s foreign policy, it quite possibly does more harm to achieving the goals of peace and justice than the rest of us can do to mitigate that harm.
It seems to read as if everyone involved agrees that the war in Afghanistan is the fault of its uneducated people, and by implication, that our military efforts there are justified. Mortenson is quoted as saying he wants children in Afghanistan and Pakistan “to have a balanced, non-extremist education”. This reinforces the fiction that those opposing US/NATO forces are extremists.
It would be difficult for any entity to be more extreme than the US government. It was the US that just officially completed the conquest of Iraq, killing another million of its citizens while wrecking the country. This is only one of countless (extremely condensed and understated) examples of our government’s extremist nature. This country was founded on the most extensive genocide in recorded history… and we now occupy more than 140 countries.
Even if the events of 9/11/01 weren’t brought about by elements of the US ruling class, the death toll was a few thousand. The US at that point already was primarily responsible for perhaps 2 million Iraqi deaths over the previous twelve years.
DIPM exhibit coordinator, Bill Meers also implicitly blames the victims, “Like Mortenson, the museum seeks to offer a vision of a peaceful world and alternatives to violence and war”. This implies that if the Afghan people had been adequately educated, they would have prevented their government from hosting Osama Bin Laden, thereby derailing the events of 9/11/01. Or maybe it is intended to suggest that if they were sufficiently learned, we wouldn’t have had to spend nine years trying to conquer their country.
Peace Museum outreach coordinator, Kate Johnson is quoted as well, “Visitors will take away a strong sense of how one person’s vision to educate children can move an entire culture toward peace”. It doesn’t seem likely that educating Afghan children will be especially conducive to achieving peace. It is common knowledge that ours is a much more highly educated society than that of Afghanistan, yet our government is nonetheless the greatest destructive force in the world.
Evidently, the knowledge required to prevent dominant powers from instigating war has eluded humankind. In the case of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, most of the world’s population didn’t want war. The highly educated weapons inspectors were relatively satisfied with Iraq’s compliance. A majority of the highly educated representatives on the UN Security Council couldn’t be bribed or blackmailed prior to the 2003 invasion as they were before that of 1991. The vast majority of our highly educated political leaders supported the war. The few (decent, informed) politicians that opposed the invasion were highly educated too. The people of Iraq also were much better educated than their counterparts in Afghanistan. Yet, this wealth of education produced the completely unnecessary destruction and conquest of Iraq.
In spite of our collective educational level and alleged democracy, we have been powerless to prevent our government’s wars of aggression or to disband terrorist training camps within our borders. If our more educated people don’t know how to eliminate our government’s routine training of terrorists, we do not have that knowledge to pass on to the people of Afghanistan. If an education is to bring about peace, then the education must be given to decision-makers, those that will become decision-makers or at least to individuals able to influence the powers that be.
Those at the museum are not educating the people that could choose not to war. They are promoting the education of the victims of our war. And if that education is to bring about peace, it must be an education of submission, like that received by the young survivors of the Native American genocide- instruction in discipline and assimilation.
The main problem with this article and the quotations isn’t that they misinform regarding the relationship between education and peace.
The primary damage caused by this article is that by repeatedly stating that the education of Afghans will lead to peace, it is implied that the war is the fault of those uneducated Afghans. And by broadcasting that falsehood, those at the museum are indirectly endorsing our government’s excuse for the death, destruction and misery it is inflicting on their population, including children- educated or not.
The bright side here in Dayton is the hope that some really smart Afghan kid will explain how peace can be achieved by endorsing war. The dark side is what is going on at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base while we wait for that kid.
Ron Swallow
Lifelong resident of the Dayton, Ohio region
B.A. Wright State University
Unemployed
Peace Activist:
13 years as member of Dayton Peace Action, 7 years as treasurer
5 years unaffiliated- focusing on domestic regime change
