WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #39

39. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, September 15, 2021

9-11  Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
Susan Sontag on 9-11

9-11, SEPTEMBER 11 FAMILIES FOR PEACEFUL TOMORROWS DAY

The US War of Terror that intensified around the world after the 9-11 bombings did not have to happen.  Our leaders and the public had a peaceful option, and it was chosen by some families of the victims, calling themselves “9-11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.”  OMNI has remembered them in eight newsletters.  #8 follows.

OMNI

9-11, SEPTEMBER 11 FAMILIES FOR PEACEFUL TOMORROWS DAY, NATIONAL DAY OF SERVICE NEWSLETTER #8, September 11, 2015(alternative to Patriot Day).

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/09/september-11-families-for-peaceful.html

COMPILED BY Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice

http://omnicenter.org/donate/

What’s at stake: Peace starts in our communities with our rejection of the beliefs and structures of our society that urge fear, hatred, and revenge. As we approach the 14th Commemoration of 9/11, we seek to honor all of the victims of the plane bombs, not by upping the violence ante, but by rejecting revenge and fostering peaceful communities—local, national, and global--that embrace compassionate service rather than violence. We would serve as practical ambassadors of nonviolent peace.  Building the peace and justice movement.

Contents: 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows DAY#8

9/11: What Happened?  The Bombing Controversy.  Ben Laden’s Revenge….Revenge…..Revenge

Peaceful Tomorrows Day 2015 against Savage Revenge and Lawlessness

Google Searches: 9/11 and Revenge, 9/11 and US War of Revenge

Glennon, National Security Obsession Produced Two US Governments: One Feebly Constitutional,
      the other Agressively Tyrannical

Imminent Threat, After 9/11 Documentary Film on War of Terror and US Civil Liberties

Where did Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Come From???

Yoder, Christian Nonviolence

Islam and Peace: 3 Books

   Islam Means Peace

   Crescent and Dove

   Nonviolence

Dick, Tolstoy and Patriotism

The 9/11 Bombing Controversy

9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows DAY 2015 against War

peacefultomorrows.org/

Peaceful Tomorrows is an organization founded by family members of those killed on September 11th who have united to turn our grief into action for peace.

DYSFUNCTIONS OF USA DURING PANIC OF 9/11

Questions regarding the post-9/11 obsession with security and revenge--the “war on terror” (become war of terror), the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and of Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries, and regarding the devastating war on civil liberties at home by the expansion of surveillance and secrecy (Homeland Security, NSA, destruction of the 4^thAmendment), I pursued by googling these two searches, with interesting results.  Many of the responses were not to the point or trivial, but some do examine deeply.  Our religious and philosophical traditions repudiate revenge.  From the perspective of Peaceful Tomorrows, US behavior post-9-11 is a paroxysm of revenge inspiring more revenge.  From that of international criminal law and law, US behavior is a convulsion of lawlessness: a few criminals blew up the Trade Towers; Interpol and national police should have been allowed to do its lawful duty.  Instead our leaders fed us immensely exaggerated fear-mongering and unchecked slaughter.  Who are we, ask the authors of The Hidden Structure of Violence?  They reply: a people of violence; especially military violence, war, in which people are displaced, tortured, shot, bombed, burned; and economic violence, in which the necessities for life are not provided or are taken from the people (10).   MORE

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/09/september-11-families-for-peaceful.html

 PEACEFUlL TOMORROWS Day/National Day of Service is part of OMNI’s National Days Project.  See Newsletters 4 and 5 for extensive explanation of Peaceful Tomorrows.

Film:  All Quiet on the Western Front

Sept 21 - An Intl Day of Peace Event

7:00 pm - Faulkner Performing Arts Center, UA

ADMISSION FREE

A Peace Week Event

Co-Sponsored by the UA Dept of Communications Film Appreciation Society and Omni Center

9/11/01 Susan Sontag

Three days after the 9/11 attacks 20 years ago, Susan Sontag wrote the following in The New Yorker, for which she received untold amounts of shit and was nearly driven out of the American cultural establishment

The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word “cowardly” is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday’s slaughter, they were not cowards.

Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracy—which entails disagreement, which promotes candor—has been replaced by psychotherapy. Let’s by all means grieve together. But let’s not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. “Our country is strong,” we are told again and again. I for one don’t find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that’s not all America has to be.
—Susan Sontag

Don’t missRobert Weissman, Public Citizen, “In Memory of the Lives Lost”
In WWW #40, 9-22.