Review of "The Iraq War and Its Consequences:Thoughts of Nobel Peace Laureates and Eminent Scholars" ed. by Irwin Abrams and Wang Gungwu

By Lynn Farquhar

Although it never appears anyplace within the text of "The Iraq War and Its Consequences:Thoughts of Nobel Peace Laureates and Eminent Scholars," this book, edited by Irwin Abrams and Wang Gungwu, reminded me over and over again of Martin Luther King's words at New York City's Riverside church in 1967 in his "Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam":

"The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war:"This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into

the veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handi-capped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." (MLK) From Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet's simple plea for compassion and nonviolence, stating that "these issues concern the whole of humanity, not just one country"...to antipersonnel landmine activist Jody Williams' fiery, well-annotated critique of "preemptive self-defense", these laureates and scholars bring their intellectual clout and moral authority to bear on the subject of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and its many ramifications. Truly a fascinating sociological study of this moment in time, each essayist articulates, in his or her own unique way, the

myths and realities of this unique war that has proven so divisive both within and without the US, where we are told we are either with our president or with the terrorists. Most of these writers have a great deal to say about unilateralism (or, what Lisa Martin, professor of Government at Harvard refers to as "opportunistic or ad hoc multilateralism") and the importance of not allowing a body like the United Nations to sink into irrelevance in the face on one powerful nation's use of the fear of terrorism to remove all constraints to gain and hold world supremacy militarily and economically. The tone of these essays is more scholarly than moralistic- more reasoned than impassioned - and more international in scope than focused merely on the US and Iraq. If you want to read some eloquent writing on a subject too often left to predictably biased talk show hosts on either end of the political spectrum or else to the shallows of embedded reporting, be sure to pick up a copy of "The Iraq War and Its Consequences". As Northern Ireland's Mairead Corrigan Maguire states in her conclusion:

"Although, after the war, people expressed a sense of hopelessness,
I myself am very hopeful for the future. I believe we live in an age of
tremendous change, when ordinary people are beginning to take up their own
responsibility and claim rights not only for themselves, but also for others
around the world. There is a deepening awareness of the value of every
human being and all of creation, and our need to take care of each other and
the earth. This is a time of hope, and each one of us can make a difference
by taking a stand for truth and living out our own lives as nonviolently and
truthfully as possible."

Lynn Farquhar is a former DJPC board member and community activist.