Dear America,

Once again you have shown your ever-increasing military might with a massive display of explosive weapons that overwhelmingly outmatch your adversary. You have murdered countless civilians in the process, along with members of their army who were legally defending their homeland from your illegal, criminal invasion. Every bullet fired, every missile launched, and every bomb dropped was an egregious criminal act in violation of international and U.S. Constitutional law. You now physically occupy new oil fields, guaranteeing more petrol under your control and allowing continued denial of your dangerous dependency upon a resource facing imminent depletion.

Let us be honest. Your latest manifestation of psychotic behavior is not war, but another massacre against a nation that you insisted on disarming before unleashing your latest firepower. Your obsession with military violence and global hegemony if not arrested soon, will surely doom the world to a series of catastrophes that may lead to our species’ extinction.

I wonder how you are feeling–I mean really deep down in your heart and soul? Are you feeling satisfied or do you yearn for more bloodletting? Is this a trial run for a series of barbaric "preventive wars" against virtually defenseless countries in the greater Middle East, eastern Asia, South America, and elsewhere? Are you so racist and paranoid that you will murder anyone you imagine not being subservient to your demands, whether or not they are able to defend themselves? What deep, unmet needs do you suppose are driving you to continually commit such barbarism, such madness? From where did our apparent unconscious sense of invalidation and alienation originate, demanding such distracting, brutish behavior?

Though many of your citizens are cheering your actions like rabid dogs in a wild pack, including some from my own family, I am feeling depressed. I am enraged that your lack of empathy, and your addiction to violence, causes so much needless harm in the world. I feel sick to my stomach. I am hurt and grief-stricken, anguished beyond comprehension, that so much carnage is committed in my name as one of your natural born citizens, all for lies. I wonder how and when the forces of the cosmos will ultimately require an accounting?

Perhaps our unwillingness to admit our wrongs in Vietnam remain like an oozing sore in our psyche. The piercing of our sense of invincibility, our humiliation, could have led to an honest reckoning with our distorted view of ourselves, and profound healing. Instead it has stirred us to pump ourselves up with evermore technological superiority enabling conquest without protracted conflicts or too many U.S. body bags.

I reluctantly see now, America, that your whole existence is rooted in patterns of nearly incomprehensible violence, and that this forms the essence of your cultural ethos. You seem obsessed with a sense of superiority, drunk with brute power, unable to feel empathy and compassion, think clearly, or act responsibly, and your actions endanger us all. Your behavior fits diagnoses of mental illness and criminal psychopathy. You need a shaking up, a moment equivalent to the storming of the Bastille nearly 215 years ago. When and how will this happen?

I wonder whether and when you might be able to listen to a deeper place in your own heart and soul? My hope, and that of billions of other human beings around the globe, is that someday soon you will experience a huge "aha!" — a relief and joy that enables you to let go of your need for superiority and become an equal part of the awesome interweave of life that is the ultimate guiding wisdom of the universe. I repeat: Does it ever occur to you that your thinking and behavior likely will lead our species to extinction after an incredible 7-million-year evolutionary journey.

America, I weep endlessly knowing in my heart that at a deep, unconscious level you are experiencing pain and deprivation that you are desperately avoiding. If you are willing to endure a painful but liberating healing process by honestly facing these uncomfortable hurts, then you will no longer feel the need for violent, macho behavior. You will be able to let go of your defensiveness. You’ll be able to stop looking over your shoulder and breathe freely, maybe for the first time. Honest healing will create win-win for all. Continuing your destructive behavior will create lose-lose for the world, and for us.

I’m hoping for a quantum leap in consciousness. Are you game? The stakes could not be higher–our very survival!

–Hans Koning, Columbus: His Enterprise, 1976

"Wherever Western man went and goes, slavery, robbery, lawlessness, culture-wrecking, and the outright extermination of both wild beasts and tame men accompany him."

–Lewis Mumford, Myths of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power, 1970

"There are 3 billion people in the world and we have only 200 million of them. We are outnumbered 15 to 1. If might did make right they would sweep over the United States and take what we have. We have what they want….If we are going to have visits from any aggressors or any enemies I would rather have that aggression take place out 10,000 miles from here than take place here in Anchorage….Without superior air power America is a bound and throttled giant, impotent and easy prey to any yellow dwarf with a pocket knife."

–President Lyndon B. Johnson, in a speech
given at Anchorage, Alaska, Nov. 1, 1966

NOTE: Though this essay was written during the Clinton Administration, it is just as relevant under the Bush Administration. Now the demon du jour is Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda Network, and the Taliban. The reader should keep in mind that the goal continues to be consolidation of world power for the United States. Our bully means continue to disregard international law with total impunity.

I would submit that the far more important question for the people of the United States and the world to consider is not how and when we are going to stop Saddam Hussein and Iraq–or Slobadan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, Fidel Castro of Cuba, or other candidates for Hitlers du jour–but who is going to stop us, the United States, and current President Clinton’s aggressions? Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government, like so many other political leaders and governments, have acquired various dangerous, threatening military arsenals, and have ruled with dimensions of repression. The list of leaders and governments with similar patterns–often identified as allies of the U.S.–is a long one. And indeed this contributes to further endangering our world. But the truth is that, more often than not, the United States has substantially contributed directly to the arming of other nations, including "rogue" regimes such as Iraq, or, ironically, indirectly because other nations have been forced to arm themselves in self-defense from threats to their sovereignty directed by U.S. forces or their proxies.

Historically, the central theme intensely and forcefully motivating U.S. foreign policy is the consistent assurance that the "Third World" be made safe for "free" market forces and expansion, enabling the continued excessive material benefits to transborder corporations and the collective American Way Of Life (AWOL).

Thus, I would submit that the far greater danger to the world is the hegemonic nature and imperial motivations of the United States. The historical pattern of acquisition of arsenals and use of military, political and economic weapons by the United States, a country with but 4.5% of the world’s population while consuming an amount approaching half the world’s resources, has set the most dangerous and violent example of all. U.S. policies and practices have been conducted with such a double standard and in such a self-serving manner, and with such insensitive and brutal ferocity, as to be virtually beyond comprehension to most residents within the United States of America.

As a natural born citizen of the United States (born on the day of our national independence, July 4) who proudly carried the U.S. flag in my small-town parades, who received an honorable discharge from four years of service in the U.S. military, including duty in Vietnam, and who was admitted to the practice of law by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, it pains me deeply to have come to this conclusion. I express it with a heavy heart.

But a conscientious review of the documented, uncensored version of the historical record leaves me with no choice but to indict the prevailing cultural ethos and behaviors of the United States government and the civilization it has represented and encouraged in its pursuit of, first continental, then hemispheric, and subsequently, global "manifest destiny." Our civilization has developed at the cost of Holocausts still awaiting genuine acknowledgement and solemn reflection–first in acquiring our land base through pure armed theft while deracinating and murdering millions of the original, Indigenous Americans (or "savages" as they were called), and second in developing our agricultural and industrial economy through the atrocity of slavery and exploited immigrant labor. Both Holocausts are of genocidal proportions. Then, our land expansion and control of many of the world’s resource areas beyond continental borders has been carried out by a century of brutal hegemony, justified by the belief espoused first in the 1840s that it is "Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the development of our yearly multiplying millions" (John O’Sullivan, Democratic Review, Summer 1845). And, when added up, our world hegemonic policies have amounted to yet a third Holocaust, causing the collective murders and maimings of dozens of millions in dozens of countries.

Our perspective as a people is similar to that of citizens from previous empires. It seems that citizens of every imperial power live in a biased and shielded milieu which portrays the arrogant policies of expansionism in a kindly light. From my personal experiences in "Third World" countries, beginning in Vietnam in 1969, and continuing in twenty-plus other countries since, it has become clear to me that virtually all the people living in the "Third World," with the exception of their own wealthy elites, view the active policies of the United States and their European predecessors as forcefully perpetuating their repressive status quos, dooming their lives to continued misery. It is important to note that the people of the "Third World," with about 4.5 billion people, comprise nearly 75% of the world’s population, a vast majority living on the lion’s share of the planet’s land mass. These 75% are squeezed by their being forced to live on but 15% of the world’s resources.

The developed industrial, capitalist, now "neoliberal," global "free" market model requires accelerated consumption (and the accelerated production that must precede it) of the earth’s limited natural resources by ever increasing populations. This consumption ethic defies the finite carrying capacity of the earth. In addition, this stimulated production/consumption cycle creates incredible amounts of dangerous discharges of pollutants and toxic wastes, further endangering the ecological health and survivability of the planet.

It is impossible for the United States to honestly criticize the actions of other nations when our own behavior has been so despicable and criminal, and when our perspective is so controlled and biased. Our government has mastered the art of war-making propaganda, and our mass media has lost the capacity to critique and challenge it. Since 1947, the U.S. has illegally and brutally intervened over 200 times into the internal affairs of over 100 sovereign nations, contributing to or directly causing the murders of more than 20 million human beings, and the maimings of millions of others. Not one of those military interventions had been authorized by a Congressional declaration of war as required by our Constitution. Instead, each presidentially-initiated intervention has been reported as justified to assure protection of "democratic" or "civilized" values from "Communist," "terrorist," or other evil forces.

Additionally, the U.S. has conducted over 6,000 major and minor covert actions throughout the world. Since the founding of our Republic over 200 years ago, the U.S. has launched over 400 military interventions, mostly into "undeveloped" areas, bullying our global "manifest destiny." All these interventions have blatantly violated a long list of international and domestic laws, and the Constitution, all of which the U.S. government is obligated to obey. Only 5 of those 400 interventions were legally authorized by the Constitutionally required declaration of war. There is rarely any opposition voiced by elected and appointed officials, including the President, who have sworn to uphold the law and Constitution as a condition of their serving in office. The United States is a lawless nation-state. It calls itself a Constitutional democracy. It is not! It is a plutocracy and corporate oligarchy.

Tragically, "national security" matters are defined as such by only a few officials within the government who are not subject to scrutiny, and whose decisions are always shrouded in secrecy, making a mockery of democratic principles. Furthermore, careful study of military and covert interventions of the U.S., once the record becomes public, reveals that virtually all of the original and continuing rationalizations for the interventions are lies, or are so deceptive as to be fraudulent. The sad truth from the empirical historical record is that the U.S. government generally lies about the nature and circumstances of its interventions. That can be counted on. If a representation turns out to be truthful, it is most likely because it is self-serving or accidental. When the government knows that its goals require illegal aggression, it must act without impairing the moral and political standing of the United States at home and abroad. This reality forces the government to choose covert operations requiring political proficiency in the principle of "plausible deniability." Of course, "plausible deniability" is double-speak for lying.

Political leaders, governments, and popular movements that have been labeled "terrorist" or "Communist" or "drug traffickers," for example, by the U.S. government, as threatening "national security," virtually always are involved in efforts seeking self-determination from U.S. foreign (economic) policy objectives. Those leaders, governments, and movements praised and/or supported by the U.S. government virtually always represent regimes supporting repression of their own peoples’ efforts for justice and self-determination, assuring the kind of "stable" political climate necessary to please the needs of financial investors and corporate profiteers. The presumption, in fact, is that the U.S. government lies, virtually all the time, and the documented, historical record clearly reveals this! If and when the tables are ever turned, let there be mercy on our souls.

Saddam Hussein and Slobadan Milosevic are the latest political leaders that the U.S. has demonized and placed on the global hit list in order to further U.S. articulated strategic interests. The U.S. government has a long history of using this tactic, this pretext, to whip up the popular frenzy and hysteria needed to justify illegal aggression. Some of the earlier unfortunate victims of U.S. demonization campaigns have been Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Guatemalan President Jacabo Arbenz in 1954, Dr. Salvador Allende in Chile in the early 1970s, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua in the 1980s, Manual Noriega of Panama in the 1980s, Muammar Kadaffi of Libya, 1980s to present, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s, Kim Il Sung and son, Kim Jong Il in North Korea, 1950s to the present, and President Fidel Castro of Cuba, 1960s to the present, among others. This pretext provides wide flexibility accommodating the often changing needs of U.S. policy, either for supporting or overthrowing a leader, depending on the strategic interests of the moment and the geographical region. It also provides convenient enemies in a post-Cold War era where the Pentagon needs justification for continued large military budgets.

Most people in the United States (myself included), whether political officials, "experts," academicians, or ordinary citizens, remain ignorant of the cultures, religions, history, issues, or unique circumstances of the countries and regions where the U.S. intervenes. Since the United States brutally conquered the Indigenous Americans, it has enjoyed the protection of being surrounded by safe territory (oceans, friendly Canada, and quasi-subordinate Mexico). Its comfortable geographical position, along with its arrogant, imperial self-righteousness, have contributed immensely to a people very isolated from global realities, a people quite ignorant about public affairs in a global context. In truth, having a consciousness beyond the parochial matters, albeit necessary, of making money and surviving as a frenzied consumer, has not seemed important. In fact, having a global and ecological consciousness is very threatening to the comfortable continuation of AWOL.

In the case of the Middle East, the most heavily armed region in the world thanks in large part to the United States, Westerners continue to be insensitive or ignorant of the fact of colonial interventions, and that these interventions have created long-standing disputes over national boundaries and control of oil and other resources. These interventions, and the manner in which the U.S. has promoted Israeli interests over Arab ones, have created deep resentment among Arab people. The U.S. defiance of a number of United Nations resolutions condemning Israel for its pattern of interventions into neighboring Arab countries and Palestine has left deep scars. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, killing more than 17,000 people, and its bombing of Iraq’s nuclear plant in 1981, are examples of brutal aggression for which Israel received no punishment despite U.N. condemnation. Iraq’s history with Kuwait, and the issues that Iraq expressed as reasons for their invasion of Kuwait in 1990, are simply not acknowledged, not addressed whatsoever. Thus there is no context presented for us to understand, no diplomacy considered appropriate. It is just "naked aggression" deserving of bombing and more bombing, then murderous sanctions against the Iraqi people.

Meanwhile, the majority of U.S. Americans continue their Christmas shopping knowing little about the effects of the renewed December 1998 bombings, and feeling virtually nothing for the Iraqi people. A million Iraqi civilians, many of them children, have died as the result of the sanctions imposed as a punishment on Iraq. Forty thousand children die every day in the world for lack of nourishment, while in the U.S., millions of people collectively spend $5 billion each year on special diets to lower calorie consumption. U.S. children have more pocket money–$230 per year–than the half billion poorest people alive. The average U.S. family affects the environment 40 times more than a family in India, 100 times more than a family in Kenya. Annually, the U.S. consumes 45 barrels of oil per person, compared to Hungary with comparable figure 18, Brazil 3, India 1, and Kenya 1/2 barrel per person. The U.S. imports far more oil today than it did in 1973. As of 1990 there were 42 million more U.S. cars on the road burning 27 million more gallons of gas every day than in 1973. The rich nations consume per capita, with a small minority, 15 times the amount of oil used by the poor nations with the majority of the world’s people.

In sum, AWOL, and the Western way of life in general, pose a dangerous, imminent threat to all life on the planet. We in the West have refused to seriously pursue radical conservation or alternative decentralized energy strategies using replenishable resources. We continue to be addicted to oil, a substance that took four billion years to form, but will be entirely depleted in four more decades after only a century of exploitation. AWOL requires the majority of the world’s people to remain poor, often in misery, in order to feed its insatiable appetites. AWOL also destroys the ecosystem, the environment that we are absolutely dependent upon for our survival. When the poor revolt to achieve some justice, we label them "Communist," or "narcoguerilla," or "terrorist," or when a political leader stands up to the United States we call him/her a "Hitler-like devil," thereby justifying some of the most barbaric and criminal acts known to humankind. But to our citizenry these U.S. acts of aggression are articulated as necessary responses in order that our "good" overcomes their "evil." Thus U.S. intervention is considered noble. Case closed! The conventional belief that the West has been on the defensive against aggressive forces, both during the Cold War and since, is pure mythology.

Again, the question is, not who is going to stop Saddam Hussein, or Kadaffi, or Kim Jong Il, or whoever is the bad guy du jour. The question is: Who is going to stop US? With the defeat of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Bloc, the vulnerability of "Third World" nations and peoples has increased. No matter how dysfunctional or repressive the Soviet Union was or wasn’t compared to the United States, it did offer some effective protection to revolutions of the poor, and deterrence to U.S. bully interventions. With the triumph of the "neoliberal" and "free" market and the accelerated advance of a global supermarket economy, the environment and the ecological integrity of the planet have become even more vulnerable. And the citizens of the developed market-dominated Western "democracies" find themselves increasingly nominal and impotent.

There is always a chance, the hope, that the grassroots of the United States and Western Europe will rise up in response to corporate oriented, oligarchic governments and the corresponding ecological crisis, perhaps along Green principles. There are many people in the U.S. and Europe who are already trying to simplify their lives, consuming less, while striving to expose the lies of government and directly resist the habitual, continuing illegal interventions orchestrated by the U.S. government. This is very promising. The December 1999 massive nonviolent demonstrations in Seattle protesting the WTO’s anti-labor, anti-environmental, anti-social policies is extraordinarily encouraging.

The Indigenous peoples are struggling worldwide to preserve what is left of their integrity, even increasing their commitments to resist further market encroachments and the cultural deracination that results. They are invaluable teachers for the so-called advanced, industrialized peoples. And there are numerous, relatively small (small is beautiful) efforts underway in countless locations throughout the world practicing survival out of necessity, utilizing small-scale appropriate technology, solar and replenishable energy resources, and functioning without dependence upon external inputs controlled by governments and their transborder corporate cohorts. The imposition of "neoliberal" economics and its requirement for ruthless economic restructuring has increased the number of the world’s impoverished people. Thus some have taken matters in their own hands with a spirit of self- and community-reliance based on local labor and resources. This may be the revolution that offers us the most hope, along with the Indigenous model, as we enter the next millennium. One thing is certain: Continuation of the carefree, Western consumptive model will assure our rapid extinction.

So the answer to the question, Who is going to stop us?, is the people, both here and everywhere, as we begin to see with our hearts and muster the courage to confront the political/economic powers that appear so intransigent. It will require people in the "First World" to break free from our materialist stupor so that our spirits and wisdom can be liberated to act with a revived consciousness of the interconnectedness of all of life. Certainly the human condition is facing grave threats from impending ecological imbalances, from new outbreaks of diseases, from famine, and from technological disruptions due to yet unforeseen system breakdowns.

If we don’t act as sensitive and sensible people of conscience, GAIA’s (the living earth) correction mechanisms will assure our extinction.

–George Kennan, Director of U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff, 1948

"Kiss my ass or I’ll kick your head in."

–Harold Pinter, British playwright, poet and actor,
summarizing U.S. foreign policy, 1998

U.S. President Bill Clinton has arrogantly, and foolishly, committed a number of egregious war crimes and crimes against peace. He unilaterally attacked sovereign Iraq with sophisticated weapons of lethal destruction, December 16-19, 1998. 425 of these weapons were Tomahawk Cruise missiles believed to have been tipped with radiation-producing, target penetrating "depleted" Uranium, similar to the ones used in Desert Storm by President George Bush against Iraq in January-February 1991. Clinton committed equally aggressive acts of war against Iraq in June 1993 and September 1996, and against sovereign nations Sudan and Afghanistan, respectively, on August 20, 1998. These crimes caused extensive damage to the infrastructure and environment of these countries, and the murders of undetermined numbers of civilians. All of these acts of war were initiated and carried out with absolutely no Constitutional or United Nations authorization. Whatever the articulated political rationale for it, this flagrant war-mongering has occurred without the support of lawful, deliberative democratic processes. And one of the notable features of the 78-day NATO-U.S. led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was the targeting and destruction of civilian infrastructure and facilities in violation of all laws of war.

Then there is the question of the brutal "United" Nations sanctions being imposed against the people of Iraq, first under President Bush and continued under President Clinton. Under international law sanctions are considered an act of war. It is important to understand that the UN is more than ever under the relentless thumb of Washington. It is the U.S. that, in effect, decides which and whether sanctions are to be imposed. Up to 6,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 are dying each month directly due to the sanctions, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) which is monitoring the tragedy. The sanctions, then, are equivalent to an active weapon of mass destruction against these innocent children. As such, these sanctions violate the United Nations (UN) Charter itself, various conventions protecting human rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the latter of which the United States has not ratified.

The fact that the sanctions, and bombings, are being directed against a country deemed "rogue" by the United States, when sanctions and condemnations against ally Israel for much worse transgressions against international law and neighboring countries have been ignored over and over again, is deepening a rage within the Arab world. This seething bitterness is likely to create dangerous, terrorizing consequences for generations. After all, it is obvious to most who is on the bombable side of the double standard, even if the United States chooses to be blind to this reality. The fact that the U.S. and other western nations have been largely responsible for arming virtually all the Middle Eastern nations is simply glossed over. The discriminatory application of sanctions, disarmament, and bombings only against Iraq in a region where Israel is, in fact, known by much of the rest of the world to be the most violent, "rogue" nation, is foolish because it ignores context and principles of fairness. Only the United States and Britain, along with Israel, seem unable to comprehend the dangers of such blatantly uneven justice.

These criminal, lawless acts committed by the United States are extremely dangerous, not just to their immediate victims, but because they are committed with such absolute, total impunity from any accountability, domestically and/or internationally. There is no existing democratic force/process that is willing, or able, to enforce the laws and impose sanctions against the outlaw nation, the United States of America. U.S. policies are continually made unilaterally, according to grotesque, self-serving double standards. They use bully forces totally out of control and increasingly threatening to the hearts, minds, and bodies of the majority of the world’s peoples. The entire world is extraordinarily endangered because of this behavior and the arrogance behind it. As the U.S. government insists on committing unilaterally initiated acts of wholesale terrorism, the people of the U.S. become ever more vulnerable to the likelihood of increased acts of retail terrorism by the desperate, enraged voices of the voiceless.

It would indeed be extraordinarily courageous if the elected U.S. Congressional representatives chose to uphold their Constitutional oath of office by vigorously challenging authentic impeachable offenses of Presidential acts of war directed against sovereign nations. Instead, for example, Congress in 1998-99 focused on impeaching President Clinton for lying about consensual sex, and perhaps about other prurient activities. Acts of war require Constitutional deliberation by Congress. If the Congress concludes that the President has unilaterally conducted war, then impeachment is, conceivably, mandated. If the Congress had deliberatively concluded in advance the political risks of, and genuine defensive needs for a declaration of war as the Constitution requires by law then, of course, the President would serve as the Constitutional commander-in-chief of the armed forces in carrying out the Congressional declaration. Genuine and conscientious adherence to this process could go a long way toward ending the historic pattern of dangerous U.S. imperialism as initiated by virtually every 20th Century president. U.S. aggressive hegemony has greatly contributed to an increasingly unjust and unstable world.

If we are to survive the next millenium with dignity (or at all) in a world already comprised of 210 nations and 6 billion people, the U.S. must learn to abide by an ecological politics of justice for all species, for all peoples.

–Declaration of Independence of the 13 United States of America, July 4, 1776

"I think our interest is to favor the undertaking of the Road, as it will help bring the Indian problem to a final solution."

–General William Tecumseh Sherman, Commander of the
U.S. Army West, 1876, talking about need for "extermination"
of the Indians to make way for the transcontinental railroad

"Indians should leave their reservations and become more like us. They have a primitive lifestyle."

–U.S. President Ronald Reagan, 1988

"Whole tribes have become extinct….For this destruction the coming of the white man is chiefly responsible. Neither in war nor in peace has the Indian been able to stand against or beside him….History teaches that inferior people must yield to a superior civilization in one way or another. They must take on civilization or pass out."

–The History of the United States, Garner & Lodge, 1906

"When the missionaries came, we had the land and they had the bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the bible."

–Jomo Kenyatta (date unknown)

When I first returned home from military service Vietnam, I believed that U.S. political policies and the resultant brutal realities of our intervention in Vietnam represented an aberration in U.S. history. Not long after return to civilian life I reexamined the history of Indigenous Americans and their treatment by European colonialists, and found that, in fact, what happened in Vietnam followed an entrenched historical pattern.

I had been born in Geneva, New York, which was called Kanadesaga during the 1700s when it was a central location for the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy. In 1779, General George Washington of the Continental Army ordered General Sullivan to eradicate the Indians in central and western New York State with the following command: "The immediate objects are the total destruction of their settlements. The Indian country is not to be merely overrun, but destroyed." General Sullivan’s diaries, posthumously published, describe in proud detail the brutal murders of Indian men, women, and children, and destruction of food stocks, homes and other storage buildings, as Sullivan’s men marched in August and September 1779 from present day Elmira, New York, north to today’s Geneva and then west to Geneseo. I thought, "My God, these horrific tactics and this kind of terror, and the attitudes of the military and their political leaders have not changed much in 190 years!"

In the 1870s, nearly 100 years after General Sullivan’s exploits, General Sherman of Civil War fame, head of the U.S. Army West, talked of "extermination" as a solution to the "Indian Problem." Sherman was clearing lands to assure the continued westward expansion of the white settlers. Again, the tactics used were so demonic as to be utterly shameful and almost beyond comprehension.

As the truth about my country’s shameful history began to sink in, I became psychically devastated. At first, I carefully kept my discoveries to myself as a deep secret. I did not want to acknowledge that my heritage, the cultural ethos of the nation of my birth, was so scarred, so arrogant, that my own identity as an "American" citizen was psychologically at risk. With whom could I begin to discuss these profound issues? If a historical pattern of arrogance, imperialism, and various forms of covert and overt intervention/aggression was, as I began to sense, my country’s real heritage, then how could I begin to heal, to become an authentic human being in a culture that seemed so plastic, and where increasing material consumption seemed to be the real religion?

Part of my pursuit of the truth about my country has led me to travel to different sections of the United States, and to some of the countries where the U.S. government has decided, for whatever reason, to be involved covertly as well as overtly. I have wanted to learn more about the attitudes of our own citizenry as well as the effects of U.S. forms of intervention and aggression on the peoples and cultures in places such as Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Haiti, North and South Korea, Japan, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine, among others.

In order to pursue our national "security" interests–i.e., to be able to continue the exploitation of people and natural resources which enables us to meet the insatiable, unlimited demands of the American Way of Life (AWOL)–U.S. foreign policy must carry out campaigns of illegitimate and illegal aggression. In order to conduct these unacceptable (if known) activities without impairing the moral and political standing of the U.S., either domestically or internationally, the policies must occur in such a manner that the official responsibility of the U.S. government can be disclaimed. This principle is called "plausible deniability." Thus the use of various covert actions, counterinsurgency and special warfare operations, "low intensity" warfare, and the proliferation of "American assets" trained and assisted in the skills of mayhem and terror, have become an essential aspect of U.S. foreign policy. They assure the "stability" necessary for corporate rape and profiteering and the unchecked continuation of AWOL.

Let’s examine the record. For example, current U.S. concerns about insurgencies threatening "stable" economics within Mexico and Colombia follow an old, old pattern. These are two countries where I have spent time examining the cultures, the insurgencies, and the effects of U.S. "involvement." There have been at least 11 documented military interventions into Mexico since 1836, and 6 interventions into Colombia since 1868. This history is part of a long, sordid record of U.S. military incursions throughout Latin America (at least 112 interventions into 23 Latin American countries since 1831), and worldwide (at least 400 interventions into the sovereignty of over 100 countries since 1798). More insidiously, the U.S. has engineered at least 6,000 major and minor covert operations throughout the world–destabilizing and overthrowing governments, plotting assassinations, etc. The U.S. has threatened the use of nuclear weapons on more than 20 occasions, and used them at least twice.

This record indicates that the USA is the most extensive and destructive empire in human history. Hans Koning declared in Columbus: His Enterprise (Monthly Review Press, 1976), "What sets the West apart is its persistence, its capacity to stop at nothing." Astute U.S.-born cultural historian Lewis Mumford concluded in Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of Power (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), "Wherever Western man went and goes, slavery, robbery, lawlessness, culture wreaking, and the outright extermination of both wild beasts and tame men accompany him." And MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, long-time diagnostician of the nature and extent of the U.S. political-economic empire, continues to remind us that the U.S. government and its policies will not tolerate genuine self-determination (i.e., democracy), at home or abroad, under any circumstances that threaten our freedom to rob and pillage (our fifth freedom) for the benefit of a few. In fact, as he and other historical scholars dare point out, there is an overwhelming, documented record of extreme hostility directed by the U.S. government against democratic efforts. One of England’s most renowned playwrights, Harold Pinter, who learned about empire from understanding his own country’s history, has declared "the crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, remorseless, and fully documented, but nobody talks about them." And social critic Gore Vidal has bemoaned that virtually all people born in the United States have been conditioned to believe that Americans possess neither empire nor a ruling class.

The tragedy for me, as I mentioned earlier, is that this ruthless empire happens to be the nation of my birth, of my heritage. I assume this psychic tragedy is experienced by millions of other U.S. Americans as well. And though I began a healing process long ago, my realization about empire continues to be painful for me, a one-time true believer in the American Way of Life (AWOL) and all that I thought it stood for. Healing has necessitated coming to terms with this reality, talking about it, striving to expose and address the incredible lies and harm being done, and articulating an alternative way of walking the talk, and talking the walk. It isn’t easy, but this path of yearning to speak and live truth as a global citizen, finding others along the way doing the same, is a liberating journey.

Never before has it been so important to present a truthful perspective of the dark history of tenacious U.S. hegemony, arrogance, ignorance, and racism. One of the significant contributions veterans of the U.S. military and security/intelligence establishment can offer the U.S. citizenry, and the global audience beyond, is an honest, experiential critique and exposé of the multiple costs to the cultural, ecological, material, and spiritual world exacted by an empire driven by the insatiable demands of AWOL and its corporations. This is, to me, the importance of organizations like Veterans For Peace. The importance of veterans’ contributions cannot be underestimated in striving to formulate a healthy, sustainable paradigm to replace our destructive, imperialistic one. The perspective of veterans who are struggling to preserve conscience and integrity enables our nation to see more clearly the lies and myths of self-righteous empire; the pain and suffering that our policies and values have wreaked upon the world’s people, including our own, and the earth’s precious resources; and that striving for genuine truth and justice, though often painful, is an important process in recovering imagination and beginning the transformation toward a new paradigm rooted in sacredness, nonviolence, and sustainability. Perhaps we will recover the ability to see with our hearts, and not just our eyes and minds so often corrupted by greed.

The dispossession of Indigenous peoples, arguably the ancient owners of land in the Western hemisphere, became the defining and enabling experience of the "American Republic." From this experience came the arrogant inference, still vital today, even if wounded, that Europeans built a new economy through hard-earned, possessive individualism, and a new Lockean, liberal politics. This profound LIE continues to be a fundamental belief underlying the political, economic, and cultural life of the United States. A popular U.S. history text after the turn of the century, The History of the United States (Garner and Lodge, 1906), attributed the genocide of the original "Americans" since the arrival of Columbus to "the coming of the white man," boasting that "neither in war nor peace has the Indian been able to stand against or beside him….History teaches that inferior people must yield to a superior civilization in one way or another. They must take on civilization or pass out." In other words, they must become assimilated or be eliminated. This racism, this arrogance, is deeply embedded in U.S. consciousness, this belief that "children of darkness" or "savages" stand in the way of progress and liberation. How we–so-called advanced, progressive people–can be so blind to our plundering of the earth and her ecosystem, and the cultural relationships that form the foundation for our evolutionary survival, is perhaps one of the great mysteries of our time. Who is calling who "savage" or "children of darkness"?

The white man’s burden of winning the West has now turned into winning the world–seeking a global, homogenous culture of imposed materialism. The U.S. possesses but 4.5% of the world’s population but absolutely insists on a way of life ("national security") that collectively consumes nearly half of the world’s resources while producing similar percentages of corresponding pollution. And when all the "First World" (and former "Second World"/Socialist) populations are included, 25% of the world’s population consumes approximately 85% of the world’s resources. This leaves 75% of the world’s people in the "Third World" (4.5 billion) squeezed with but 15% of the resources. This is truly the Mother of all structural problems and spiritual challenges. Without comprehensively addressing and correcting this disparity, our species (and many other species) has absolutely no hope for survival; in fact, our extinction is assured.

Western appetites, coming almost as a birthright without any thought, absolutely require political-economic policies that assure continued theft and exploitation around the world. This is the fifth and only freedom that the U.S. seriously defends and fights for. Such rapaciousness has been rationalized to allow us as a people to feel okay about our brand of intervention. We are always told that U.S. foreign intervention is necessary in order to promote "manifest destiny," to preserve the "Monroe Doctrine," to fight evil "Communism," or, more recently, to combat "narcotrafficking" and "narco-guerrillas," and "terrorism." To the uninformed these pretexts sound so good, so noble. But as many of us know from experience, the results are repression, unjust and inhumane practices, often times invisible ("low intensity warfare"), and, discovered or not, so horrific as to be almost beyond the comprehension of most citizens. Meanwhile, protection of the interests of corporations and a wealthy elite by United States government policies continues unchecked. Sadly, these practices and policies are absolutely inevitable unless the fundamental ethos of the U.S. culture undergoes a profound reexamination and radical transformation. In U.S. empire’s wake, everybody and everything has become an endangered species. Assimilate into the religion of consumption or be eliminated for being in the way.

In the post-Vietnam era of U.S. history, politicians have bemoaned the emergence of the "Vietnam Syndrome." This national "sickness"–the political inability to dispatch U.S. military personnel into foreign interventions unless the action is to be of short duration, and decisive with minimal U.S. casualties–has proven to be politically frustrating. However, it has led to the increasing sophistication of the military doctrine euphemistically called "low intensity warfare," a fancier, expanded version of the older counterinsurgency doctrine. "Low intensity warfare" is not really less intensive for its victims elsewhere, but it intends to be "low visibility warfare" to the U.S. population at home, enabling U.S. and transborder corporate economic interests to be forcefully but "quietly" shaped and nourished through a variety of military, paramilitary, covert, economic, political, and communication methods. As mentioned above, if the U.S. population knew of the existence or true nature of this intervention, many would disapprove. Thus, politically, "plausible deniability" is an important "necessity" for conducting illegitimate and illegal aggression without impairing the moral and political standing of the United States. Thus covert actions have become the primary course of operation.

Now, at the turn of the 21st century, we are in the post-Cold War era of unipolar, Pax Americana, "neoliberal" economics, where the only acceptable political, even moral, value is a privatized, "free" global market–absolutely unfettered world capitalism. Everything and everybody is now or is designed to be for sale to the highest bidder, including culture and spirituality. All life is rapidly becoming commodified, privatized, and unregulated. The United States government and the economic forces that control it are the most significant driving forces behind the spread of this "no limits" model, pushing it on us with religious fervor. And the more addicted the citizenry becomes to increased consumption, the more entrenched these politics become. Under this model the transborder corporations now have the power to force national governments to defend corporate interests whenever such interests are in conflict with those of the people whose interests the governments have been elected to protect.

The imposition of this neoliberal policy requiring global economic reconstruction (privatization and deregulation) and cultural homogenization (assimilation or elimination) could be called war by another name. It tries to force everyone into a consumptive and cash, versus subsistence, economy; it accelerates downsizing of employment and increases the number of contingency employees; and it is threatened by standards designed to protect our sacred environment and fair and safe working conditions for employees, because such standards interfere with the goal of maximizing profits for the few. Furthermore, this model dramatically increases the misery level for growing numbers of the human population, contributing to marked increases in psychological stress and alienation, malnourishment, disease, and premature death. And it dramatically speeds up the depletion of sacred, finite natural resources while increasing pollution, foolishly threatening the health of our earth’s ecosystem, risking extinction of our entire species and all life as we know it. It is a fatal war against the people, especially the growing numbers of "have nots," and the earth.

The current Indigenous organizing within southern Mexico in response to imposition of the neoliberal economic model is one clear illustration of the clash between paradigms. The Indigenous live a relatively autonomous, culturally established subsistence model within the local carrying capacity of nature, having struggled to survive for five centuries since the European conquest. The new, "progressive" model aggressively insists that the Indigenous assimilate into a consumption and cash dependency model, where profits and greed of distant owners dictate the end of local autonomy, of culture, of nature.

Many people throughout Mexico, the United States, and the remainder of the world resonate with the Indigenous struggle, and are enraged by the systematic campaign of repression being waged against them by the Mexican government with the assistance of U.S. intelligence, military, and counterinsurgency resources. In April 1998 a Veterans For Peace (VFP) delegation traveled to the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Oaxaca to learn more of the U.S. role there. A report was prepared, Veterans For Peace Tour Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico, Bring Back a Story of National Shame, Ours, by VFP delegation member Wilson "Woody" Powell (May 7, 1998, available from Woody at woodyp1@aol.com. Also, see research booklet, The Slippery Slope: U.S. Military Moves into Mexico (updated April 1998) by this author, viewable on the Nonviolence Web . There is talk of another, perhaps more comprehensive, VFP delegation returning to Mexico in the future. A number of other organizations such as Pastors For Peace and Global Exchange also regularly dispatch delegations and observers to southern Mexico to document the continued repression and the U.S. role in it.

VFP members and chapters around the U.S. are part of increased national efforts to expose the role of the U.S. in its various forms of imperialism and arrogance. Whether to expose U.S. support of counterinsurgencies against the poor in Colombia and Mexico; or to close the School of Americas (SOA); or to lift the sanctions and lawless blockade against Iraq; or to lift the sanctions and illegal blockage against Cuba; or to support a new campaign to disarm the world of small arms; or efforts to convince the U.S. government to sign the International Land Mine Treaty, etc., etc.; the activities of VFP and others are very important.

A popular movement for a new peace through genuine justice is enhanced when we share our thoughts and activities with one another. It stimulates ideas and can be spiritually uplifting. It is difficult to confront and expose the crimes and transgressions of our country as it continues to shroud itself in self-righteousness. We may often feel lonely, and certainly frustrated. But by working together we can build support for a new perspective that exposes and discontinues the old lies and myths. We can offer courage to one another as we take part in building a new conscience for the transformation of the United States of America. We need you!

The U.S. military "victory" in the 1991 unprecedented technologically detached, brutal war against pathetic Iraq created an equally unprecedented dangerous threat to the lives of the majority of the people of the world, and to the planet herself and her millions of species. Manifest Destiny is now a unipolar Pax Americana, a new/old world order in brutal U.S. style, a grotesque and nightmarish assault on all dignity and life on Planet Earth. There does not appear to be any other force available to stop the spread of its destructive violence. With the elimination of the USSR as a Cold War "enemy," and with the U.S. manipulative destruction through sheer bully bribery of the United Nations to support the bombing of Iraq, nothing seems in the way of the U.S. empire causing dangerous, even terminal, havoc with the survival of the human race and much of the ecological fabric upon which we, as a species, are absolutely dependent. Any person, group, or nation–or nature herself for that matter–that is perceived as interfering with or defying the "national security" interests of the United States, as defined, of course, by the U.S., becomes immediately subject to being destroyed, devastated, eliminated, exterminated–i.e., subjected to the "Final Solution," as was experienced by many over the centuries, such as the Native Americans in the " New World" and the Jews in Europe.

The people of the United States have become Nazified, almost totally dehumanized. Most people in the U.S. have become grotesquely complicit with the means necessary for maintaining the empire, i.e., the American Way Of Life (AWOL). Their silence or, in the case of Iraq, enthusiastic, gleeful support for the most barbaric and intense bombing in military history was so diabolical as to be beyond human comprehension. Recently, a friend of mine watched a historical documentary about Hitler and Nazi Germany. The German people, everywhere, were waving the German flag with swastika, and hosting parades for the army, celebrating Germany’s aggression against Poland and Czechoslovakia.

During the relentless January-February 1991 bombing of the Iraqis, I spent most of my time in seclusion in my boyhood home in rural, southwestern New York State, contemplating the meaning of this darkness. Surrounded by neighbors flying both yellow ribbons and U.S. flags, I sought out clues as to what the Great Spirit might be calling me to do, or simply how to be. It seemed like I had never experienced such anguish as I was feeling about the victims of our bombs halfway around the world, and about the dehumanized automatons that it seemed the U.S. citizenry had become, at a level deeper than I had realized. Was I experiencing the death of my last thin thread of hope for "America?"

The Western mind, the Western way, really is diabolical beyond comprehension. The Columbus legacy is heavy, and I believe we need to undergo an unprecedented, radical transformation of consciousness, something so historic as to be beyond imagination. The inner message I continued to hear was: Be patient; you will know in time what to do, how to be. You must be prepared to be an instrument for love, justice and truth. Have faith that the way will be shown. With some difficulty I continued to let go, because the truth was, I did not have a clue as to what to do or how to be. So I continued in contemplative seclusion for several months.

A significant new insight, or new love, entered my life during the period of bombings. My seclusion was regularly interrupted by a series of very personal, and, I believe, very prophetic conversations with Seneca Indians. Our paths converged through a profound connection. I was born on July 4, 1941, in Geneva, New York, in the Finger Lakes region. At one time, Geneva, then called Kanadesaga, had been a major center of the Seneca Nation. But in early September 1779, General John Sullivan, with 5,000 men of the Continental army, carried out General George Washington’s orders: "The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of [the Indian] settlements… [The Indian country] is not to be merely overrun, but destroyed." The Senecas were routed, many murdered, all their homes and crops destroyed, and the survivors driven into Southwestern New York State and points further west. Most of the remaining Senecas today live in Southwestern New York State, the majority on two reservations in Cattaraugus County, not far from the small town where my family moved in 1951 from Geneva, New York. In a way, my own life had followed the Seneca "trail of tears." But this only set up the geographical convenience for our meeting. A more serendipitous force was at work.

Floyd Redeye, a Seneca, became a good friend during the bombings. In the early 1980s he lost his aboriginal land to a New York State highway route, land he and his ancestors had occupied from the late 1700s, after they had been routed from Kanadesaga (present-day Geneva). As Floyd described the trickery and deceit used to rob him of his ancestral land, I was fighting my own tears, and working on calming my anger. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Seneca Tribal Council, under pressure from the State of New York, had declared Floyd Redeye a non-Indian (unbeknown to Floyd), and the state was able to take his land through the legal provision of eminent domain as if the property was privately owned. Aboriginal land is sovereign property of Native Americans, not subject to eminent domain unless, of course, through trickery and pressure, the land is declared non-Indian, private property. Floyd subsequently learned of this trick when he saw the New York highway equipment getting ready to gorge his sacred land. Outraged that no one had ever spoken to him about this matter, he proceeded with a handful of other Seneca Indians to sit firmly in front of the road equipment, blocking its forward movement with their bodies. This occurred on several occasions, and forced a temporary showdown, delaying completion of the highway construction for a number of months.

On September 1, 1987, while Floyd Redeye was visiting his Seneca blood brother near Concord, California, he was shocked, along with millions of others, by the news that a U.S. Navy munitions train, accelerating to over three times the legal speed limit, had viciously assaulted several people who had been peacefully protesting by blocking the shipment of lethal weapons from the Concord Naval Weapons Station. Many of these weapons were destined to be used against the people in Central America who were expressing various forms of revolt against the unjust oligarchies in their native countries which were forcing virtually all the small farmers and working class people into misery and starvation. One of the demonstrators assaulted at Concord, of course, was myself.

A mutual acquaintance discovered that Floyd wanted to meet me, and arranged our first meeting, which occurred shortly after the U.S. had launched its genocidal bombing of the Iraqi people and I had begun my contemplative stay at my boyhood home. It was a connection of soul brothers. We shared our experiences of blocking white man’s machinery, of challenging the continued galloping of the Western mind, of the Western way. We were both shocked by and grieving over the U.S. bombing of the Cradle of Civilization in the Middle East. The Columbus Enterprise knows no limits. Will it end with the d
estruction of all life, or will there be an unpredicted transformation of consciousness?

When blocking the road equipment, Floyd was opposed by a number of other Senecas, including one of his own blood brothers, who sided with white authorities from the New York State agencies and the local police, all uniting to remove Floyd and the few others at his side. Floyd calls those Senecas red apples: red on the outside, but white inside. From the beginning, Floyd called me a reverse apple: white on the outside, but red inside. This became one of our attractions to each other, of course. We are both seeking an end to the Columbus Enterprise, and a re-creation, or resurrection, of a more primitive, spiritually alive consciousness.

The blocking experience took an emotional toll on Floyd. He and his wife have raised three children, all now grown and working in professions. At 69 years of age, he hobbles around with arthritic knees, one of which is a plastic substitute. He has a Veterans Administration rated disability stemming from injuries suffered in combat in Korea. Floyd has given a lot to the white man’s world order. He is a retired Master Sergeant after a 31-year career in the U.S. military, having served in combat situations in three wars, WW II, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

After retirement from the military Floyd returned to his family’s aboriginal land on the Allegany Indian (Seneca) Reservation at and around Salamanca in Southwestern New York State. He was already saddened, and angry, about the federal government’s Kinzua Dam and reservoir project in the 1960s that had carved out a third of the aboriginal land on the Allegany Reservation promised for eternity, first by President George Washington in the 1794 Pickering Treaty, and again by President John Adams in the 1797 Treaty at Big Tree. Floyd was working to recover his indigenous values and heritage. When New York State insisted on routing four-lane Highway 17 through the reservation in the 1980s, Floyd said, "Enough is enough." A section of the land to be taken was the ancestral Redeye allotment-another chunk of sacred reservation land taken by the white man’s way, the white man’s mind. Thus Floyd and the small band of Senecas attempted the physical blockade of construction of Highway 17.

The City of Salamanca, with about 6,000 white residents, sits almost entirely within the Allegany Reservation. The land had been taken from the Senecas in 1892, by mysterious circumstances, through an imposition of a 99-year lease. The whites felt certain there would be no Senecas left in 1991 to reclaim the land. That lease expired on February 19, 1991. Floyd and some of the other Sencecas, a minority, wanted the lease terminated at its expiration, and the land returned to the natives. A series of tactics by the local whites ended with a capitulation by the BIA-sanctioned Seneca Tribal Council (under pressures from the white Salamanca residents, from the Sate of New York, and the U.S. Congress), for money, to agree to the equivalent of an 80-year lease, that has, at least temporarily, left Salamanca in the possession of the white residents. But the Senecas I know are determined to not let this new lease, a continuation of a legacy of tricks and deceit that has robbed them of their land and heritage, stop them from continuing their struggling to reclaim their aboriginal rights and land. Incidentally, Floyd refused all money being offered by the state for the taking of his ancestral land. He said that by accepting the money he would be legitimizing the state’s theft of that land.

During my period of contemplative seclusion I thought a lot about the Iraqi people. But the images in my mind were not restricted to those in Iraq and Kuwait. What about the Palestinians! The Koreans! The people of East Timor! The Mozambiquans! The Blacks in South Africa! The Namibians! The Angolans! The Libyans! The Cubans! The Haitians! The Guatemalans! The Grenadans! The Panamanians! The Philippinos! The Mexicans! The Hondurans! The Chileans! The Peruvians! The Vietnamese! The Nicaraguans! The Salvadorans! The indigenous Americans! The Blacks kidnapped from their cultures in Africa to build the "New World’s" economy! Etc.!

For nearly a week I placed photographs of maimed and dead people from Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, the Philippines, and Indigenous Americans on my living room floor in front of the wood stove, about two dozen in all. I found myself looking closely at each photograph, sitting on the floor without my artificial legs, and conversing with each face, each person. "You are my brother, you are my sister, we are really one. I’m sorry you have had to pay such a price for having run into the Columbus Enterprise and all its spin-off and collateral enterprises," I cried. "The haves have become so cruel, so bestial, against the have-nots, and nature herself. Oh, my god, forgive us, forgive me," I moaned, as my weeping became steady. "Oh, great Spirit, help me feel my oneness with all of life, help me feel these people’s suffering as well as their visions for a just and fair world. Let my life express this oneness with them, including their suffering," I prayed out loud, over and over again. "We are not worth more, they are not worth less," I proclaimed almost endlessly through my weeping.

I had a number of meetings with Floyd, and sometimes with another Seneca, Lucy Watt, a good friend of Floyd’s. Usually we met at my boyhood home. We were meeting, then, not only at the spot on the globe where I roamed as a kid, but on soil once roamed by the Senecas. I came to feel extraordinarily close with these Senecas, because in the most profound sense, they knew deeper than anyone else I have met, just how intrinsically corrupt, how diabolical, this Western mind, this Western "civilized" way has been, and continues to be. I experience these feelings so deeply sometimes that I don’t know if I can express them adequately, so it was affirming to share together our mutual anguish, our sadness, anger and rage.

One day, Floyd drove me the 20-plus miles down Highway 17 from my home to point out the stretch of road and the area along the Allegheny River that had been the Redeye sacred land. He was obviously choked up, fighting back tears. Mine rolled down my cheeks. I know that we whites, and those that have adopted this Western way of thinking, always in pursuit of riches, have butchered life beyond comprehension. We were, at the time, bombing the shit out of defenseless Iraq. Here I was, riding with an indigenous Seneca who only a few years earlier had been declared a non-Indian by the BIA-sanctioned Seneca Tribal Council so that his land could be stolen by the white man’s agencies bent on completing a highway to facilitate "economic development" in Southwestern New York State. Where, when, does it end?

Floyd said to me, "The U.S. government could have avoided the bombing in Iraq. It was a conscious choice. It was so easy to bomb. I know this way of thinking." I replied, "And the people, they’re cheering, just as the German people cheered the exploits of Hitler and the German Army." Floyd and I were not cheering. We were crying. He looked at me in the car as we passed his sacred land, now lost, at least temporarily, to the white man’s "progress." He commented about the stars and stripes, the U.S. flag that was seen flying everywhere at that time. I don’t remember when I’ve seen so many U.S. flags flying as during that bombing onslaught. He said, "The flag, we call it ‘Old Gory.’ The red is our blood, ripped out of our bodies. The white, our bones, scattered around, buried, then dug up for highways." Though we were driving on New York State Highway 17, the "Southern Tier Expressway", there were moments I couldn’t tell whether I was in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, or at the end of the Seneca Trail of Tears. "Oh Great Spirit," I cried, " help me to be a peace warrior, give me the strength to continue to speak truth as I experien
ce it. Let me be open to your infinite wisdom and courage to continue on the trail as a recovering white male. The Columbus Enterprise must come to an end! Help me to be a creative force in pursuing a nonviolent, radical new vision while aiding in the death (radical transformation) of the ‘Enterprise.’"

I believe that only an apocalyptic awakening, a historically unprecedented radical change in the way we understand ourselves in relationship to everyone and everything else, can save us from extinction. A radical transformation of the Western, oligarchic way seems an absolute necessity if health is to be restored to the planet, enabling her to continue furnishing a life base for all species, including Homo sapiens. It seems that we are facing the choice between an ecological awakening, or death.