Learning from Soldiers
It was good to read in Mark Rudd’s article (“The Male Cult of Martyrdom: Saying Adios to Che,” WIN spring 2010) that he no longer believes in the violence and adventurism that many of us have associated with the Weatherman faction.
But I disagreed with the dichotomy that he set up between organizing and violence. Most of those anarchist and Marxist groups that advocate the use of violence (under some circumstances) also believe strongly in organizing. And the talk about organizing isn’t just empty rhetoric. The most effective organizing for the Spanish revolution (of the 1930s) was done by anarchists who also participated in political assassinations and robberies and who fought heroically and violently against Franco. Much good organizing in the United States (particularly of the CIO) was done by CP members and by Trotskyists.
We pacifists need to learn from them—both about organizing techniques and about devotion to the cause, even as we try to avoid their use of violence and their manipulative tactics to keep their faction in control of the movement. Certainly the various factions that accomplished the Cuban revolution used a lot of organizing of the peasants and of the urban workers, in addition to the guerrilla violence. I expect that Che participated in some of that organizing, though I haven’t made the detailed study of his life that Rudd has. Maybe Rudd is right that Che became
violent because of asthma.
One reason Rudd gives why the movement should be nonviolent is that most in the United States don’t understand non-state political violence. He’s probably right. But most don’t understand civil disobedience, pacifism, or organizing for our rights, either. It’s always tempting to interpret “going to people where they are” as meaning you don’t challenge the ideas that have been so beat into our heads by the establishment that we accept them unconsciously. We have to find ways to confront head-on (or sideways, or whatever) the brainwashing that the system has done and to organize around it. Of course, this includes the organizers trying to be aware of the ways in which we ourselves have been brainwashed. Education of the organizers and organizees (and realization that that’s a false dichotomy, too) is an important part of organizing.
In his last paragraph, Rudd says, “The soldier has to constantly justify the loss of his friends by killing more...All soldiers...have to justify their own sacrifice...through more war.” The wonderful antiwar organizing among soldiers in the U.S. war against Vietnam; the many conscientious objectors and deserters from current wars; groups like Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and Iraq Veterans Against the War; former soldiers like Howard Zinn; former violent revolutionaries like Mark Rudd—all these and more make a mockery of Rudd’s claim. We pacifists need to appreciate and learn from (the learning’s more important than the appreciation) such soldiers, who know a lot better than we do what kind of a hell war is and who may know better how to build the beloved society.
Bill Houston
Yellow Springs, OH
Nonviolent Warriors
I read Mark Rudd’s article with interest. It seems that it was a description of his own eventual change from methods of violence to methods of nonviolence, and the distinct advantage of the latter—not just strategically but because it is the right way to proceed with fellow human beings.
Gandhi knew that nonviolent work, not the atom bomb, was the crown achievement of the 20th century, as Eknath Easwaran wrote in his book Gandhi, the Man: The Story of His Transformation. Gandhi also said that the best soldiers in nonviolence are those who have engaged in violent warfare.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Pathan warrior from the frontier territories in what is now the borderland around Afghanistan and Pakistan, was the towering giant seen in many photos of Gandhi. Khan led 100,000 Pathan warriors in using nonviolence in the struggle to free India from British domination.
The discipline and determination of those people proved to be the turning point in that controversy/struggle/social conversation over decades in India. Details and a wonderful explication of that part of history are in the book Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan, A Man to Match His Mountains.
I would have liked Rudd to include some of the Gandhi story about the best people in his movement having been those who had served in war and turned to nonviolence as the preferred, more humane, and even more effective method of dealing with such social problems. He could have told how Martin Luther King, Jr., led a movement in which people were trained like soldiers, but nonviolent ones; or how at the Seattle World Trade Organization demonstrations, lots of soldier-like training was used for a nonviolent approach.
Curtiss DuRand,
conscientious objector
Sexism Kills
The world is a better place for Mark Rudd having moved beyond his worship of Che Guevara and violence. But am I the first person to notice that it was Che’s sexism that led to his own death? Guevara and his cohorts had a pathetic arrival in Mexico in 1956. They would surely have died of starvation and stupidity if it had not been for the Celia Sanchez Red de Apoyo (Network of Support) that provided food, shelter, and clothing to the motley fighters. These fundamentals were as critical to the Cuban Revolution as were guns, but in the context of the prevailing sexism, they were simply taken for granted and relegated to the background as something that women naturally did.
When Guevara tried to stage fights in the Congo and in Bolivia without comparable networks of support, he failed miserably. He had plenty of time to figure this out, but the importance of women’s production remained a blind spot in his brain. As a result, he ended up isolated, hungry, weak and—finally—dead. Let this be a lesson.
Deborah Fink
Ames, Iowa
Pimping Pacifism?
Memorial Day weekend. You wouldn’t know of past carnage or recent human destruction by the magazine content (WIN spring 2010).
That cover is truly horrible—stereotypical pimp and his girls, with minimal pacifist symbols. In short—are you nuts?
Sonya Cavazos
Orinda, CA
“March All You Want”
The best way to refuse to pay federal income tax for war, with no fines and no threats from the government, is to live simply—below the taxable level. I lived well for all of 2009 on $3,965, less than one-half the federal income taxable level of $9,350 for me as a single person.
Half of every federal income tax dollar goes for past, present, and future wars. If someone came to my home collecting money, I would not donate even a dime if I knew any of the money collected went to a local gang to rob and murder neighbors on my street—no matter if the rest of it went to schools, libraries, and homeless shelters. My neighbors in Iraq and Afghanistan are no less human, no less precious than neighbors on my street.
The main purpose of the U.S. war machine is to make sure that most Americans keep on stealing and hogging the wealth of the world. Why spend time analyzing, protesting, and cursing the deadly beast if you keep feeding it federal income tax dollars for war?
On June 12, 1982, about a million of us rallied against nuclear weapons in New York City. Secretary of State Alexander Haig under Reagan saw us that day and said, “Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.”
I have paid no federal income tax for 31 years. I pledge publicly to live simply, to own no car, and to pay no federal income tax for war for the rest of my life!
Don Schrader
Albuquerque, NM
