Letters

Unsheathing the Sword

The day of Monica's last testimony saw missile strikes against Bin Laaden's "terrorist" camp in Afghanistan and Sudan's "chemical-biological weapons" facility, with no prior grand jury or other charge or indictment. Bin Laaden - once ally, now nemesis - the story rang true. But Sudan? Western ambassadors and specialists visiting the bombed-out drug plant saw no evidence.

And now, amidst continuing Starr releases, and after Tony Blair's humiliation by left-wing adversaries in Britain, Clinton and Blair threaten mass attack on Serbia, to punish a Kosovo massacre. Yet the Kosovo carnage, where Serbs battle for their legendary "Alamo" against the Albanian- and Iranian-supported Kosovo Liberation Army, has seen all too many such tragedies, perpetrated by fanatics of both sides. Never mind the ultimate truth as to who perpetrated the latest. Why the sudden rush to judgment? Why now?

Lasting conflict resolution may require Western intervention and aid, but above all it requires even-handedness. This is not a simple morality tale of good versus evil. Single group victim association is caricature. Which leaves the question: is today's anti-Serb pathology simply revenge lust after the hard-line victory in Bosnia's recent election (so inconvenient to Dayton's architects), or is it even more spurious, reflecting far simpler political calculation? "Wag the Dog" time, indeed, though this time with real bombs, real horror, real victims.

Professor Carl G. Jacobsen
Director of Eurasian Security Studies, Carleton University

Be a Peace Magazine

If you truly wish to be a peace magazine (versus a disarmament magazine), then I believe that you should broaden your perspective to include building peace at the individual, family, community and world levels. Your magazine would be more relevant if it spoke to the general public, community and business leaders, as well as academics, and highlighted practical solutions that we can all get involved in.

Robert Stewart
Okotoks, Alberta
Director,Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace

Editorial Policy

As a lifetime "peacenik" and subscriber I feel challenged by your query on editorial policy. By all means, persist in broadening editorial policy! Address these topics:

1. MAI. In the field of investment, which means the effective control of productive activities, we are already in an era of global interdependence. Unfortunately, the global economy is not responding to trillions of market transactions on the global market, but rather by a limited number of key decisionmakers who are neither integrated among themselves nor responsible to the populations they serve and exploit. In the financial arena we already have an effective though incomplete global governance - and human needs and civil rights need to be protected on that level. How that can be done without an effective global political organization is of course the big question.

2. Ecological concerns are even more basic to global survival than atomic disarmament. Which is worse, the gradual distruction of the biosphere or a speedier extermination through nuclear fallout?

3. Ethno-religious conflicts are within and across national boundaries. Given an abundance of weapons and only weak means of conflict resolution, these conflicts are the usual starting points of the battles of the giants. World War I was ignited by a single political murder far from the centres of political power. Can disarmament be reasonably separated from peaceful conflict resolution?

4. The control of economic production to serve the people's needs; and the interlocking need to control population growth, so it does not outpace available resources.

6. None of the above concerns can be addressed unless there arises in every continent a critical mass of influential activists to globally cooperate and accomplish democratic, respon- sible world government.

We are the only real pro-life movement. May the spirit of life guide us so we can recognize each other and support each other's efforts for global survival.

Andrew Kapos, Ph.D.
Etobicoke, ON.