The Pursuit of Happiness?

According to the Declaration of Independence we are endowed with the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Government actions are thereby delimited as well as government obligations defined. Governments may do nothing to limit their citizens life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. On the other hand governments must secure these rights as far as possible. They must protect our lives and liberties and safeguard our pursuits of happiness.

We do not often reflect about what that means. I shall try to do that here. Our "inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness" is not straightforward at all; it raises questions we may find difficult to answer.

The right to pursue one's happiness, we believe, implies that one is free to follow one's own desires and ones own beliefs about a good life. For many of us that means that we should be able to marry whom we please. No one else should be able to force us into marriages we do not want. We should be free to follow occupations we choose for ourselves. No one, whether family members or government agencies should be allowed to choose for us what work we do.

We should each be able to shape our daily lives as we consider best. This family says prayers before and after every meal. In that other family everyone eats at different times what ever they please. There is no private or public agency that should be allowed to criticize the way of life we choose. It is a task of the government to protect us against anyone who would interfere with how we choose to pursue happiness.

So the government needs to guarantee for us the freedom to choose life partners, to choose occupations, to choose where we learn and what style of life seems best to us.

No doubt questions come to your mind as you read this. Some people choose lives that are clearly destructive of the lives of their family members: they take drugs, they drink too much, they lead a life of crime, they are violent and coercive. Should someone not try to stop them and protect their family?

The government's duty to protect our pursuit of happiness is very unclear and full of difficult decisions.

Are there other ways in which we can expect our governments to protect our pursuit of happiness?

Children who are unable to go to school are severely limited in their life choices. We therefore restrict child labor and we believe that educational opportunities should be available to everyone. (It is another matter that we do not always act on that belief.) Ill health restrict life choices and many of us believe that everyone is entitled to the best health care that is available.

I have recently, purely by accident, read several novels that describe in excruciating detail the suffering war imposes on its victims. One novel describes the terrible struggles against PTSD of a young woman Iraq war veteran. Another follows a German and a French child through the crucible of World War II. In a third we hear of the brutality practiced by both sides in "The Troubles" in Ireland. The experience of war, whether as a soldier or a civilian, if we survive at all, leaves us overwhelmed by our losses and consumed by fears and regrets, by guilt long after the hostilities have ceased.

What future is ahead for the children in Gaza who emerge from the shelters to find the streets blocked by the rubble of their houses? Their parents, if they survive, are consumed by grief and hatred. Their chances for choosing a life they want are severely limited.

If it is true that one role of government is to protect and foster our possibility to choose the best life for ourselves, then governments surely may not engage in the violence of war. Our government has fought a number of major wars since the end of World War II. In each we sent massive troops and airplanes into foreign countries. In each case the wars ended with many Americans dead and many veterans whose lives continue to be seriously afflicted. In each war we left foreign countries in ruins, we affected the genetics of the population that survived so that after several generations their children remain frequently afflicted by terrible genetic diseases.

The wars we have fought left masses of people whose lives will never be freed from the burden of terrible loss, people would never be able to feel completely safe again, people who would always struggle with profound despair, with guilt and horror.

If all human beings have an inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness, if governments are to protect that right, must governments not abstain from violence?

The temptation is to reject this question as silly, to say that we needed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Korea and Vietnam to protect ourselves and our liberties. But before you soothe your conscience with that bromide, think hard about the victims of war, both of the wars we have fought, and the wars we have enabled by supplying military hardware to one or both sides as happened in the conflict in Gaza. The cliché that governments take refuge in, that they must wage war in order to promote peace, is laughable. Governments have killed and plundered for thousands of years in order to promote peace. So far that hasn't worked. Why should it suddenly begin to work today?

If governments are to protect our right to pursue happiness, they must dedicate themselves above all to an end of all violence.

More War ?

More War?

US naval vessels, including the gigantic nuclear powered aircraft carrier George Washington have joined South Korean military forces in a joint naval exercise off the coast of that country. North Korea has responded by threatening  “sacred war” and nuclear retaliation.

This massive show of force is a response to the March sinking of a South Korean naval vessel near a disputed region in the oceans off the Koreas. Originally it was unclear whether a mine sank the warship, or an explosion.  Then a panel of international experts decided that the boat was sunk by a North Korean torpedo.

Why would North Korea want to sink a South Korean naval vessel? Since the 1960s there have been a series of attacks on South Korean Presidents, on airliners bound for Seoul, South Korea, or on South Korean naval vessels by North Koreans. A bitter enmity exists between the two countries.

So now we are doing war-games near the coast of North Korea and that country is talking nuclear war.

At the same time, there is more talk about Iran and its nuclear weapons program. Some people are seriously talking about attacking Iran. Iran is seriously talking about defending itself against such attacks.

Has the whole world gone mad?

We have been involved in two wars for seven years. The end--let alone victory--is not in sight. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on these wars while we do not have enough money to pay unemployment to those left jobless by the economic crisis. We don’t have enough money to pay for our schools, for health care, or even, in some communities, to to turn on the street lamps. We are broke and we owe $ 4 trillion to other nations.
The US casualties in these wars have been high, so have been the casualties for some of our allies. Estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq alone range from 100,000 to 800,000. Damages to houses, streets, water and sewer installations, to schools and mosques have been enormous.

Two wars, poorly if at all justified, causing damages that will not be repaired for decades. Many of these damages--the human lives taken prematurely; the lives of the survivors marked indelibly--will never be repaired.

And still we talk more war?

Wake up, America!

The Cost of War

We do not think much about the cost of war. A few years after the end of the latest military engagement, we erect war monuments—plaques with names, statues of soldiers, civic buildings. We call our soldiers heroes, especially if they did not come home and that's about it.
But a spate of recent news stories about the Iraq war cannot be ignored. They force us to face up to the horrendous cost of this war. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, 4328 soldiers are officially listed as killed, 31,431 officially listed as injured. Unofficial numbers for injuries are much higher. Many of the injured have brain damage. We need to pause a minute with these numbers to consider that for every soldier killed, there is a grieving family—parents, brothers and sisters, often grandparents, uncles and aunts. Friends and neighbors are affected as well. Many soldiers killed are fathers and mothers who leave their spouse behind and often also their children. More than 900 children in the US lost one parent in Iraq. The war memorials we erect so diligently do not mention the wide swath of grief left by each death or the lives seriously affected by the loss of a son, a life companion, or a parent.
Nor do they remember the soldiers who attempt suicide after their return—estimated currently at 1000 a month. They may have returned with their bodies intact, but their spirit is suffering profoundly; they do not want to continue living. Others cannot find their way back into civilian lives with jobs and families. They end up homeless, asking for money at the stoplight or offering to work for food, shunned even by the citizens who like to speak of veterans as heroes.
Recent stories report that children of soldiers are seeking psychiatric help in increasing numbers. The total number of outpatient mental health visits for children increased from 1 million in 2003 to 2 million in 2008. The marriages of returning veterans are more likely to founder; family violence is more common in the families of servicemen and women, as is alcoholism, drug abuse and child neglect. Each of these has long run effects that last throughout the lives of military children and may well leave its mark on the grandchildren of men and women in the military today.
The human cost of war is inestimable. The cost in dollars is more easily counted up. It now stands at $687 billion for the Iraq war. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is approaching $200 million. In the seven years of the war thousands upon thousands of American children went hungry; many Americans died a premature death because they could not afford to see a doctor or, if they did, could not buy the medicines to control blood pressure or keep diabetes under control. Many led wretched lives because there are not enough places in clinics to help sufferers overcome drug and alcohol addiction. Many young people could not get the education to develop their intelligence and other aptitudes because there was no money for scholarships or cheap public education. If we had been able to use those $687 billion dollars to improve medical care, education, rehabilitation and nutrition programs many Americans would have better lives today. Remember also that drug addicts also have families who suffer with their addict members; hungry children develop more slowly and thus their lives are impaired as long as they live. Early deaths spread sorrow in families of the victims. Few remain untouched by the cost of war.
Now comes the latest story from Colorado. In the area around Fort Carson, 14 murders have been committed by returning soldiers. Members of combat units that suffered particularly high casualties in Iraq were more likely to murder innocent civilians here—including a couple about to put up a sign for a garage sale.
So far we are thinking about American losses. The devastation of lives in Iraq is much worse. Here the numbers are much less precise. But the count is definitely above 110,000. Some estimates of war orphans in Iraq are as high as 5 million. Five million young people whose entire lives will be burdened by their early loss and the hard lives awaiting orphans.
An avalanche of terrifying facts forces us to consider the cost of war more carefully and to face up to the multiple destructive repercussions of war. The war in Iraq spreads its evil influences throughout Iraq and throughout our own country and those of our allies not just today and tomorrow but for generations to come. Is anything worth such enormous sacrifices?

War and Genocide

Its this time of year again, the season of genocide remembrances and conferences; President Obama went to Turkey and without using the dreaded word “genocide” spoke harshly about the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Turks. It is the time of year to remember genocides and its victims.
The local paper displayed a bar graph of different genocides: 200,000 persons killed in Bosnia-Herzogovina in 1992- 1995; 800,000 in Ruanda in 1994; 2 million in Cambodia under Pol Pot in 1975 – 1979; 6 million in the Nazi Holocaust 1938 – 1945; 300,000 killed by the Japanese in Nanking, China in 1937- 1938; 7 million killed in Stalinist Russia during the forced collectivization of agriculture; 1.5 million killed in Armenia in 1915.
In this chart the word “genocide” is applied very loosely. The Nazis set out to wipe out the Jews. They were aiming to destroy a people. Stalin was trying to rid Russia of perceived enemies of the modernization project set in motion by the Communist party. The large loss of lives had nothing to do with ethnic identities. If they were seen to be enemies of the Stalinist state, they would be killed whether they were Russian or belonged to some other nation. Similarly the killers and killed in Cambodia were for the most part Cambodians (Khmer). National identities were not the primary issue. The word genocide is here simply a synonym for “mass murder.”
But if that is what genocide has come to mean—the killing of large numbers of people in a fairly short time, why does the chart not mention Word War II which is reputed to have cost the life of 50 million people? Why is there no mention of the Korean war (2,800,000 victims) or the war in Vietnam 3,500,000 victims)? It is common to distinguish genocide from wars. Genocides are deplored and remembered tearfully. Many holocaust museums and commemorations have been erected. There are some but many fewer war memorials or remembrances of its many, many victims. Few, if any, university institutes study war; more study genocide. But if genocide refers to mass killings, wars should surely also be included.
Wars are different from genocide, but not that different. The carpet bombing of German cities, the methodical bombing of London and other cities in England had as their goal the destruction of civilian populations. In genocide the destruction of a people is the end; in methodical bombing of cities the destruction of a people is a means. For the persons who fall victims to either, the difference is non-existent. All die a horrible death. Modern wars in which the distinction between combatant and non-combatant has disappeared involve genocide. The distinction between war and genocide becomes blurred.
Of course we Jews should mourn our dead. But we must strenuously resist the temptation to think that death of our people is a more serious tragedy than that of others. We must not be tempted to acquiesce in the killing of more than a thousand residents of Gaza in retaliation for 14 Israelis killed by the rockets of Hamas. We must not for a moment accept the argument, often offered to justify dropping atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, that these bombs served to save American lives. Upward of 700,000 persons died in these twin bombings. The number of American lives saved would certainly have been much smaller. The justification for dropping those two atomic bombs assumes that American lives are worth much more than the lives of Japanese.
But that sort of thinking—that some lives are worth a lot less than ours—legitimates genocide: Jews could be killed because the Nazis called their lives worthless. That sort of thinking stands behind slavery—including the sexual slavery of our day. That sort of thinking makes war and mass killing thinkable.
Holocaust remembrances and museums thus are very ambiguous. They allow us Jews to mourn our terrible losses and to mourn, and protest, the hatred so many people have felt for us in the past and still feel for us in the present. But when these remembrances reinforce the belief that Jewish lives are more valuable than the lives of Palestinians, they become a justification for repeating genocide, only this time the Jews are not the victims.
Holocaust remembrances accompanied by the strident insistence that genocide is different from war, conceals the evil of war, conceals the millions and millions of persons who die miserably in war, and allow us to continue to use violence as our chief tool in international relations.
When Holocaust remembrances remember only “our” dead, they support the widespread nationalist assumptions that “our” lives—whether they be American, or German, or Israeli, whether they be Sunni or Shia, Hindu or Muslim, Chinese or Tibetan—are worth more than those of our enemies. A people that believes that, will ruthlessly kill its enemies and not shrink back from genocide. The cry “Never again” is emptied of all content once we fail to accept the value of all human lives as equal.
Until we learn to consider every human death a tragedy whatever the victim's ethnic affiliations , the world will continue to suffer bloodbath after bloodbath. Hundreds of thousand, millions will die whether we call it genocide or not.

War on the Poor

Senator Obama recently gave a speech linking the high price of oil and gas to the Iraq War. But that is only a part of the connections between the war in Iraq and conditions at home. The war in Vietnam gave us the War on Poverty; the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has given us the War on the Poor.
One of the recent articles commemorating the beginning of the sixth year of the current wars (this one in the NY Review of Book) pointed out that the majority of new enlistees in the Armed Forces have significant economic motives for joining the military. No one doubts that young men and women enlist from patriotic motives, or to avenge 9/11, or to protect their loved ones from future terrorist attacks, or from a desire for adventure, or just to get out of town. But whatever their other motives, a majority of enlistees also cite economic reasons: getting out of debt when they received their signing bonus of $ 10,000.00 or more, getting a pay check after having been unemployed for a considerable period, help with getting a college education once they complete their military commitment, finally getting out of poverty and off welfare. What decides many enlistees to join the military is economic need or, to put it bluntly, poverty.
This creates an opportunity for a government that needs more soldiers to continue its different military adventures, but is unwilling to institute a draft. The solution is to reduce the rates of unemployment payments. Currently only 35 % of unemployed receive unemployment benefits. Many of the rest are sufficiently hard up to consider a military career. Another solution is to keep the minimum wage low, so that even people who do manage to find work cannot make ends meet. They too may consider enlisting. Over the last 30 or so years, working and middle class people have lost ground economically. Real wages have barely kept up with inflation. While more and more super rich appeared in the top layers of our society, the income of the bottom layers stagnated. Prices went up; wages did not. But there was always the possibility of getting three square meals and a bit of cash by soldiering. More young women and men saw a military career as advantageous because civilian life only promised a lot of drudgery and very limited incomes. A government intent on war, facilitated an economy that would maintain a steady supply of soldiers.
Steadily growing military budgets until, today, the government spends about half of its tax income on military expenses have reflected constant warfare. But military jobs are in the words of some economists "job-killers." Money invested in the military goes, to a significant extent, into weapons production. Such production employs a lot fewer persons than if the same amount of money had been invested in schools, in hospitals, in facilities to take care of the sick and the elderly. In all of these places, most of the investment goes to hire people; very little pays for machines or buildings. The same is true for money invested in entertainment, in sports, in libraries or after-school programs. They employ a lot more people than money invested in largely automated production processes that make bullets, bombs, or sophisticated weapons systems. There most of the money is invested in machines, not in workers.
A nation that spends half of its income on the military will suffer from significant unemployment and thus provides itself with another source of willing recruits for the military.
Wherever we look, at our excessive military budgets, at the continuing cuts in essential social services, at the low minimum wage, at the continuing increase in economic inequality, we can see clearly how war and economy are in lockstep: wars require ever more soldiers and those are procured by an increasingly harsh economy that produces enough poverty to push people towards military service. The government makes civilians suffer economic deprivations; it can then find willing recruits for its armed forces. It makes life at home sufficiently miserable that, by comparison, a tour of duty in Iraq may actually seem attractive.
You tell me whether that's right.