In only 16 days, 10,323 people worldwide have spoken out against the nomination of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. In celebration of the event, I have put out a somewhat revised version of the letter.

Literally all over the world, people are spreading the word - person to person, by word of mouth (or email). Thank goodness there are so many people who have the good sense to speak up about this outrageous absurdity. War is not peace. What simpler truth could there be?

To my critics: A few people have sent me e-mails - some calm and reasoned, others nasty and ill-informed - objecting that the “War on Terrorism” is a necessary step towards any number of goals - peace and safety from terrorist violence, women’s liberation in Afghanistan, and so on.

Well, one, this just ain’t true.

All the Right-wingers bring up the oppression of Afghan women under the Taliban these days, because they figure it’s a good way to use moral bullying against potentially anti-war Leftists who have been protesting the gynocidal Taliban regime for years. And certainly no-one genuinely concerned with women’s human rights sheds any tears over the destruction of the Taliban regime.

That said, however, it is a mistake to say that women are now free in Afghanistan. The dominant forces in the new coalition government, which is primarily made up of Northern Alliance / United Front warlords, are fundamentalist men who are every bit as hostile towards women’s rights as the Taliban. Before the Taliban consolidated its power over Afghanistan in 1995-1996, they were merely one of many warring fundamentalist factions within Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance and their comrades were the other factions. Before the Taliban ever came to power, these self-styled mujahedeen and jihadis were throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women, and re-introducing the burqa. Their rape and murder of women during their brutal regimes is also well known. This is why Afghan women’s groups such as RAWA have opposed the Western powers’ decision to align with warlords like Shirzai, Khan, Rabbani, Dostum, etc. Is there a historical opportunity for women to fight for their own liberation, now that there is a temporary reprieve from the power of the Taliban? Yes. Are women free in Afghanistan today? No.

Are Bush and Blair’s military actions promoting peace in the long run? It’s doubtful. Even if the strategy of global warfare and domestic repression could contain international terrorism - and there’s no reason to believe it could - that very campaign of warfare has already slaughtered more innocent Afghan civilians than innocent American civilians were murdered in the September 11 massacres [BBC] (a fact major newsmedia decline to point out [FAIR].)

For two, even if it were true that Bush and Blair’s actions would bring about greater peace in the end, this should be irrelevant to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Are there cases where killing one person may save 1,000, where the body-count calculus shows it’s better to start a war than to sit back? In some cases there sure are. But that’s not what the Nobel Prize is about in the first place. Alfred Nobel specified that the Peace Prize laureate "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Bush and Blair campaign of endless global militarism, even if it did succeed in saving more lives than it takes, does not satisfy any of these criteria. It doesn’t even come close. It directly contradicts them. They have shoved through an agenda of aggressive unilateral militarism, repudiation of international peace congresses, and massive increase in the size and scope of standing armies.

War may do a lot of things, but no matter what war does, it is never peace. The Nobel Peace Prize is, in intent as well as practice, a starry-eyed, idealist prize committed to a utopian vision of world peace, and Bush and Blair do not meet its objectives. And thank God for starry-eyed idealism. We have a world jammed full of "pragmatists" and "realists" who take up the tools of the most appalling violence - not out of any kind of malice, but because they honestly can’t imagine a world that works any other way. And we desperately need some starry-eyed idealists out there who are willing to confront that and affirm that the cycle of warfare and global violence is not the only way possible.

For further reading:

• GT 2/14/2002 WAR IS PEACE (original report)
• GT 2/18/2002 Holy Internet Memes, Batman! (protest draws over 1,000 participants in first 7 days, Talkback discussion)
• GT 2/20/2002 The Voice of Protest Grows Louder… (more than 2,200 participants in only 9 days, and commentary on the political promise of the Internet)