ZGram - 9/16/2001 - "A Call to Sanity: An Essay by Allan Savory"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

September 16, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

It seems almost irreverent to write my customary Sunday summary of
"Revisionist Week in Review" in light of what has happened with the attack
on New York and Washington.

Therefore, I am skipping my usual task and send you instead a very
thoughtful summary by a man who shows by example what happened to Rhodesia
when guerrilla motives and tactics were misunderstood by entrenched
traditional warfare specialists.

The source of this article is an organization called
general@lists.holisticmanagement.org .  The date is Saturday, September 15,
2001.  Its author is Allan Savory, in exile from Rhodesia.

[START]

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
=46irst War of the 21st Century. He has pledged to win it at a time and plac=
e
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.=20
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.=20
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" =1D 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'" =1D I lost the suppor=
t
of even my own party and ended up in  exile.=20

I use the similarities with Rhodesia because only the scale  differs.=20
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, =1D we will bring about counter retaliation at some time. Thi=
s
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.=20

I know many Americans,  including good friends of mine, will immediately
say,  "but our policies are not  harming them. =1D  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  "<bold>Until all people
feel secure and well governed, none  are</bold> =1D.  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?=20
Looking at our government I do not see  representation of many Americans.=20
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.=20

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=20
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:

=B7       I would recognize the need for statesmanship rather than  gut-leve=
l
politics.

=B7       I would do all in my power, working with our allies, to  bring the
perpetrators of the current violent actions to face international  justice.

=B7       I would not call it a war but rather focus on this as a  struggle
for worldwide peace involving our leadership of all  nations.

=B7       I would treat it with the utmost urgency, as this  horrifying act
has been a bigger blow than was the strike at Pearl  Harbor.

=B7       I would recognize that failure of the developed nations  to addres=
s
worldwide biodiversity loss, desertification and global climate  change and
social injustices will result in ever more horrifying events  involving
nuclear and biological weapons.

=B7       I would put the situation on a  "war footing' in terms of
seriousness and allocation of funds and people  no price is too high to pay
and, as in war, I would go beyond using only establishment bureaucrats and
experts.

=B7       I would task an expanded NSC with developing a  comprehensive
civilian and military strategy and monitoring system to address  over time
the root cause of most worldwide violence.=20

=B7       I would, as my duty to the nation, insist that this  expanded NSC
have free reign to investigate all aspects of our political,  economic,
educational, trade and business systems  there would be no sacred  cows.

=B7       To the expanded NSC I would appoint people who have a  track recor=
d
of understanding the underlying problems, social and economic
ramifications of destructive agricultural and land management policies,
trade  policies, and more that lead to poverty, frustration, displacement,
disease and  violence (there are many such people in America and Europe
consistently ignored  at present). And I would include people with a sound
knowledge of guerrilla  warfare as well as conventional warfare.

=B7       I would urge all politicians to accept the  recommendations of suc=
h
a strategic group in a non-partisan manner so that  implementation could
proceed rapidly in the interests of all  nations.

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.

[END]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"Now that the government has declared War on Terrorism, it appears that we
are headed for really big trouble.  Why?  Because when the government
declared War on Poverty we got more poverty, when they declared War on
Illiteracy we got more
illiteracy,  when they declared War on Crime we got more crime, and when
they declared War on Drugs we got more drugs.  Brace yourself for more
terrorism."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)