I remember when I was on the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies Program in Bangkok.  I asked our teacher, a counter-intelligence officer in response to civilian deaths in Southern Thailand: “who is the enemy”, I asked a few more questions and then asked “are the public the enemy”.  I said it in quick succession, I am sure he felt interrogated which was a good thing as that is how others feel when questioned.  He was speaking about a suppression of Muslims in Southern Thailand that had their hands tied behind their backs and stacked on top of each other in a truck.  They were protestors given one of their people had been incarcerated and they wanted his release.  In the truck they all affixiated.  My questioning was to ascertain is the public the enemy?  That night I had around 12 hits from the US Army.  I ask them: am I the enemy or it fear that is the enemy?  Which is true?  From my perspective as a civilian I know why people protest, they are concerned or fearful about some issue and they have not been heard.  That is why they go on the streets.  They feel strongly.  This in truth is the actioning of democracy.  I realised the other day when I was contemplating the word ‘activist’, they are simply people who are questioning in the spirit of democracy.  I know when I went on radio I wanted to listen to other voices from across the spectrum to discuss bridges to peace.  I could be called a peace activist but in truth I am a caring person.  Those engaged in violent acts do not want that mirror, that is why dictators often are installed as they violently repress questions.  It is the questions that they do not want to face. That would mean questioning themselves, it is far easier to create an enemy. Yet what if that enemy was actually a friend.  I recall Byron katie using the analogy of the snake as a rope.  We see what looks like a snake and we recoil, we get scared, we want to kill it before it kills us.  But what if on closer inspection it is a rope, that is there to pull you in, or to rein you in, to save you.  What if the person is trying to show you an aspect of yourself you are in denial of.  You don’t want to see it as your world unravels, the lies and myths created to justify cruelty were really illusionary.  That is what is at the basis of resistence.  I also apply the same point to activist who get violent, they are just acting out the same behaviour as they turned the other into an enemy.  There are no enemies folks. Life will bring the truth to you in a myriad of ways until you get it.  You can’t kill life, you can try but what you put out returns to the self.  Life is circular, that is why eventually the truth always surfaces and tyrants always fall, as Gandhi wisely obsered.  Is the killing of civilians training for a greater cull?  If so, then it returns to self, all ways.  We are One.

The fact that 90% of civilians are being killed in modern warfare these days.  The expenditure of over $1 trillion (conservative estimates devoid of hidden expenditure).  In light of the fact that even 10% of military spending could resolve the world’s ills, the breeding grounds for inequality and resentment.  Imagine that solution.

How does the international community respond to civilians being killed in the name of freedom and democracy? Is this a war crime?    It certainly is a crime if a civilian does it. Is this hypocracy?

I understand part of counter-terrorism is to try and win the hearts and minds of the people (public image).  However, if you keep killing their families, incarcerating without trial, undermining their society, imposing puppet leaders they will never forget you and they will want justice.  Murder is murder, occupation is occupation.   

I know there is group think, there is collective denial in the military about what they do, there is sanitising, their is friendly fire and the jargon goes on.  This is an internal strategy to ensure no critiques and the power of marketing to ensure honour as allegiance, anything other is a traitor or coward – is that true?  I recall asking a soldier when in the States about what he thought of peace, he got defensive with me.  I realised it is a sacred cow that the military can’t be questioned.  In Ausralia we don’t have that type of nationalism, we question and critique as that is normal.  So culturally we are different.  I was seen as a peacenik and he saw ‘enemy’ yet I was honestly asking as they say they secure the peace.  I was seeking his view. 

However, in these current so called theatres of war (which are not entertaining) innocent people are being targetted mercilessly and questions must be asked as they are defenseless.  I’ve seen the footage of the cross hair targetting of civilians presented by an Iraqi doctor in Canberra, some years ago.  I heard the pilots changing the target from a building to a group of people.  I’ve seen a person mistaken for pulling out a gun when it was a camera.  I heard the helicopter pilots excited as they sought permission to take him out, as if a video game.  They don’t know the story of this man, his family, his children, his life, his ancestery and how their actions affect his family, friends and others.  How this sends out a ripple of hate not love, it doesn’t teach democracy it teaches sorrow and great fear of Americans. 

So many innocent people killed.  I’ve heard so many stories. Yet those in authority will say it is war as if that is fine.  Well these voices are supposedly coming from democratic societies where there is a rule of law, where rights have been given and then in military theatres there are no more rights as it is war.  Who started the war?   Was it on the basis of a lie or was it truly security.  It has been made clear by many to-date that it was clearly an illegal war of aggression.  The civilians are identified as the enemy and there is justification in this whilst the story (spin) is believed.  When the emperor has no clothes he is seen for what he is – a dictator, no different to Saddam Hussein.  

What next, protestors in western societies the next enemy when they raise their voices about leaders who are less than honest. What then legislative changes to justify arrests and rendition?  Do we continue on with the rhetoric with the war on terror or do we stop the terror by seriously looking at peace education globally.  Who gains from the wars, obviously those profiting.  There is a high price from this type of profit.  It is not about democracy it is about industry.  That is the core issue.

I sit back and wonder is it really peace that is a Mission Impossible? Tasked to preserve the peace as a force for good as Colonel Jim Channon (Jeff Bridges) stated in the film ‘Men that Stare at Goats’.  He actually had a vision in Vietnam when shot of a Vietnamese woman stating “the gentleness is the strength” it was a realisation which became the seed for the New Earth Army.  the first army of its kind tasked to prevent violence.  Yet we wait for those so blind can’t see or won’t see their folly.  It will remain so until people get real about who they are and what they do in the name of peace.  They have to come to a point where that is all they want.  So maybe this dismantling has to happen.  None of it is with an intention of peace, peace building (strengthening civil society), security (de-escalation of violence) or stable (institutions destroyed).  It is deeply destabilising on every level as the humanity is deconstructed.  I recall a painting of a building in the shape of a man in ruins, I feel this is the true state of play.  This is because governments, industry, the military, society are not at peace. 

I have watched parliament play out, the name calling, bullying, debating to win, demonising each other and felt embarrassed to be honest.  I looked at the children in the public gallery and wondered what they thought of these so called performances by leaders who followed each other.  I could see clearly the system is set up as combat, it is a male game – they don’t know how to work together, dialogue, mediate, they believe competition is winning the war rather than sharing the pie (expanding it), they actually war with the opposition and call this democracy.  It is not.  Democracy is representation of the people by the people, it is to find out what they want and then deliver it.  It is not about people serving the leaders (compliance). I am yet to experience the reality of this democratic idea.  It is not evident in families either, so the control and domination scenario is evident in society which regards this as normal.  I think the promise of democracy if truly lived would free up time and resources to really explore potential.  Democracy is not supposed to be about politics, manipulation, being seen to be, slight of hand and corruption. It is supposed to help redistribute resources efficiently, provide good governance so people feel trust, safe and to show leadership and vision for the benefit of the people.  Yet there are those who are in the shadows influencing the game, accountable to no-one, who benefit from conflicts that brings only misery and perpetuate the duality of winners and losers (inequality) which is the basis of powerlessness and perpetuates all conflict.  It is also the reason why our civilisation is collapsing. History reveals that this concentration of power always breaks down.  Always they find an enemy to energise themselves.  Imagine if they could get energised by new ideas, expanding beyond what is known, seeing positive outcomes, making a real difference, exploring potential and evolving our humanity beyond the stars.  Imagine that. 

So I observe and offer real hope that sanity is in resolving conflict, solving problems, learning about differences, questioning our own negativity and when realisation finally comes, we know we must make peace with wars of our own making.  This is real responsibility and possibility.   Denial will continue to fight, justify violence on behalf of a greater good, will continue to create terror and blame others, fear will continue to disempower but in the end love will be the game changer.   I believe in the end we will realise love.  That what we see in others is in ourselves.  The civilians killed are the mirror – your mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and friends.  They are me.  A soldier told me that when he killed a little girl, a part of himself died.  He was right.  I wanted to give him inquiry (the Work of Byron Katie) to release his great suffering.  Maybe one day.

The final realisation when we return to the sanity of we are one, is that all is a mirror of the self.  Only clarity will reveal that through the truth of inquiry, you cannot see it when in denial, it is not possible.  The pain of confronting truth is very great as guilt is there, however, there is a way out of hell and there is restitution through serving the people.  Many Vietnam veterans went back to make peace, they were the ones who healed their inner wars.  I offer that as the olive branch to those of you still invested in this industry.  The 500,000 killed x families (10) is 5 million affected directly by the war as a conservative estimate. The Huffington Post reports this figure from the organisation Body Count refer https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/15/iraq-death-toll_n_4102855.html

There is real hope for you in self realisation. For only in that moment will your wars stop.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/us-isis-air-strikes-civilian-deaths-syria-iraq-america-no-idea-how-many-dead-the-uncounted-a8066266.html

America has no idea how many innocent people it’s killing in the Middle East

Sixteen years after Bush Jr launched his so-called ‘war on terror’ an untold number of civilians have been killed by disease, illness and by the US and UK-led military campaign

In February 2003, Elliott Abrams, a US official convicted of lying to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair but pardoned by President George HW Bush, spoke to the media about the impending invasion of Iraq, ordered by Bush’s son.

Abrams claimed in his remarks about “humanitarian reconstruction” that six priorities had driven the planning. “The first is to try to minimise the displacement and the damage to the infrastructure and the disruption of services,” he said. “And the military campaign planning has had – has been tailored to try to do that, to try to minimise the impact on civilian populations.” 

It didn’t turn out that way. Sixteen years after Bush launched his so-called “war on terror”, millions of people’s lives have been turned upside down, Isis has been allowed to fester and spread, and Iraq is a nation at risk of fracturing apart. Moreover, an untold number of innocent civilians have been killed – by disease, illness, in gruesome tortures performed by local and foreign insurgents, and by the US and UK-led military campaign that Abrams and others vowed would be surgical. 

In recent days, the US has been again forced to address the painful issue of civilian casualties following the publication of a investigation by the New York Times, which found that, contrary to the claims of the Pentagon, as many as one-in-five coalition air strikes on Isis targets in Iraq in 2014, resulted in civilians deaths. That figure was 31 times higher than what the US has acknowledged.

“The unfortunate death of civilians is a fact of war that weighs heavy on our hearts,” said Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon. 

Asked about the total of civilians killed since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Pahon told The Independent he doubted he could provide such a figure. He referred inquiries to the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, the name of the operation against Isis. There was no immediate response.

The truth is that nobody knows how many civilians have been killed in Iraq since George W Bush and Tony Blair launched an invasion that was sold to the world, not as a means to simply topple Saddam Hussein, but to seize the weapons of mass destruction they claimed he had. That is one of its many enduring tragedies. 

The militaries of both the US and Britain kept painstaking records of its soldiers killed in both Afghanistan and Iraq – 2,280 and 4,491 for the US, and 455 and 179 for Britain. Yet, they have never tried to make an overall tally of Iraqi civilian deaths or those killed in other theatres.

Over the years, there have been various attempts to come up with a figure. One of the first was the Iraq Body Count (IBC), a British project that maintained a tally of casualties based on media reports. Yet as the IBC has admitted, its figures are based on reports in the media, which were themselves limited in scope and detail. 

Two reports conducted by the Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, used extrapolation based on epidemiology, and were published in The Lancet. The first, published in 2004, estimated that at least 100,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the war.

The second, published in 2006, suggested the figure had risen to near 650,000. The British and US governments criticised the findings but those involved defended the methodology. In 2015, a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility suggested the total may have passed one million.

The truth of the matter is that nobody knows. The figure could be one million, it could be two million. 

And when you add the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and other places where the “war on terror” has played out – Yemen, Pakistan, Mali, Niger, Somalia and the Philippines – it becomes even more of a guessing game. In many of these places, there are not even the rudimentary efforts, such as that attempted by the IBC.

One thing that is so striking about what was said in 2003 and what is being said now, is the language employed by US officials. Pahon, the Pentagon spokesman, stressed how everything was done to  “limit harm to non-combatants and civilian infrastructure”.

Back in 2003, Abrams had vowed: “We hope to discourage population displacement through – partly through an information campaign, and partly by efforts to provide aid rapidly and restore public services rapidly.” 

War has always been a dirty, dangerous business. People should not pretend otherwise.