To: The U.S. Green Party International Committee (of which I am a member)
From: Patrick Mazza at ClimateSolutions.org
Re: 9/11/2001

By strange coincidence, at the Lake Union Shipyard in Seattle, the USS
Turner Joy is being refurbished.  I caught sight of it Sunday afternoon
during my neighborhood walk by the Lake.  Such a thing to see on such a day
as this, the very ship involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident which led to
the resolution for unlimited involvement in Vietnam, its flag flying off its
stern at half mast.  Who, knowing the history of fighting a war with no
fronts against an enemy you can't see, could believe Bush when he says we
will end this at a time of our choosing?  Tonkin began the fateful slide
into the quagmire from which there was no easy exit.  Are we doomed to
repeat?

As we look for the educational opportunity in this horror, the great
challenge that I hear being debated among progressives and Greens from the
local to the national is how to present the facts on what led to this
without arousing reactions that do not let people hear us.  (Though from
looking at the local letters to the editor, I am amazed at how many
sensible, thinking people there really are.) In any case, one way to reach
Americans is by way of the practical.  In crafting our positions and
message, we need to point out in a convincing manner the practical
difficulties of "wiping out terrorism."   Or to put it another way,
illuminate how the political and social realities of the Middle East are a
breeding ground that will generate attacks. Wiping out specific networks
only wipes out the symptom, not the disease.  The conditions will generate
new networks all the time. We are not just dealing with isolated groups,
but, as in Vietnam, vast populations that have reason to be hostile. If
Americans, even if they might disagree with the reasons, do not engage in
honest reflection about why this is, we cannot understand how to resolve the
issue.  We must call people to reflection and discussion.

Dependence on oil is the critical piece.  If International Energy Agency
projections of a few years ago have played out, 2001 is significant not only
for the NY-DC bombings, but as the year global oil production outside the
Persian Gulf began its long-term permanent decline.  See graph in document
at http://www.iea.org/g8/world/oilsup.htm .  It is this trend that has so
powerfully driven the U.S. to increase its military presence in the region,
specifically in Saudi Arabia, which is really what pushed Osama into his 
jihad.  Which apparently, brought down on NY and DC a messy version of a 
fuel air explosive.  (The most powerful bombs in the U.S. military arsenal 
short of nuclear are fuel air explosives, bombs based on fossil fuels.  
They were used in the Gulf War.) Fossil fuels weave all through this. They 
are the underlying strategic issue driving the U.S. into ever deepening 
involvement, really, into an informal Middle Eastern empire centered on oil.   
They are also the weapon used in retaliation.  A distributed, decentralized 
energy network based on local and regional clean energy sources is the clear 
alternative to the Empire of Oil.

I was looking at historian William Appleman Williams' "Empire As a Way of
Life," the past few days.  This was Williams overview of our national
tendency to divert ourselves from our problems through endless expansion.
That is what is still in play.  He concludes the book with a vignette about
stealing a knife from a store as a child, and being forced by his mother to
return it. On doing so, the storeowner responded, "Thank you. The knife is
not very important, but you coming down here and saying that to me is very
important."

Williams concluded, "Remembering all that, I know why I do not want the
empire. There are better ways to live and there are better ways to die."

In that spirit, I think we need a long-term and sensitive effort to bring
home to people that we are relating to the world in an imperial way, driven
by our own overconsumption, which is a lousy reason to die.  That justice is
a better way of life than empire.