Nonviolence Is Not for Wimps: Musings of an Ohio Farmer

By Ralph Dull

Although How to Cope with a Hitler was the beginning motivation to write this book,

the inclusions grew like Topsy. The themes threading their way through the pages are

consistent even though interrupted by various personal experiences and musings. The

themes are relateda kinder and gentler everybody, active nonviolent solutions to

problems, improved leadership, and improved followers. Some proposals in my musings

may seem far-out, but if you can stay with me to the end, you may be satisfied. My

audacity to even consider a Soviet nonviolent response to Hitler need not discredit the

other musings herein.



Gandhi urged his countrymen, as they entered jail for the cause of freedom, to go as the bridegroom enters the brides chamberthat is, with a little trepidation but with great expectation. Such is the way we can approach the adventure of applied nonviolence.

Many examples of effective nonviolence are included in this book as well as a few light-hearted comments. One approach is to lift up logic and practicality. If Will Rogers were
still with us he would have a ball commenting on todays world, especially the lack of

logic in our war-making. Anyway, we have Michael Moore.



During my writing in early 2003, the air was full of war talk, so I couldnt resist doing

three chapters on emotions before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq. To add to those

musings my wife and I visited Iraq in June, 2003 to get a firsthand experience with the

people. Wars are graphic examples of human failures and frailty, so this book is intended

to give a nudge to Americans to think for themselves, create more friends, and lose some

foes. Im suggesting that is a more efficient way to reach our long-term goals than to bomb and kill and threaten.

The book may be interesting, helpful, or provoking (entertaining) for anyone, including readers who differ with me. There are musings about what could be, throughout the book, and parts of my life experience related to the theme are included.

Please forgive me for being a little flippant, intolerant occasionally, or letting you finish sentences at times.

Ralph Dull

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 10, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469107110

Ralph Dull

Ralph Dull, the author, was born in 1929 in a farmhouse where he still works on the farm with sons and grandsons when not traveling with his wife to other countries, which are 48 in number so far. He lettered in four sports in high school and attended Manchester College and Purdue University. A ten-year partnership with his father was interrupted by Selective Service who ordered two years’ work in Baltimore slums as an alternative to military service. During the Vietnam War Ralph was twice a candidate for Congress. The Dulls have hosted a steady stream of foreigners in their home, sometimes for years. Following a six-month experience on a Soviet collective farm in 1989, they published Soviet Laughter, Soviet Tears. Also authored was a small book for Soviet farmers, which in addition was distributed to all members of the Ukrainian Parliament

Book preview

Copyright © 2004 by Ralph Dull.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

24876

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1  BUT WHAT ABOUT HITLER?

CHAPTER 2  WHY WE FOLLOW, AND CONSEQUENCES

CHAPTER 3  CAUSES AND ALTERNATIVES TO WAR

CHAPTER 4  THREE CASES OF APPLIED NONVIOLENCE

CHAPTER 5  GERMANY 1914-1934

CHAPTER 6  THE SOVIET UNION IS INVADED

CHAPTER 7  AN ALTERNATIVE RESPONSE TO HITLER

CHAPTER 8  ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT

CHAPTER 9  PEARL HARBOR

CHAPTER 10  MORE CASES OF SUCCESSFUL NONVIOLENCE

CHAPTER 11  QUOTES

CHAPTER 12  BOSNIA

CHAPTER 13  UNARMED ARMY

(NONVIOLENCE IS NOT FOR WIMPS)

CHAPTER 14  EMOTIONS BEFORE THE INVASION OF IRAQ

CHAPTER 15  EMOTIONS DURING THE INVASION OF IRAQ

CHAPTER 16  EMOTIONS AFTER THE INVASION OF IRAQ

CHAPTER 17  MY EXPERIENCES IN IRAQ

CHAPTER 18  FURTHER REFLECTIONS

APPENDIX I  IRAQ HISTORY

APPENDIX II  RUNNING FOR CONGRESS

APPENDIX III  CORN FOR TAX DRAMA

APPENDIX IV  PIG IN A POKE TAX DRAMA

APPENDIX V  ESSAY ON SANCTIONS

APPENDIX VI  FAMINE AND BIOTECHNOLOGY

APPENDIX VII  WHEN YOUR ONLY TOOL IS A HAMMER

APPENDIX VIII  THE AMERICAN MILITARY EMPIRE:

A THREAT TO HUMAN RIGHTS?

APPENDIX IX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Much appreciation to my wife Chris for endless word processing, copyediting, and feeding me helpful emails. We had quality time together.

A thank you to Virginia Baron who examined the first crude draft, giving detailed critique but encouraging appraisal. Bill Shaw and John Swomley also reviewed a rough draft. It was like asking them to help make a silk purse out of sow’s ear.

Two books were helpful for background and personal experience: Defying Hitler by German citizen Sebastian Haffner, and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges.

CHAPTER 1

BUT WHAT ABOUT HITLER?

As a 20-year-old in 1949 I traveled with another young

lad around Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia for ten months, leading discussions on war and peace. WWII was still fresh on our minds as we met with groups which included widows and parents of soldiers. US veterans and their families had suffered much. The purpose of discussion was to cause the participants to consider alternatives to war and other violence, to benefit nations and individuals in the future. Our views of getting along with the USSR must have seeped out in a Keyser, West Virginia, high school discussion. The next day the Keyser newspaper made note that two communists had been at the school. In the McCarthy Era, if you weren’t called a Communist, you were a slacker as a peacemaker.

In discussions we were never thoroughly prepared for the inevitable question, But what about Hitler? Even now many folks can agree the Korean War was not a good solution, a few years later the Vietnam War was a complete failure, the one-day Grenada affair wasn’t very honorable, and the Panama incursion only succeeded in killing civilians and eventually captured one druggie (Noriega). It’s quite a stretch to call the Somalia event a success, the Gulf War and Kosovo War were questionable, and Afghanistan is still a mess. The bombing of a Sudan factory and bombing Serbia (including the Belgrade Chinese embassy) were no great shakes as a success.

Then Bam! The discussion hits the WWII brick wall. It was the good war, the just war, the unavoidable war, the successful war. Discussion over. Active nonviolence would have been impractical, ineffective. There was no alternative to that war, so we can justify war, any war. Forget about an alternative nonviolent approach to serious international problems, especially an aggression.

We had to destroy Europe and its people to stop Hitler. The Soviet Union had to lose twenty-some million of its people and all kinds of things to defend their property and national sovereignty. No more discussion. War was the only honorable response to an invasion. So goes the reasoning. There is only one kind of bravado—old-fashioned war.

It’s fairly easy to come up with plausible ways that the American Revolutionary War with the British and our uncivil North-South war could have been avoided nonviolently, especially in light now of Gandhi and King’s accomplishments in similar circumstances.

It’s said many times that aggression can be met only one way—with physical force. There are certain unquestioned assumptions. Fight fire with fire. Meet violence with violence. All of these wars are to defend our freedom. If deterrence or threat doesn’t work, you have to follow through with military might. Don’t think. Just do it. Roll out the bombs. Forget about long-term effects. We are moral; they are not. God’s chosen people against insignificants. Preemptive strikes will prevent future problems. Kindness and diplomacy is the same as appeasement. Sometimes we are motivated by the illusion that democracy and capitalism makes us superior human beings.

In the pre plane-and-missile era there was at least a tinge of sportsmanship flavor to men’s battles, which has given way to very little eye-to-eye contact, and massive murder of out-of-sight non-participants. Today’s firepower is awesome, capable of destroying all life on earth, or at least a huge disrespect for all life. On August 6 and 9, 1945, a nation used the ultimate weapon to wipe out two cities full of civilians, and remains in February 2003 the only country to do that. Give President Truman credit for not using it on Korea.

It’s amazing that it hasn’t happened again. Now when we don’t expect it to happen… . Where? That will be a surprise, too. We are on borrowed time. America’s in a powerful position to lead the parade to a nuclear-weapons-free world.

America can save itself by having more citizens be well read and better informed on the true condition of the world, our true effect on it, and what an American’s commitment could be to those ideals that simply are helpful to other individuals and nations, rather than destructive. This goes for the Washington powerful, too. I certainly don’t qualify as a prophet but I worry about the future of my country.

Our leadership has antagonized about 90% of the rest of the world, and still about half of our population doesn’t seem to care that we’ve lost respect, honor, and friendship, as long as we have super military power. That indicates a need for varied reading, study, and listening, so as to know what’s what.

CHAPTER 2

WHY WE FOLLOW, AND CONSEQUENCES

It’s easy to realize why the Allies in WWII rallied for a

great effort against an Axis attack on European countries. It’s more intriguing to figure how the people of Germany, Italy, and Japan were coaxed into falling in line to be invaders. It bears more self-examination by all Americans today, February, 2003. Maybe Americans in recent history are not invaders to occupy permanently, but sometimes our general public seems gullible enough to support something close to that. Sometimes the process is subtle; sometimes not so subtle. I’m sure there are speech writers who understand how to get people to fall in line. Our obsession with fighting Communists led us down many strange paths. For instance, it’s not a stretch to say our foreign anti-communist shenanigans in and around Afghanistan and Iraq in the eighties, contributed heavily to terrorism twenty years later. Perhaps the silly things we do around the world now will cause us much pain during the next twenty years. It would be beneficial to our long-term happiness to constantly ask why there are terrorists out to get us and why they are increasing in numbers. Especially the U.S. and Israel could ask why rather than go careening at extreme financial cost and human rights cost. Reminds me of the guy who jumped onto his horse and rode off in all directions.

We know there will be leaders with strange ambitions, but why must we let them persuade us to follow? Later we’ll learn from a German what happened in Germany from 1914 to 1934.

Concerning our leaders in Washington, DC, who have lost their way and asked us to follow them, each official should sit in isolation along the Skyline Drive in Virginia for half a day each week, looking westward over the Shenandoah Valley and eastward over Bacon Hollow. Without buddy pressure and the city hubbub, each would formulate their own priorities as leaders. They would be perplexed as to why they often consider a barbaric method to solve an international problem. Sitting in this beautiful and tranquil setting they would wonder why civil war soldiers could have come storming across the ridges to kill each other—why the peaceful farming valley should have been littered with dead soldiers. They might even notice the poverty in Bacon Hollow and spend some government money there instead of for tools of war. Or they might dwell on the people they’ve met while visiting forty countries and decide not to kill or dominate them. It would not be a waste of time to sit on a mountain each week.

I believe the Watergate guys were fairly decent when they weren’t together, feeding off each other, and heading as a group to crime. I don’t know what makes Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Perle, and Wolfowitz tick, but together they are a threat to the world and our nation. Every red-blooded American should worry about them. Since I’m older than they, I can say, Boys, go sit on a mountain and think. Or, Resign from your job and take up farming. That would help reduce the grain surplus, too. Apparently they don’t much love their neighbors around the world. We suspect whom they do love. Perhaps the potential to control the world is irresistible. It’s hard not to attempt something that might be possible and then try to justify it. Hitler tried it his way and… .

So we still think of ourselves as being civilized even though with bombs and guns we kill thousands of innocent people and soldiers on all sides just because our government requests it.

CHAPTER 3

CAUSES AND ALTERNATIVES TO WAR

Let’s dive right into alternatives to war. I’m not

optimistic about this first possibility, but it should be mentioned. There is a huge conglomeration of professing Christians around the world, including our President. It’s not too far-fetched to glean from Jesus’ teachings and behavior that his followers would rather be killed than kill another person. It’s kind of a natural notion that the most important thing is to stay alive, which isn’t always the right thing to do. (We ask soldiers to put staying alive on a back burner.) If a Christian wants to relax a little about that conviction, he can realize that he’s going to die sometime anyway, but let’s not shorten someone else’s life. There is something freeing about not being afraid of one’s own death. Christians refusing to kill Christians would reduce wars dramatically.

On a high plane, a Christian might realize that he’s choosing the whole Christian ball-of-wax (the overall flavor), rather than picking and choosing the verse he likes or the one he doesn’t like. Do you wish another person well (love) or do you wish him dead? The only real security is the reduction or absence of the will to kill, because if there is a will to kill, it can’t be stopped. For instance, bombing won’t stop bacterial killing.

If you pick up a DC directory, you’ll see a Christian denomination listed after almost every Senator, Congressperson, and President. When you add in all the Christian Eastern Orthodox folks (perhaps 50 million in the former USSR and millions in Serbia, etc.) and of course a variety of Catholics and Protestants, that’s a huge constituency that could logically refuse to kill people. Is that too much to ask—to not kill fellow humans around the world? Killing a person you know isn’t very nice either. A gun in every pocket makes it more likely locally. I have no idea how a gun under the pillow, in the glove compartment, or between your belt and spleen can help your self-defense survival. Logic would say you’re safer without signing up for a duel. Your wayward offspring sneaking into your house at 3 a.m. is absolutely safer, and likewise curious children.

In addition to Christians, other world religions are big on reverence for life of all kinds. Suicide bombings are not part of any religious faith. For the unregistered non-religious we can only applaud their decency if they refuse to kill. Everyone else can have their way and deal with local courts or world courts. We just won’t follow them.

Refusing to kill people can really simplify one’s everyday life. Many decisions you don’t have to ponder in the future, such as whether or not to purchase a gun (even if you don’t expect to kill, it’s not nice to just wing someone either), whether or not to join the military, or whether or not you’re going to hit an intruder over the head with a ball bat when he comes to rape Grandma. (Yes, I’ve heard them all during the last 60 years.) None of us are 100% guaranteed how we would react to a situation we’ve never faced before, but we still need to dedicate ourselves to nonviolence ahead of time.

Nationally and internationally we wouldn’t need to make or drop bombs, or threaten for that matter. We wouldn’t have needed to enforce sanctions that killed Iraqi children. We wouldn’t have needed to bomb Germany, Japan, Afghanistan, Iraq, and then rebuild them. In a sense we could stop intentionally killing our own people, by reordering our national priorities from military spending to solving social problems such as environment, crime, education, our poor, deteriorated infrastructure, etc. Perhaps we need a political party based on non-killing. You’ll recall that William Penn had no soldiers or guns for protection from Indians. He made friends of them.

Deciding not to kill would simplify some aspects of our personal and national life, but would require a real effort of the brain to come up with new, creative ways to meet our human potential in dealing with each other in a civil way, which often is more practical and effective than a violent technique. Active nonviolence takes no less amount of courage, bravery, and dedication than a violent reaction to a situation, even if it’s to meet an invasion. It might take as much training. It’s just a more civil way of facing a crisis. It’s common to be macho, but we can learn to be reasonable.

Some people will die in an approach of non-cooperation to an invasion such as the 1941 attack on the Soviet Union. Would twenty-some million Soviets have died? Would they have been under the thumb of Germany forever? How many Soviets would have died while attempting to save their own Jews and Slavs from Hitler? Not many tried.

Reverence is a great word. I’ve learned recently to like it as much as I hate the word appeasement. Reverence for life and all creation gives one that warm, fuzzy feeling, doesn’t it? Reverence for all people regardless of their behavior or skin shade is a wonderful thought. Since the word love is often used and abused, (e.g. the song I love my pick-up truck, and I love you, too) and probably hard to define in less than a book, how about thinking more about living a life of reverence? How about our nation being steeped in