There are two ways that warring parties can come to terms with each other and make Peace. The first and clearest occurs when one party loses the war and the other party wins. This can happen acutely as the result of overt warfare, as with the Allied victory and the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers ending WWII. It can also happen as the end product of a long, more indolent process of cold war; the United States defeated the Soviet Union when the Soviets realized that they could no longer sustain the fight against the United States and essentially agreed to end the war. In both cases, one enemy recognized (or tacitly accepted) they had lost and as a result Peace ensued.
When a long war takes place and neither party loses, the only other option is for the war to continue until both parties are sick and tired enough of the war to arrive at an armistice, a cessation of hostilities. In the best case scenario, such an armistice eventually evolves into a true Peace, with all that is implied by that formulation. In the worst case, the armistice lasts for some time before it fails and warfare breaks out anew.
There are two important corollaries to this having to do with the necessity of preparing the populations of the combatants for Peace after they have spent some indeterminate number of years at war.
War is a societal trauma and as such, as I described in my post on Terror and Societal Regression, when a country is traumatized, there is a tendency toward societal regression. This leads to the failure of higher order cognition in favor of more primitive cognitive and psychological mechanisms:
Societies, as highly complex structures, can regress from their optimal functioning in the face of a trauma. The American Psychoanalytic Association panel considered just this question, and while their focus was on various traumatized societies (Albania, after Hoxha, and Argentina, after the military coup of 1976 and the ensuing suppression of the left, were of special interest) there is obvious relevance for America, post 9/11.
After a national trauma, there are a number of signs of "large group" regression. (I will not here go into some of the characteristics of what constitutes a large group; it relates to elements that I have referred to in the past as our tribal nature; see also here.) The panel chair, Vamik Volkan, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and founder of the Center for the Study of the Mind and Human Interaction at the University of Virginia and Emeritus Training and Supervising Analyst of the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, described 14 major symptoms of large-group regression:
3) Severe splitting. This can occur as a polarity between "us" and "them" or within society.
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10) Dehumanization. Exemplified by the Nazis, this is a two-step process. Step one is identifying undesirable humans; step two is turning them into nonhumans, as in the Hutus' degradation of the Tutsis, referred to as cafrads, or insects. Interestingly, the Tutsis were also called the "Jews" of Rwanda.
Repairing the split view of the enemy and re-humanizing them are intra-societal processes necessary to negotiate one's path to Peace with an enemy. Until the population can accomplish the re-integration of the split images of the enemy and re-humanize them, they will not be able to accept the enemy's essential humanity and approach them as equals.
In a society that has a free press and encourages diversity of opinion, the public already has the prerequisites for such re-integration and re-humanization, since parts of the information sphere have already done the work (or, in some cases, had resisted the tendency to dehumanize and split in the first place.) Societies that do not have a free press have much less ability to perform these progressive (in the psychological sense, ie, opposite of regressive) processes and as a result, are less likely to be able to make the transition to true Peace with a former enemy.
These questions are particularly pressing in our current context and their expression can be seen in various ways. Of note, splitting is dysfunctional whether the focus is on the idealized object or the devalued object. While the devalued split object presents an obvious problem, the idealized object presents a significant problem as well. The flip from idealized to devalued, with minimal provocation, is an ever-present risk.
1) In relation to Iraq, the MSM and the anti-war politicians, without any apparent awareness, have supported the splitting inherent in the idea that Iraq is a total mess; such a formulation supports the notion that Iraqis are barbarous and we must get out of the way of their inevitable and ongoing civil war. Here the focus on the devalued Iraqi damages our efforts to attain stability and ultimately Peace.
2) Domestically, the MSM and our government, by their support of the most extreme of the urbane Islamists, such as CAIR, enhance the possibility of a future terrorist attack leading to the very splitting they fear. By focusing on the idealized "Religion of Peace" they fail to provide the fractionation that would immunize society from the easy regression to the split image of Islam as all-bad. In this case, the focus on the idealized image not only increases the risk of a future attack, it also increases the risk of the switch taking place once such an attack has occurred.
3) The third area of interest is the renewed efforts to press forward with the illusory "Peace Process" in the Middle East. This includes efforts to support Mahmoud Abbas's brand of pseudologia cum passivity cum ineffectiveness, along with massive amounts of Israeli and Western self-deception.
In the greater Middle East, the MSM in their misguided efforts to demonize Israel and idealize the Arab and Muslim "oppressed", have avoided mention of the dehumanization of the Jew by the Arab/Muslim world, who attribute all-bad to the Jews as justification for murder and terror. The humanity of the Jewish victims is denied by simply avoiding mention of them. A subtle sabotage of Peace efforts ensues. The Arab League is reported to have made a de facto recognition of Israel. Note the reporting on the visit of delegations from Jordan and Egypt to Israel in the New York Times:
The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan began a historic visit to Israel on Wednesday to formally present an Arab peace plan, saying they were extending ''a hand of peace'' on behalf of the region.
The ministers arrived as representatives of the Arab League, the first time the 22-member group has sent a delegation to the Jewish state. The Arab League peace plan envisions full recognition of Israel in return for evacuation of lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
''We are extending a hand of peace on behalf of the whole region to you, and we hope that we will be able to create the momentum needed to resume fruitful and productive negotiations'' between Israel and the Palestinians and the rest of the Arab world, Jordan's foreign minister, Abdul-Ilah Khatib, said at a news conference with Israeli President Shimon Peres.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the two delegates had been asked by the league ''to come and offer Israel the Arab peace initiative.'' He urged Israel to consider the plan seriously.
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Israel has welcomed the plan as a basis for negotiations, but raised concerns about certain aspects. Israel rejects a full withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It also objects to the plan's apparent call for the return of Palestinians who became refugees in the 1948 Mideast war and their descendants. Israel says a large-scale return of refugees would destroy the country's Jewish character.
It is noted without comment (in the thirteenth paragraph after extolling the virtues of the Arab League plan and preceded by the dismissive formulation that "Israel says") that the Arab League plan essentially includes the destruction of Israel, but this is considered a minor none-noteworthy point by those who imagine that talking with one's enemies without having done the necessary preparation for the talks can be meaningful. By insisting on the right of return for the Palestinian refugees with no commensurate notice of the Jews who were forced to leave the Arab countries, Israel's fundamental humanity is once again denied. Further, the Jerusalem Post includes a telling detail the Times omits:
The Egyptian State Information service released a communiqué on Saturday saying Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit will be "representing Egypt and only Egypt, not the Arab League" during his visit.
The communiqué quoted Gheit as saying "there was no truth" in the statement issued by the Quartet last week that the two foreign ministers were going to Israel on behalf of the League.
Nevertheless, Israeli spokesmen continue to say that the visit by Gheit and his Jordanian counterpart is "historic," marking the first time League representatives will hold official talks with Israel.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev pointed out that Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa acknowledged in a BBC interview last week that the delegation was coming on behalf of the League.
The Arab Peace Initiative, based on the Saudi peace plan of February 2002, calls for a full Israel withdrawal from all territories taken in the Six Day War, including east Jerusalem, in exchange for normal ties with the Arab world. It also calls for the return to Israel of Palestinian refugees and their descendents.
One would imagine that by this time the fact that Arab spokesmen typically say one thing for international audiences and a diametrically opposed comment for domestic consumption would have penetrated the wishful thinking of the Israeli liberals exemplified by Regev, but sadly, further disappoints seem necessary for reality to intrude.
The sad fact is that the Arab press, most of it under State control, has not prepared their people for the idea that Jews are people worthy of treatment as equals. The Jew continues to be crudely and savagely demonized in the Arab press (and in marginally more sophisticated ways in the European press) and no expectation of a more integrated perspective is evinced. Until the Arab and Muslim public is prepared to see the Jews as people, no Peace can be accepted by their populace. The best that can be hoped for is an Armistice.
Of most interest to this discussion is that the one place where splitting and dehumanization have been most ameliorated is in Iraq. The US military, especially since General David Petraeus has taken over command, has done an exceptional job of humanizing the Iraqi Arabs and resiting the temptation for global splitting. The surge includes finding allies among the Sunni and Shia and separating them from those who cannot undo their own regression. (Note that al Qaeda separates all into supporters or opponents and denies the humanity of those who disagree.) By imbuing the Iraqi people with humanity and recognizing their complexity, for the first time since the invasion, Peace may yet be possible.
Peace can only come when a society at war, having recognized that their maximalist desires cannot be attained, begins the difficult and painful process of re-integrating and re-humanizing their image of the enemy.
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