On War and Nonviolence

We visited a war museum in Cambodia.

The reasons for war in Cambodia are as complex as the strangler vines that have devoured their temples over the centuries.

Vietnam, Thailand, France, China, the United States and the Soviet Union have all had a hand in different wars in Cambodia. The Cambodians themselves were involved in a long civil war in the power vacuum left by the aftermath of the American War in Vietnam.

Just as the tangled roots and creepers of banyans and strangler vines destroy great religious shrines, so the complicated conflicts have torn apart Cambodian society.

Victims of War

 People are afraid to speak of these conflicts for fear of losing their jobs. An old soldier working at the war museum described the terrors to us, but was afraid of being recorded on camera. When we told him, "Just tell us what happened," he looked at us as if we were crazy. "I can't do that," he said, "I will lose my job. The people who did this are in power now. We can't talk about it."

Carrying bombs to war

 Older Cambodians remember the war in Vietnam, the invasion by Vietnamese and the rise to power of Pol Pot, a madman dictator responsible for the "killing fields," known as Brother Number One. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/17/world/death-pol-pot-pol-pot-brutal-dictator-who-forced-cambodians-killing-fields-dies.html
Pol Pot sent a generation to their deaths. Today most people in Cambodia are young. 60% of the population is below the age of 30. Most people have forgotten the terror.

Child Soldiers play at war with live ammunition

Child soldier with M16

As part of our project, we filmed at the War Museum. The director there gave us permission to film what we wanted. Our idea was to make a reflection on the horrors of war.

Chinese Land Mine

 One of the scourges of Cambodian existence is land mines.Here's a chart of different sizes and shapes. The whole point of a land mine is to maim and terrify the enemy. Mines were laid by Vietnamese against the Khmer Rouge, by Cambodians against Vietnamese, and by various and sundry enemies, so much so that people forgot where they had put the mines and the whole country is one big land mine. It's dangerous to walk in the beautiful jungle forests.

Different land mines from USA, USSR, Vietnam, China, Belgium, France

Detail of above chart with Chinese, Soviet, and American mines.

In the end, who won the war? Cambodia is a third world country struggling to survive. Third World Cambodia To whom go the spoils of war? Now that I'm back from my trip, I'm so jet-lagged I don't know if it's day or night. So I watch the news on TV to help bore me to sleep. And I'm bombarded with images of people demanding war. Senators and congressmen who think war is good for business. All kinds of great reasons to bomb people. Bombs, like land mines are indiscriminate. They don't know the difference between children and militant terrorists. This is called "collateral damage."

Most people have no experience of war. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exm7FN-t3PY

I remember when the war was raging close to Cambodia, and when we bombed Cambodia to make the world safe for democracy. The strategist Von Clausewitz said that war is the extension of politics by other means.  But now that we're so civilized and advanced, there must be more intelligent ways to resolve conflicts.

My guru was a follower of Gandhi before he came to Gaudiya Math. Here's a TV interview with Gandhi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpjBWw5w444

Gandhi believed in confronting violence with moral force, satyagraha. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyagraha

He believed that nonviolent moral force was more powerful than violence, since violence is the last resort of weaklings, cowards, and bullies.

 "Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence under any circumstance whatsoever; and it ever insists upon truth." M. Gandhi

It's difficult to conceive of moral force in our world, since things seem so corrupted now compared with Gandhi's time. How can you apply moral force in a struggle against terrorism? I'm not sure, but I don't think bombing innocent civilians into oblivion really solves anything. It makes people feel vindicated when we bomb some area where the terrorists are supposed to be. But bombing doesn't stop terrorist groups from intensifying their violence. It doesn't matter how many times I spray the ants in the kitchen with poison, there are always more ants underground. Gandhian nonviolence worked in India against the British, Martin Luther King applied Gandhian nonviolence in the Civil Rights struggle.

 Cesar Chavez used Gandhian nonviolence to gain rights for Mexican-Amerian farmworkers in California. 

People like the idea of nonviolence as a tactic to win something. The idea of Satyagraha or "Truth Power" is not generally understood. In the struggle to gain immediate results, the idea of truth, or moral power is completely forgotten. Gandhi has been repudiated, but people forget that India, the largest democracy in the world, was based on Gandhian principles. Perhaps Gandhi's principles are too advanced for the barbaric violence of today's world. But shouldn't someone try to practice the principles of peace?

Ukrainians, Russians, Americans, Peace, Love, and Hare Krishna