Our board member Lucina Kathmann presents the following reflection at the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara (27 November through 05 December 2010), the largest Spanish language book fair in the world. This presentation is a follow-up to her eye witness account of the savagery of the undeclared civil war in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (see her original report below). In this follow-up presentation, Lucina Kathmann reflects on the rising level of violence fueled in part by the easy availability of guns. Her reflection ponders the question of how and when to use armed intervention to fix profound social problems. Thank you for your attention, Nick Patricca

Thinking about Peace
a reflection by Lucina Kathmann

Do you have peace in your family?
Do you have peace in your body?
Do you have peace in your soul?

My Senegalese friend told me that to greet a person politely, you must ask these questions. Peace comes first.
Yet when we have it, we take it for granted, and when we see it slipping away, it is already very late. How do we get peace?
We have a lot of deficient ideas about how to restore peace when it is threatened. The shoot-'em-up film celebrates an apparently automatic return to peace when the ground is littered with the dead bodies of the bad guys. Other films show how we or they “won the war.” Generals recommend on television that fresh troops or more guns will bring peace. A little voice inside says this does not sound right. We know that with more troops we will not kill all the enemies or win the war. Yet these ideas are constantly refueled even today, and the arms dealers are the only ones to profit.

About Guns
The United States Constitution says the people have the right to bear arms. Two recent decisions of the US Supreme Court, in 2008 and 2010, permit virtually anyone who wants guns to own them. The 2008 decision struck down a ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. In 2010, another decision upheld this right in the states as well. The Court decided that the plaintiff, a Chicago citizen, could possess a gun, even a loaded one. Both were narrow decisions with the court split 5-4, which was little consolation to the mayor of Chicago. In a recent three month period, 32 schoolchildren had been killed with handguns in Chicago.
Guns are big business in the US. Almost anyone can buy a gun. From there it is an easy step to bring it to Mexico or anywhere else, with very bad results.
With knives or fists, a dispute in a neighborhood cantina takes only two normally trained policemen to put down. Once this disputatious person goes to Texas and brings back a gun, the stakes automatically are much higher. Not only might the intended victim be shot, so might the police and the passers by.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that 90% of the guns used in Mexico come from the United States. In September of 2010 Clinton acknowledged the responsibility of the United States in the violence that takes place in Mexico and vowed “We will keep seeking ways to stop the flow of guns and to reduce the demand for drugs.”

Positive Uses of Military Force
Arms are dangerous and armed interventions are dangerous. As dangerous as it is when our hotheaded neighbor obtains a gun, when we add many people with many guns, the stakes go up. Armies are associated with wars in everyone's mind including the soldiers. Armies do not automatically cause wars, but when they are on the scene, the potential for violence increases. Any decision to deploy an army must be reviewed constantly, with the option of withdrawal always on the table.
Yet not all armed intervention is futile. During the flooding of the Mississippi River in 1993, two states sent in National Guardsmen to sandbag the banks of the river and to prevent lawlessness from breaking out, as it is so likely to do in any emergency. Nobody would object to this. Yet even in that event the National Guard had to restrain people. A man was prosecuted for maliciously removing sandbags to strand his wife on the other shore.
In Haiti in 1994, foreign troops helped maintain order while Aristide was returned to power. In East Timor in 2006, peacekeeping forces helped in a transitional period. UN troops have helped in Bosnia since 1995, in the Congo at times, in Namibia, in Mozambique. There are many instances of military peacekeeping.
Many examples of effective action involve multinational troops, like NATO or the UN. Most are extremely restricted. In some cases the soldiers do not even have the authority to shoot. However sometimes multinational forces have waged military campaigns which went far beyond peacekeeping. The NATO bombing in Serbia and Kosovo in 1999 may have helped to restore peace in the former Yugoslavia, but it did much more collateral damage than ordinary peacekeeping military activities. It is still a subject of controversy.
There are examples of omission as well, cases where international peacekeeping forces did not go in, or did not go in fast enough, and maybe they should have. Many people believe that an opportunity to save many lives was lost through international military inaction in the genocide of the Tutsi people in Rwanda in 1994 in which 75% of the Tutsi population was exterminated.

Caveats
The dangers of using armed forces without the greatest care are obvious. Armed interventions have run amok for centuries. In the talks during this Bicentennial year I learned of Padre Hidalgo ordering a horrendous bloodbath in Guanajuato in 1810, the execution of many people for no strategic reason. During the 1980s, there were many massacres in Guatemala and El Salvador: Dos Erres, El Mozote, the Sumpul River. In the 90s there were massacres in Mexico in the wake of the Zapatista uprising, such as in Acteal. None were justifiable as military operations.
When one hears the stories of a family mowed down as an escaping member watched, one can sympathize easily with the survivor's desire for revenge. But revenge simply does not work. It does not bring back the Jews, the Armenians, the Tutsi. The tragedies are permanent; they are exactly the same if the perpetrators are pardoned as if they are executed. Possibly truth commissions, working to clarify the crimes after peace is restored, can help us learn from history.
Meantime, we would do very well to remember the Senegalese elders, checking day after day,

Do you have peace in your family?
Do you have peace in your body?
Do you have peace in your soul?

Acknowledgment:
Thanks to a fine article “Military Intervention” by Charles Hauss: http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/military_intervention/