THE REAL WAR AGAINST TERRORISM STARTED 500 YEARS AGO

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday April 04, 2003 10:55 by Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, 2003 - Mohawk Nation

Now I believe that all of the Native American soldiers and marines over there in Iraq, along with every one of the Black and Hispanic troopers who, put together, make up sixty percent of the U.S. military's front line, should be asking themselves, "Why are we doing the white man's dirty work?"

NEVER FORGET…
THE REAL WAR AGAINST TERRORISM STARTED 500 YEARS AGO

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, 2003 Mohawk Nation

In the current invasion of Iraq, as with all of the other of the United States' wars in this century, on a per capita basis there are more Native Americans serving on the front lines than any other population group. Some people think this is something to celebrate. Not me. I used to be a United States Marine, or what General Smedley Butler called himself after learning what he had been fighting for during his 33 year service in the Marines, a "gangster for capitalism." Too bad some things are only clear in hindsight! Now I believe that all of the Native American soldiers and marines over there in Iraq, along with every one of the Black and Hispanic troopers who, put together, make up sixty percent of the U.S. military's front line, should be asking themselves, "Why are we doing the white man's dirty work?" and "Why are we serving the empire that stole our homelands and massacred our people?" Tough questions at any time, I know. Questions like these are even more difficult in wartime, when our friends, sons, daughters, fathers and brothers may end up dead or crippled because of the choices they made to become a part of the United States' military machine. But, question we must, because when it comes to realizing the truth: better late than never…

Jimmie: You're a former Jarhead, Taiaiake… I was wondering what your thoughts are on this: are you feeling the ache to be there with the boys?
I used to be in the 75th Ranger Regiment in the U.S. Army, have a lot of friends over there right now, and man oh man, am I wishing I was with them. Regardless of my thoughts about the war, I still wish I was there.

Taiaiake: I'll tell you what, man, whenever I get a gungie gung ho feeling, I force myself to remember how happy I was to get the hell out of dodge on my last day in The Suck. That cures it real fast. As for what's going on now, I'm not young and dumb anymore, and I've learned too much about what the United States government is all about since getting out of the Corps to have any respect or sympathy for the bastards. I think it's sad that so many of our young Native people are unthinkingly drawn into the lies and greed and evil violence that the United States government is founded on - to me it's a sure sign of the total loss of any real indigenous cultural foundation in our communities. The warrior spirit is based on honour and displaying bravery for a good cause, and I believe that's what some of our young people crave; but it's a shame that they are sucked into the illusion that the U.S. military is a place where they can be (true) warriors. We should be giving them a place in our own Mohawk and Cree nations to follow that path. There is no honour in conquest, and the U.S. these days is all about lies, greed, and conquest. It's the opposite of being a real indigenous person, Onkwehonwe. If we join the U.S. military, we become to the rest of the world what The White Man is to us. I'm proud to say that unlike some of the women I see on television these days talking about how proud they are of their indigenous sons and daughters serving in the military, my Mom never approved of or celebrated what I was doing.

Ranger: Being an Indian from the United States, I see things a little different from both of you. I think the key word is what you said, "unthinking." We all make decisions for ourselves, whether we are ready to do so or not, and although I knew that warfare was immoral, I joined the Army anyway. It was a decision I took on my own for very pragmatic reasons, and it had nothing to do with the fact that Iranian students were at that time holding Americans hostage in our own Embassy in Tehran, or any motive of patriotism. It was not a popular decision, certainly no one else I knew was joining, and no one thought it was cool. My parents freaked out, but I wasn't listening to them by then, anyway. Simply, and this is going to sound so fucking retarded it may make you sick, I read too much Hemingway and decided I wanted to be a writer, tried hard to do it, and decided I had nothing to write about. So I joined the Army. There were other reasons, but that was the primary one.

Jimmie: Well, my parents weren't too happy about my decision to sign up in the states either, but they dealt with it! My sister, who is doing her PhD at Harvard, friggin' disowned me for a while there! Mind you, she had some pretty warped ideas about the military. We'll have to agree to disagree on our views of the U.S. government and conquest. That darned Iroquois Confederacy was as good at conquest as it gets; any Huron would agree with that statement. As some of those old Mohawk warriors would argue, it has inspired the U.S. constitution…(I couldn't resist that dig!). From the perspective of those young people from my community that have served in the military, both U.S. and Canadian, it has done them wonders. There are two general types of people here: those that drop out of school and who's only hope at grandeur is getting on the band council and spending oodles of money on their travel budgets, buying leather embroidered jackets and driving big new trucks; and, those that leave the reserve to better themselves. Most of the guys/girls that leave for university drop out and go back to route one. A small percentage of them make it in the outside world, but are then not fully welcomed back. The guys that do military service for the most part come back to the community and make positive contributions. The military guys seem to come back to the reserve with a wider worldview and with some lofty aspirations. The families that have a connection to the military are the ones that foster a warrior spirit in their children. They are the ones, in my experience, that are strong-willed enough to stand up for what they believe. They are the families that are the most spiritual (both Christian and Traditional) in my community. I know your community is a different breed altogether, but don't you think it's successes partly reside in the history you guys have serving with the military?

Taiaiake: My feeling on it is more like that Marine Gen. Smedley Butler in the 1930's - once he found out what the political and economic purposes of the Marine Corps were, he became a crusader against the corruption in the US government and against the waste of young Marines' lives on anything but self-defence. No doubt about what you are saying about the positive effects on us as individuals that come from the training: discipline, organization, assertiveness, pride, etc. I became the person that I am because of the Marine Corps. And sometimes, but not always, these do transfer over to the community. But come on now, the argument about the Iroquois being conquerors a long time ago, and therefore it's okay to be a conqueror now…? That doesn't hold up when you test it against the facts anyway - it's a myth put forward by white academics to justify what they did to us. Sure, we fought wars like everyone else and did it very well, but the question then and now is the same: what are you fighting for? The so-called conquests of the Iroquois were really defensive wars to protect an existence that was being threatened by other nations that had allied with the white invaders. The Huron historian Georges Sioui has written about this as a corrective to the racist histories that have become common "knowledge." Even if you agree with the white academics, instead of me and Georges, and beside that discount all of the living teachings of the Great Law of Peace, and still believe that us Iroquois were money hungry savage killing machines, does the past justify the future? Do we have to continue on a path even when we know it's wrong just because it is tradition?

The question of purpose and intent of war is the crucial one in my mind, Brother - I'm not a pacifist. Back in the day, our people fought a brutal two hundred year war to survive against dirty, thieving, murdering invaders, just like the Vietnamese did and the Iraqis are doing right now against the Americans and the British. When I joined the Corps in 1981, it wasn't to invade and take over other peoples' countries - we all believed we were fighting against Empire, the spread of Soviet communism. As intelligent and moral human beings, we ought to be able to make some distinction between right and wrong, and admit it when we are wrong. "We" were right in WWII (who could deny the threat of Nazism?), we were right in Korea (as the development of North Korea since has proven); but we were wrong in Vietnam and in the 80s in Central America (those were simply unjust invasions or propping up brutal dictatorships to support U.S. commercial interests). And, we're wrong now in Iraq: there is absolutely no question about the purpose and intent of this war being: a) Yankee vengeance for 9.11, b) the U.S. government's disciplining of Saddam, a rogue agent they created, and c) a war of conquest of the Iraqi oil fields.

So I believe we have to think about these things rather than blindly following The White Man. Sure, we get some personal good out of military training. But we also have responsibilities as human beings and as Onkwehonwe that are more important than our personal interest. We live here and now; not in the 18th century, 1941 or in 1985. We need to think about things in light of reality and our larger responsibilities. And as indigenous elders and leaders, we should not in any way be encouraging or celebrating our young Native people unthinkingly become part of the United States, England and Israel's unjust war and conquest of indigenous people in other parts of the world.

Ranger: That's a pretty negative view... even a pessimistic view. I believe that many of us that find our way into military service are not destined for the plum positions in society in the first place. Love them or hate them, the armed services remain among those few meritocracies that are relatively colour-blind, true equal-opportunity employers - and the bennies are excellent. The downside is, you just might die. You also end up serving the Empire, but that is what soldiers do, and what soldiers have always done. I do agree that many of those that suck most greedily at the pap of government service, accomplishing little while padding fat salaries with cushy benefits, typically start out in one of the armed services. It is a natural transition from military service to civil government service, and the acquired dependence on "uncle" is an easy one to continue. I don't think that it's pretty, myself, or something that should be celebrated. It often constitutes a diminishing of the human spirit, particularly when it is characterized by fear and self-deceit.

Jimmie: Here's how I look at the U.S.'s role in the world right now, the "empire of America," as some would call it. I look at it as a guy living in an apartment building, with all sorts of neighbours, good and bad, each both good and bad at the same time. If you live in this apartment building and your neighbour is beating up his wife, you have a responsibility to act. You have more of a responsibility to act if you have the power to do something (you are a big tough guy, let's say an Ultimate Fighting Champion). Every one else in the building may say, "Ah leave them be, what goes on in their apartment is their own business." These are the weak people; scared to act that say such things (like Canada), or people that are guilty of the same offences (like most Arab nations). If you go kick in the guy's door and lay waste to his ass, you have probably broken a few laws, such as Article 12 of UN Charter, but International Human Rights Law morally justifies you to do so. If you're the big tough fighter that kicks the shit out of guys that beat up their wives, there's no doubt that the power might go to your head. That you may kick ass occasionally for the heck of it, or look and wait for people to get out of line to kick someone's ass... but... if you don't fight and keep up your skills, you'll get weak and eventually the wife beater will kick your ass.

Essentially I believe that any nation needs to go to war occasionally. Whether that nation is a country or a reserve. It keeps their perspective real; it keeps them grounded in the reality that humanity is basically motivated by self-interest, and the reality that there can be no life, no freedom, without sacrifice. If you look at the history or Kahnawake, or Peguis in Manitoba, where the people have fought the federal government, where the people have a history of "going to war," versus a reserve like Shamattawa, Manitoba, where the people have never really fought for anything and have never had anything to fight for, there is a marked difference in their communities and in their outlook towards adversity. Canada has been crippled from our over reliance on the peacekeeping model and we are now speaking solely from a moral high horse inspired by Lester B. Pearson. We've put all of our eggs in the U.N. basket. That's our background I suppose. Just as power can corrupt, our lack of power has corrupted us.

If a young Ininu decides to sign up with the Canadian armed forces or the U.S. military to defend either the U.S. constitution or the elected government, then they are serving the community at large in the belief and furthering of those ideas. I guess where we mainly differ is in our beliefs of who we are. I believe I am a Canadian, and an American. I'm damn proud of being both. I have put my time in and shaped the guys around me that served with me. I have contributed to the shaping of America and Canada. I do not consider the elders of long ago, the ones that signed the treaties with the Europeans as naïve dupes. I see them as intelligent forerunners of modern thought. They knew more back then, were more grounded, than we are today; because of this they have guaranteed us a position in the makeup of our countries. I cannot speak for you, but the guys I know from Kahnawake all consider themselves Mohawks and not Canadians…

Taiaiake: I like your analogy. But I'll offer my (adjusted for true facts) version of your apartment-neighbour scenario: the U.S. is the one who bought the wife-beater his brass knuckles, taught him how to properly beat his wife, cheered him on, and for years took a big cut of the profits from his pimping off his daughter too. So, now that some other pesky neighbour reported him to Child and Family Services, the big, tough U.S. comes in and steps on the daughter's head and stomps the wife to get their knife in the husband's back so they can take possession of the apartment, gut it, and turn it into a luxury condo and rent it out to their yuppie friends.

It's not "tough" to win a fight by dropping bombs from 20,000 ft or to pay poor brown people to die fighting your battles for you - as the U.S. has been doing for the last 30 years. This is the big, tough guy's first real fight in years, since getting his face punched in by a skinny brown kid from Hanoi, and we're finding out that the Ultimate Fighting Champion is not as fearsome up close as he looked on television!

But when you say you are a Canadian/American, even though it saddens me, there's not much I can argue with. That's your identity; and in terms of this war, your views just reflect the common mentality of a mainstream person. But there are implications to this: if you are a Canadian/American, then treaties and indigenous rights and heritage don't even come into the discussion - those treaties were made between France/Britain /America/Canada and independent indigenous nations, and those rights are due to indigenous peoples, not citizens of Canada or the United States. When an indigenous person accepts an identity as a citizen of Canada or the United States, he forfeits his birthright and any access to those treaties and those rights. To claim otherwise is trying to have it both ways, against all logic.

You are definitely right though about what people from Kahnawake think or say they are ("not Canadians"), but for so many of us, our actions are not always consistent with the principles we claim. I believe what a person does is a truer mark of who they are than what they say about themselves. That's why I, for one, changed my way of living and made some hard choices. I don't work for the band council anymore and would not go back into the Marine Corps - I've come to realize that both of those are actions that make you Canadian/American, even if you say you are Onkwehonwe.

Ranger: It has been my experience that the men of deepest pacifist integrity are combat soldiers. They understand violence as few others can. We know that there is no glory in combat. We know that governments lie to whip up patriotism, and incite us to serve. So what? It was my honour to serve. I was a warrior, and a warrior I remain, regardless of my age. It is in my heart. I tried hard to fight with honour and to conduct myself as a soldier at all times, and for the most part, I believe I succeeded. I would have served regardless of where I was born, or whether the cause of my government was right or wrong. This is what young warriors do. Experienced warriors... well, they make more informed decisions, assuming that they live, and assuming that they learn from their experiences.

Anyway, I myself have learned that I cannot save the Great American Empire, or divert it or its policies. Nor can I speak sense to its people, or make a difference on any large scale. I can be a good father, a good husband, a good brother, a good friend, a good neighbour, and a good citizen. I cannot change history by myself. I tried. I paid a high price for it, and everyone around me paid along with me. I am still paying, in many ways, for the idealism and naivety of my youth. I almost died, in fact, for daring, for presuming, that I could make a difference. It could be said that it might have been better if I had died, but I did not. And now I feel that I at least have a duty to live, and to try to live well. That is enough for me, and difficult enough. If I accomplish that much, I will consider my life worthy.

Taiaiake: Yeah, but do you think your people would still be around today if the ancestors had the same kind of attitude back in their day?

Ranger: Even though Saddam is an evil man, so what? Perhaps Iraqis should handle him - with or without our assistance. What did we do about Pol Pot in Cambodia and every other genocidal regime? Not much. There are other examples. I think a karmic burden of guilt is shouldered when we do nothing about such men and such events, whether on a national scale or simply in our own neighbourhoods… I do not believe it is the American destiny to police the world. But again, so what? Who cares what I think? These are just my opinions, and worth nothing in the greater scheme of things. None of this matters. This is a war of Empire. America is an Empire. This coming century may be the American Century, or it may not be. Regardless, I personally will have little impact on it.

I think that the best advice we can give to young people is to permit themselves to be spiritual, to help them to feel their connection to nature, to the Great Father, to the earth, to the winds, to all winged creatures, to all creatures on four legs, and to the trees and to the oceans, where all life began. I will speak my mind when talking with my you, Brothers; but I will not agitate, nor will I propagandize, nor will I march in the streets. I will not take up arms, except to defend myself and my people on our own ground. I will teach my son. That's it.