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Not sure I
want to step into this discussion, I already have enough on my plate, but I
will. I am sharing some words from
a friend who was very involved in the Rhodesian civil war, and guerilla
warfare. Jeff
Carl Jeffry Goebel
Goebel and Associates
Website: http://www.aboutlistening.com/
Phone: 509.334.4767
-----Original Message-----
From: Jody Butterfield
[mailto:jodyb@holisticmanagement.org]
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2001
2:44 PM
To:
general@lists.holisticmanagement.org
Subject: From Allan Savory
I am posting this to our general conference via Jody as I am not
routinely on our listserve due to email overload. I am venting my deep
feelings of sorrow and frustration by writing to you who I know care and think
deeply. I also write because Holistic Management is more important than
ever if peace is to prevail as we all wish.
As the events of the 11 September unfolded I found myself so overwhelmed that
for an hour or two I simply pulled out of the important planning meeting in
which we were engaged. I needed to sit quietly with my thoughts. In my youth,
growing up in Rhodesia after World War II, I somehow recognized that
guerrilla warfare would be the future form of warfare and I began studying and
later fighting for over twenty years in such a war. I mention this past
briefly because as this week unfolded, having gone through much of my life in
senseless guerrilla warfare, I began to see the past floating before my eyes.
What I saw was not the endless showing of the towers being hit and then
crumbling, followed by the anguish of family and friends of the dead but
something sinister and frightening. I felt an emptiness not because of
the tragic loss of life of so many Americans and others, including we think
five of my countrymen, but because of the television interviews of leaders and
public figures. I could not help but notice that all talked of America’s
strength and resolve, war and revenge. Not one leader replied in the
manner I would have found myself responding in my anger and grief. The
President has called it a new form of war and named it the First War of the
21st Century. He has pledged to win it at a time and place of our
choosing. Although this pledge is understandable in terms of prevailing
emotions, it is about as meaningful in real terms as the many pledges to win
the war against drugs. America and the western nations, whose way of life
is under attack, will need far deeper understanding for peace and what we all
value in our way of life to be safeguarded. This is not a new form of
warfare it is one of the oldest forms of warfare that, due to
technological advances, is capable of wrecking unbelievable damage.
Nothing I write should be construed as not having feelings for the dead and
suffering I only risk writing at such a sensitive time because my
feelings run deep, and after living so much of my life with violence I want
desperately to see an end to such suffering. America will be called upon
for international leadership in this hour of need. Is America up to that
responsibility and what does that leadership entail?
Let me make a few basic points. People waging guerrilla warfare try to
undermine their enemy by actions designed to cause a spread of terror,
over-reaction, economic damage, etc. Commonly they hit soft (not military)
targets that will inflame emotions simply because they do not have the military
strength to do otherwise. If skillful they strike in such a manner that
their more powerful opponent will fan the flames and spread terror, lack of confidence
in the economy, etc., and do the job for them. A mistake made by most
governments is to call their opponents ‘terrorists’. The constant use of
the word ‘terrorist’ while televising dramatically the damage and suffering
makes their action several million times more damaging. If you want to spread
terror use the word terrorist repeatedly, associated with terrifying pictures,
and low and behold you do spread terror. I watched Ian Smith do this
repeatedly in Rhodesia’s long struggle for independence. Long ago in that
struggle I said publicly that if I was a guerrilla I would pray that my
opponents would call me a terrorist to further my aims. The Smith
government made that mistake and repeatedly attacked me as an army officer and
Member of Parliament for using the name guerrillas instead of trying to
understand the form of warfare they faced. Smith, his generals and
media gurus, through ignorance about guerrilla warfare guaranteed their own
political defeat. I am not indulging in hindsight as many times on the
public platform I said that Mugabe’s greatest allies were Ian Smith and his
generals who, while waging a ‘war against terrorists’, were winning political
victory for Mugabe and ensuring the end of democracy for years to come.
Secondly I see in America floating before my eyes once again something I lived
through. Our strength is our greatest
weakness. What do I mean by this? In Rhodesia we had an
extremely capable and efficient army for bush warfare. We knew it and
were intensely proud of our army. We never lost a single encounter or
battle no matter what the odds, but that, as I pointed out many times during
the conflict, guaranteed we would lose the ‘war’. I say this simply
because these situations are not ‘wars’ requiring military solution, but
situations requiring civilian policies that deal with the root cause of
people’s frustrations and suffering. Because we white Rhodesians were so
strong our government, under a political leader rather than statesman, was
unwilling to even contemplate seeking the necessary solution that would
preserve the democracy we valued. That, after all, would appear ‘weak’ to
the bulk of the electorate who wanted tough-talking generals and
politicians. When, as leader of the opposition in Parliament, I said (to
Smith) “You are going to have to talk to the guerrilla leaders” I was
branded a coward and traitor in public. When I said on one occasion “If
you want to win this ‘war’ you need to understand your opponents and to
understand why someone like me would say “If I had been born a black Rhodesian,
instead of a white Rhodesian, I would be your greatest terrorist” I lost the
support of even my own party and ended up in exile.
I use the similarities with Rhodesia because only the scale differs.
America’s leaders would be wise not to treat this as a ‘war’ but rather as a
serious wake up call to look at an extremely broad and comprehensive strategy
involving our foreign and domestic policies as well as our education and
business systems.
Right now there is a need to motivate people to unite. And there is a
need, that the President and his advisors are tackling well, to collaborate
with other nations and go after the perpetrators determined to bring them to
justice. However, this should be done without setting our people up for
war and retaliation. There is a need, while unity and determination still hold,
to initiate the moves to bring about a civilian strategy to win the peace we
all seek. If we rely solely on our military strength in retaliating, far
from ending the war “in a place and time of our choosing,” we will bring about
counter retaliation at some time. This has been the most massive guerrilla
attack ever staged, but it will pale into insignificance with future nuclear or
biological attacks unless our leaders act with understanding and wisdom as well
as determination.
There have always been evil people and will continue to be such people. We need
of course to share intelligence between nations and root them out. But at the
same time we need also to address the causes to which they attach themselves
and to dry up their source of recruits. I am sorry that many in this nation are
focused only on America and seeing this as an attack on this nation and on
democracy. It is not a war in which ‘they’ are trying to conquer America
or defeat democracy. Public memory can be short. It was but months ago
that thousands of peace-loving people (including prominent Americans) brought
the World Trade Organization Conference in Seattle to a halt. Now, this
strike at the World Trade Center as the principal target by ruthless people
exploiting grievances for their own ends should have conveyed a message to all
developed nations - America, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and others. If
America is to provide the leadership the world is crying out for, we would be
wise to try to understand how and why the Bin Laden’s of the world can have
such a pool of angry young people to call on who are prepared to give their
lives so readily. We need to understand and heed the cries of people displaced
by massive dam construction in India or Africa, or the bulk of the Mexican
population who deplore the loss of their way of life and all they value most
dearly as we pursue policies like NAFTA. We need to understand that we cannot
call on people in poor countries to be good capitalists and then go to war
against them for supplying our people with drugs they seek at any cost. We need
to understand that when we ban chemicals because they are known to be damaging
to humans that we should not allow multi-national corporations to increase
their manufacture and sale to third world countries so we can profit. We need
to understand that we cannot take thousands of years of careful nurturing of
genetic material by simple people and patent the genes for the profits of our
corporations and shareholders. We need to understand that in many ways it
is not democracy that is under attack but rather certain aspects of our lives
that others see as causing their poverty and suffering.
I know many Americans, including good friends of mine, will immediately say,
“but our policies are not harming them.” I am afraid if others even
perceive our policies as harmful to their culture and way of life that becomes
the political reality in such situations. It is essential that we look at
our policies in our own enlightened self-interest as they affect our
environment and other people as we do with Holistic Management policy
formation.
I am not a politician. I only went into politics in my country as a
junior army officer with a deep knowledge of guerrilla warfare to try to end a
senseless war of self-destruction. But over the twenty years that I have been a
‘political has-been’ I have never ceased to try to think of ways nations might
end such violence. And I have never ceased to work on the causes
underlying most worldwide violence. I don’t know who originally said it,
but I have long believed that “Until all
people feel secure and well governed, none are”. No nation can
be an island unto itself in the modern world. In America we may feel
secure and well governed but are we? Clearly by this definition we are
not. When the towers were first hit and blame started to fly, more than
one person raised the question are we sure this time that it is not
Americans? Looking at our government I do not see representation of many
Americans. We don’t even have a Parliamentary opposition in the sense I
understand- we have a government formed from alternatively one or other of two
wings - left and right - of the same corporate party, managed by a mature and
often insensitive bureaucracy. As a consequence, millions of Americans
are politically emasculated and apathetic, feeling a deep sense of
hopelessness. The present catastrophe will unite all Americans as never
before and that is good. But the unity will not last. If our leaders
cannot see what is happening in our own country, what hope have we of
understanding the frustrations of millions who are daily affected by the
policies of the US, and our fellow western powers that support corporations
with economies and powers greater than whole nations. The focus will be
on America as the single super power, but Britain, France, Germany and other
countries are as much part of what many millions of people see as the ugly side
of capitalism. Focus is on us because we are seen as having a small
percentage of the world’s population consuming a very high percentage of the
world’s resources resulting in vast impoverishment for others.
It cannot be repeated too often- poor land leads to poverty, disease, social
breakdown, abuse of women, increasing violence and genocide and
ultimately war. One has only to look holistically at the many resource
management policies of America, or the World Bank and other governments and organizations
heavily influenced or dominated by American money and university graduates, to
see that we are guaranteeing an increasingly violent future for our children
and our allies.
As I write, the President is sitting with his National Security Council to decide
how to respond. They are intelligent people who will advise on all
aspects of security within the comprehension of their professions
military, economic, political analyst or whatever. Probably the President
could not put together a more competent team if we were at war. However
if one understands the nature of how wholes function I would wager a bet that
the same NSC with its heavy regular military bias will be ill-suited to forming
a strategy to win the peace. Building our response on a war analogy is
dangerous in the extreme. While the President will politically have to respond
with force in some form right now, it would be wise to look beyond starting
right now. I believe to win the peace the NSC should be expanded to
include men and women who understand the effects on millions of ordinary
peace-loving people of such things as our agricultural policies and NAFTA as
well as the actions of not only American but also multi-national corporations.
Conventional economists have almost no comprehension of the effects of for
instance agricultural policies on rural American families let alone families in
India, Pakistan, Mexico and Africa.
When faced with situations of such enormous magnitude, where it is always easy
to be a critic but never as easy if actually having to handle the full
responsibility, I have a habit of asking myself ‘If faced with this
responsibility what would I do?’
In this instance I would do the following. No one has the answers, least
of all me, but these actions would lead us toward finding solutions, I believe:
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
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In short, I believe the surest way to guarantee Americans a future of severely
restricted liberties and fear of violence is to treat this as a war that can be
won with economic and military might. The war analogy focuses on what the
enemy is doing when we need to focus on what we are doing to ourselves. The
possibility of even more horrific acts is increased when rogue religious groups
such as the Taliban (most Muslims, as well as the Koran, preach peace and
harmony), and individuals like Bin Laden, can recruit people willing to commit
suicide and align themselves with genuine grievances for their own ends.
To let such evil people put up a smoke screen that clouds our vision and draws
our attention away from addressing the real grievances of millions of
peace-loving people would be the greatest tragedy and play into the hands of
future Bin Ladens.
This is a battle for peace that can be won by statesmanship that ensures that
while containing present violence to the best of our ability we at the same
time start to address the things needed to ensure that all people feel secure
and well governed.
Jody Butterfield
Co-Founder
Research Coordinator
The Allan Savory Center for Holistic Management
1010 Tijeras NW
Albuquerque, NM 87102
505/842-5252; 505/843-7900 (fax)
www.holisticmanagement.org