The U.S. War Against Iraq

people-in our literature, ou1· conferences, our political proposals, and in the various social movements in which we participate- about the dynamics ofcynicism . In particular, we shouldtalkto people abouthow our political leaders continuously promote a cynical attitude toward idealism ofany kind, how the mass media insidiously reflects the notion thateveryonebas dark and ulterior motives, and how our religions and communities often recreate the same sense ofspiritual emptiness. We should find ways to remind people of movements like the civil rights and women's movements , which were genuinely idealistic and rejected the cynical beliefthattheway things were was the way theywere destined to be. All the while, it's crucial to call people to their true longings for connectedness andto systematically confront the psychological dangers that keep people from hearing that call. We need to try, in words and deeds, to make itsafefor peopleto experiencemore oftheinterdependence that they secretly desire and to rebel againstthe institutfons thattell them that such mutuality is shameful. We shouldn't need a catastrophe to open our hearts to each other and to feelings that are aching to be expressed. MARcn / APltll, 2003IVOLUME18, NUMllEit2 The U.S. WarAgainstIraq by Michael Lerner H ow COULD IT havecometothis?The fundamentally decent people ofthe United States destroying the homes and lives ofinnocent Iraqis,justtwenty -eight years after most Americans were so sickened by war-making that they chose to abandon the ill-conceived war in Vietnam! Once we remember or begin to allow ourselves to truly appreciate the Unity ofAll Being, we realizethat the damage being done to the Iraqi people is being done to everyone on the planet including ourselves. They are us. They are notthe"Other." How we live our lives is a manifestation ofan underlyingflow ofenergy inthe world-eitherthe energy oflove and caring for others, and trustthatthere is enough, that you are enough, and that there will be enough for all ofus; or the energy offear that manifests in a certaintythatthe"Other"will behurtful, that there is not enough love or recognition or food or material well-beingto go around, and that ifwe don'ttake care ofourselves first and foremost- and without regard to what hurt we may have to inflict on others in orderto achievethat-then others will hurtus or even kill us, and laugh atour naivete and stupidity. Every actthat we take in our lives, everyperception ofwhat is possible with others and for ourselves, is shaped by our larger assessment ofthe flow ofthis energyin theworldandhow it defines what is reality and what is fantasy. Theseperceptions in tum tell us what tothink about how much we can trustothers, whether we can pick up a hitchhiker or not, whether we can trust a stranger walking in our neighborhood or not, whether we can as a society "afford"to payfor health care for the uninsured or supply child care or quality education for ourchildren. The war is an expression in its most acute form of the alienation and "othering" ofpeople that is intensifying in daily life, a manifestation ofour isolation and inabilityto seethe Unity ofAll Being, to recognize our mutual interdependence, and our fear ofaffirming love and hope. Every ounce ofBeing mirrors the totality, and is shaped by the totality, so that our own personal alienation grows deeperthrough living in a world based on war, and our likelihood ofchoosing war increases through our own individual and societal alienation, loneliness, fear oflove andhope, and cynical realism. Much ofwhat we've done in Tikkun in the past seventeen years has been to chart the movement ofsocial hope and the ways it gets undermined byfear, leading tothe dissolution ofthe bonds oftrustbetween people. Thetriumph ofthecompetitive marketplace andits ethos ofnarcissistic, self-indulgent materialism bas been central to this, generating a worldview that everyone is outfor themselves and that no one can really count on others. Yetthere have been counter-tendencies , because human beings normally gravitate toward caring andconcern for each other, andthat has at times found expression in large-scale social movements (e.g., in the 1930s and again in the 1960s and 1970s) that articulated a vision ofhope. Those visions were systematically challenged in the name ofcynical realism, and the challengers often won the day because they could always refer back to our...