Pacifism advocates urge Iraq dialogue

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

A grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and an associate of the late Martin Luther King Jr. said yesterday the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks increased the stakes and the challenges for advocates of peace through nonviolence.

Most of the 83 people at the East-West Center program applauded Arun Gandhi and Lawrence Carter for their message that true peace begins in the human heart, flows from dialogue and cannot be guaranteed by governments at gunpoint.

Moderator Majid Tehranian, a University of Hawai'i professor and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace, a sponsor, said if all Americans had heard the speeches they would not support a United States attack on Iraq.

Arun Gandhi said because of Sept. 11, "we are now seeing war clouds gathering around us" and that the war on terrorism has resulted in bombing in Afghanistan which "killed many innocent people."

An earlier Sept. 11, in 1906, suggested a different way, he said. On that date, the modern philosophy of nonviolence was born when Mahatma Gandhi launched a struggle against racism in South Africa.

Carter, today dean of Morehouse College in Atlanta, said it is time to return to the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, and to move international relations "from retaliation to dialogue."

Carter accused the Bush administration of exploiting the grief that followed Sept. 11. And he detailed the horrors of Hiroshima, where the United States' first atomic bomb killed or crippled hundreds of thousands of civilians. "Hiroshima must become the nuclear fallout classroom of the world," he said.

But a former career diplomat and a retired military officer in attendance said their experience didn't support Gandhi's and Carter's perspective.

"There is the problem of evil," said Ed Marks, a former U.S. ambassador to West Africa and a veteran of 40 years in the foreign service. "I don't think they face up to it. You can only 'dialogue' with people who want to dialogue."

Gayle Gardner, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel and has been active in Republican Party politics in Hawai'i since, said Gandhi and Carter offered idealistic "propaganda," which they failed to support with facts.

Steve Boggs, 72, of Honolulu, a longtime peace activist, said after yesterday's talks that Sept. 11 has made it harder for Americans to oppose violence without being called unpatriotic.

Also in the audience yesterday were college-age students and members of Soka Gakkai, the Buddhist sect, which sponsors the Toda Institute.

A traveling display at the program gave equal billing to Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Soka Gakkai President Daisaku Ikeda as advocates of peace and nonviolence.

Reach Walter Wright at 525-8054 or wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com.