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The Left Was
Right
By Curt Guyette
19/03/08 "Metro Times" -- - They take no
satisfaction in knowing that they were right in opposing this
ill-fated Iraq war from the outset. All they want is for people
to listen to them now.
And what they have to say is this: If we are ever going to get
all of our troops out, it will be because of pressure that
starts at the grassroots level and works its way up to the top
of the political chain - not the other way around.
When the Bush administration was spewing its lies and the
mainstream media marched behind in lockstep, trumpeting myths
about weapons of mass destruction and fantasies about invading
troops being greeted with tossed bouquets, members of the peace
movement were trying to warn us not to make what became a
mistake of epic proportions.
But America didn’t listen. The drumbeat for war was too loud,
drowning out the voices of opposition. Shoved to the margins,
they were all but invisible. When not being ignored by
mainstream media they were on the receiving end of ridicule from
squawking chicken hawks.
Before the start of the war, nearly 60 percent of the country
supported an invasion of Iraq. An invasion supposedly made
necessary by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and
the dictator’s close working relationship with Osama bin Laden
and his al Qaeda terrorist network. An invasion that would cost
only about $50 million, we were told, with a majority of the
troops expected to be back home within a matter of months.
All of which proved to be untrue.
Now, with 4,000 American soldiers dead and another 30,000 U.S.
troops wounded in this conflict, with tens of thousands - and
perhaps hundreds of thousands - of Iraqis killed and 4.5 million
more displaced, there is no room for gloating by those who urged
us not to invade. Instead there is only frustration that their
voices were not heard.
After five long and bloody years, the doves aren’t despairing.
Instead, they are determined.
“We just have to keep going,” says Phyllis Aronson. “There is no
other choice.”
As co-chair of the Huntington Woods Peace, Citizenship &
Education Project, Aronson is old enough to have witnessed how
public protest helped bring about an end to the Vietnam War more
than three decades ago. Memories of that era are like a buoy
keeping afloat hopes that another mass movement will succeed in
bringing this war to an end.
Public opinion has flipped since the start of the war, with
polls showing that about 60 percent of Americans now say that
the war was a mistake.
“The peace movement hasn’t been marginalized, we’ve been
mainstreamed,” says Leslie Cagan, co-chair of the national
antiwar coalition United for Peace and Justice.
But the shift in opinion has not resulted in an outpouring of
protesters taking to the streets.
Wendy Hamilton, director of the Detroit peace group Swords Into
Plowshares is perplexed by the lack of outrage: “Where’s the
anger? Where’s the indignation? Why aren’t people saying we were
lied to and doing something about it?”
Part of the answer is cynicism, she says. People believe that
nothing is going to change as long as George Bush remains in
office, so why bother to protest.
“A lot of people, I believe, think that speaking out won’t make
any difference,” she says.
Yousef Rabhi, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of
Michigan in Ann Arbor, has a similar view.
“A lot of people are fed up with the war. You can see that in
the national polls,” he says. “But there’s a feeling that’s like
despair. Because the task seems so daunting, some people are
afraid to do anything at all.”
It doesn’t help that the 2006 mid-term elections, which were
largely seen as a referendum on the war, resulted in the
Democrats taking control of both the U.S. House and Senate - yet
the Bush administration has continued to wage war unimpeded by
the opposition party.
“The Democrats didn’t do what some of us hoped they would do,
which was use the power of the purse to force an end to the
war,” says veteran activist Al Fishman, a board member of the
group Peace Action of Michigan. “Not enough of them had the
courage to face the accusation that cutting off funding meant
that they were deserting the troops in the field.”
It’s a ridiculous charge, Fishman says. You don’t support troops
by keeping them in harm’s way; you show support by bringing them
home.
But 2006 “was just the first step,” Fishman says. “We’re hoping
that 2008 will result in us having a more progressive Congress -
not just in terms of ending the war, but also in terms of ending
the mind-set that allowed us to get into this war. That’s where
the struggle is going to continue.”
Joel Eckel, executive director of the group Michigan Peaceworks
in Ann Arbor, agrees with that assessment. He also thinks that
the failure of Democrats after the 2006 election left a “lot of
people disheartened and cynical.”
Another factor is what might best be described as a feeling of
disconnection between everyday life on the home front and the
wars under way.
During World War II, gasoline, tires and even food were
rationed. Instead of being asked to plant victory gardens and
buy war bonds in this conflict, we’re urged by our president to
hit the stores and visit Disneyland as a show of patriotism.
As for Vietnam, it was the draft that motivated many young
people to take to the streets. Trying to bring about an end to
the war, for them, was a matter of self-preservation.
This time around, the war - as well as the one in Afghanistan
that has been under way since fall 2001 - is being fought by an
all-volunteer military and an army of private military
contractors.
As a result, say many of the activists we talked with, the war
has been reduced to a sort of background noise for the vast
majority.
“Because people don’t feel directly affected by the war, they
tend to tune it out,” Eckel says.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cost we’re all paying. Rabhi
made that point during a speech Saturday at an anti-war protest
in Ann Arbor he helped organize.
“People aren’t linking the dots,” he explains. “A lot of the
students I talk with don’t grasp the fact that this is something
our generation is going to have to pay for.”
There are also other issues, especially here in southeast
Michigan, that force attention to be focused elsewhere.
“In this area,” Hamilton says, “people have so many other kinds
of concerns: Will I keep my job? Will I keep my house? Will I be
able to afford college for my kids? These are the things that
they are most worried about.”
The point Fishman wants to make is that those bread-and-butter
economic issues and the war shouldn’t be viewed as separate.
When Bill Clinton made his first run for the presidency in 1992,
James Carville’s now-famous quote - “It’s the economy, stupid.”
- formed the foundation for the campaign’s success. But in 2008,
Fishman says, that credo is only half right.
“It is not just the economy,” he says. “And it is not just the
war. Those two issues are inextricably linked.”
But that point does not yet seem to have hit home, at least in
terms of moving the war to the forefront of people’s attention.
This perception was reinforced by recent poll that found only
about one-fourth of all Americans were aware that nearly 4,000
of their countrymen have died in the war. The survey results
were announced with a headline that declared: “Awareness of Iraq
War Fatalities Plummets.”
On the other hand, says Wendy Hamilton, there are signs that the
public is becoming more concerned about our nation’s use of
military force. She points out that when the group Peace Action
brought arms expert Scott Ritter and media critic Jeff Cohen to
this area for a presentation addressing such issues as political
propaganda, the Iraq war and the possible invasion of Iran, a
standing-room-only crowd of more than 500 turned out.
“Only a few years ago that number would have been much smaller,”
Hamilton says.
The key to change, the activists say, is not to expect change to
happen at the top. Work at the grassroots level involving masses
of people is what’s needed to alter the direction this country
is taking.
It is not enough to just show up at the polls on Election Day.
You have to become active and make your voice heard on an
ongoing basis. Contact your representatives in Congress. Come
out for protests. Circulate petitions. Donate to peace groups.
“In this upcoming election, we’re going to be working to put the
issue of war and peace in the forefront as much as possible,”
says Fishman, who has been at this for 60 years. “We’re going to
be very active in this campaign.”
But one important question remains:
How many of us will be with them?
© 2008 The Metro Times
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