With millions marching worldwide, we might still avert Bush's
war on Iraq. But given one of the most insular administrations
in America's history, we may also fail. No matter how powerful
our arguments, and the unprecedented breadth and strength of our
movement, Bush and his cohorts may still go ahead with a war
they've wanted for years. So we're working not only to stop this
war, but to lay the groundwork to prevent it from leading to
wars on Iran, North Korea, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil-maybe
even France. This means we'll need those now surging into the
movement to stick around for the long haul, and not melt away
when times get hard.
During the first Gulf War, one arguably more justified, the
U.S. peace movement got kicked in the gut. Then as well, major
protests surged through American and European cities, hoping to
stop the war before it started. But once the war began,
mainstream debate over the wisdom of war quickly became
supplanted by the insistence that anything other than relentless
cheerleading was disloyal to the troops-and to the country. In
previous fights against Contra aid and the nuclear arms race,
polls said our fellow citizens were with us. But Americans
overwhelmingly supported the first Gulf War, because it worked
militarily, and because the hundred thousand Iraqis who died
were faceless and anonymous. Those who continued speaking out
for peace quickly felt marginalized, isolated, and silenced.
Some blamed their compatriots for not doing enough. Most quickly
retreated into private life, many entering a political cocoon
they would stay in for years. Either way, visible public
opposition quickly faded.
Yet for some who've been active working for justice and peace
ever since, that war was their entry point to involvement. What
made the difference between the people who retreated and those
who stayed engaged? What will make the difference now that many
more ordinary citizens are outraged enough to speak out-opposing
both the war and Bush's broader assault on democracy?
Those who persisted back then promptly learned that their
actions could matter whether or not they produced immediate
results. Connecting with fellow activists, they saw themselves
as part of a long-term movement for change-fighting for basic
principles that mattered more than how fast the largest military
power in human history could crush a relatively small nation
whose dictator it had armed and supported. They retained hope
and courage even when the political tides seemed to run against
them.
So how do we encourage the newly engaged to continue? How do
we keep on ourselves, and keep reaching beyond the core
converted? History never fully repeats itself, a lesson that the
Bush administration seems to forget. But if Bush does go to war
despite massive global opposition, the peace movement needs to
be prepared for some unsettling possibilities.
The initial military phase may go quickly. Iraq today poses
far less of a military threat to American troops than it did in
1991, when the phrase "turkey shoot" came into popular
use. The march to Baghdad-following massive bombing of the city
and its inhabitants-will likely encounter little substantial
opposition; as was true in the first Gulf War, far more U.S.
troops will probably die due to cancer from their
uranium-enriched arsenals than from any initial Iraqi attacks.
But once U.S. troops reach Baghdad, there's major potential for
bloody urban warfare, followed by a protracted occupation.
If the war goes well militarily, Americans are likely to
rally behind Bush, as their worst fears seem to be averted. The
mainline media will praise our President's heroic leadership and
largely avoid covering civilian deaths, though tens of thousands
will certainly die, if not several hundred thousand. Most
Americans will hesitate to speak out, once again fearful of
undermining the troops or too discouraged to think it will
matter. The administration will brand those who challenge their
policies as disloyal and irrelevant cowards.
But the same casualties that our media minimize will be
highly visible to the Islamic world. Our planes may
"accidentally" bomb Al Jazeera in the first raids, but
this will only further inflame the Arab street. Whether through
satellite image or word of mouth, Muslims worldwide will hear of
the dead and wounded, the fleeing refugees, the destruction of
homes, power stations, and sewage plants. Just as our conduct in
the first Gulf War helped shift Osama bin Laden from an ally to
a murderous foe, so attacking Iraq now will create further
enemies, in ways we can only hope we'll never know.
Perhaps the results of this rage will be delayed. But an
uglier immediate scenario is also possible-that the attack on
Baghdad, and the crackdown on Palestinians that Israel is likely
to launch at the same time, will trigger counterattacks on
American and allied targets throughout the world-including on
U.S. soil. Forgotten in the Bush II administration's relentless
propaganda campaign, equating Saddam and his weapons of mass
destruction with terror and 9/11, is that many of the actual
perpetrators of 9/11 are still out there - quite possibly
including Osama bin Laden himself. And Islamic terror groups
have been planning for this invasion at least as long as the
Pentagon.
If terrorist bombs do go off in Chicago, Des Moines, or
Philadelphia, America will no longer simply be conducting an
invisible war in a faraway land. We will be at war with an enemy
that fights back here at home. If bombs are killing innocent
American civilians, most citizens are likely to feel overwhelmed
with anger and fear. Just as was true after 9/11, they'll hardly
be receptive to the difficult truth that America's own actions
will have helped set those terrible events in motion. And that
we as well have taken innocent lives, again and again. It will
be hard to resist the administration's permanent evisceration of
due process, the Bill of Rights, and other inconvenient
nuisances. If unprepared, the peace movement risks being
isolated and obliterated.
The best way to avoid this nightmare scenario, of course, is
to apply enough public pressure - globally and here at home-
that the Bush Administration feels unable to proceed with its
invasion. Failing that, the anti-war movement needs a Plan B. It
needs a message that will play well after an invasion begins,
even if terrorist counterattacks begin; it needs a plan for
getting that message out to the public despite all the media
cheerleading; and it needs a strategy for not only retaining its
current massive numbers, but expanding them to the point where
we can reverse government policy. We need to take account of
these possibilities now, in our message and approach, doing our
best to prevent the coming war, but also anticipating the public
mood, so our actions still count no matter what happens.
In the face of such grim possibilities, we might begin by
connecting the waves of new participants just beginning to speak
out with communities of longtime activists. That sounds almost
trivial, but there's nothing more demoralizing than staying home
in isolation, watching Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld on TV. Even
with supportive communities, keeping on will be difficult. But
the more disconnected we are, the harder it will be. And if
we're connected with enough sympathetic people, we can support
each other, pass on alternative perspectives, and talk about all
the issues that will remain whether or not Saddam Hussein gets
removed from the Baghdad palaces where we helped install and
maintain him.
Community also lets us gather to mourn. We did this far too
little during the first Gulf War, and suffered as a result. It's
sometimes necessary to admit that we feel angry and powerless.
Then we can remember that we still have the power to act, and
that our actions still matter, even when things seem bleakest.
Supportive community reminds us that, whatever men like John
Ashcroft may think, true patriotism means engagement, not
silence.
This past December, a Seattle antiwar coalition called SNOW
gathered 2,000 people from the city and suburbs at a local high
school, and divided them in neighborhood groups. The resulting
80 groups are now operating on their own with local facilitators
and email listservs. Some are conducting vigils and neighborhood
marches, others door-to-door canvassing and handing out yard
signs, others peace fairs, petition drives and potlucks. These
efforts reach people who'd never go near a downtown march.
We could build this infrastructure at every point we speak
out. Our marches and rallies have grown, in nearly every city in
the country, to create carnivals of homemade signs,
stilt-walkers, puppets, belly-dancers, marching bands,
grandmothers, ministers, punks, and all manner of ordinary
citizens. But they've also missed opportunities. Speakers have
focused, with reason, on how Bush has failed to make the case
for a war that will make us less safe, not more. But they've
talked little about what it means to work in an ongoing way to
address the root causes of the crises we now face. They've taken
for granted the need to give people psychological bread for
their journey.
Our marches and rallies have also done far too little to
connect the tide of new participants to concrete networks that
could support their involvement. Some of us are linked with a
hundred different groups, juggling endless invitations to act.
But most in America, including most participants in the huge
recent marches, aren't connected in this fashion. Despite the
growing involvement of religious and labor groups, most march as
individuals, not through organized institutions. Except when
local peace and justice efforts are most visible, those newly
involved can easily miss them, particularly if they live, like
most Americans, in neighborhoods outside the urban core which is
the focus of so much visible alternative politics. When the
propaganda barrage escalates into a full-scale blitz, those just
beginning to act will find it particularly hard to resist
isolation.
But peace movement participants don't have to be
disconnected. We now have the technologies to keep people
involved. Imagine if at every march, rally, or door-to-door
campaign, organizers put major volunteer energy into gathering
names, emails, and zip codes, then used the Seattle model to set
up local meetings. Organizers could at least do their best to
ensure that no one left a major march without knowing about the
key local websites that could allow them to plug in and get
connected. Integrating the flood of new participants would take
serious volunteer energy, but if we can link even a fraction of
those just coming in to each other and to existing communities
of concern, far more will persist when the going gets tough.
That's also an argument for continuing our coordinated local
protests, in ways that can keep reaching new communities.
Encouraging this kind of connection should be as high a priority
as getting people to march to begin with.
If war comes, we'll need to remind ourselves and our fellow
citizens that no matter how "well" it goes militarily,
it's a betrayal of law and of justice, and an incitement to
bitterness and terror. That's why, for all the need to build
community, we also need visions sufficiently compelling to help
participants new and old keep going no matter what happens. We
need to raise these visions to all just beginning to raise their
concerns, including those who backed Bush's war in Afghanistan,
served in other wars, or even consider themselves honorable
Republicans.
Given how continually Bush plays the fear card, we might
acknowledge that Americans have some reasons for fear. And then
make clear that reckless zealotry and a willingness to make
entire populations expendable does nothing to bring real
security. That's part of why so many major military figures-like
retired Generals Anthony Zinni, Wesley Clark, and even Norman
Schwarzkopf-have expressed strong reservations about this war.
Think of bin Laden's original vision. His Al Qaeda militants
justified their anti-American jihad on three grounds: American
military desecration of the Islamic holy land of Saudi Arabia;
American support for Israel's brutal military occupation of
Palestine; and (despite Al Qaeda's loathing for Saddam Hussein
himself) the massive suffering of ordinary Iraqis during the
Gulf War and the medieval economic siege, punctuated by
occasional bombings, that America has led ever since.
From every indication, bin Laden hoped 9/11 would provoke the
United States into perpetrating such atrocities against Muslims
to inspire a global Islamic holy war against the Western
oppressors. Or at least that it would trigger a regional jihad
bringing militant Islam to power in the Middle East. After some
initial bows to multilateral restraint, the Bush Administration
has complied more fully than bin Laden could ever have dreamed.
It has given a blank check to unprecedented levels of Israeli
brutality; it has openly plotted for a widespread, permanent
military presence in the Middle East; it now proposes to
incinerate vast numbers of Baghdad residents just in the first
few days of our invasion.
Add to that the renewed American allegiance to brutal
dictators from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia,
and all points between; a pointed campaign for America to
dominate energy resources in every country with Islamic
populations, from Nigeria, to Indonesia, to the Caspian Sea; the
re-installation into power of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance
warlords; and the targeting of Islamic minority communities in
the United States itself. The Bush administration has already
handed a wealth of arguments to Islamic terrorist groups
worldwide. As an Arab diplomat recently told Reuters, "With
Bush as a recruiting sergeant these people will be in business
for another generation."
We need to remind people that the terrorists whose attacks
Bush has used to give his efforts legitimacy wear no uniform,
answer to no central authority, and work from no single national
state. And that their efforts were fueled in part by past
American actions, like supporting bin Laden in Afghanistan. As a
result, their efforts can ultimately be prevented, not by war,
but a combination of police work and persuasion - ensuring that
such tactics are embraced by dozens, not millions, and then
working to render those dozens as ineffectual as possible.
Ignoring this not only puts our soldiers at risk, it risks the
lives of ordinary Americans at home. We need to talk about this
now and if an invasion starts. We need to be clear that those
who've rushed to war, not those of us who oppose it, are the
real betrayers of trust and security.
From its embrace of might-makes-right to its rejection of
international treaties and norms, to its crude taunting of the
elected leaders and populations of America's historic allies,
the Bush Administration has taken the United States from being
the object of the world's sympathy and solidarity to inspiring
global resentment and anger. That, in turn, not only helps
isolate the U.S. from its historic allies and undermines
international law. It also incites the violent fringe who are
willing to kill more innocent American civilians. And it invites
other countries to follow the path of preemptive war, including
a nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
Facing crises that have built on own government's actions, we
have no magic solutions to resolve every possible global
problem. But at any point our country can make the world safer
or more dangerous, more respectful or more brutal, more
sustainable or more environmentally destructive. And in every
one of these choices, this administration is inviting the worst
possible consequences. The more we elaborate this, the more
we'll have credibility even if the nightmare scenario occurs and
9/11 turns out to be just an opening act for further death and
carnage.
But we can't just appeal to fear. Two themes link the
millions who recently marched worldwide: They recognize that war
on Iraq would be a practical and moral disaster. And they reject
Bush administration's attempts to impose their vision on the
world. Which means we also need to challenge this
administration's raw arrogance, the contempt with which they
view not only those who challenge their vision, but also the
process of democracy itself. We need to do this in a way that
reaches even to those who once called themselves administration
supporters. If Saddam's armies fold quickly, we'll need even
more to challenge the apostles of empire, who insist that
because our armies dwarf those of every other nation, we have
the right to impose our will however we choose. We need
particularly to resist scenarios where the US turns military
victory into regional economic and political dominance.
We might point out that Bush's disregard of world opinion on
Iraq has ample precedent. From the moment it took office, this
administration has sought more power and less accountability
than any U.S. administration in living memory. The assault on
democracy began with the 2000 election, emerged early on through
Enron-crafted secret energy policies and massive wealth
transfers masked as tax reform, and has continued with the
gutting of core civil liberties and laws requiring government
openness. Since this government's relationship to both the world
and its own citizens is bullying arrogance, we need to make
challenging that arrogance a central focus.
An ethic of accountability would link the casual way this
administration approaches this war's potential human and
political consequences, with the ease with which they make other
lives and communities expendable. We should connect the dots
between Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest, his cuts in every
program that serves the poor and vulnerable, and his cavalier
dismissal of every major environmental crisis that we face. We
need to highlight the broad-spectrum recklessness of such
choices, then challenge the distracted powerlessness that makes
too many citizens accept in resigned silence whatever is handed
down.
When we're challenging this recklessness, we need more than
ever to express our vision in human terms, not abstract
rhetoric, to put human stories and faces on the issues we
address. We need to do this without self-righteousness or
ideological abstraction, and with compassion for how easy it is
to feel overwhelmed by a world spinning out of control. We need
to stand up and not be intimidated.
We also need long-term perspective, for the perseverance that
creates real change. Contrary to the prevailing myth, Rosa Parks
didn't just step onto a bus in Montgomery, but had been an NAACP
activist for a dozen years, part of a supportive community that
taught people to persist despite every setback. Because we can't
foresee every twist and turn, we need to view our involvement as
a long-term process. If we give up simply because things get
difficult, we create self-fulfilling prophecies of despair.
If war comes, it will be particularly important to not berate
ourselves or our activist compatriots for having failed to stop
it. We did this during the first Gulf War. That was part of what
burned people out. We need the faith that if we keep on long
enough and keep raising critical questions, our actions will
have an impact, in ways we can rarely foresee. We need to
remember this even when our efforts appear utterly futile, when
we seem to be rolling the proverbial rock up a hill only to
watch it roll back again and again.
Even if we succeed, we may never know when our actions are
mattering most. The heads of the Eastern European police states
insisted their hold on power was secure until almost the moment
peaceful revolutions erupted and the Berlin Wall came down. So
did the white rulers of South Africa, almost until the moment
when Nelson Mandela was freed. During Vietnam, Richard Nixon
seriously considered using nuclear weapons and at one point
threatened their use-then backed down in the face of the
nationwide Moratorium demonstrations and a huge march in
Washington DC. Publicly, Nixon responded to the protests by
watching the Washington Redskins football game and declaring
that the marchers weren't affecting his policies in the
slightest-sentiments that fed the frustration and demoralization
of far too many in the peace movement. Yet privately, Nixon
decided the movement had, in his words, so "polarized"
American opinion that he couldn't carry out his threat.
Participants had no idea that their efforts may have helped
stopped a nuclear attack.
Whatever the impact of our protests on an administration
drunk on its own power, they show the rest of the world that
vast numbers of ordinary Americans disagree. They help deflect
anti-American sentiment, perhaps even violence, away from U.S.
citizens. They give us back our dignity as we resist attempts to
intimidate and silence us, and they challenge and change us at a
personal level.
Global protests have already handed the White House major
United Nations setbacks, prompting daily anti-Europe tirades
that sound an awful lot like those of a petulant child finally
being told "no." If enough ordinary citizens here at
home have the courage to keep on saying "no" to
reckless actions, there's no telling what we can stop. And if we
accompany that "no" with a "yes" that
demands a world where humans are treated with respect, there's
no telling what we can create. For only by persisting do we have
a chance to break the cycles of endless enemies, retaliations,
and deaths of ordinary people caught in the crossfire.
Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With
Conviction in a Cynical Time (St Martin's Press) and three other
books on citizen involvement. See www.soulofacitizen.org.
Geov Parrish is a columnist for www.workingforchange.com,
the Seattle Weekly, and In These Times. To get Paul Loeb's
articles email list@soulofacitizen.org
