Preventing World War III—Special

In Solidarity with Hunger-Striking Government Workers

The situation is escalating fast, and the “Death Spiral” I have been warning against advancing faster than we can keep track of.  I finally agree with something our often befuddled and inadequate secretary of state has said: this week, Antony Blinken, his own fears and insecurities on display, declared that our world is closer to a World War right now, even more so than at the time of the 1973 war of the Middle East.  Back then, it was Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, standing in for a depressed and thought-to-be heavily drinking President Richard Nixon, who shocked the world with a “Nuclear Alert.”  Today’s situation is far more complex: there are many more nations and “non-state actors” involved, there are far more deadly and “modern” weapons available to many parties, and the chances of “miscalculated” or mistaken—not to mention calculated—escalations are far greater.  We managed to survive 1973, and before that, 1962.  And there was at least another dozen “close calls.”  It is certainly not clear that we will manage to survive another one.

This is the situation in which many persons and groups are feeling they, too, have to demonstrate their concerns by finding ways to speak up and to act.  Tomorrow, on February 1, 2024, a group of workers at over two dozen U.S. government agencies are planning a “Day of Fasting” in what they are calling “a powerful display of solidarity with the people of Gaza,” in opposition to a genocidal assault, through which mentally-impaired Israeli leader is endangering the U.S., not to mention his own country.  Feds United for Peace—who earlier this month held a “Day of Mourning” to mark 100 days of the war—said Monday that the planned daylong hunger strike is meant “to raise awareness and support those affected” by the relentless military onslaught and “aims to shed light on the humanitarian crisis faced by the people of Gaza.”  The group quoted a United Nations report stating that Palestinians now make up 80 percent of all people worldwide facing famine and catastrophic hunger.  Just as rape has been dubbed a weapon of war in genocide, starvation, in this instance, is an even more direct “weapon of war.”

Tomorrow’s will be one of the most unusual government employee protests that I have heard about.  Hunger strikes evoke the protests I have seen in prisons, when extreme desperation calls for extreme measures.  Some government employees will be risking their livelihoods and careers.  It is still unclear if the planned protest will be blocked, undermined, or diminished by fear over threats of retribution.  Employees from dozens of government departments, including the Pentagon, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security are said to be planning to participate in protest against American complicity to a humanitarian crisis.

Even the International Court of Justice, using “legalese” twists and turns to avoid actually declaring “genocide”, has taken the unprecedented step of specifically ordering Israel to stop doing what it is doing and to report back on compliance to the Court formally in 30 days.

Just what the protestors are going to do and how many will be involved remain unclear.  People are rightfully fearful of the ramifications, especially in these tense times, but at the same time they feel morally compelled to protest as never before.  The protestors have made it known it is their goal to bring about a much more open discussion about U.S. policies and to insist more forcefully upon a complete “Ceasefire” and the immediate imperative to rush far greater food and medical assistance to the Palestinians.

Tomorrow’s Feds United for Peace planned actions follow a walkout and vigil last month outside the White House by dozens of Biden administration staffers who concealed their faces, fearing retaliation.  In December, more than 40 White House interns anonymously sent a letter condemning the “brutal and genocidal response” to the October 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel that mirrored the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.  We, too, may have avoided enormous loss of national wealth, military personnel, and global stature, had we not drawn ourselves into self-defeating wars that killed more than 60 times the number that died in on September 11—not counting the more than 30,000 veteran suicides—only to make us less safe by creating the Islamic State and by increasing global terrorism by 40,000 percent.

In November, more than 100 congressional staffers also walked out and held a vigil to mourn 10,000 Gazans who had been killed by Israeli forces with American weapons and support up to that point. The death toll in Gaza now stands at over 26,600, with more than 65,300 others wounded, mostly women and children, and there is hardly any medical care now available, and little water, food, or shelter.

Just yesterday, the very large and influential American Federation of Teachers formally joined other groups demanding a total “Ceasefire” and demanded that food and medical supplies be rushed to the Palestinian people in Gaza.  I, too, write in solidarity, as a physician concerned about human life, under the Hippocratic Oath and the Geneva Declaration that mandate medical neutrality, in applause of these life-affirming actions of government employees and the lengths to which they plan to go tomorrow, to protect life.

War benefits incompetent leaders far more than any people, and this opportunity may be taken to highlight the threat of dangerous leaders, be they the head of Hamas, of Israel, or of the United States.  When George W. Bush traveled to the U.K. as president, a group of psychiatrists considered detaining him as a danger to the public, based on his threats of a war in Iraq.  It would not have been an unusual move, given the principles of the profession and the lives that would certainly be saved.  Thanks to the corruption of the American Psychiatric Association during Donald Trump’s presidency, this matter-of-fact task of our protecting the public became off-limits for a head of state, no matter the level of danger, in an exceptionalism that rivals if not exceeds the time of George III.  Nevertheless, it is important to highlight the inappropriateness of this policy when unfit leaders beset by legal troubles come to see political power as a way not only to avoid prison, but to stoke conflict and devastation so as to “fulfill” an emotional need for demonstration of force and for the dependence of a desperate and frightened people.  The antidote is to listen to and join the voices and conscience of ordinary people, such as the federal workers who organized a hunger strike, even before the crisis situation of the U.S. further escalated into what has already become a regional war, which is dangerously threatening to slide into a slow-motion, step-by-step, retaliation leading to counter-retaliation, World War III.